Born in Esslingen, Germany in 1954, Roger Sorrell grew up in the US and studied at Kansas State University before going to Oxford to read for a Masters in Modern History. Returning to the US, he completed his PhD at Cornell, later publishing his thesis as St. Francis of Assisi and Nature. Sorrell then moved into psychology and therapy, taking his Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington and working at his first career, in community mental health, in Seattle. Then Mr. Sorrell moved to Hawaii with his husband, David Frost, where Sorrell worked at the University of Hawaii’s Lyon Arboretum in a micropropagation laboratory where he cultivated endangered plants in test tubes to save them from extinction. He continues to volunteer there and is now also a botanical artist, a plant portraitist. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 10 November 2025.
Roger Sorrell
Kansas & Corpus Christi 1975
My birth in Germany and Childhood in the US
I am American, but I was born in Germany in 1954 of German birth parents. My birth parents, Paul and Helen Nigbur, were German refugees who had escaped from the Russian invasion of Poland at the end of WWII. The post-war situation in Germany at that time was dire, with many families trying to survive in impoverished conditions. I was one of four children. I was placed in a hospital, and my three sisters were placed in a Catholic orphanage. When I was in the hospital, at five months old, my American adoptive parents travelled to Germany from their US Air Force base in England to find and adopt a child. They visited the hospital in Esslingen where I was recovering from malnutrition. My parents relate a touching story that when I saw them, I smiled and reached out my tiny hands to my adoptive mother, Gertrude. She felt something in the universe had signalled to her that I was the one they should adopt, and so they chose me to adopt.
They then completed their tour of duty in England, and returned from England to the US in 1956. I grew up with them in Kansas and Colorado. They were a strong-minded, fundamentalist couple, and that had a tremendous impact on me. They were very secretive: they did not even tell me I was adopted until I was 17. I did not feel that I fit in with them and I did not know why. Coupled with my incipient sexuality, which I was not fully aware of either, I had a sense of deep alienation from myself and the world around me. My first reaction to learning that I was adopted and I was German was not only amazement but incredible relief. There was no way to connect with my German family at that point, but I formed a plan to go to Europe on a student trip in 1972, after I graduated from high school summa cum laude. As I went through Europe, I felt an avalanche of identity coming in. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of my true self.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
Because of my parents’ fundamentalist convictions, they wanted me to go to a Baptist university. I wanted to go to a secular university. We compromised on Kansas State, and I began studying history, anthropology and archaeology. At the end of my second year, I went on an archaeological dig, which proved to be life changing in many ways, including that I had so many credits from it that I could graduate at the end of my junior year. I was planning to go to Berkeley when one of my professors suggested applying for the Rhodes Scholarship. I had never heard of it, and when I read the initial description, I was put off, mostly by the reference to manly sports. Nevertheless, I applied because my professor felt I should.
When the time came for the Rhodes interviews, I was still waiting to hear whether I’d been accepted at Berkeley. So I decided that the purpose of the Rhodes interviews for me would be to have a stimulating intellectual interchange with the interviewers, with no further objective in mind. This openness and genuine exchange apparently translated into what the interviewers wanted. Further, when they asked about sports, I explained about how I explored caves, and they were blown away. At that time, I was not an athletic looking individual, and had had no interest in traditional sports. So this surprised and impressed them. Because I had no expectation of receiving the scholarship, when I did, I again I felt very disoriented and alienated. Nowadays, there is a lot of support and counselling for students. But then, I had no one to turn to to talk about my feelings and my confusion. Further Kansas State was a conservative university and there was no discussion of gay issues. I was feeling gay feelings and I had no support, no connection. I had to go deep into myself and come to terms with what had happened. Winning the Scholarship made me essentially feel as though the universe had grabbed me by the neck and said, ‘Your life is going to head in another direction whether you want it to or not.' After a deep internal struggle, I got ready to go to Oxford.
A major door opening in my life: finding myself at Oxford
The American Rhodes Scholars of my year (1975) sailed over to England on the Cunard Queen Elizabeth II. We slept in bunks (astonishing to believe with the amenities on cruise ships today!), and one night some of the guys in the adjoining bunks came back from the bar. One of them was referencing someone they met in extremely offensive homophobic language. They were greatly surprised to be called out on it by another individual in the cabin who openly admitted to being gay. This was revolutionary for me to hear at the time. Doors were opening, and more would open at Oxford.
I majored in modern history and transitioned to a master’s level programme, which was another major door opening in my life, because my supervisor was very thoughtful and very kind. I also found a circle of friends through the hiking and walking club, and that was wonderful. I began to ‘find myself’ while I was at Oxford through these things. While the other Rhodes Scholars were certainly well meaning and pleasant, our connections were not that significant, and Rhodes House had a minimal supportive influence on the Rhodes Scholars’ life at Oxford at that time. Nevertheless, I remember some particular conversations that were formative, including one where a friend told me in all seriousness that he was devoting the rest of his life to ancient Greek verbs. I thought, ‘Wow, that is not the road I want to take. I want my research to be “relevant” and to make a difference to the world.’
I decided I needed a more portable career
I was still thinking that I would end up at Berkeley and become a professor. My parents said they would not support me in that, so I chose instead to go to Cornell to pursue a PhD. There, I took a class on St. Francis of Assisi and I began to explore St. Francis’ view on nature and the ways in which he was both original and traditional. My thesis was later published as a book and became, apparently, the authoritative view on the subject. That work put me back into contact with nature, because I realised Francis had been a sort of prototype in history, showing a path where people could reconnect with nature and, in doing so, could begin to heal themselves from alienation from the environment and make themselves psychologically whole.
Career and Gay Life
As I was completing my PhD in 1983 at Cornell, one of my professors who had observed that I was coming out told me that because of this, he didn’t think I would ‘fit in’ to obtain tenure because I was gay. This was a significant warning and typical for the time. I realised medieval history didn’t have a lot of job openings and I decided I needed a career that was more portable and more open to my sexuality. I was interested in psychology, so I applied for a Masters in Social Work and was accepted at the University of Washington in Seattle. I settled there, and that was occurring at the same time as my coming out experiences. I had not come out actually to myself or others at Oxford. At Cornell, I came out as bisexual, and then, when I transferred to Seattle, I found my first partner there, and while I was with him, I decided I would come out to my parents. My partner and I wrote a letter to them and sent it off. We wrote down 20 different negative ways they could respond, and when they wrote back, their response included 19 out of the 20. But the one thing they did not say was that they never wanted to see me again, so I realised there was a crack in the door. It took perhaps ten more years of arguments and stress and conflict between us to open that door further.
After my first partner and I broke up, I joined a gay support group and had a wonderful gay Jungian therapist and I became a Jungian therapist myself. I also met my husband, David, at that time and we continued to receive support from other gay people. It has not always been an easy time – of course, this was the era when many people didn’t survive, because of AIDS – but in the end, it’s been a successful time. David and I are a good team, and we married as soon as the Supreme Court in California declared gay marriage legal there in 2008.
In my career in psychotherapy, I left the university environment and worked for many years in community mental health, working with adults from dysfunctional families. I also became involved in gerontology, and here in Hawaii, I founded the first unit which helped older adults at risk of neglect or abuse. It’s so valuable to see older adults make changes in their lives that can get them to a safer situation.
A sort of emergency room for endangered species
Part of the reason I originally moved to Hawaii was my profound concern about endangered species. Hawaii has over 300 species that are endangered, many of which have become extinct in the wild. I got involved with Lyon Arboretum, which was founded by an early botanist here and which has a micro-propagation laboratory where we grow endangered plants in test tubes. It’s a sort of emergency room for Hawaiian species, and we have 50,000 of them. As part of my passion for this project I have become an artist and I paint these plants in an effort to help people learn about their plight. I was moved to see that Jane Goodall featured our work in her book, Seeds of Hope, and want to continue to devote myself to working in this area.