University College Oxford Record 2020

1974:
DAVID VAUGHAN
(Worcester RGS) died on 2 April 2020 aged 63.
He read Physics at Univ. We are very grateful to
Andrew Scott (1974) for providing the following
tribute, by arrangement with David’s widow, Jane:
David died in the early hours of 2 April 2020.
He had a genuine love and care for his fellow
man (and woman). David was hard working and
unassuming, but scratch below the surface and
you found a genuinely good person. Sometimes
he’d pop in for a late-night coffee looking
exhausted. After some time and a lot of banter,
he admitted he’d been working a late shift with
Nightline, one of the volunteers manning the
phones to be there for people in despair. We
came to realise that was typical of the David we
knew. Those of us who kept in contact with him
realised his gentle kindness never diminished. As
well as being a Nightline team leader he was also
a member of the Physics Society committee.
After graduating he joined Shell, initially in a
technical role. He then moved into financial roles
where he spent the majority of his career, before
retiring in 2016.
He married Jane, then a nurse, shortly after
leaving Oxford. David spent the last few years in
Berkhamsted, living closer to their adult children,
Richard and Helen, and enjoying the company of
his grandchildren. David was active in his local
Church, Rotary and National Trust Conservation
Volunteers.
1981:
CHRISTOPHER DANIEL SUITS
(Williams College) died in 2019 aged 59. Ed
Johnson (1981) has kindly written this tribute:
Chris Suits died in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in
the early morning of 2 August 2019. He was
a complex, introspective, deeply intellectual
person who did many things with tremendous
exuberance. I met Chris when we both came up
to Univ in 1981 and I have often thought that all
of us only knew a little part of him.
Chris grew up in Ellensburg, Washington,
and came to Univ as a Rhodes Scholar after
graduating from Williams. There he studied
Classics and played American football, and won
effectively every undergraduate distinction, both
academic and athletic.
Chris read Russian at Univ. He travelled
extensively, including a trip to Gdansk around the
start of the Solidarity movement. At Univ, Chris
lived first in the Goodhart Building and then at
104 Banbury Road.
Chris had read a lot, even by then. And he
kept reading a lot when I knew him. We talked a
lot about subjects that neither of us knew much
about. But just how I got along with Chris, … it
was a game between us, call and response with
“literary” quotations. There was Virgil, there was
Proust, there was Joyce. I have a distinct memory,
coming home at dawn, when I was writing up and
I was dead tired. Chris asked, “So how’d it go?”
and I answered, “The system is not finished yet.”
And Chris said, “Surely by next Sunday.” That’s
Kierkegaard.
Not that it was always easy to get along with
Chris: he was an intensely private person. But
sometimes, wildly thoughtful and considerate
too. On a trip to Italy, we had arranged to meet
in Stresa, by Lago Maggiore. When I got off the
train just before dawn, disoriented and dead tired,
Chris was sitting on a bench outside the station
with a bottle of Campari in one hand and a fresh
lemon in the other.
After Oxford, Chris moved to New York to
work in international finance. This took him to
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