WASHINGTON — When they were children, Elizabeth Sherwood and her little brother, Ben, were sent to Switzerland in the summers to learn to speak French.
It was not at all a typical upbringing, even for Beverly Hills kids. And the Sherwoods did not turn out to be typical young adults, or even ordinary high achievers. They recently became the first American sister-brother duo to win Rhodes scholarships to Oxford.
Elizabeth, now 26, won her Rhodes scholarship in 1981 after she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, and Ben, a 22-year-old Harvard senior, just learned that he won his Rhodes. He will head for Oxford in October.
Highest Student Achievement
Each year about 1,200 Americans apply for Rhodes scholarships and only 32 receive them. It is widely considered the highest student achievement in the academic world.
The Sherwoods' remarkable story is not one of overcoming adversity--at least not the usual adversity.
Theirs is the story of children of privilege who made the most of their gifts and would like to give something back to a world that has been astonishingly good to them.
It is also the story of being different, and understanding all that that can mean.
"I have my own neuroses. Everybody has them," said Elizabeth, who graduated from Beverly Hills High School a year early, spent a year at the Sorbonne, four years at Harvard, two years at Oxford and is now the top foreign affairs specialist on the staff of Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), a name increasingly mentioned in connection with a presidential candidacy.
Besides her obvious intelligence, Elizabeth is also slim, attractive, blond, fashionable and outgoing. Occasionally she will dash off for a weekend of skiing at the Adirondacks.
"I know that people look at me," Elizabeth continued, "and think that things look awfully good. And I'm conscious of it.
"My life has been blessed and I have not suffered hardship, and I know that. I try very hard to pay attention to and listen to people who may not have been so lucky, to somehow come out of myself and not be somebody who's difficult for them to cope with. I mean, that's hard work. I really don't want to be somebody who puts people off."
Important Discovery
Elizabeth's father, Richard E. Sherwood, an attorney with the Los Angeles firm of O'Melveny & Myers, said that when his daughter was 15 she made an important discovery about herself while attending a summer session at a leading New England secondary school, Phillips Academy Andover.
"It was the first place she ever realized it was OK to be a smart girl, that she didn't have to cloak it under all sorts of guises," her father said.
"There is a tension," he continued, "between wanting to be part of the social scene and at the same time having an intellectual capacity that may have been a little bit stronger than some of your peers."
Ben Sherwood also has had to work hard to fit in with others his own age while darting in and out of a more adult world that tended to find his enthusiasm quite charming. Ben has, for his age, a long and unusual list of activities. Besides maintaining an A-minus average at Harvard, he has interned at CBS in New York, at the Los Angeles Times in Washington and Paris, and at the Raleigh, N.C., News and Observer. He has worked for a U.N. border relief agency on the Thailand-Cambodian border, plays chess with a computer, has tried sumo wrestling in Japan, speaks French, Chinese and Russian, won a disco dancing contest with his eccentric grandmother and does mime and magic tricks--he even listed magic as one of his interests on his Rhodes application.
But one of his most outstanding skills is forensics. At Harvard School (a private high school for boys) in North Hollywood, he did not handle his debating success with "appropriate modesty," he said, and, even in college, he did not always turn off his debater persona in social situations.
"I like to think that I'm controversial because I have opinions about things and I care passionately about certain things. And I think that sometimes it is not particularly popular to care passionately about gun control or current events," Ben said.
"I'm not reluctant to make waves when sitting at a dinner table with a group of classmates when one person says something I disagree with. And Machiavelli, who is widely misunderstood, said that in the long run it's not that important to be popular because popularity is fleeting but respect is permanent."
So, does he feel he was more respected than popular at Harvard?
"I don't know whether I was respected," he said, laughing.
"I'm uncomfortable suppressing my feelings."
Getting along better with his own age group is something he's "been working on the last few years," and things have improved, he said.
'A Great Year'
