William Bogaty, June 23, 2012

(From the Class Notes) As promised, here is the Jim Schweitzer memorial for Will Bogaty: “Will Bogaty died from complications of leukemia in Sydney, Australia, on June 23. At the beginning of last year, Will was diagnosed with myelodysplasia, a blood disorder that can lead to the cancer. The diagnosis came shortly after Will had retired from heading ExxonMobil in Tokyo and moved to Sydney with his wife Helen and their two children, Sophia and Alexander. Will is also survived by two children from his first marriage, Peter and Nick, who live in New York, and five grandchildren.

“Will gave an extraordinary amount to our class. He was chair of our 20th reunion, gave the class speech (by DVD from his office in Tokyo) at our 35th reunion, and was for many years our corresponding secretary. He was also an incredibly generous contributor to the class and the graduate school. In 2004, he received the class Distinguished Service Award.

“Will was the first person I met when I showed up in Vanderbilt in the fall of 1965. And he’s the last person I’ll ever forget. I’d never quite experienced anyone like him. When he arrived from suburban Chicago, he spoke Japanese fluently and was the piano player in a Dixieland jazz band that had already released a successful album. Acerbic—to put it mildly—and scarily smart, Will was working on his master’s while the rest of us were still trying to figure out whether to take rocks and stars or bones and stones. Will stayed at Yale for seven years, getting his undergraduate degree, a master’s in Japanese studies, and a law degree. He was a regular at the Doodle, a shark at poker, and a skilled handicapper at the track. Will often said that he spent most of his time in law school studying probability theory—at Aqueduct.

“After law school, Will joined Mobil Oil as assistant general counsel in Japan and stayed with the company for the remainder of its separate existence. Will described his time with Mobil as a series of different careers—first in Tokyo, then in London looking after the company’s Middle East interests, then in New York on the executive track, then in Washington, DC, as an officer of the corporation. When Exxon acquired Mobil, Will returned to Tokyo to run the new company’s Japanese operations for the next decade.

“After he retired, Will was personally honored by the emperor for his efforts in promoting the energy industry in Japan, receiving ‘The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon.’ Will was justifiably proud of the award since he had devoted much of his life to Japan, although he pointed out in an e-mail that the honor ‘conveys few if any material benefits, not even free parking in the Ginza.’ He also found some humor in the gold rays with neck ribbon.

“Will found humor in most things. For example, my height, my girth, my receding—and now nonexistent—hairline. My dating life. Basically, I was his piñata for nearly 50 years. And I loved every minute of it. I even tried to give it back in kind, although I was operating from a serious IQ deficit. Will was pretty much the personification of rapier wit—and extremely egalitarian in dispensing it. His close friends, his not so close friends. My parents. My mother once said to me, “I really love all your Yale friends, especially Will, although he’s awfully rude.” And, of course, he didn’t hold back in the class notes. I was a class agent trying to raise money during his decade as corresponding secretary. About 90 percent of those I contacted said they’d only contribute if Will continued to write the notes; the other 10 percent said they’d never give again as long as he was writing the notes.

“None of this ever disguised Will’s deep underlying affection for his classmates, even when he was half a world away. His writing always kept him close. In the years before e-mail, he stayed in regular touch through observant, amusing letters about his life abroad. And when Will was working in the states, he made a point of spending as much time as possible with many of us. He lived with Robb High in New York for a spell, and had a house near me in DC for several years, where Don Galligan, Rick Larkin, Robb, and I were all part of his wedding to Helen in 1989. When Will returned to Japan, he encouraged friends to visit, as Dick Williams and other classmates did. After our 35th reunion, John Yarmuth and I brought his class Distinguished Service Award to Tokyo and enjoyed a sake-enhanced weeklong tour of the city.

“I visited Will in Sydney last April before his illness had taken hold. He was hopeful, but realistic. There was some limited cause for optimism at that point, thanks to our classmate Lee Goldman, the dean of the faculty at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, who arranged for Will to be examined in New York—and monitored in Sydney—by one of his faculty members who is the world’s leading expert on myelodysplasia.

“In one of his last—vintage—e-mails, just before a planned stem cell transplant, Will wrote of the search for a donor and his prospects long-term: ‘A couple of complete matches have actually been located from international lists of registered donors (I have not asked whether the testing involved either sense of humor or the ability to handicap horses), so this sometimes difficult hurdle seems to have been overcome. But the process I just described is not for the faint of heart.… [It] is risky; mortality in the first year is not zero. On the other hand, this procedure offers the only real hope of a “cure,” and the alternative (staying the current course) will very likely lead, over some unknown period, to “game over” (as they say in Tahrir Square).’ This June, as the disease inexorably progressed, he e-mailed, with his usual subtlety, that ‘this movie may not have too much further to run.’

“As a 1967 article in Life said of a politician at the time, ‘The impact of the man is widely considered to be his forthrightness, the direct and irresistible force of his personality.’ And as Andy Rooney said on his last telecast: ‘Being liked is nice, but is not my intent.’

“It’s tough to get old. It’s tougher to see your closest and most cherished lifelong friends die. I don’t like anything about it.”

“The ultimate chance of survival of all of us is zero. So that takes care of where we’re going.”—Will Bogaty, in his address to the Class of 1969 35th reunion.

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