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.
In Memoriam
Read the In Memoriam, Perspectives, May 2026
Samuel R. Gammon III (1924–2024)