Samuel R. Gammon III was AHA executive director from 1981 to 1994. He was appointed executive director in June 1981, following a distinguished career in the Foreign Service, from which he retired with ambassadorial rank. Gammon’s diplomatic career included service as vice-consul in Italy, consul-general in Ethiopia, counselor for political affairs in Rome, deputy assistant director of the USIA for Western Europe, deputy executive secretary for the State Department, minister-counselor at the US Embassy in Paris, and American Ambassador to Mauritius. Gammon was educated at Texas A&M University (BA), at Princeton University (MA and PhD), and at the University of London, where he was a Rotary Fellow. Although most of his career was spent in nonacademic pursuits, Gammon taught briefly at Emory and published in 1973 a book, Statesman and Schemer, on Henry VIII’s last foreign minister. He passed away October 21, 2024, at age 100, in Charlottesville, Virginia.