Obituaries
Please alert us to the recent death of any other Rhodes Scholar by emailing communications@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
Kit was born in Matara, Sri Lanka on 28 of October 1942 and passed away peacefully on 10 of October at Mercy Hospice, Auckland after a long battle with cancer. Kit studied sociology at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Sorely missed by his family and friends. At his request, Kit was farewelled in a private ceremony.
At a picnic one spring day in 1977, John Churchill told a Yale faculty member that he had gotten a job at Hendrix College and was moving back to Arkansas, where his infant son would grow up without an accent. “The joke blew right past him, clear and clean,” Churchill later told a crowd at Hendrix.
By 1977, Churchill had been a Rhodes Scholar, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oxford and was finishing up his dissertation for a Ph.D. from Yale University. He spent the next 24 years at Hendrix, where he twice served as interim president, and his pickled okra won a blue ribbon at the Faulkner County Fair. Then for 15 years he was the chief executive officer of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society, in Washington, D.C.
Churchill, 70, died peacefully in his sleep at a hospital in Nashville, 42 miles east of his home in Dickson, where he moved after retiring in 2016. He had been battling a septic infection, according to the family.
Born April 1, 1949, John Hugh Churchill spent the first few years of his life in Hector, where his father, Olen R. Churchill, was superintendent of schools.
The family moved to Little Rock, where John Churchill took an interest in the girl next door, Jean Hill. They began dating at the age of 16, later married, had three kids and remained together the rest of his life.
Some of their fondest memories were living in a cottage in Kirtlington, about 12 miles north of Oxford, while John was studying in England.
Years later, John Churchill would occasionally torment his children with exotic dishes like pickled herring.
Churchill graduated from Little Rock’s Hall High School before attending Southwestern (now Rhodes College) at Memphis, where he was captain of the football team, conference champion at throwing the discus, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
For 17 of those 24 years at Hendrix, Churchill served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college. He had also been dean of students at Hendrix and taught philosophy throughout his time there.
Ann Die Hasselmo, who was president of Hendrix for nine years, said Churchill was “a prince of a man,” brilliant, ethical and humane.
“There aren’t many people about whom I can say this, there is nothing laudatory or flattering that you can say about John Churchill that would not be true,” Hasselmo said. “He was a remarkable, an amazing human being. Those of us who knew John and Jean mourn with the family and count ourselves fortunate to have walked a bit down the path with him.”
James Patrick Griffin passed away in Oxford on 21 November 2019.
Having obtained a BA from Yale University in 1955, Jim came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar at Corpus Christi College (1955–58). He was then a Senior Scholar at St Antony’s College (1958–60), obtaining his doctorate in 1960. He lectured at Christ Church from 1960 to 1966, and was then appointed a Fellow in Philosophy at Keble in 1966, a position he held for 30 years. He was then appointed White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, becoming a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Keble in 1996, and was also an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi.
Husband of the late Catherine and father of Nicholas and Jessica. Beloved Grandpa of Isabel, George and Kate.
From Keble News.
Bill Sterling attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1961 and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Robert K. Massie, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who wrote respected biographies of Russian royals, including “Nicholas and Alexandra,” which became a movie. He died on Monday at his home in Irvington, N.Y, at 90 years old.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in American studies at Yale and another degree in Modern History at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before serving in the Navy.
Howard J. Burnett, 89, passed away peacefully on June 16, 2019, at his home in Mt. Lebanon. As a Rhodes Scholar, he studied at Queen's College, Oxford University (1954), completing B.A. and M.A. degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Dr. Burnett received his doctorate in Government and International Relations from New York University (1965). Dr. Burnett served in the U.S. Navy from 1954 to 1958, for which he was honoured as a Distinguished Alumni of the Navy Supply Corps School in 2010. After serving in the Navy, he worked for Booz Allen & Hamilton, A. L. Ransohoff & Company and Texaco.
On July 1, 1970, Dr. Burnett became the 10th president of Washington & Jefferson College, leading the college until his retirement in 1998.
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Walter Frank was a veteran of WWII, a Harvard graduate (Class of '49), and a Rhodes Scholar. Walter is survived by his nieces, Isabelle and Claudine, and their children, Sophie Lilla and Henrik Elster, as well as many loving friends and colleagues.
Richard Newton Gardner served as the United States Ambassador to Spain and the United States Ambassador to Italy. He was a professor emeritus of law at Columbia Law School. Gardner graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. degree in Economics, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and as a Rhodes Scholar, he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Economics from Oxford University
Richard D. Nehring passed away on August 27, 2019, at age 76 in Colorado Springs. Richard earned a B.A in History at Valparaiso University (1965) and attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1965. He went on to become a Danforth Fellow at Stanford University, where he pursued his doctorate in Political Science (1967-72). During that time he also worked at the office of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Interior before joining the Rand Corp., where he spent a decade as a project director of fossil fuel supply issues in their Energy Policy Program.