Eileen Gaylard, AHA Executive Assistant, Convention Manager Retires
This issue of Perspectives sadly reports the retirement of Eileen Gaylard, executive assistant and convention manager. Her many years of loyal and dedicated service to the Association and its members ended this August 31.
It was eighteen presidents, three executive directors, and countless committee members ago that Eileen’s tenure began at the AHA in May 1970. She was hired by former Secretary Paul Ward and her initial duties at the Association were that of administrative assistant to Dr. Ward. Her duties changed, however, for her position continued to expand and with it her title to executive assistant and convention manager.
It was during the mid-seventies that Eileen became responsible for the monumental tasks of scheduling committee meetings and annual meeting sessions and contracting with the hotel and convention center for each successive annual meeting. This was in addition to the administrative duties that she has always continued to perform and the editorial responsibilities of producing and editing the Annual Report of the Association and the Program of the annual meeting.
Before working at the AHA, Eileen spent many years as a staff member of the British foreign service in such exotic locales as Iraq and Afghanistan. She remained a citizen of Great Britain until 1986, when, we are proud to note, she took the oath of citizenship for the United States. Since her arrival in the United States, she has resided in Washington, DC and is an avid tennis player.
Eileen has worked tirelessly in the pursuit of nurturing and promoting the Association and its members. Few here at AHA headquarters and those who have worked closely with her would argue with former Executive Secretary Paul Ward’s sentiments that “Eileen deserves more appreciation than she has ever received.” We quite agree.
AHR Names New Associate Editor, Ellen Dwyer
Associate Professor Ellen Dwyer, formerly the chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University, has been named Associate Editor of the American Historical Review. She received her BA in history in 1967 from the College of New Rochelle. She then transferred to Yale University and received her MPhil in history in 1970 and her PhD in history in 1977.
Ellen studied at Yale with Dr. David Brion Davis and did her dissertation on the anti-Masonic and Temperance movements. More recent research has focused on the treatment of the insane in the nineteenth-century America. In 1987 Rutgers University Press published her study Homes for the Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth Century Lunatic Asylums. Several articles, papers, and lectures have resulted as well from her continued research on the subject of mental health. She has held the position of book review editor of Criminal Justice History since 1985 and has reviewed manuscripts for journals including the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History. She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards including an AHA Beveridge Award in 1982–83. She succeeds the former associate editor, Ann G. Carmichael.
AHA Headquarters Welcomes New Controller
This past summer the AHA welcomed Randy Norell to the position of AHA controller. He succeeded James Leatherwood, who retired at the end of July.
A graduate in accounting from Towson State University and a CPA, Randy came to the AHA from Peat Marwick Main and Company (the Association’s official auditing firm), where he held the position of in Charge Auditor. His former accounting experiences include the position of auditor in the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation.
His immediate duties at the Association will be to complete the internal computerization of the accounting department and develop new accounting procedures based on the new system. Computerization of the accounting department follows in the wake of the computerization undertaken in the AHA Membership Department this past spring.
A Maryland native, Randy is a member of the American Institute of Public Accountants and is a particularly avid golfer.
The Jameson Papers Grantworthy and Newsworthy
The AHA recently received grant renewals from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in support of the J. Franklin Jameson Papers Project. NHPRC renewed for one year its grant to publish a selective edition of Jameson’s papers, a project jointly sponsored by the AHA, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives; the NEH renewal is for three years. The AHA has also received two grants of $5,000 each from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation and a second private foundation. With these awards, the project has raised the entire $22,000 in matching funds provided it under the current grant from the Endowment. The grant from the Littauer Foundation was awarded in recognition of Jameson’s efforts on behalf of religious history and his assistance of the American Jewish Historical Society.
As noted previously in Perspectives (November, 1987), the project’s editors, Jacqueline Goggin and Morey Rothberg, have prepared a slide lecture on Jameson and Washington, DC in the first third of this century. The show highlights Jameson’s role in creating the National Archives. This lecture was presented in July to an audience of over 250 people at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington as part of the Smithsonian’s Resident Associates Program. The lecture was the subject of a feature article in the Washington Post newspaper.
