50th Reunion

Richmond Mayo Smith
It is April 1993 and Nancy and I are traveling to Saigon to participate in the wedding of our son Rick to My Duc. He is an entrepreneur based in Hong Kong and now Vietnam. Leaving with us will be our son Michael, a medical doctor in N.H. and his eleven-year old son Michael Jr. Left behind will be Michael's wife Janet and Leslie, who was born on our fortieth anniversary, December 17. 1989. In San Francisco we will be joined by the Sonoma branch of our family, daughter Katrina, a massage practitioner and ecology/spiritual leader, her husband Michael and their son Maxwell, three and a half.

The last time the whole family set forth in such fashion was in 1951 when Nancy and I and the three children, then aged 9, 7, and 3, embarked on the major adventure of our marriage, aside from having the children themselves. We went to India for 3 1/2 years, most of it in the countryside at Literacy House, an organization specializing in helping village people. My first administrative experience was serving as Acting Director of Literacy House with its all Indian staff.

To return to earlier days, after serving in the field artillery in Europe, I returned for a final year at Amherst. I finished in early September 1946 and immediately started a 16-year teaching career in biology at The Phillips Exeter Academy. It was a great place to teach and I learned a lot.

Richmond Mayo Smith
Nancy and I were married in December, 1949. Nancy, Smith '44, had developed her taste for overseas life by serving in the Red Cross in the Philippines and Japan at the end of WWII. In 1950-51 we lived in England on a Fulbright Teaching Exchange.
After India I was headmaster of the Roxbury Latin School for eight years and then worked for Common Cause/MA for six. In the early eighties I helped to start Educators for Social Responsibility and am presently chair of the board.

My major present interest and occupation is serving as chair of the board of the Center fa Psychology and Social Change, an organization affiliated with Harvard Medical School. I have learned much from this experience, some of which I hope to share with you in a presentation at Alumni College in 1994.

Nancy and I have lived at our present address in Boston on Beacon Hill for twenty years. We greatly enjoy life in this city.