SO: And it was the main place we all got our food, about three times a day. I believe at dinnertime, we had to wear a gown for dinner, and for breakfast and lunch, I think it was different. But it was okay. It was okay. Yes.
CT: So, you started to mention a bit about your time at Oxford. Were there any experiences that were really significant to you, or unexpected, while you were in Oxford?
SO: Yes. First of all, in terms of significant, during my first year there, my fiancée moved over to Oxford and worked in Oxford during part of that year. That was great, to have her nearby, and she taught at Headington School and she taught at a nursery school in North Oxford called the Squirrel School, and she lived in North Oxford. I still lived in college. At that time, before we could get married, we had to get the Warden’s permission, because first-year Scholars were not permitted to be married, and then, as I recall, to marry after one’s first year, we still needed the Warden’s permission, which he readily gave.
Anyway, that was a big part of the first year. The second was that, I had been planning, originally, to read for a BA in PPE, but my college adviser on my undergraduate thesis at Princeton was Professor Arthur Link, whom I mentioned a moment ago, and he had advised me on writing an undergraduate thesis at Princeton on the subject of the British response to Woodrow Wilson’s peace efforts in the fall of 1916 and early 1917, which was during the period of the First World War when the US was neutral, and President Wilson was vigorously seeking to try and mediate and help develop a peace negotiation and agreement. And the reasons that Dr Link put me onto that was that the British archives for that period had just opened up under what had been the 50-year rule of keeping things confidential. The 50-year rule later became a 30-year rule, but here it was in 1966, these new papers were opening up, and I wrote my undergraduate thesis, went to England to do my research on that, as an undergraduate, in London.
But when I was headed to Oxford, he suggested that instead of reading for another bachelor’s degree, in this case in PPE, he said, ‘Why don’t you expand your undergraduate thesis, to cover not just the fall of 1916 and early 1917, when Wilson’s mediation efforts came to a head, but to cover the entire period of American neutrality, from 1914 to 1917?’ That’s a big expansion for a historian, because you’re digging into many more archival materials. And so, he said, ‘Then you could read for a DPhil, rather than doing another bachelor’s degree, if Oxford would permit you to expand your undergraduate thesis and do that.’ He knew my adviser at Oxford and mentioned this idea to him. My advisor at Oxford embraced the idea. I got permission to expand this thesis and to read for a DPhil, rather than the BA.
Well, the DPhil is a big deal, in many ways. It’s lonely. The research is lonely. You’re going, day after day, into archival materials. In this case, they were all in the Public Record Office in London, and I’m living in Oxford, but fortunately, the Public Record Office at that time had a satellite facility in Hertfordshire, and they would send up to Hertfordshire such papers as I requested, such volumes as I requested, and then I could drive over there, from Oxford. It was still 43 miles, and on mainly back roads, and it was a slog, but here I was, basically immersed in a degree programme that was solitary, much more solitary than you would be reading for a BA in PPE, for example, and this was month after month of digging and researching in these archival materials. Fortunately, I had a car, and there were other graduate students were also doing research over at this facility. I would give them a ride frequently, and we became friends in the course of doing that.
So, that was a bit of a shock. What was even more discouraging, was I had not finished the dissertation by the time we left Oxford after two years, and I just was very, very disappointed in myself for not having done that, but we were headed back to the States. I was going to law school. Fortunately, during law school, I spent one summer in the States trying to keep writing this dissertation and making progress. I made progress, but I still didn’t finish it. But after law school, I took nine months holed up in our apartment in New Haven, Connecticut, and I finished the dissertation. I submitted it. I went over to England for my viva, the oral exam, in the spring of 1973. I’d left Oxford in 1969. Here it’s four years later. But I passed the viva and I got the degree, so this was a tremendous feeling of getting an albatross off my neck.
So, that was all unexpected. When I arrived in Oxford, I had no idea that this was going to be the path ahead, but it was challenging, and I’m glad I did it. I learned a lot. Also, the research and the writing on British diplomatic history during this critically important time, between 1914 and 1917, ultimately turned out to be very valuable to me in my own life, when I went into the State Department. I had learned a lot about, not just British diplomacy, but diplomacy more generally. The British diplomatic service always had a wonderful reputation, and still does, as one of the top diplomatic services in the world, so having been immersed for a long time in the archives of what was going on in the British government, particularly the British Foreign Office, which was running the diplomacy during World War One, I picked up a lot. I learned a lot, not directly relevant to, ultimately ending up in the United States State Department in the 1970s and the 1990s, but still very valuable. So, that was unforeseen, that in due course, this degree programme of the DPhil in diplomatic history would have this bearing on my subsequent professional work. That was unforeseen.
CT: So, it sounds like a lot of your time at Oxford was taken up with your studies, and even after Oxford, it was taken up with studies. Did you have any hobbies or sports while you were in Oxford, or were you very much focused on your degree?
SO: I did get involved in the Oxford University fencing team, and again, I was a sabre fencer. I fenced for Oxford against Cambridge, and that was a great experience. It didn’t require as much time as being on the fencing team at college in the States had done, but it did require significant time, and I enjoyed it. It was a good outlet. Among the other things I did there that were non-academic was basically conversation. One of the wonderful parts about the Rhodes experience was hanging around in the common room – in this case it was called the Middle Common Room at New College--with graduate students and just talking, having the time to talk and to listen [30:00]. There was much more of that opportunity at Oxford than there was at college in the States, and that was huge. Not just me, all of us, I think, sensed that this was a new dimension, and very, very valuable, that informal interaction, not just to talk, but especially to listen, and you’re talking and listening with people of a highly diverse group, particularly among the graduate students.
So, that was wonderful. Also, Pat and I did a fair amount of travelling during the vacations at Oxford. Vacations were longer than we were used to having here in the States. Her sister and her husband were living in Italy. We would go periodically down to Italy. We did a lot of travelling around the UK, to Wales and to Scotland, and that was a big part of it. It’s also a reason why I didn’t have enough time to finish my dissertation, unfortunately, until, you know, a little bit later. So, that was a problem.
CT: Well, it makes me feel better to know that you weren’t only doing your DPhil, because as interesting as that sounds, you also had this opportunity to live in a different country and explore it, and I think that’s important.
SO: Yes. And we would do things like drive down to Covent Garden to see an opera. Now, that’s 75 miles to get there, and we would leave late afternoon, get there, see the opera, drive home and think nothing of it, think, ‘This is great. We have this opportunity to be exposed to culture in this way, in London.’ So, we were doing a lot of adventures and things, and we weren’t the lone ranger. Many of our classmates were doing the same thing, accessing London and the cultural things that were on offer there.
CT: That’s really good to hear. So, when you’re looking back at your time at Oxford – and this is a big question – what impact did the Rhodes Scholarship have on your life in general? Not only at Oxford, but now, reflecting back on your time, being a Rhodes Scholar and having those years in Oxford, what was the impact of that?
SO: I would say the impact has been huge, in my life and my wife’s life. It’s hard to draw a one-to-one relationship between specific things from Oxford and specific things in our lives, but basically, living in a foreign country for two years on your own, and beginning married life that way-, so, we’re away from our families. We’re living in England. That’s a big deal. It’s a great way to begin married life with the challenges that you have to navigate when you’re living in a foreign country, and you’re, in a sense, living on an economic shoestring. You know, you have to be very careful about how you’re meeting expenses, and at that time, my wife, after we were married, had a better job, teaching at the Barton County Infants School, on the outskirts of Oxford. It was a state school.
So, just the sheer process of living abroad was very big. The second was the intellectual exposure was tremendously stimulating, more so than we even realised at the time. That exposure, in my case, came from just the, sort of, informal interaction I was discussing, common room-type interaction, and then also from the more focused digging into archival materials, and when all is said and done, that has an excitement of its own. These were the most secret papers of the most powerful empire on Earth, and here I am, an Oxford student, being permitted after 50 years to dig around in these things and to really immerse myself. That would have been hard to replicate in any other setting, given the subject matter I was focused on. It was, sort of, a perfect fit.
And then, later in life, this group of us who were in our class – and you know this a bit, Celia, from helping us – we bonded, in a wonderful way, over the years, both at Oxford-, many of us had sailed together on the SS United States. Not the entire class, but a lot of us had. We stayed in touch at Oxford. Even though we were not encouraged to congregate at Rhodes House. We managed to stay in touch. We were at various colleges. We managed to figure out a way to do some socialising together. And then, over the years, we got into this idea, ‘Well, let’s have reunions every two or three or four years,’ and we’ve done that, all these years. So, this has become a wonderful support group of very close friends and their spouses. In many cases, they were starting married life at the same time we were, and our spouses got together and became very friendly at Oxford.
So, this has become a very wonderful part of life now, to have this support group, almost like a fraternity. I was never a member of a fraternity over the years, but this is a form of a special fraternity. We just came off our latest reunion, as you know, out in Sonoma Vally in California, and it was just a tremendous experience. Now, we’re at a time in life where we’re starting to lose classmates. We started out with 32, and we’re now down to 26, and each loss is painful. Some of them are recent. Some of them are classmates who died very prematurely. But we’re still, kind of, a hearty group of 26 that get a lot of enjoyment out of staying in touch with each other one way or another. So, that’s another unexpected feature of the Rhodes experience. Those would be the things that I would highlight, and I’m not getting specific enough, but repeatedly over life, that Oxford experience has had relevance to so many things, professionally and personally, that have unfolded in our lives, I would say.
CT: That’s really lovely to hear, and as you know, I know that you are really close to your class, and it’s really lovely to see that lifelong community stay with you. And I think it’s a testament to the people that you are the people that you’ve become, and the fact that you’re still friends is a lovely part of the Rhodes community, which isn’t the reason why you would have applied or interviewed, but it’s something that you’re left with.
SO: I think that’s a fair statement. Also, I mentioned that I’m sure the experience of current Scholars is different, because they have so much more of this opportunity to gather at Rhodes House, interact under the aegis of various Rhodes Trust activities. In our cases, I’ve thought back on, why is our class perhaps unusually close? It may be, in part, because of the influence of Vietnam on what happened to some of the members of our class when we got to Oxford. At that time, it was not the case that, just by virtue of being a graduate student at Oxford, you were immune from being drafted. Several of our classmates ended up being drafted. Some ended up fighting in Vietnam. Others ended up avoiding having to go to Vietnam. But it was highly stressful in the lives of many members of the class, what to do about this issue. The draft, Vietnam, whatever. And that didn’t affect me as directly as it did other classmates, so I speak with some trepidation, but I think that experience probably had the effect of making the class feel something in common that required or would be helpful to be addressed by a form of solidarity, mutual support. Something like that may have influenced why we stayed pretty darn close over the years.
CT: Yes. That’s lovely. I think solidarity is exactly the right word for that. It’s just being there for each other at a time where, like you say, you didn’t know what was going to happen, and everybody had different experiences, but you could come together as this group, which is really nice to hear.
SO: Right. And I should emphasize that some of the classmates had experiences which were extremely difficult. The influence of Vietnam, one way or another, was a huge influence in their lives,, presenting huge challenges. [40:00]
CT: Yes. And you always have to think of your experience in the context of what’s happening in the world at that time, and I think what’s really interesting is, I think we’ll find throughout our oral history interviews, is seeing how different points in history affected the Rhodes Scholar experience, however that may have been.
SO: Absolutely. The context in which we were at Oxford is hugely important to how we experienced Oxford, the macro-context in which we were there influenced heavily our experience there. In some cases, that meant some of the members of the class were only there one year, not two years. Some couldn’t even finish the first year. Some, ultimately, were able to spend three years. In my case, it was two years in residence, one year, in effect – nine months – finishing up the dissertation remotely, and then going back. So, different people had different ultimate experiences, but it was difficult.
The other thing I’d just mention, Celia, on this issue of missing what was happening in the US while we were in England: when I got back in the summer of-, let me just get this straight in my mind. I completed my residence at Oxford in 1969. I’m heading off to law school in the fall of 1969. So, therefore, I’ve missed all the tumult that occurred in this country from October of 1967 to, let’s say, the summer of 1969, and I’m heading to law school, and I’m not exactly sure what to expect, but based on my Oxford experience, I figured I’d wear a tie and jacket to the first day of law school.
So, I get there to the law school, and I was completely out of place, and in the courtyard of the law school – nice courtyard. This was at Yale Law School – there was an inflatable tent, a big tent. I don’t know how to describe it: like a bubble. And lots of my fellow students, particularly from the classes that had already been there a year or so, they were, sort of, hanging out in the bubble, and a lot of smoking of marijuana was occurring in the bubble, and there had been zero drug use at college in Oxford, from my point of view. That was not part of the scene. And here, I get to law school, and I’m completely, you know, dressed the wrong way, and then I’m into a situation where things have changed, a lot. A lot of that changed happened because of the Vietnam situation, and because of the Civil Rights movement, which were both very, very intensely active while we were all away. That included the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King, riots in American cities, and so forth. So, there was a certain element, in coming home from Oxford-, a big element of readjusting, and realising that we had been away for a very critical period, and we now were in a different paradigm, and it took some readjustment, I would say.
CT: And although that’s quite a comical story, you’re in your suit and tie and you go into this tent, it’s a real metaphor for how much things can change in only a few years. You left the US to come to Oxford as a foreign student, who was trying to learn the ways of Oxford, and then all of a sudden, you’re coming back, only a few years later, and so much has changed. It’s just the way that the world works, in that it can all change very, very quickly, depending on what’s going on
SO: Yes. And most of the years of that period, I would say, involved unusually quick change, and they’re still cited here as people try to figure out, how did we get to this point in our national lives over here? And particularly, the year 1968 is viewed as a very, very important pivotal point, and we missed that. We were away for that, most of us. Some of us had had to come back, because there was the draft, and other things, but in my life, anyway, that was something that Pat and I had essentially missed.
CT: So, we’ve spoken about your educational experience, and I’d love to talk a little bit about your career now. I mean, you have had an illustrious career, in business and government and law, as we’ve mentioned, and just this year, you retired from Morgan Stanley after 25 incredible years. How has your career trajectory unfolded, and what drew you to these areas, and what are some of the personally significant projects that you’ve worked on? I know it’s a big question, spanning your career, but it would be very interesting to see that journey.
SO: Well, thank you. My basic concept was, I wanted to figure out a way to be involved in public service after my educational time, and I also wanted to be sure to have enough training so that I would have an opportunity to have a base in the private sector, in case governmental work, public service work, did not work out. But my goal was in large measure stimulated by President Kennedy when we were in high school, and there was this young president, sort of, showing up and saying, ‘Public service is really worth thinking about.’ So, I had this idea that I wanted to figure out a way to get involved, either in US politics, US diplomacy, something that was an important public service, or potentially important.
So, what happened was, after finishing law school, I practised law for four years, and I wanted to get involved in the government in some fashion, but I also wanted to lay a groundwork of expertise in the private sector. When President Carter was elected in 1976 – and I was a Democrat. I wanted to serve in a Democratic administration, if possible – I got very, very lucky. I was trying to figure out, how could I get to Washington to do something helpful in this administration? And I was striking out all over the place, sending letters, doing everything. It was just not working, and I was not the lone ranger. When a new Democratic administration comes in and there’s been a Republican administration, all kinds of people wanted to do the same thing I was doing.
But I got very lucky, in that I was working on a case. I was based in New York, with a law firm, and our local counsel in Los Angeles was a large Los Angeles firm, and I picked up the newspaper one day, and saw that President Carter, having nominated Cyrus Vance to be secretary of state, had now announced his number two official in the State Department was going to be Warren Christopher, who was a senior partner at this Los Angeles law firm that was our local counsel on the case. I did not know Mr Christopher, but I was working closely with one of his partners, so I happened to call this partner, and I said, ‘Bill, I just saw this wonderful announcement. I’ve been dying to figure out a way to serve in the administration. Would you by any chance consider mentioning to Mr Christopher my interest in becoming a member of his staff?’ And I had researched-, the deputy secretary of state is the number two official in the State Department. He has a number of staff positions right under him that he could fill with young special assistants and so forth. And Bill said, ‘I’ll not only tell him. You fax your resume to me right now, I’m going to walk it into his office,’ and the next day, I have a call from Warren Christopher, inviting me to come for an interview, and I got the job.
So, I ended up working in the State Department, working for him during the first half or more of the Carter administration, and I couldn’t believe what I had gotten into. At that level, when you’re the secretary of state and the number two guy, the staff people are in the flow, and you’re really up to your ears in critically important issues. The first day I got to the State Department, I had this wonderful, panelled office, overlooking the Lincoln Memorial. I couldn’t believe this was happening. And in my inbox was a bunch of materials I needed to start going through. The very first document in the inbox was a memorandum that the president of the United States had made his marginal notations on. It was a memorandum [50:00] from the secretary of state to the president, and the president sent it back with his marginal notations, and I’m thinking, ‘This is where I want to be. This is really, really interesting.’
So, that was really getting involved in diplomacy in a significant way, and then after some time in that work, I went back to the private sector to try and become a partner in a law firm, which I did. There was a 14-year hiatus between my departure and the next Democratic administration under Clinton, but in that administration, Warren Christopher was named secretary of state, and I was appointed assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, which was a more senior role, obviously. We moved back to Washington, moved the whole family back down, and I was back in the State Department, involved in diplomacy in a significant way. So, that was really amazingly interesting work. It was a hard on the family, because of all the moving, and what happens in these senior roles in Washington is, you, kind of, disappear into your job. In the State Department, Saturday was basically a full working day, when all was said and done, at that level. You had part of Sunday with your family, and then the whole thing begins again Monday morning. So, there was a big challenge on work-life balance, but the work itself was so fascinating, in many ways. I couldn’t wait to get to my desk in the morning. When you work at that level in, for example, the State Department, you develop a sense of responsibility for the security of this country, and you know you’re working on extremely important and difficult issues. After this tour of duty, I returned to the private sector, in investment banking, a field I’d be in for several years before joining the Clinton administration.
And since then, in addition to my investment banking work, I have had a number of different public service-type involvements, which I have really valued so much. One was to become a trustee of Princeton University and to become the chairman of the executive committee of the board. To me, that was huge form of public service, when all is said and done. And I also, over the years, have been a trustee, and member of the investment committee, of an outstanding foundation called the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was originally established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 and is one of the pre-eminent funders of, among other things, non-governmental organisations in the area of international peace and security, such as nuclear non-proliferation groups and groups that focus on informal diplomacy with Russia and China and other countries, with the approval of the United States State Department. So, being on the Carnegie board and investment committee – now, I’m in my ninth or tenth year in those roles – again, I have felt, is a really significant form of public service. So, that’s how things have unfolded. Now, as you mentioned, I’ve retired, after over 50 years of work, 25 of which were at Morgan Stanley over the last period, which was a tremendously positive experience, and I’m not sure what I will be focused on now. My work on the Carnegie will continue for a number of years, but I’m just adjusting, now, to what it means to ‘retire.’
CT: I had one interview with somebody who told me, ‘Never retire. Just do something else.’
SO: That’s very well said, very well said, and I think that one thing I learned is, when you’re working, it becomes a wonderful excuse for, sort of, kicking the can down the road, on a number of fronts, both personal and otherwise, because you’ve got that primary thing. You know, you can put stuff off. But then, when you retire, what you discover is, there are a lot of cans at the end of the road.
CT: You have to pick them all up.
SO: You’ve got to deal with them.
CT: You’ve mentioned a few times your interest in public service, and you clearly do have a desire to give back, through your work as a trustee, and volunteering. Where do you think this desire has come from?
SO: I’m not exactly sure. I think part of it was this, sort of, seminal effect of President Kennedy, as I mentioned earlier.
SO: He was really sounding the clarion call for young people to think about going into public service, and he did things like create the Peace Corps, for example. Out of blue, creates this thing called the Peace Corps, where young Americans can go work abroad in developing countries, for no pay to speak of, but just as a way of giving or contributing and serving, and that planted a seed. And parenthetically, one of my sons, Gavin, became a Peace Corps volunteer in the years after his college education, and spent two years in the country of Togo in West Africa, and we saw through his experience how important the Peace Corps can be, to the individuals involved and to the folks living in the country where the Peace Corps volunteers are serving, and that was decades after President Kennedy had started the thing. So, I think a lot of it came from that impetus, and also, I think it, sort of, feeds on itself. Once you go into public service, in one way or another, you realise how fulfilling it can be to your own way of living. You realise that you can have an impact that’s positive on others. And it, sort of, reinforces your idea that this is a good idea, to figure out a way, along the path, to engage in one form of public service or another.
CT: And speaking of an impact on other people, you’ve had long-time service as a mentor to many young Rhodes Scholars, and it really brings to life the vision of the Scholarship as lifelong fellowship, as you’ve mentioned before. Can you share your impressions about the Scholarship, and the way that it’s changed, and what’s changed while you’ve been involved over the years? Because you have stayed very involved in the Rhodes community, within your class and with the rest of the community.
SO: It’s a good question. I don’t have as much insight into that, Celia, as I would if I had been more deeply involved, and there’s been tremendous change over the years, in the Rhodes Scholarships and the Rhodes Trust. I mean, women were not Rhodes Scholars, for example, and we did not have a high degree of diversity among the groups that were selected, so things have changed. One thing I realised is that the board of trustees of an entity like the Rhodes Trust is so much more deeply immersed in the issues than a bystander or an outsider such as myself, and the issues that they are wrestling with can be very, very difficult ones, frequently are very difficult ones.
So, I guess I’ve reminded myself that there is a lot I don’t know about what they’re wrestling with, and I know that during the global financial crisis, the situation became very challenging, I think, for the Rhodes Trust. I don’t know all the details, but they had to navigate a very difficult passage. So, from afar, I hesitate to be at all judgmental, knowing that there is so much I don’t know. I’m grateful to the trustees for wrestling with these issues and navigating in a way that has the Trust on a different path, now with partners. Other entities are partnering with the Rhodes Trust in a way that was not something we were at all familiar with. But not knowing all the details, I think, as a general matter, I’d have to give them high marks for navigating a difficult time. And Elizabeth. I’ve gotten to know Elizabeth. She’s visited with our class, and she’s had, I think, a lot of difficult issues to wrestle with, and I admire the way she’s handled things.
So, that would be one of my comments. The other is, I’m not all that close to current Rhodes Scholars. Every now and then, I am able to mentor some who approach me and want to discuss things, or where they feel I could be helpful in their own career development. [1:00:00] But I don’t have my finger on the pulse, I would say, of what exactly the life of a current Rhodes Scholar is like. It looks very interesting. We get these write-ups about what each of these Scholars is reading, what they’re pursuing as their course of study, and it’s overwhelming, to read what these young people are capable of, what they’re planning to do, what they have done. It’s tremendously inspiring. But I’m not close enough to it to give you a better answer than that.
From the point of view of our US Rhodes class of 1967, we were able to say, ‘Thank you,’ through annual giving, for example. Then along the way we got the idea of seeing whether we could achieve 100% participation. Many of us who have been involved in charitable fundraising knew that 100% is usually totally unattainable. But we focused on the idea that we had a reasonably small group. And sure enough, over the last five years, classmates have embraced this notion, ‘Let’s see if we can do 100%.’ It’s a form of saying, ‘Thank you,’ to Oxford and to the Rhodes Trust, but also, it’s a way of honouring each member of the class, saying that we want to do something all together, and we’ve achieved 100% for five years in a row. You and your colleagues at the Trust have helped us so much in getting this done. And at our recent reunion that I mentioned, in Sonoma, out of the blue, a few of the classmates made it clear that this fact, that we’ve been able to achieve 100% solidarity, they’re excited about, and it puts a bounce in the step of the class. So, that’s been another way that we’ve tried to be involved, and we’re hoping that other classes, you know, take note, and that their participation levels can continue to go north.
CT: Your class really is an inspiration. I will tell you that, whenever we look at the class rankings, it’s always that 1967 will be number one, there’s no choice about it, but other classes are thinking, ‘How close to 1967 can we get?’ So, I think that’s a testament to how well you’re doing, and that’s lovely to hear, and thank you for all of your support. I know you said that you haven’t been very close to some of the Scholars in Residence, but you have heard about what they’re doing. Do you have any words of wisdom or advice that you would pass on to the Scholars today?
SO: Well, I’d offer that with some trepidation, but I think, a couple of thoughts. I would say, take very seriously the educational opportunity you’ve been presented with. There are going to be a lot of ways you could involve yourself at Oxford, but if you give primacy to the educational area that you’re focusing on, it’s really worth it. You’re in this magnificent university, with a tremendous base of expertise and knowledge among the faculty. So, I would take it seriously, really seriously. That would be one thought.
I guess the other would be, sort of, be conscious of the fact that this is an opportunity, maybe, that will not replicate itself, to live full-time in another country, and I would say, take that seriously as well. It’s an opportunity that may not come again, and there is a lot of richness embedded in what’s going to happen to you as you’re going through this experience of living in another country. That would be another, sort of, 50,000-foot comment. And I think those would be my main two thoughts, Celia. This issue of staying in touch once one leaves Oxford, I think it has a new dimension now, because of what you’re doing there, and you have people who are creating connectivity at Oxford of a kind we never really created, both among themselves and with recent Alumni and not-so-recent Alumni. We did not have that, and that’s a resource. I don’t quite know how it works out in practice and how easy it will be to mine that resource, but I would think that’s pretty darn interesting and this group over, whatever, the past ten to 15 years, is the one that’s the beneficiary of the potential of this new connectivity that’s been created. So, I think that’s something worth taking seriously too, and not just thinking of it as a given. It’s not necessarily just a given, you know?
CT: Yes. I think that’s a really great, balanced approach to time at Oxford: remember your studies, remember how important they are, but also enjoy the fact that you’re in a new country and that you can explore it, and then afterwards, take those experiences with you and stay within your community. I think that’s a lovely piece of advice. I hope anybody listening to this interview will see from your experiences how valuable that was. And so, my final question, and I don’t want to end, but my final question really is, now that you have retired – and we’ve mentioned that you’ve got a few cans that you’re now having to pick up and figure out – what does life look like today, and what are you looking forward to?
SO: That’s a really good question. I’m trying to figure out the answer to that, especially having recently retired. Certainly, more time with children and grandchildren is very, very important. In our case, the grandchildren-, we have some far-flung folks living in London and LA, some living here in New Jersey. But that’s very important. Figuring out how to become involved in things without getting over-involved. One thing I’m learning, when you retire, you get innumerable requests to get involved, usually with charitable organisation, on the board level or something of that kind, and you can quickly become overscheduled.
So, I’m, sort of, deliberately taking it slow, moving slowly in that regard, with the encouragement of my wife. You know, she thinks retirement – and I agree with her – should be a new paradigm, where we’re not completely jammed up with activities. So, that’s one thing I’m looking at and thinking about. The other thing is, of course, trying to stay in good health, and staying active physically. Very important when we get to this age, and good friends have health issues, and die. It’s very, very sobering. So, that’s another feature. And then, I guess, the final point is realising one cannot simply adjust to retirement overnight. It’s a period of adjustment, and I would say, right now, I’m probably best case 40% of the way there. I don’t know.
CT: I think that’s a pretty good start. Well, thank you so much.
SO: So, are there any other issues you wanted to touch upon and didn’t, Celia? I think we’ve covered a good spectrum.
CT: I think we did. I’ve covered my questions, but if you’ve got anything else you’d like to add, anything you want to reflect on, please do.
SO: Nothing jumps to mind right now. I want to, though, thank you and your colleagues for organising this whole thing. I think it’s a creative idea. It would be nice to be able to look back at the Zoom interviews of the Rhodes Scholars from 1915.
SO: We don’t have that, but I thank you and your colleagues, as with many of the other things you’re doing very creatively, for coming up with this kind of a programme. I wish you well with this. I thank you again for your help on the annual giving side. As you know, we’re almost in daily contact on that, at this time of year. Our whole class deeply appreciates your help on that front.
CT: Well, it’s a joy to work with you and to talk to you, and thank you very much for being part of the inaugural group of oral history project interviewees. And, like you said, I wish we could have started this 120 years ago, but I’m glad we’re starting when we are. So, thank you very much, Steve. I’ll stop the recording now.
