Obituaries
Please alert us to the recent death of any other Rhodes Scholar by emailing communications@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
A professor of physics, astronomy and electrical engineering at USC for nearly 50 years, Robert W. Hellwarth was a laser innovator and a beloved mentor.
Hellwarth was offered a scholarship to Princeton University, where he was valedictorian of his class, earning a dual undergraduate degree in physics and electrical engineering in 1952. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and spent the next three years at the University of Oxford, earning his doctorate in physics in 1955 and becoming a lifelong Anglophile.
A fellow of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Optical Society of America (OSA), Hellwarth was also the recipient of the OSA’s Charles Hard Townes Award.
Hellwarth wrote or co-authored more than 200 papers and articles, the last published in 2018, shortly before his 88th birthday.
Bob frequently returned to Oxford over the years, during which he'd meet with colleagues dating back to his Rhodes years, make recurring appearances at the Clarendon Laboratory, and popping in for tea at St. John's.
Read more from USC Dornsife and the LA Times. Read Ben Hellwarth's Obituary for his father, Robert.
Graham Boustred was the deputy chair of the Anglo American Corporation in the 1980s and '90s. Boustred joined the South African Navy in 1943 and after the war he went and studied Chemistry at Trinity.
Jon Westling graduated from Reed College in Oregon. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1964 and studied history at St. John’s College, Oxford University.
Westling’s career at Boston University spanned 46 years and included several top leadership posts, although his most lasting avocation was teaching students about the history of Europe. He came to the University in 1974 to work on a project to produce films for the US Bicentennial. While that project never materialized, John Silber (Hon.’95), then BU president, took notice of the 32-year-old and drew him into his administration. He was named provost in 1984, and later became executive vice president. Westling (Hon.’03) served as president of the University from 1996 to 2002.
Westling was proud of his activities as a Freedom Rider, including participation in a sit-in in southern Virginia in 1963.
Jim Redmond obtained his Bachelor of Arts and Law degrees from the University of Alberta, where he was gold medalist in his law class and was the recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship.
Jim practiced law for 60 years. He was one of Canada's leading trial lawyers and an international arbitrator. He mentored countless young lawyers, served as a Bencher of the Law Society of Alberta, and as a lecturer at the University of Alberta. Jim was a lifelong student of the law, attending legal conferences, seminars and courses around the world into his eighties.
Jim loved and supported the Edmonton Arts including the Symphony, Opera, Citadel and the local jazz scene.
Carter Revard was born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in 1931. Revard was raised, along with six siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, in the Buck Creek Valley on the Osage reservation — a great, extended “mixed-blood family of Indian and Irish and Scotch-Irish folks,” as he described it in his 2001 autobiography, “Winning the Dustbowl.”
After eighth grade, Revard graduated from Bartlesville College High School. His twin, Maxine, encouraged him to enter a radio quiz contest, and his third place finish won him a scholarship to the University of Tulsa, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952. That same year, Revard was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Merton College at the University of Oxford, and he received his Osage name, Nom-peh-wah-theh (“fear inspiring”), from his grandmother, Josephine Jump.
Known for his groundbreaking scholarship on the Harley manuscript, a 14th-century collection of secular and religious lyrics now housed in the British Library, Revard also was an accomplished poet whose work frequently explored Native American themes, beginning with the chapbook “My Right Hand Don’t Leave Me No More” (1970).
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.