Deceased December 15, 2019
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In Memory
Charles Rosier Millar died in Richmond, Calif., on Dec. 15, 2019, after living with cancer for 12 years. At Amherst, Charlie shared freshman rooms with Mike Driver ’67 and the late Jim Greene ’67. Soon he met the love of his life, Marilala “Laila” Campbell (Mount Holyoke ’68). After two years, Charlie transferred to Marlboro College to complete his B.A., and he later received a master’s in international administration from the School for International Training. Chuck and Laila shared remarkable life adventures and had two children, Annie Dimakatso Millar Desmond, who died of cancer in 2018, and Rowan Campbell Millar.
Like many students at Amherst in the mid-1960s, Charlie was attracted to the College psychologist Roy Heath’s book The Reasonable Adventurer (1964). When he set off for Alaska in the summer of 1965, he put the thesis to the test when, for instance, as a summer forest ranger sent to prevent illicit salmon fishing, he glimpsed poachers once (they escaped) and was treed by a bear. Charlie and Laila hand-built and lived in a lovely log cabin in the woods near Putney and then truly proved their mettle in Botswana, where , through the Mennonite Central Committee, they spent three years. Charlie ran a center for job-skill development and agricultural education. Returning to the States, he received a Ph.D. in psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and such training informed Charlie’s long practice as a most effective counselor. He was also a perceptive teacher and editor, and he had a lifelong passion for small-craft sailing. As he hoped would be his epitaph, Charlie really was a wonderful friend to a great many around the world, always sympathetic and wise while retaining a distinctly quirky and altogether engaging sense of humor. The world is a better place because of Charlie Millar.
Al Roberts ’67