RHODES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interviewee: Richard Celeste (Ohio & Exeter 1960) [hereafter ‘RC’]
Moderator: Rodolfo Lara Torres [hereafter ‘RLT’]
Date of interview: 17 January 2024
RLT: So, this is Rodolfo Lara Torres of the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, England, and I’m here with Richard Celeste on 17 January 2024. During the 120th anniversary year of the Rhodes Scholarship, Richard is helping us to launch the first Rhodes Scholar oral history project. We’re very grateful to you for this gift to the community and future Rhodes Scholars. Let’s get started with one formality, Dick. Do I have permission to record this interview?
RC: You have my permission to record this interview.
RLT: Thank you. And can you please spell your full name?
RC: Yes. It’s Richard Celeste.
RLT: Thank you so much. And let’s just jump into the interview, and we’d just love to talk a little bit about your life, your trajectory, and how the Rhodes Scholarship played a role in your life.
RLT: Starting with the very beginning, where and when were you born? And maybe you can tell us a little bit about the family you grew up with or any reminiscences of that time.
RC: I was born in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, the oldest of three children. My father was nine months old when his mother brought him from Italy to a steel town in Pennsylvania. He met my mother in college. They were married and moved to Lakewood. And so, I grew up from the time I was four years old until I graduated high school, in the same house, on the same street, with the same friends. I have a younger sister and younger brother. Lakewood was just a wonderful place to grow up. I mean, the excitement was when we got on a streetcar to go to downtown Cleveland, right? I was active in church activities, the Methodist church. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived only five blocks from our house, so I could ride my bicycle down to her house. And she had two apple trees in her back yard. I would pick the apples and she would make applesauce or applesauce cookies for me. It was a wonderful place to grow up.
RLT: How big was Lakewood at that time?
RC: Lakewood was probably 50,000 people, and you knew virtually everyone. I mean, in high school, I was co-editor of the yearbook. I think I knew the name of every kid in high school. And I knew something about them, what sport they played or what club they were part of. And the first big decision I had to make was, where do I go to college when I graduate?
RLT: And just a quick question. Were you a good student in junior school and in middle school and high school?
RC: I was a good student. It came relatively easy to me. I worked hard. I enjoyed it.
RLT: Do you remember your favourite subjects at that time?
RC: I mean, my favourite subjects were always determined by the teachers that I had. Unexpectedly, the class that challenged me the most and, I guess, in the end satisfied me the most, was a speech class, taught by a man named Wally Smith, who also was advisor to what we called the Barnstormers, the group of students who were active in plays. We’d put a play on in the fall and in the spring. My parents had met at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and that was on my list of potential colleges. And I had gone on a trip to look at colleges, to the east. We’d visited the campus of Yale. It was at a time of spring break and there was no one there, and it looked like a prison to me. I was not impressed. And I was very impressed by Williams. So, I applied to Williams and Wooster. Then I got a call, several days before the end of the application process, from a Yale alum, who encouraged me to think about Yale. And his comment to me, which resonated, was, I ought to pick the place that was going to challenge me the most.
RLT: Yes. How did this Yale alum learn about you? Was that part of their outreach?
RC: Well, I had travelled to Yale. So, they knew that I had visited. And I think there were probably half a dozen students in my high school whom they were encouraging to apply to Yale. In the end, two of us went from my high school to New Haven. It was a total shock. I mean, I was from a relaxed co-ed high school where everybody knew each other and you were mutually supportive. All of a sudden, I was in this very, kind of, stuck-up, preppy place. The majority of the students had come from prep schools and I felt totally out of water. The first exam I took was in European history. I got a D, maybe a D- even, on the test. It was a midterm, and, if I could not do much better I was going to lose my scholarship. I could only afford Yale because they had given me a decent scholarship.
RLT: So, it was a major shock.
RC: It was a major shock. So, I went to see the professor, Professor William Emerson, who the students called ‘Wild Bill.’ So, I went to see Mr Emerson. ‘Mr Celeste, I might know why you’re here.’ I said, ‘Well, Mr Emerson, I’m devastated. I’ve never performed so badly on an exam. I need advice. If I continue like this I’m going to be out of here very quickly.’ ‘Well, let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘Did you take time to outline your answer before you started writing?’ And I just said, ‘No.’ ‘Well, that would be a good place to begin.’ And, he became, sort of, the mentor for me in terms of how to approach the academics at Yale.
RLT: Why was he called ‘Wild Bill’? Why was that his nickname?
RC: He liked to shock students. I remember one day, he was talking about when Henry IV came to Canossa and sat outside in sackcloth and ashes to try to get the pope’s forgiveness. Some students in the class asked, ‘What’s the big deal?’ And he said, ‘Let me just ask a question. Imagine what would happen if Dwight Eisenhower,’ – who was the president at the time – ‘came to New Haven, put on sackcloth and ashes and asked a blessing from the chaplain here.’ Over the top, right?
RLT: Thought experiments.
RC: Yes. I ended up doing well at Yale. After a year or two, I became more involved in student activity. I was always involved in the Methodist Student Movement and my senior year at Yale, I was president of the National Methodist Student Movement, and active on campus in an effort to stir people’s political interests. Three students, myself and two others, started something we called ‘Challenge,’ and we had a colloquium in the fall of 1959 on the challenge of the nuclear age, and in the spring on the challenge of American democracy. We looked at economics and race as issues in the United States. If you think about that, that was 1960.
RC: That was pretty unusual at that time.
RLT: I was thinking about that, and the challenges that the US was going through at that time. How did you get involved in those three topics?
RC: Well, I was interested in them. On behalf of the Methodist Student Movement [10:00], I had testified before Congress in opposition to the draft, because it has not ended in the United States after World War II. I was always, kind of, a peacenik. Part of that grows, I think, out of my background in Methodism, which was always a social gospel kind of aspect of Protestant Christianity.
RLT: How did that resonate in Yale at that time?
RC: Well, it was interesting. We were not discouraged. In fact, we had many people take an interest in it. The chaplain at Yale at that time was a man named Bill Coffin, who was just a wonderful man, and he was supportive. And the secretary of the university helped us raise some money for the challenge. So, we got the encouragement we needed. We brought 500 or so people to campus for the colloquium. In the spring, we had Thurgood Marshall, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, who were giant leaders in the civil rights movement there. We had Hubert Humphrey. We had Michael Harrington, who had written a book that had critiqued where the American economy was at that point. We called it Challenge because we wanted to challenge our classmates to think about the world in a different way. I think we did that. And I applied for a Rhodes in 1959. I was encouraged by a former Rhodes Scholar I had gotten to know a bit. We shared an interest in African studies. My major ended up being in history. American and African history were the two subjects that I liked particularly.
RLT: Was that interest because of the slave trade and the intertwining of the two?
RC: It was less the slave trade. It was more what was happening contemporaneously in Africa. I wrote a thesis on Pan-Africanism, because at that time, a series of leaders of Third-world countries were trying to present a non-aligned view of the world, and I was very interested in it. So I applied for a Rhodes in 1959 and interviewed in Cleveland and was not selected.
RLT: The first time round?
RC: I was not selected. And I had been, out of the blue, awarded a fellowship to do graduate work and teach – it was called a Carnegie Teaching Fellowship – at Yale. So, I found myself back at Yale for the next year, teaching in the history department and doing some graduate work. I decided to apply again for the Rhodes. The fellow who had originally encouraged me saw me on campus one day and he said, ‘Dick, you know, you can apply again, and a number of people get chosen on their second or third try.’ Well, I sort of did it on a lark. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I had also been admitted to law school.
RC: At Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. I thought I was going to be a lawyer, but I thought, ‘Let’s apply for the Rhodes and see what happens.’
RLT: Tell me something about that application, because the four criteria have more or less remained the same since 1903. The one that has changed a little bit has been the one on ‘manly sports’. That has been redirected. But how did you feel at that time about those criteria for selection?
RC: I had been a fencer at Yale. Not a star fencer, but I fenced. I thought I measured up to the criteria. Part of the notion behind the Rhodes Scholarship was educating young men to lead the world, to change the world in a better way. And that, certainly, was part of my motivation. So when I wrote my essay the second time, I focused on the relationship between Christianity and diplomacy, diplomatic policy.
RLT: And the challenge of our age.
RC: Exactly. At that time, John Foster Dulles was the secretary of state and his view of a Christian foreign policy was, ‘We’re going to civilise the rest of the world. We’re going to have them measure up to our standards.’ That wasn’t my view.
RLT: It was pretty much like Rhodes’ view at his time.
RC: Yes, that probably was Rhodes’ view. Because I was taking the whole process with a grain of salt, I was very relaxed when I went in for my interviews in Cleveland. And there was another young man, a Notre Dame alum, named Denny Shaul (Dennis Shaul (Ohio & Exeter 1960)), who was just terrific. And I came home after the interview and I said to my parents, ‘I met a Rhodes Scholar today. I tell you what, he’s going to be a Rhodes Scholar, Denny Shaul.’ In the end, Denny and I were both nominated from Ohio to the regional in Chicago. And I decided, since I was having fun, I would invesigate who were the people who were going to interview me on the Chicago panel? One of them was the editor of the Louisville Courier Journal, the newspaper in Kentucky. One was the owner of a sports team in Minnesota. And one of them had been a member of the foreign service who had worked for John Foster Dulles. So, I figured, ‘Okay, a senior will have an interesting conversation with him.’ In the interviews, I was not early in the list of people going in. The first person was a young man who was a brilliant mathematician, and he came out in tears, which was a shock. ‘What happened?’ ‘Well, we had this very good interview and then they said, “Mr So-and-so, tell us what you believe, I mean, what you really believe.”’ He said, ‘I didn’t know how to answer that question.’ And Denny Shaul went in and they said, ‘So, you’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, do you think that Catholicism is compatible with a liberal view of the world?’ ‘What do you think of parades?’ was another question they asked him. Clearly it was going to be very interesting. So, I went in, and the editor of the newspaper in Louisville asked the first question. He said, ‘You know, Mr Celeste, you seem to have an interest in public policy and politics. Wasn’t it Aristotle who said that no one should be involved in politics until after they are 36?’ And I said, ‘Well, to be honest, I’ve never read Aristotle, so I don’t know whether he said that or not, but I can tell you I disagree with it.’ Then we went on with the conversation, and it ended up being a delightful interview. Both Denny and I were chosen and both of us ended up at Exeter College, coincidentally.’
RLT: Did you get the [20:00] tough question, along the lines of ‘What do you really believe in?’ or similar?
RC: No. Everyone got different questions.
RC: I mean, that would have been a relatively easy question. In a way, I answered that in my essay for the application. So, you know, I was a Christian activist, that is the way I think about what must have come across as they read my application. We sailed to England together and ended up at Exeter. I was reading PPE, but the truth of the matter is, I was a very inattentive Rhodes Scholar, in the sense that I did not take advantage of the academic opportunities at the university the way I should have. I went to lectures that interested me, I did a bit of work. What I found with PPE was that most of the reading that I was doing was subjects that I’d covered in my undergraduate work at Yale. And so, towards the end of that first year, I asked permission to switch my direction to a BPhil in history. I had a topic in mind that had to do with the Berlin Conference of 1884/85 where the European powers divided up their interests in Africa. One of the history dons at Exeter said, ‘Well, if you want to do that, the person you want to be your advisor is Alan Taylor, A.J.P. Taylor,’ who was the leading historian of the time. He was on television all the time. He was a public intellectual of real stature. And I was a little intimidated by the thought of that, but I went to visit him in his college rooms, explained what I was interested in, and he said, ‘Well, let me think about it, Mr Celeste.’ Then, he wrote me a very nice note saying, ‘I’d be happy to take you on and supervise your project.’ But I look back in terms of regrets, that was the first and last time I saw A.J.P. Taylor. I never wrote the thesis. I did some work on it, but I spent more time in Oxford with folks I met who were involved in the campaign for nuclear disarmament. You know, as an American who would speak out against nuclear weapons. I was invited to speak at demonstrations. I sat in during an anti-testing demonstration in Trafalgar Square, got carted off by the bobbies, paid my £2 fine and took the train back to Oxford.
RLT: I mean, at that time, £2 was a substantial sum.
RC: Yes. It didn’t ruin me. I spent a lot more at Blackwell’s than that. So, I was on the fringe of the intellectual life here. The first year, I lived in college. Because I spent an extra year at Yale, I was probably three or four years older than Bob Burchell, who was my roommate. A wonderful young man from Plymouth who became a history don eventually. In fact, his field of study was American history, and he specialized in the Irish immigrations to the US. I moved out of college the second year and I moved in with an Australian Rhodes Scholar who was a dear friend. Our flat was right next to a language school where young people from around Europe would come to get a diploma in English. And that’s where I met the woman who became my wife. But the other thing I was doing was a lot of theatre. I became deeply involved in theatre.
RLT: So, that speech teacher…
RC: Yes. Wally Smith was a huge influence on my life. In fact, I took the speech course because I thought it would be easy. You know, there were no exams, all you had to do was make a speech. I could make a speech. I’d done a bit of it. The first speech we were going to do was to introduce ourselves. Three or four students would do their speeches, and he’d stand at the back of the auditorium. Then he’d come up and give them notes. So, on day three or day four, I am giving my introductory speech and about two paragraphs in, there is a voice from the back of the hall that said, ‘Eye contact.’ And then I hear, about two paragraphs later, ‘Where’s the logic of that?’ And he punctuated my speech with his comments. And all my fellow students were, like, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ I mean, this was not the usual thing, right? And he came down afterwards and he gave notes to each of the other students who’d done their speeches and then he looked at me and he said, ‘Celeste, you can do better.’ That was all he said, ‘You can do better.’ And every speech I gave, as hard as I tried to do everything that I had learned, I would get punctuated interruptions, and then, at the end, he would say, ‘Celeste, you can do better.’ So, what I thought was going to be the easiest class I took in high school, my senior year, because it wasn’t going to require exams, turned out to be the most demanding class I had.
RLT: Do you think he was doing that because he saw the potential in you?
RC: No. We’d worked together on theatre things, so I knew him. I thought he was kind of a nice guy from the theatre, right? He was always fun. We did these plays and we’d have cast parties afterwards, and of all the teachers, he was the most approachable. Then, all of a sudden, he became this-, so, I think there’s no question that he was incredibly influential. In fact, when I was trying to decide between Wooster and Williams and Yale, he was the person that I talked to for advice.
RLT: Did you keep in touch with him when you were in Oxford?
RC: I did. When I was governor, I used to ask audiences every so often, ‘I want you to close your eyes now, and I want you to visualise the toughest teacher you ever had. Put your hands up if you can see the toughest teacher you ever had.’ And almost everybody could put their hands up. And then I said, ‘Okay, put your hands down. Now I’m going to ask you a different question. Who was the best teacher you ever had? If it was the same person, please put your hands up.’ 80% of people would put their hands up. The most demanding teacher turned out to be their best teacher. During my second term, we had the state-wide meeting of the Ohio education association, all the teachers from across the state, and we invited Wally Smith to come. I told the story of his speech class and its impact on me. It blew him away.
RC: It was something else.
RLT: That’s so beautiful. An influential mentor in your early life, and continued throughout. Going back to Oxford, you said you were involved in theatre here as well.
RC: Yes. There was an American. He was not a Rhodes Scholar, he came here on his own. He graduated from Oberlin. His name was Michael Rudman, and he was basically only interested in theatre. Somehow, he talked his way into, like, St Catherine’s, or someplace like that. And he started doing theatre. He wanted to do a play called The Connection, which was about a drug dealer and the people around him, and he asked me to play the drug dealer. And so, I did, and had a lot of fun. He became a good friend. During my second year he was doing a production of A Month in the Country and he asked me to join the cast which was very British. I stuck out like a sore thumb, because I didn’t have a British accent [30:00]. The reviews said I reminded them of Montgomery Clift. It was a strange thing. But it was a really terrific production. Every year, the Oxford Theatre, the main theatre in town, would invite one student play for a week’s run during the summer. So, the summer after that second year, we were invited to perform A Month in the Country at the Oxford Theatre. I stayed here for that and then went to Austria and got married.
RLT: Tell me something. I’m very interested by this. Did it ever cross your mind to down the route of theatre or performing, or was that just your pastime?
RC: Do you know, it never did. I mean, I look back on it and-, in fact, tomorrow evening, in London, I will have dinner with a fellow castmate from that production, who went on to become a major figure. He was the producer of Trainspotting. He was the producer of Four Weddings and a Funeral. So, we talk about it, and I’d see Rudman on occasion until he passed away this past year. Well there are those who say that politics is theatre, right? There is an aspect, I think, of engaging an audience when you are in public life.
RLT: Absolutely. Or keeping poker faces in tough negotiations.
RC: Yes, well, that too. But, you know, particularly when you walk into a room of 120 people you’ve never met and their hands or all sticky because they’ve been eating chicken and French fries, or whatever, and you want them to listen to you. You need to understand how to connect with those people where they are. So, I think theatre was certainly very helpful to me, and Wally Smith’s speech classes were very helpful. I couldn’t have done better.
RLT: Absolutely. Tell me about Oxford and the transition from Yale to Oxford. You said that Yale was really a challenge because of the preppy, eastern culture, and then you came here to Oxford. Was that a challenge, or did Yale prepare you for it?
RC: I think if I’d taken the intellectual side and the scholarship more deeply, it would have been a similar adjustment. But most of what I’d done at Yale in my junior and senior years was independent study or very small groups, so the tutorial system was not alien. And, of course, I’d gone from a men’s college in the US to a men’s college here. One of the differences was, I was older than the first-year students at Oxford.
RLT: What about the other Rhodes Scholars in your class?
RC: Well, yes. The only two Rhodes Scholers in Exeter were Denny Shaul, who was from Ohio, and me. I would see other Rhodes Scholars from time to time. I wasn’t all that close to them. There are a half dozen who I’ve stayed in touch with since. Two of them are Yalies, so I knew them coming over.
RLT: Did you meet any of the African Rhodes Scholars? Given your interest-,
RC: I did. Exeter was a very international college at that time. K.C. Wheare, who was the rector was really a leader in promoting international students on the campus of all colleges here. So, there is a lovely picture. I was President of the Junior Common Room my second year here, and we took a picture of the class, with the rector, who was a very proper individual. You know, suit and tie, dressed like you. I was in blue jeans, motorcycle boots, I don’t know what kind of shirt I had, smoking a cigarette, right? Sitting right next to the rector, and then sitting next to me is this lovely Ghanaian. His name was Bola Ige. He was a student at Exeter College and we had become friends. In fact, I had thought of going to Ghana to do research and his uncle was at the Ghana High Commission in London. Just before the summer started, he said, ‘Not a good time for an Oxford student to be out wandering around.’ I was looking at the labour movement in Ghana and the role it had played in politics. Not a good time, because at that time there were strikes going on. ‘You shouldn’t be there asking those question,’ so, I didn’t go to Ghana.
RLT: What are your memories of Rhodes House, if any, at that time?
RC: I think I came to Rhodes House perhaps twice during the two years I was here. As I said, I spent most of my time, or misspent most of my time, depending on how you look at it in London. I had a girlfriend, whose mother was Margerit Laski. Her father was a publisher named John Howard. They had a beautiful place in Hampstead Heath. I’d spend time there with her. I sometimes felt guilty. If I came here, I’m not living up to what the deal was.
RLT: So, you had meetings with the warden, then?
RC: Well, I think I had one meeting with the warden during that period of time, early on. And then I did everything I could to avoid the warden, because I was afraid that he might say, ‘Mr Celeste, you know, your Scholarship is through.’ I mean, I benefitted enormously from the time that I spent here.
RLT: What would you have done if you hadn’t got the Rhodes Scholarship that second time round?
RC: I would have gone to law school. I paid $75 as a deposit to Case Western Reserve every year from when I graduated from Yale, the year that I was teaching there, two years that I was here as a Rhodes, and then for four years when I went out to India and worked for Chester Bowles, because shortly after I got back to the States, within a year I was on my way to India to work as an assistant to the ambassador. In the end I never went to law school.
RLT: All of that said, it seems that you pursued a very personal interest while you were at Oxford. What do you think was the effect that the Rhodes Scholarship had on your life?
RC: It took a kid from the Midwest of the United States whose most sophisticated activity was a cocktail party at Yale, with the president of Yale. Oxford exposed me to all sorts of people and cultures, in a way, that I wouldn’t have been exposed to. And while I didn’t take the academic side of the Rhodes as seriously as I should have, I think in many respects, the time here really helped lay the groundwork for my work in public service later, whether it was demonstrating against nuclear weapons or whether it was the theatre.
RLT: That’s beautiful. And then, as you mentioned, your career took you to several positions, from India, the Peace Corps…
RC: Yes. I tell the young people who ask me for advice that the most important thing is to be open to serendipity, to the unexpected, something that presents as an opportunity and you hadn’t really anticipated. In many respects, getting the Rhodes was serendipitous. When I didn’t get it the first time, ‘Okay, I’m going to move on with my life.’ But then, as I say, I was encouraged by my friend to apply again and I did, more to see what the process was like and see what happened [40:00]. And I had no idea that I would be going to India. When I got back to the States, my wife and I were in New Haven, I was studying, taking a master’s in teaching at Yale.
RLT: So, you were considering an academic career?
RC: Well, semi-academic, yes. We got married in August 1962, and in November, we discovered we were pregnant. Now, we had no insurance that would cover-, and pregnancy in 1962 was considered a pre-existing condition, so you couldn’t get coverage. I received a call from the sister of one of the young men that I did the Challenge with at Yale. His name was Sam Bowles, she was Sally Bowles. ‘Come to Washington. The Peace Corps is getting started. We’re trying to get it started. We need bodies to interview.’ So, I went down December of 1962 and interviewed, and there were two things I realised. One is, they weren’t looking for professional qualifications. They were looking for somebody who was prepared to work hard and learn on the job. And second, they had an insurance plan in which pregnancy was not existing a pre-existing condition. So, I went back to New Haven and I said to my wife, ‘Come on, we’re going to move to Washington.’ We moved to Washington. My plan was six months there and then back to Oxford to finish my degree but March of that year, Sally’s father, who was a senior official at the State Department, invited me to lunch. It was on the eighth floor of the State Department. Very fancy, white linen tablecloth, a butler who served the meal, just the two of us. In the course of our conversation, he asked, ‘How’s my daughter doing? How’s the Peace Corps doing?’ Eventually, he said, ‘I suppose you are interested in why I invited you here. President Kennedy has asked me to go back to India as ambassador, and I think I’m going to do it. I mean, there are some conditions, and I’ve written him a letter with my conditions. Would you like to see it?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ so he handed me the letter he wrote to President Kennedy, which was a page and a half outlining his conditions for his return to India as ambassador. And, young historian, I’m reading presidential correspondence in real time, right?
RC: I was excited. After I read the letter, he said, ‘I would like you to come out as my personal assistant. You and your wife need to think about this.’ So, I went home and said to my wife – you know, she wanted to know what he wanted – and I said, ‘He invited me to be his personal assistant in India.’ She said, ‘What did you say?’ I said, ‘Well, I needed time to think about it.’ She said, ‘Think about it? You moved me from Europe to New Haven, from New Haven to Washington. We have a chance to go to India, now, while we’re young? Let’s do it!’So, I had to go to the atlas, to make sure I understood exactly where India was located. I mean, I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to make sure that I had India’s location accurately in my mind. I thought I’d stay two years, I stayed four years. That, in the end, proved to be the most important education in my life. Chester Bowles was a wonderful mentor and he gave a lot of responsibility to young people. So, it was terrific.
RLT: So, you were four years stationed in Delhi?
RC: Four years in Delhi. It was an exciting time. I mean, in my memoir, I describe Stalin’s daughter defected through our embassy, and I was intimately involved in that.
RLT: That must have one of the toughest challenges you have faced. You know, the age, the geopolitical implications, the diplomatic implications.
RC: Yes, I mean, it was. I accompanied him to Vietnam during the fall of 1965. For five or six days, we were in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to see what was going on there. Well, the State Department really wanted to figure out a way to persuade Lyndon Johnson not to start bombing in Cambodia. So, we were there to look at the incursions that were going on and try to understand the implication.
RLT: And then you came back and you were working in several different positions, and then you went on to be governor of Ohio.
RC: Yes. One of the lessons from Bowles was, he was a very successful businessman, and I decided I needed to learn something about business before I went into politics. He was upset about that. He said, ‘No, you should go into politics.’ So, I went into business with my father, the real estate business, then ran for state legislature and lieutenant governor. Ran for governor in 1978, and lost. President Carter asked me to be Peace Corps director. So, for two years, I commuted from Cleveland to Washington to be Peace Corps director. And then came back to Ohio in 1982 and won. Re-elected in 1986. So, most of 20 years were spent in Ohio politics.
RLT: How was that first defeat and how did that influence your campaign and your personal commitment to do it again and try it again?
RC: Well, I always knew I was going to run again. I mean, I lost by 35,000 votes out of more than three million. If I had run a better campaign, I would have won. So, I knew I was going to run again. But also, I think it was like the Rhodes. You know, ‘Okay, you didn’t get it the first time. Try again.’
RLT: I was making that parallel, yes.
RC: Yes. You try it again. And I often would tell students to try again. I spend a lot of time with young people, college students, to this day, sharing advice and so on. I have a young friend who applied for a Fulbright and didn’t get it. I said, ‘You know what? You can always apply again. And, it may open the door for something else to come along. So, be prepared for the opportunities that come.’ I was very fortunate. I won a big victory in 1983 with 59% of the vote and in 1986, I had 60% of the vote. So, it was good.
RLT: A good track record. Yes. In these very varied experiences that you have had, what has been the most impactful project?
RC: When I was at the Peace Corps, I was involved in the reorganisation of the Peace Corps, moving back to independence in 1979 and 1980. When I was governor, we had a savings and loan crisis in 1985. To deal with it, I had to close 69 state-regulated savings and loans. So, half a million Ohioans couldn’t get to their money, which didn’t endear me to them. But I was trying to protect them from serious problems that had happened in the savings and loan arena. We were very successful, far more successful than people had thought we would be. I mean, helping to protect the savings of half a million people was not a small achievement.
I think another was, when I was governor, I was visited by several women who were sociologists at Ohio State University. They had done a study of women at the women’s prison in Ohio, and they said that I should be mindful of the fact that most of the women who were in prison had been abused as young women. They felt that that abuse accounted for some of the behaviour for which they had been convicted. There were about 600 women in the prison, but 106 women who [50:00] had killed somebody. And under Ohio law, they had not been able to use what we now know as the battered woman syndrome, a syndrome where the battered woman blames herself for what’s going on, ‘It’s my fault. I did this.’ And often, that’s what they would say to the police when the police arrived. ‘It’s my fault, I did this terrible thing.’ So, I set up a process for them to be counselled in prison, to go through group therapy sessions, submit papers and evidence of abuse, and I would consider commuting their sentences. Over Thanksgiving in 1989, I reviewed 106 files, of these women. I concluded that 29 of them clearly had been abused and should have their sentences commuted to three years, or time served if it was more than three years, and 250 hours of community service with battered women. So, I commuted those sentences for 29 women. It hadn’t been done before. And there were another 32, I think, that I suggested my successor take a look at, because they needed more evidence. He wasn’t interested in that. But it was probably the hardest thing I did, ever, because I was reading files of people, going through this terrible, terrible, terrible behaviour. One interesting thing is, of the 29 women whose sentences I commuted, 20 years later, only one of them had gone back to prison, and that was for a drug charge, not a violence charge. The other 28 are living a good life some place. That was a chance to make a real difference in the lives of people. And, to be honest, I think that’s why any of us want to be in public service, if we’re motivated properly. How do we help those who aren’t in a position to help themselves? Whether it’s because their savings are in an S&L that could go under, or because they killed a parent or a boyfriend or a grandfather who was abusing them.
RLT: That’s beautiful. And then, you changed track to education and became president of Colorado College.
RC: Colorado College is a fine liberal arts college in Colorado. It’s a wonderful place. When I was governor, I made a point of taking a keen interest in higher education. Among other things, I did something I called ‘University Day’, and I went to every state university – there are 14 in Ohio – and spent 24 hours on the campus. I would arrive, I’d do an open meeting with beer and pizza for the students to ask me questions. I had dinner with student leaders. I slept in a dormitory. In the morning, I had breakfast with the trustees of the university, and then met with the president of the university. I would ask each of the presidents of these universities, ‘Show me what is the most exciting thing happening on your campus. Let me know what’s going on.’ And I would conclude with a press conference for high school journalists from the high schools around the university, because the state universities did a terrible job of telling their story to young people who ought to be thinking about, ‘Am I going to go to Kent State University or Bowling Green State University?’ or wherever it was.
So, I had done that. When I was leaving the governor’s office, my two oldest boys sat me down and said, ‘Dad, we think you should become a college president.’ I said, ‘No. I think I want more activity than that, so maybe later.’ When I was in India as ambassador and I was getting ready to come home – it was the end of the Clinton years – I got contacted by a headhunting firm that asked, ‘Would you be interested in being considered for president of a college in Ohio?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and went back. That didn’t work out, but there were some stories in the press, and so, I started getting calls from this, that and the other headhunting firm. Then, about six months after we were back from India, the president of Case Western Reserve in my hometown announced he was leaving, and I knew the search firm that was handling his replacement. So, I called the fellow I knew and I said, ‘I’m interested in this,’ and he said, ‘Well, to tell you the truth, when we got this job, we sat down with the Case Western Reserve University folks and we went into a list of 260 names of people, to try to get an idea of, what were they looking for in a president? Your name was on that list and they didn’t respond at all.’ And I said, ‘Well, do you have a problem if I talk to the chair of the board?’ because I know him. So, I had lunch with the board chair. He had been a one-term state senator, Republican, from outside of Cleveland, and he’d had a hard time figuring out what being a state senator required. I was lieutenant governor presiding over the senate. So, I helped him find his way. He was very willing to have lunch and we had a delightful lunch. He got all excited and I told him why I’d be a great president for Case Western.
In January 2002 I received a call from John Isaacson, from the search firm, and he said, ‘I’ve got good news and bad news.’ ‘Okay, tell me what’s up.’ He said, ‘What do you want first?’ I said, ‘I don’t care, just tell me.’ He said, ‘Well, the good news is, you will be a finalist for Case Western Reserve. There is no question in my mind that you would be a great president.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s the bad news?’ And he said, ‘Well, to be honest with you, I don’t think they’ll choose you. You’ll be on the list, but in the end, they’ll look at it and say, “You know, Celeste, he’s going to run for the Senate. They’ll want him for governor again. We’re not going to be able to keep him as president.”’ ‘You know’, he said, ‘They don’t have a lot of confidence. I knew a lot of members of the board, and a number of them had complained about the way the board operated. I thought about it for 30 seconds and I said, ‘You know what, John? I think you’re right. I think you should take my name off the list. Now what?’ And he said, ‘Well, what about Colorado College?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know anything about it. Tell me something about it.’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s in Colorado.’ I said, ‘Okay, smart-ass. Tell me something else.’ He said, ‘Take Oberlin,’ – a nice, liberal arts school – ‘put it at foot of Pikes Peak’ – this beautiful mountain – ‘and give it this funky curriculum where they teach one course at a time.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m certainly interested in liberal arts education, and I also like the location, but why do you think it would be different than Case Western?’ He said, ‘Well, my instinct is they’re looking for a non-traditional candidate.’ And so, I was the non-traditional candidate, and they selected me. That’s how I got it.
RLT: Again, serendipity, as you were saying.
RC: Yes, it was more serendipity, and it was a good nine years as president.
RLT: That’s beautiful. Now, coming to today, what keeps you inspired today? What are you looking forward to?
RC: Well, I think that we face in a world that has plenty of challenges, I mean, certainly in the United States-, globally, climate change and immigration are two massive issues that no one nation is going to solve. It’s going to require some kind of really thoughtful, international collaboration. And then, issues like gun violence in our country, which is a serious issue and on the minds of all the young people in the United States, in a way that it isn’t on the minds of my generation and the generation of people making political decisions now. I’m really interested-, I think that Gen Z and the generation that’s coming up behind them are so much better prepared to address these issues than my generation or the generation of leadership in [1:00:00] most countries today. I’m just curious about how they’re going to make themselves felt and, to the degree that I have any opportunity to help one or two of them in the process, I’ll do that.
RLT: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. The last question is, as a Rhodes Scholar, what are your thoughts, expectations, for the future of the Rhodes Scholarship?
RC: Well, the Rhodes Scholarship has become wonderfully diverse since my time. I mean, we were all a bunch of men, mostly white men, of a certain background. The diversity of the Scholars today – certainly, I see it in the US class, and I’m sure it’s true as we have more and more Scholars from around the world. I think that is an extraordinary opportunity, and it means, if I were here today, I’d be making friends with folks who are going to be making things happen in every part of the world. And I think the complexity of the operation here is impressive. I mean, now, with the Atlantic Fellows activity and the Schmidt Fellows, it’s not just the Rhodes Scholarship that is being directed out of Rhodes House. And I think that’s bound to enrich perspectives as we go forward. So, I read the list of new Scholars from the US every year with keen interest, and still, I’m afraid that too many of them come from the usual suspects. Many still come from Harvard or Yale or the military academies. But more and more frequently I see, ‘State University’. I think that is also a good sign for the future.
RLT: Thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to mention for this project?
RC: Well, you know, it’s interesting, because I go back 60 years, right? I mean, I arrived on campus in 1960, so that’s 63 years ago. And as I was saying to the warden, in the longest conversation I’ve ever had with a warden of Rhodes House. I’d like to help with this oral history project. But also, I’ve toyed with the notion of actually coming back to Oxford and finishing the academic work that I didn’t finish. Whether I do that or not depends on other aspects of my life. I’m on the board of several companies, including one in India. We’ll see what happens.
RLT: That’s beautiful. Thank you for your time and for being part of this project and part of the Rhodes community.
[Note: there is some further general discussion, lasting until 1:06:04, but this has not been transcribed as the interviewee was told that the interview had ended at 1:03:35]
