wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Notes about people

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8459 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04367
August 19, 2004

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.

				       # # #

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.

					# # #

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.

				  # # #

	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.

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