Gerald David Miller writes: “I constantly find the news of the classes jumping from ’61 to ’63. Hey, what’s new ’62? Okay, I figure I will fill that sandwich. Soon after graduation, I married my childhood sweetheart, Susan Gilson, started using my middle name (David), earned a couple of graduate degrees, and moved to Israel for several years. In 1970, Susan and I, with our two little kids, went to Morocco for a month for a research project. We found classmate Richard Holbrooke in Rabat serving as a Peace Corps director. As a result, we stayed on as Peace Corps volunteers for the next three years. From there, I became director of Peace Corps training in Afghanistan and then acting director for Peace Corps Tunisia. I was recruited into the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department. Once again, Holbrooke and I would cross paths at State. We often went to lunch together when we were both in town and not flying off somewhere. I left State to become deputy vice president for programs at Save the Children before becoming founding director of the International Community Economic Development master’s degree program at Southern New Hampshire University. Susan did her PhD research and taught Middle Eastern history at Harvard much of that time. For two of those years, I was also a research fellow at Brown’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. I spent the time at the ‘Rock’ catching up on all the things I missed as an undergraduate. In 2009, Susan and I joined the faculty of UC Davis. I founded the Global Fellowship for Agricultural Development program that takes research to action by connecting faculty and graduate fellows to organizations in developing communities all over the world. Susan and I have two prize-winning kids (RISD and Brown grads), each of whom have prize-winning children. Retirement is not among my plans.”
See more notes:
Class of 1962