Douglas Wheeler

Wheeler, Douglas

Doug Wheeler, University of New Hampshire emeritus professor of history, passed away peacefully at home surrounded by family on December 22, 2022, after a heart attack. Wheeler, who made his home in Durham, N.H., was 85 years old. He was the erudite, gentle and wise partner-in-life of Durham's political and social powerhouse, former NH State Senator Katie Wheeler. The Wheeler's spent many summers and holidays in St. Louis and Imperial.

Wheeler taught history at the UNH for nearly 40 years, working in a number of different areas – African history, Portuguese history – colonial and modern, world history and the topical field of espionage. Wheeler's early focus was on modern African history, especially Angola and Mozambique and later Iberian history, especially Portugal since 1850. He emphasized political history and the history of Angolan nationalism with later research on espionage and secret intelligence. He also studied protest movements and taught courses on African American history before UNH hired faculty specializing in the subject.

He published seven books as author, co-author, or co-editor, edited two scholarly journals on Portuguese history and produced about 250 articles, review essays, or reviews in several dozen journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, USA Today Magazine, the Journal of Contemporary History, the Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times. His scholarship has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and French. Among many other honors, he was decorated by two Presidents of Portugal for scholarship and teaching on Portuguese history and culture (Order of Prince Henry the Navigator, 1993; Order of Liberty, 2004).

Wheeler earned an A.B. in history with high distinction from Dartmouth College in 1959, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Boston University in 1960 and 1963. His doctoral dissertation was on 19th century colonial history of Angola, a Portuguese colony in West Central Africa. He received a Fulbright grant and was among the first Fulbright grantees in Portugal, where he taught at the University of Lisbon from 1961 to 1962. He later served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Intelligence which sparked a lifelong interest in issues of surveillance.

Douglas Lanphier Wheeler was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 19, 1937, the only child to Russel Wheeler, a dentist and author of the leading dentistry textbook – Wheeler's Dental Anatomy, Physiology and Occlusion, currently in its 19th edition, and Lucille Lanphier Wengler, a homemaker. He graduated from St. Louis Country Day School. During summers home from Dartmouth, he crewed on Mississippi tow boats for the Hardy Salt Company. He also clerked at the Missouri Historical Society in what is now the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park.

Wheeler married Katherine (Katie) Graves Wells in St. Louis on June 13, 1964, the daughter of Benjamin Harrison Wells, chairman of The Seven Up Company, and Katherine Gladney Wells, a poet and composer. The couple realized from an inscription in Doug's childhood bible that decades earlier, Katie's mother had been Doug's Sunday School teacher at Central Presbyterian Church in Clayton, MO.

He is survived by his wife, Katie, his daughter and son-in-law Meme and Robert Wheeler, daughter and son-in-law Lucy and Garfield Goodrum, and his four granddaughters Emma Wheeler, Helen Wheeler, Cecily Goodrum and Katherine Goodrum, all of New Hampshire.