Deceased August 25, 2014
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50th Reunion Book Entry
In Memory
Walter “Ret” Millis died Aug. 25 at the age of 81. Ret was born in New York, where he attended Trinity School. At Amherst he was a member of Theta Xi fraternity and Phi Beta Kappa.
After graduating from Amherst, he served in the army for two years and as a producer and writer of documentaries at Johns Hopkins University for three years, after which he worked in New York as a NBC TV producer.
In 1979 Ret was transferred to the London desk, where he was a news field producer manager. Many of his assignments were to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia prior to their breakups and to the Middle East, especially Iran. One of his biggest stories was arranging an interview in Iran with one of the hostages.
In the 50th reunion booklet “Strangers Once,” he described as one of his most fun assignments covering the 1987 America’s Cup in Fremantle, Australia.
Ret retired in 1995 and moved to Orient Point at the north fork of Eastern Long Island, where he devoted most of his time to sailing and was treasurer of the Orient Yacht Club. He had been a member since 1944.
As a sailor he took his sons on many sailing trips: down the East Coast in his own boat, to the Caribbean, to the west coast of Scotland and to the canals of England.
Ret is survived by his wife, Allison MacKay (Mt. Holyoke ’55); three sons—Andrew, a professor of theoretical physics at Columbia; Peter, a social worker in Asheville, N.C.; and Robert a sound designer in Seattle—and a grandchild, Peter’s daughter, Lilly.
Bob Abrams ’54
