David Elliott retired as Professor of political science at Pomona College last year, enabling him and his wife, Mai, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in France and Italy this spring. For decades their life has revolved around Pomona and Vietnam. In 2003 Dave published The Vietnamese War, Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975, cited in the New York Review of Books as probably the best book on the Vietnam War. Mai had published The Sacred Willow, Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family, in 1999, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Mai is also the author of RAND in Southeast Asia, A History of the Vietnam War Era, an eye-opening account of political machinations.
Dave and Mai have been invited to the production headquarters in Walpole, NH by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick for a critique of an early cut of their documentary series on the Vietnam War.
The 1960 Yale Whiffenpoofs are taking advantage of Dave being in the East to rehearse for next year’s performance at our 55th reunion in New Haven. Hank Marquardt was also a member of the 1960 Whiffs.
Dave continues work on a massive biography of his father, Professor of Government at Harvard, a Roosevelt “brain truster”, on the War Production Board, on Eisenhower’s security council, and much more.
Joseph Twichell
1956