Donald Y. Gilmore

1923 - 2014

Donald Y. Gilmore, 90, of Concord, passed away at Havenwood-Heritage Heights Nursing Facility on Tuesday, June 17, 2014.

A retired Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State and the U.S. Information Agency, Mr. Gilmore was born in Charlottesville, Va. on September 14, 1923, but moved with his family shortly thereafter to Providence, R.I., where he attended school until graduating from Providence Country Day School in 1941. He was a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont and earned an M.A. in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Donald was a naval aviator and flight instructor at Pensacola, Fla. in World War II. Mr. Gilmore's foreign service assignments included Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Belgium, India and Colombia. He also served for several years as director of French language broadcasting at the Voice of America, and later as a deputy assistant director of USIA in Washington, D.C. He was accompanied on his foreign service postings by his wife, Norma (Nicki) Kerr Gilmore, a former State Department employee. Three of their four children were born in North Africa.

From retirement in Meredith, and later Concord, Donald served as a contract escort-interpreter for State Department cultural exchanges and arranged conference programs for the Fletcher School and the Television Conference Foundation. He also become interested in archaeology, took summer field schools in archaeology and was elected president of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) for six years. For NEARA publication, he co-edited a book on evidence for trans-oceanic contacts with the Americas before 1492, "Across before Columbus?" (1998). His trips in retirement to Northern Africa led to lecturing on the rock art of the Sahara desert.

He and Mrs. Gilmore loved the mountains and climbed most of the "four-thousand footers" of New Hampshire and also hiked in Switzerland and in the Grand Canyon.

Donald is survived by his wife, Norma; by daughter, Deborah Gilmore of Voorhees, N.J.; daughter, Shelly Barton of Laconia; daughter, Katherine Sheils of Potomac, Md.; and by son, Jefferson Gilmore of Denver; as well as by grandchildren, Paul Howard of Prides Crossing, Mas.., Sarah Howard of Waltham, Mass., Allison Cronin of Washington, D.C. and Ian Gilmore of Denver; and by sister, Jeanne O'Brien of Cambridge, Mass.

Donations can be made to Union of Concerned Scientists, ucsusa.org/memorial or Two Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02138.