David Roger Giltrow

Giltrow—David Roger Giltrow, 85, on August 29, 2023, following a fall at his home, at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe, N.M. David had been treated for acute myeloid leukemia since June 2023. He was born on December 18, 1937, to Aubrey Giltrow and Ruby Jane Senseman Giltrow, in Middletown, Ohio. David grew up in Saline, Michigan, where he was raised in the Methodist church.

David learned of the Religious Society of Friends while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He joined Ann Arbor (Mich.) Meeting in 1959. David was a photographer for the daily student newspaper and the campus humor magazine. His photographs documented John F. Kennedy’s impromptu speech hinting at the formation of the Peace Corps; civil rights actions in Michigan and the South; and jazz festivals in Newport, R.I.; Detroit, Mich.; and Chicago, Ill. A collection of his photographs is archived at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library. David graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1961.

From 1961 to 1964, David performed alternative service in Tanzania with American Friends Service Committee’s Voluntary International Service Assignments (VISA) program. He was assigned to the Tanzanian government’s film unit, making films focused on nation building and rural development. His experience led him to enroll in graduate school at Syracuse University in New York, where he earned a master’s degree in 1973 followed by a doctorate in educational technology. During his doctoral research in Tanzania, David met Peggy Medina. They married under the care of Ann Arbor Meeting in 1971.

David began working for TV College, the television extension of the City Colleges of Chicago, in 1974. He and Peggy attended Chicago’s Northside Meeting. In 1978, they left Chicago to do research in London and Kenya for a book about the British Colonial Film Unit. Soon they were back in Tanzania, where David served on the agricultural faculty of the University of Dar es Salaam in Morogoro from 1980 to 1983.

In 1984, they returned to the United States and settled in Santa Fe, near Peggy’s extensive family. From this home base David worked in developing countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East as an independent consultant on education, communications, forestry, and development projects for the United Nations, the World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. He retired in the early 2000s.

David began attending Santa Fe Meeting in 1985. He transferred his membership from Ann Arbor in 1995. David served the meeting on many committees and in many capacities, including as a longtime member of the Future Planning and Building and Grounds committees, and as board president of the meeting’s corporation. As the meeting’s archivist, he oversaw the preservation and digitization of records. He had a special concern for understanding and communicating the meeting’s history, and was particularly committed to the care of its historic meetinghouse. He unfailingly brought deep knowledge, thoughtful reflection, and Light to the meeting’s most challenging considerations.

Influenced in part by Peggy, who was a reference librarian with the New Mexico State Library, David was instrumental in establishing the New Mexico Library Foundation, advocating support for libraries statewide. Although he was not a librarian, the New Mexico Library Association recognized David’s contributions with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

David was predeceased by a brother, Danny Lee Giltrow.

He is survived by his wife, Peggy Medina Giltrow; one sister-in-law, Careen Giltrow; two nieces and one nephew; and numerous grand- and great-grand nieces and nephews.