Amory Houghton Jr. made a habit of welcoming new challenges at ages when many people think their life’s most significant work is in the past. Elected to Congress at 60, he served for 18 years and for a while counted among his interns one with an unusual resume: the Right Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, the Episcopal bishop in Massachusetts.
Then when Mr. Houghton decided not to seek a 10th congressional term, he switched roles with Shaw and, at 78, became the bishop’s intern in Boston.
“My family was very devout, and I was thinking of going into the ministry myself,” he told the Globe in 2005. “And it just seemed to me that rather than going down to Florida and playing golf and bridge and things like that all the time, I would try to do something which is reasonably worthwhile.”