Paul,
Thank you for sharing your experiences. As my children grow older, I was reading about your discovery process and ticking off a list of what I and my mom and my siblings should prepare for our children.

My first experience with Alzheimer’s was going to a job interview at Grumman's Calverton facility (way out on Long Island). Two of my father's other sisters lived separately in Calverton and I was determined to stop by and say hello. After visiting with one Aunt and my Uncle, I stated my intentions about visiting my father's other sister. They warned me off. I don't think it was called Alzheimer’s in those days, but I was told she wouldn't know I'm there, or she would call me different people's names, etc. Undaunted, I made the visit.

As my father was the youngest of eight children born to a pair of Irish immigrants (*and I was fifth of eight as well), my Aunt was well over ten years older than my dad. My father rarely spoke of about ancestry, except an occasional reference or visit to a property or building owned by my grandmother in Brooklyn or New Jersey.

I, and my Aunt, had the best four hours during that visit. Occasionally, I was called “Jack” (after my father), my name, and those of distant relatives or long gone neighbors I never knew. Most of all, my Aunt shared story after story of how her older sisters would have her enter the house first at night (to face their strict disciplinarian mother’s wrath), and other stories from times long gone. It was the first time I heard anything about my grandfather who died when my father was five years old, and also the first time I ‘met’ the person that was my grandmother through my Aunt’s memories who died when my father was about sixteen. I had a new sense of awareness of this sister, her sisters and brothers who shared being the surrogate parents for my father growing up.

I treasure that memory for ever and whenever questioned about how I could have stood the lack of recognition, I just smile and remember my Aunt.

Thank you for sharing.

Larry Timmins
 

That's a wonderful story. My father was a great story-teller, so I was treated to many anecdotes of his childhood and the people he grew up with. Unfortunately, I never bothered to sit down with him and fill in the details on names and dates while he still had the capacity to remember those things. By the time I realized I was missing that information, it was too late.

I've talked to some podcast enthusiasts recently who are using that medium to preserve family histories. I think oral histories are the easiest and most genuine memoirs, so I hope more people will take advantage of podcasts in the future to preserve history in this way.

My advice to anyone who's confronting the reality of a dying parent is to make an effort to find the names and contact information of people who are important to that person, because you will need to contact them at some point. It's natural to put aside that task because you're too busy attending to the urgent medical matters at hand. But when the person is gone, you'll be sorry you didn't collect that information.
 

As someone who has read and learnt a great deal from Donald Gillin's scholarship on Chinese history, I am really sad to hear of his passing. Thank you so much for posting the obituary.
 

Brian Brown sent these nice words in an e-mail and agreed to let me post them:


Please accept my condolences for the passing of your father. I was not aware of it.

I just sent your blog off to a couple of friends. They now work in Washington, in media and politics. We all were devoted followers of Prof. Gillin. I took nearly all his classes.

He was an excellent professor. He'd stand in front of the class and speak for one hour, mostly without notes. He'd recount anecdotes of travel to the region interlaced with history. It made learning easy. To this day, I carry knowledge about China and understand the world better because of him. He was a decent man with an excellent sense of humor.

He also had a tremendous sense of honor. I remember with fondness how he confessed the guilt he felt for being pro-communist for a small part of his life. He had no reason to feel guilt, but it bothered him that he did for a short time support an ideology that imprisoned and killed many -- including a relative, in another time and place. I very much appreciated that, especially when so many were so callous, dismissing their misguided beliefs as resulting from "good intentions." Prof. Gillin would have none of it.

His views did get him into hot water at times. And I thought this was absurd. He was one of the few voices on campus that differed from the orthodoxy. Yet, they -- who demanded diversity -- were often against him for offering a different perspective. The duplicity was thick and your father's ability to navigate it only increased my esteem.

He had a real impact on my life and for that I am grateful. I wish I could have communicated that more directly to him. Thank you for your efforts and, again, please accept my condolences.

Best,
Brian Brown
 

Former student Brian Brown contributed these memories:

He was an excellent professor. He'd stand in front of the class and speak for one hour, mostly without notes. He'd recount anecdotes of travel to the region interlaced with history. It made learning easy. To this day, I carry knowledge about China and understand the world better because of him. He was a decent man with an excellent sense of humor.

He also had a tremendous sense of honor. I remember with fondness how he confessed the guilt he felt for being pro-communist for a small part of his life. He had no reason to feel guilt, but it bothered him that he did for a short time support an ideology that imprisoned and killed many -- including a relative, in another time and place. I very much appreciated that, especially when so many were so callous, dismissing their misguided beliefs as resulting from "good intentions." Prof. Gillin would have none of it.

His views did get him into hot water at times. And I thought this was absurd. He was one of the few voices on campus that differed from the orthodoxy. Yet, they -- who demanded diversity -- were often against him for offering a different perspective. The duplicity was thick and your father's ability to navigate it only increased my esteem.

He had a real impact on my life and for that I am grateful. I wish I could have communicated that more directly to him. Thank you for your efforts and, again, please accept my condolences.

Best,
Brian Brown
 

I knew your father well. I went to Vassar from 1986 to 1990 and had the great privilege of taking at least two of his courses. He was one of my favorite professors, and a friend.

Professor Gillin had an obvious passion for Chinese history (and, of course, for film). He also had a great sense of humor. To the small band of conservatives at Vassar, he was something of a hero. I remember him saying something positive about Ronald Reagan during one class. He then stopped, looked out the window to the Main building that housed the school administration, and said something like, "There! I said it! Ronald Reagan was not a bad President. Shoot me." In fact, you would have been hard-pressed to find any other professor at Vassar who thought of Reagan as anything but a dangerous extremist.

I recall a Vassar administrator pointing to Professor Gillin as proof of political diversity on the Vassar faculty. Your father found that quite amusing, pointing out that when they hired him he was a Maoist! I believe he paid a price in the academic world for daring to be an independent thinker, but it made him an especially engaging professor. I am saddened, but not surprised, that Vassar College did not publish his obituary. The college never truly appreciated what a treasure he was.

On occassion I would meet Professor Gillin for Irish coffee at a pub near campus. I relished those conversations, which mostly centered on current developments in China and Chinese history, especially Shanghai in the 1920s. His knowledge of Sun Yat-sen's China was unsurpassed. He was also a great guy. I miss him.

- Jonathan Karl, Vassar '90
 

Paul, I too was lucky enough to take a course with you rfather at Vassar in 1982. His remarkable lecture skill was matched by his warm sense of humor. And he was forgiving: i wrote a paper on Doonesbury's Uncle Duke and the revolution which i can only believe he found funny. It wasnt very good but it is one of the few papers i kept from long ago. He was a great character and i am my classmates remember him fondly.
 

Doonesbury was my dad's favorite comic strip. You were either very perceptive or you got lucky!
 

I took several classes from Don Gillin at Duke when he was a very young professor. He was unquestionably the most influential professor I had although he was only in his second year as a professor. I was so influenced that I wrote my senior paper on the Marshall Mission in China after World War II. My wife and I moved to Asia after graduating and much of my career since then, as an attorney focusing on International Business Law, has involved Asia, particulary Japan and China. My wife also took the class from Gillin in Chinese history and went on to study Japanese language and history in graduate school. We sometime wonder what our lives would have been like if we had not met your dad.

With condolences and best wishes,

Chuck Routh
 

Thanks, Chuck and Susan. That's a wonderful tribute. I know my dad would have appreciated it more than any of the professional accolades he received.
 

Paul, I was saddened to read of the death of your father, and by the fact that Vassar seem to have ignored it. I was a young Englishman on a year's scholarship to Vassar in 1977/78, and took your father's courses with great delight. He was a rebel who clearly didn't see eye to eye with the authorities, a very gifted lecturer and an impassioned spokesman for his subject. I still remember his Hollywood and Asia course 30 years later. He was academically rigorous as well, unlike many of his colleagues, but he inspired me to work harder (I got As in all his classes!). Later in life, I visited China, and even lived in Asia for some years: a lot of my interest was as a result of your father. I remember his passion for his subject, his desire to communicate. Above all, I remember that he was friendly and kind to a young student almost 4000 miles from home. I feel lucky to have known him. My condolences.
Tom Callaghan
 

Tom: My dad would have been so gratified to hear that he had touched someone in the way you describe. He was passionate about China and if even a small amount of that passion rubbed off on the people he touched, he would have said that made all his worth worthwhile. Thanks for commenting.