John Robert Graham Jenkins

John was born in Treforest, near Cardiff, Wales on June 30, 1928. His father, John Henry "Harry" Jenkins was a talented, award-winning graduate of the Royal Academy of Art who later became a successful businessman. His mother, Olwen Prys-Jones was a primary school teacher and graduate of the University of Exeter.

John's maternal grandfather claimed descent from Rhys ap Maredudd, the young Welsh squire who retrieved the fallen banner of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, thus reviving the morale of the victorious Tudor army. One of his maternal uncles was a poet who wrote in both Welsh and English and was a contemporary of Dylan Thomas.

John was educated at Wood Road School in Treforest (attended twelve years later by the singer Tom Jones), Pontypridd Grammar School and Wycliffe College, Gloucestershire. He served his National Service in the RAF at the time of the Berlin Airlift, after which he attended and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1951.

After being awarded two fellowships by the University of Toronto in 1951 John sailed to Canada on an elderly World War troopship packed with 800 American, Canadian, and European students. He won the ship's table tennis tournament, played on deck during the rough Atlantic weather.

John supported himself with a number of part-time jobs together with a summer assignment in forest survey work in north-central British Columbia, afterwards hitchhiking back to Toronto with his ukulele, which he played very badly.

Graduating with an MBA in 1953, John was hired by Procter & Gamble of Canada, commuting to New York frequently for meetings with P&G's advertising agencies during the "Mad Men" era. Subsequently he became, in turn Media Director of two large Canadian and an international advertising agency before becoming Market Research Director of the fledgling CTV Network. While there John was also a Visiting Professor of Marketing at his alma mater, the University of Toronto and decided on a career of teaching and business consulting.

John married Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Cooper of Dublin, Ireland and Bromley, England in May 1956 and they were happily married for 40 years prior to her sudden death in 1996. Betty loyally supported John in all his activities and, in 1964 with three young children, they moved to the US where John, at the age of 36, studied for a doctorate at the Harvard Business School, graduating in 1968.

Shortly afterwards they returned to Canada where John became dean of the business school at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, a then-struggling private Lutheran college with limited financial resources. Despite financial problems, with the involvement of devoted faculty members John launched and obtained academic recognition of now-thriving Coop and MBA programs at the same time WLU became government-supported Wilfrid Laurier University.

John served Laurier devotedly for 22 years total, reaching the then Canadian retiring age in 1992 as an emeritus professor. During sabbaticals in the 1970s period he studied for, and later obtained a second doctorate (in Political Geography) at Oxford University.

Upon mandatory retirement in 1991 John then immediately joined the Middlebury (then the Monterey) Institute of International Studies as a professor in marketing, being named "Best Teacher" at the business school before retiring as an emeritus professor in 1998. He continued to undertake specific assignments for MIIS in subsequent years.

The author or co-author of 9 books and two marketing simulation games John also authored 37 business cases and more than fifty articles. He was a visiting professor in Australia, China (twice), England, New Zealand and Wales and directed seminars in such countries as Brazil, Bulgaria and Fiji. His works were translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, French, German and Welsh.

In his younger days John was an active member of the Sierra Club and played tennis with a group other Monterey-area seniors until breaking his back for the first time at the age of 82. He was a member of the Carmel Foundation and an active member of its Men's Discussion Group.

John was proud of his Welsh roots and learned to speak the language with some fluency. At various times he was president of Welsh societies in both Toronto and Boston and served as a vice-president of the Welsh Society of the Monterey Peninsula for many years.

John was a longtime supporter of Native American causes and endowed the Frances Elizabeth Scholarship for a Native American student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

John was preceded in death by his wife, Frances Elizabeth "Betty", and daughter Elizabeth "Beth" Kidnie.

John leaves his son, John Craig Jenkins, daughter Anne and husband Stephen Turner, all of Kitchener, Ontario. He also leaves his son-in-law Peter Kidnie, his grandsons Reid (Caroline) and Sean (Shawna) Kidnie, granddaughter Emma (Liam) Kidnie, great-granddaughter Ellie Kidnie and great-grandson Jack Kidnie.

A Celebration of John's life will be held on Thursday, August 24 from 1PM – 2PM, followed by light refreshments, at Holland Center on the MIIS Campus - 442 ½ Van Buren Street, Monterey.