William Joseph Bogaty – 50th Reunion Essay

William Joseph Bogaty

Date of Death: 23-Jun-2012

College: Morse

(Jim Schweitzer submitted a memorial for Will Bogaty for the Class Notes. This is an edited version of that memorial. The full version can be found online.)

Will Bogaty died from complications of leukemia in Sydney, Australia, on June 23, 2012. 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 had 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 stayed at Yale for seven years, getting his undergraduate degree, a masters 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. 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. 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.

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.

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’s address to the Class of 1969 35th reunion.