We were honored today by a visit from Dr. Eric Widmer, one of founding dean Carolyn Ladd Widmer’s two sons, who came to view the new 75th anniversary exhibit honoring his mother in the Storrs Hall Widmer Wing atrium.
Like his mother, Dr. Widmer is both an educator and an internationalist. Educated at Deerfield Academy, Williams College, and Harvard University, Dr. Widmer has been a scholar in Chinese history, teaching at Brown University, where he also served as a dean. Later his career returned him to his alma mater Deerfield as headmaster. Eventually, he was invited by King Abdullah II of Jordan to found the King’s Academy (celebrating its tenth year) on the model of Deerfield.
Dr. Widmer is following in the footsteps of his mother, who founded not only the UConn School of Nursing but also the collegiate nursing program at the American University of Beirut, and of his maternal grandfather, Cyrus Hamlin, who founded Robert College in Istanbul in the mid-nineteenth century.
He is currently working on a memoir of his mother, derived from his and his brother Michal’s recollections and archival sources.
Dr. Widmer is married to Dr. Meera Viswanathan, head of the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury Connecticut.