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Marshall Rutter

This week we are highlighting Marshall Rutter, an SSE alum from Radley College in 1949. After SSE, he attended Amherst College in Massachusetts. He has practiced law in California for 16 years and been on the board and as an Emeritus member of the Los Angeles Master Chorale for more than half a century.

He was President of the Board of the ESU in Los Angeles, where he shook the hand of Prince Charles.

During his time in the SSE Program at Radley, Rutter played on the rugby team and formed strong friendships. Rutter is most grateful for his experience travelling during school breaks extensively around Europe: "from London and then to Bordeaux, to Madrid … Barcelona, Nice, The San Remo and Rome, and somehow I got all the way back to Naples." He says it was the most "broadening experience that I've ever had and I'm forever grateful to the ESU for doing it."

Marshall Rutter with his dormitory rugby team at Radley in the fall of 1949, pictured on the bottom left

He reminisces about his time in the UK as an eye-opening experience:

"But you know, because this was 1949 was only four years after the Second World War was over, when I went to England, when we went to London, especially, it was still bombed out and they had cleaned up the rubble, but there were lots and lots of bombed out buildings, excavations where buildings used to be, so it was pretty much a shock at that time."

"I came home [from SSE] speaking somewhat differently because I had to enunciate more clearly and pronounce certain words a little bit differently. I didn't think that I had changed the way I spoke, but I was a counselor at a camp that summer in Canada, and they kept teasing me about my English accent, which I swore I didn't have."

Diary entry from Marshall Rutter's travels in Europe, Sept. 1949. Notable quotes: "Afraid to ask for seconds from reluctant waiter," "French hills are beautiful with crops."