Ian Mayo-Smith, MBE, MA, Ph.D.

1924 - 2021

Ian Mayo-Smith, a British-born poet, author, administrator, academic, raconteur, and Bletchley Park veteran, died January 8 in Sun City, Florida at 96. An avid sportsman in his youth, he excelled at running, boxing, and table tennis. He was passionate about cricket. Born December 3, 1924 in Muswell Hill, Mayo-Smith came into a world reeling from World War 1, the Spanish flu pandemic, and on the cusp of the Great Depression. His bureaucratic career in colonial-era Britain reshaped his view of global politics and made him a tireless advocate for social justice around the world.

He attended boarding school at Aldenham, founded by the brewer to King Henry VIII where he learned how to brew beer. A gifted student, he earned a spot at Clare College in Cambridge. After just a year of studying medieval and modern languages, he was called up for service in World War 11. Assigned to British Army Intelligence Corps, he was part of a team at Bletchley Park that decoded the German army's military signals. His account of that work is in Eavesdropping on Adolph Hitler: Deciphering the Daily Messages in the Tunny Cipher. He also learned Serbo-Croatian to help break coded messages by the Yugoslav secret police.

Post-war, Mayo-Smith completed studies at Clare College, where he earned his Master's, and married his first wife, Ellen-Åase. He took a job with British military intelligence in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he and his wife had their first two sons, Peter and Steven. Their third and last son, Brian, was born in London, after Mayo-Smith was re-posted to work in the war department.

In 1953, Ian Mayo-Smith moved his family to Kaduna, regional capital of northern Nigeria, a country on a path to decolonization. Bucking colonial-era protocols, he and his wife hosted multi-racial parties. He left Nigeria in 1966, working the last two years as a consultant for Ford Foundation to train civil servants and foster development programs. Queen Elizabeth 11 honored him with the MBE for his service in Nigeria.

Mayo-Smith accepted another job from Ford Foundation, this time in Nairobi, Kenya. It was there he met Krishna Sondhi, whom he wed in 1973.

In 1971, Mayo-Smith moved to Hartford, CT to be an associate professor at UConn. After a brief United Nations post in Arusha, Tanzania, he returned to UConn, earned his PhD, and served as Director of the Institute of Public Service International. His career included management and leadership development programs in countries around the world for civil servants, public managers and governments as well as consultancies with the United Nations, Harvard University and the World Bank.

As a young man, Mayo-Smith became active in the Oxford Movement, now known as Initiatives for Change. Its mission inspired him to co-found, with Krishna, Healing the Heart of Hartford, a group passionately committed to healing racial and sectarian rifts.

Ian traveled to over forty nations. Particularly fond of Thailand, for twenty-eight years he spent his winter months there living with a Thai extended family. His hobbies included photography, classical jazz, classical music, musical revues, poetry, of which he published several collections, and novels. He wrote songs and music and sang. For two decades, he and Krishna hosted an annual summer party in their CT home, bringing together guests from a wide diversity of cultures.

In recent years, he and Krishna spent more time in Sun City, Florida.

Ian is survived by Krishna, three sons, three daughters-in-law, twelve grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.