Notes about people

by Jerry L. Van Marter

    John D. Filiatreau, who wrote and edited for the Presbyterian News Service and Presbyterians Today magazine before becoming copy editor for the Office of Communication earlier this summer, is recovering in a Louisville hospital after undergoing quintuple heart bypass surgery Aug. 13. Filiatreau suffered a serious heart attack on Aug. 11.

      Filiatreau is expected to be released from the hospital this weekend and will convalesce at home for an extended time.

      Well-wishes may be sent by email c/o jvanmart@ctr.pcusa.org or by regular mail to 7408 Greenlawn Road, Louisville, KY 40222.

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     Norma Dunning Farmer, a Presbyterian medical missionary to India for 35 years, died in April at the age of 103 in Farmington, MO.

      Farmer went to India in 1930 at the age of 29, where she served at the Mary Wanless Hospital in Miraj. During World War II she met S. J. Farmer and they married in 1943. He served as financial/property administrator for the Western India Mission of the then Board of Foreign Missions and she continued to serve as medical superintendent of the hospital until she retired in 1965. They settled in Farmington after retirement and S.J. died shortly thereafter.

      A memorial service was held at Farmington Presbyterian Church.

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     John Knox Miller, a Presbyterian Church (USA) medical missionary to the Congo from 1949 to 1987, died July 27 at his home in Black Mountain, NC. He was 82.

      Miller was born in the Congo to missionary parents and grew up there. He attended Davidson (NC) College and received his M.D. from Tulane University Medical School in 1946. A lifelong student, he received advanced medical degrees in 1965 and 1970 (at the age of 52).

      Married for 58 years to Aurie Hollingsworth Montgomery Miller, Miller was instrumental in the founding of such Congo missions as the Institut Medical Chretien du Kasai and Good Shepherd Hospital, as well as a number of remote medical clinics and residential nutrition facilities for mothers and malnourished children.

      In addition to his wife, Miller is survived by two sisters, a brother, four children and seven grandchildren. A memorial service was held Aug. 1 at Black Mountain Presbyterian Church.

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     J. Robert Nelson, 83, a United Methodist theologian and bioethicist noted for his pioneering work in bioethical theology and church unity efforts, died July 6 in Houston.

      Nelson, who taught for many years at Boston University’s School of Theology helped develop the U.S. National Institutes for Health in formulating ethical and religious guidelines for cloning. As secretary of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, he helped organize a seminal WCC-sponsored world conference of scientists and theologians on the subject of bioethics in 1979 at MIT.

      A native of Indiana, Nelson graduated from DePauw University, earned a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich. He worked for the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission in Geneva from 1953-1957, served as dean of Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School from 1957-1965, in Boston from 1965-1984 and finally, until his retirement at the Institute of Religion at the Texas Medical Center in Houston.

      Nelson was one of the few people who attended every WCC General Assemblies, from the inaugural in Amsterdam in 1948 to the most recent in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1998.