SUSAN WARD (nee HILL,) was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1936. Wilmington was home base for most of her life between considerable travel and education. Beginning in 1954, she attended Wellesley College for three years where she majored in English literature and was a Wellesley Scholar. Several years later she completed her B.A. (with honors) in social/cultural anthropology from the University of Delaware. Eventually, she completed her formal education with extensive study over five years in a master’s program in psychology at the New School in New York City.
Married to Rodman Ward Jr. in 1959, (Harvard Law School, 1959), they moved to Kyushu, Japan in 1960 with their newborn daughter (Gigi) to fulfill a three-year compulsory military assignment in the Air Force Judge Advocate Generals’ Program (JAG). They lived for three years in a Japanese farmhouse in a hot spring town in the rice paddies, five miles from the air base.
Susan developed a deep interest in Japanese Culture which led her to study the history of Japanese Buddhism and Shinto. Upon return to the United States (now including a second daughter, Emily, born in Japan), Susan trained and taught Yoga for some 40 years. Eventually, this led to further study at the New School in New York in the late 1970s to compare Eastern and Western understandings of the psyche. During these years the family increased by a son (Rodman Ward III) and a third daughter (Jennifer, who died in May 2017 of a glioblastoma brain tumor). Jennifer’s marriage to Jonathan Oppenheimer of Johannesburg, South Africa inspired the Wards to retire to Cape Town, South Africa in 2000 where they bought an old Cape Dutch house and immersed themselves for 20 years in African history and cultures. For Susan, this meant a particular focus on Bushmen Rock Art under the aegis of the University of Witwatersrand and its recent discovery that much of the Bushmen rock art depicts the experience of Bushmen healers while in an altered state in the trance dance.
Finally, two themes come together in the creation of the Ward Endowment of the Professorship in Psychedelics and Consciousness Research. First, Mr. Ward’s life-long support of Mrs. Ward’s interests, the paramount being her full-on mystical experience during childbirth when this was poorly understood. And second, their abiding respect and gratitude to Dr. Potash for his assistance to the Ward family.
RODMAN WARD, Jr., Susan Hill Ward’s husband of 63 years, died in March 2023 at the age of 88. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1934, he graduated from Williams College (B.A.) in 1956 and Harvard Law School (L.L.B.) in 1959. In the fall of that year, Rod and Susan were married. Rod graduated from law school and Rod was admitted to the Washington DC bar. In 1960, Rod and Susan moved to Kyushu, Japan, for three years, where Rod served as a captain in the US Air Force Judgel’s (JAG) office. These were the years of compulsory Military Service. In 1963, when Rod and Susan returned to Wilmington, Delaware, with their two daughters, Rod began his civilian legal career, which would last four decades. He specialized in corporate, commercial, and securities litigation and founded the Wilmington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom. In one of his most famous cases, he represented the State of Delaware to end court-ordered bussing and supervision of the New Castle County schools on the assurance that the schools would treat all students equally. Rod maintained for years that this was always his most significant case.
Rod served as President of the Delaware Bar Association, was a fellow of the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers, and a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He was a member of the DC Bar Association (as mentioned), and the Bar of the City of New York, the American Law Institute, and the American Judicature Society.
In his life outside the law, Rod was director or trustee of many boards including The Delaware Art Museum, (when it was in crisis), The Delaware Historical Society, Winterthur Museum and Gardens, and the Garden Conservancy of America. In addition to all this, he found time to have and be a father to four children of whom he was very proud–three daughters, Gigi, Emmy, and Jennifer, and a son, Rodman III. In due time the four married and blossomed into 13 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. In his own words published in an online obituary, Rod wrote, “It would be a fair summary of my life to paraphrase Churchill. In 1959, I married Susan Hill and lived happily ever after.”
