Obituaries
Please alert us to the recent death of any other Rhodes Scholar by emailing communications@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
Upon graduation Jim was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship for the Province of New Brunswick. After two years at the University College Oxford, where he played on the Oxford hockey team, Jim completed a BSc in research. He continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received his PhD in Geochemistry in 1961. Jim came to McMaster University in September 1961. He had a passion for research and early on in his career built a mass spectrometer and made use of the McMaster nuclear reactor to aid in his research.
Jim enjoyed working with his students both in the lab and the field and believed strongly in the contributions they made together towards the scientific knowledge base of geology. Over the course of his career, Jim worked with graduate students from all over the world to expand the understanding of gold and the platinum group metals.
MCQUADE--Lawrence C. The Hon. Lawrence C. McQuade died of pneumonia in Nantucket, Massachusetts on 21 December 2020. He was 93 and a resident of New York City and Nantucket. Born in New York on 12 August 1927 the second son of Edward Anthony and Thelma Keefe McQuade, Larry moved to Tucson, Arizona when he was two years old. He was an outstanding student and athlete during his school years, a combination that continued at Yale University where he was a football hero and graduated with distinction, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, captaining his rugby team, and receiving an MA in Law. He then earned an LLB cum laude from Harvard Law School and became a member of the New York and Washington, D.C. Bar Associations. Larry worked as an associate at Sullivan and Cromwell until he joined the Kennedy Administration as assistant to Paul Nitze, then Deputy Secretary of Defense, who became a friend and mentor. Among their challenges in the early 1960s were the war in Viet Nam, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. During the Johnson Administration Larry served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Domestic and International Trade. After leaving government, Larry returned to the private sector, becoming president of ProCon, a builder of oil refineries worldwide. He then moved to W. R. Grace as vice-chairman and a member of that board. In the 1990s, Larry became vice chairman of Prudential Securities and then cofounded River Capital International, a venture capital firm focused on investment in Russia. Larry served as a director of Oxford Analytica, the Quixote Corporation, Prudential Securities, and the Bunzl Corporation, among others. As part of his volunteer work, Larry sat on the boards of the National Trade Council, the Atlantic Council, the Asian Programs Foundation, the Foreign Bond Holders Protective Council, the Czech-Slovak American Enterprise Fund and the Overseas Development Council. He was a lifelong member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Century Association, and others. Larry's first wife, De Rossey Morrissey, died in 1978. Larry is survived by his wife, Margaret Osmer McQuade, their son, Andrew Parker McQuade, and their grandson Jack Roberts McQuade. He is lovingly remembered by numerous nieces, nephews and godchildren who happily share "Uncle Larry" stories. There was no finer gentleman than Larry McQuade. He was a person of brilliant intellect, unshakeable integrity, gentleness of heart, and infectious good humor.
Mort arrived at Harvard College in the Spring semester of 1947 and graduated in 1949. In 1949 Mort became a Rhodes Scholar and spent the next three years at Oxford University studying ancient history and philosophy until he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate.
He served a year as an Instructor at Harvard (1954-1955) and after three years as an assistant professor of History and Classics at the University of Chicago, he arrived at UCLA, where he would remain for his entire career.
One can conservatively estimate that 20,000 UCLA undergraduates attended his Mort's lectures on the ancient world at UCLA.
Paul Sarbanes (Maryland & Balliol 1954) was a graduate of Princeton University and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1954. He graduated with a First Class degree in 1957 and then returned to the United States to attend Harvard Law School.
After graduating in 1960, he clerked for Federal Judge Morris A. Soper before entering private practice. He was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1966 and went on to serve two terms in the Maryland House from 1967 to 1971. In 1970, he won a seat in the United States House of Representatives, representing Maryland's 4th and later Maryland's 3rd congressional district from 1971 to 1977.
In 1976, Sarbanes ran for the United States Senate and was re-elected four times, each time receiving no less than 59% of the vote. Sarbanes co-wrote the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which reshaped corporate oversight after accounting scandals.
Many Rhodes Scholars will especially remember how Sarbanes and Senator Richard Lugar (Indiana & Pembroke 1954), from opposing parties, jointly made them so warmly welcome in Washington, DC.
John enrolled at Dalhousie University at the young age of 14, and graduated with an MSc in 1958. He was awarded with First Class Honours, the Governor-General's Gold Medal and a Rhodes Scholarship to continue his doctorate in Experimental Physics at Magdalen College, Oxford University.
John spent five years as a researcher and lecturer at the Université de Grenoble, where he developed a love for the French Alps and met his future wife, Jacqueline. A compelling offer with the National Research Council brought him back to Canada (Ottawa), and later he joined the Association of the Atlantic Universities (Halifax). He retired as Director of Research and Academic Planning for the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (Fredericton) to pursue his many other interests and moved back to Halifax in 1997.
We were saddened to hear of the passing of Colin Curtis, former managing director of the Bermuda Perfume Factory. Colin read Jurisprudence at Queen's College from 1959-1961.
After leading his final Russian study groups, Dick retired in 1995 to work on his two volumes of poetic analysis, Tchaikovsky’s Complete Songs (2002) and Rachmaninoff’s Complete Songs (2014), both of which were also translated into Russian.
These two books were published in the Indiana University Press “Russian Music Studies” series. Dick was thrilled when concert organizers asked to use his translations in vocal programs at Carnegie Hall and the Oxford Lieder Festival.
Professor Geoffrey Phillips (Rhodesia & Lincoln 1956) was an active Reader and member of synods since retirement as an English Professor more than a decade earlier from the English Department at Åbo Akademi, the Swedish medium University in Finland. Geoffrey was born in Kasama, Zambia and died in his present country of residence, Finland.
Graeme Rea worked for the Asian Development Bank from 1969-1979 and then for the International Monetary Fund, from 1979-1995. Graeme studied Law at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.