W. Sheridan Warrick

1921 - 2020

W. Sheridan Warrick

August 9, 1921 – January 21, 2020

W. Sheridan Warrick, executive director of International House at UC Berkeley from 1961 to 1987, died of heart failure on January 21 in his bed at home in Berkeley. He was 98 and still full of his trademark warmth and good humor. His wife Betsey, age 95, had died seven months earlier, on June 26, 2019.
Known as Sherry to his colleagues, friends, and family—and to the new acquaintances he made at every turn—he was a beloved figure around the UC campus and in fact around the world. During his time at I-House, he befriended thousands of students and visiting scholars. He was the institution's second director since its founding in 1930.
In a public statement on May 12, 1987, I. Michael Heyman—then UC Berkeley chancellor and I-House board president—bowed to Sherry's two and half decades of contributions. Those years, Heyman said, "included severe campus unrest, critical international incidents, economically challenging times, and visitations to International House by national and international dignitaries." The chancellor also lauded him for mounting a capital campaign that to honor I-House's 50th year raised almost $2 million.
From childhood, Sherry lived a charmed life, although he repaid the world in a thousand ways for his advantages. He was born in Evanston, Illinois, to Walter Dempsey Warrick, a baking industry executive, and LaMar Sheridan Warrick, a book reviewer and author. Her novel Yesterday's Children, a barely fictional account of Sherry's life on the verge of World War II, was published in 1943.
The family kept a cottage at Epworth Heights on the shore of Lake Michigan, where as a boy Sherry spent his summers swimming, canoeing, fishing, and snaring turtles in the lazy Lincoln River. (As an adult, he returned to that same shore to vacation at a summer home the family dubbed Club Mich.) Handsome and athletic, he was voted senior president of Evanston High School. At age 17 he drove with three friends by way of Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone to the 1938 World's Fair in San Francisco, where they camped at the fairgrounds on Treasure Island. The Chicago Tribune ran a photo of the boys in their tent.
He was accepted at both Wesleyan University and Amherst College, but enrolled at Amherst, class of 1944. He joined Alpha Delta Phi, played varsity football, took jaunts with classmates to Boston and New York, and studied just hard enough to rank as a so-so student, he later confessed.
In December 1942 he met Betsey Fowler, a Smith College freshman, at an Amherst fraternity dance. Smitten by Sherry's good looks and easy manner, Betsey invited him the next day to an evening sing, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history—a romance that lasted for three-quarters of a century.
They announced their engagement in spring, by which time Sherry had enlisted in the Army Air Corps. The war was not cruel to the young lovers. Corporal Warrick ended up stationed at multiple bases, mostly in the South, but never overseas. He and Betsey married on March 24, 1945, at a church near the Fowler home in Norwood, Massachusetts; and at the war's end, as both finished college, they began a storybook married life that took them to Chicago, for Sherry's graduate studies in history, then to rural Davis, California, pop. 5,000.
Amazingly, Sherry never applied formally for the jobs he held during his career. He was invited to teach history at the University of California campus in Davis, following recommendations from colleagues he had known at Amherst. The family drove from Chicago and settled into a two-bedroom house near the Southern Pacific railroad tracks.
Sherry bicycled to campus. Becky (born in 1948), Dan (1950), and Doug (1954) sprinted through sprinklers and dangled on rope swings beneath cherry, peach, apricot, and almond trees. Friendships blossomed with faculty families, in particular with UC professor Dick Cramer, whom Sherry had met at Amherst, and his wife, Alison, and children, Terry and Steve. They spent many carefree days at the Cramers' cabin on the west shore of Lake Tahoe.
In 1959, Sherry received an inquiry. Would he consider an administrative position at UC Berkeley? Perhaps as foreign student adviser? And so he and Betsey and the kids moved again—for the last time—to a wooded neighborhood in north Berkeley. Within two years he was appointed executive director of International House, the cultural center and residence hall for foreign and domestic students where he already kept office hours.
I-House was made for the gregarious ex-lecturer. He whistled swing-era tunes en route to his office, greeted staff and residents in the hallways by name, and oversaw the permanent opening of a door between the men's and women's wings. With Betsey, he served as charming host and deft conversationalist at countless dinners, parties, and picnics.
He was forced into more demanding roles by events of the late 60s and 70s: the Free Speech Movement, the demonstrations over People's Park and the Vietnam War, the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the revolution in Iran.
Yet with Sherry's level stewardship, I-House remained largely a refuge—a place where students could be students, where distrust between nations and religions dissolved into lasting friendships. Maintaining that feeling of fellowship and welcome was his proudest achievement—that, and staying close to his family and to his huge circle of friends. His kindness, intelligence, curiosity, affability, love of music, and count-me-in spirit are deeply missed by all.
He is survived by his daughter Becky and her husband Ron, son Dan and his wife Karen, son Doug, granddaughter Ali and her fiancé Mark, as well as by grandsons Morgan and Tom, their wives Christina and Jeanetta, and great-granddaughter Maya—and by Ruben Montano, who brought happiness and comfort to Sherry in his last years of life.
A memorial is being planned for the fall. In the meantime, contributions in his memory may be made to the Sheridan and Betsey Warrick Scholarship Endowment, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave., Berkeley CA 94720.