Deborah Ann Garretson '62

February 2,1945 - March 5, 2025

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With sadness, we report the passing of Deborah Ann Garretson '62.

Deborah Ann Garretson '62, Friends class of 1962 died quietly on March 2, 2025, of complications of stage 4 lung cancer. She had just celebrated her 80th birthday. A long-term resident of the Upper Valley of New Hampshire, she was a professor of Russian at Dartmouth College from 1976 until her retirement in 2019. Deb led a peripatetic life of accomplishment and adventure. She was born in 1945, in Syracuse, New York the daughter of Albert Henry Garretson and Agnes P. Garretson. When Deb was two years old, the family, including brothers David, Peter, and stepbrother Ronald Maddox, moved to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. There her father became an advisor to the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry and to Emperor Haile Selassie. The ten years she lived in Ethiopia cemented her taste for travel and adventure and her passionate interest in culture and language.

She began her education in Ethiopia at the Sandford school whose student body was made up of children from all over the globe. When her family returned to New York in 1957 she briefly attended Wagner Middle School and Grace Church School before settling in for three years at Friends Seminary. At both she honed her knowledge of languages by strengthening her French but also added Latin at Friends. At first, she went through culture shock from the move from Addis Ababa to New York, but then she found herself becoming a New Yorker – an identity that never disappeared but faded significantly when she moved to New Hampshire and Dartmouth College.  While in New York she learned to play the guitar and benefited greatly from exposure to life of Greenwich Village. A special treat was the occasional ticket (given us by a close family friend Howie Sargeant) to see tennis matches at Forest Hills (which later became the US Open). She spent part of her junior year studying in Brussels and became fluent in French which she had begun studying since in Ethiopia.

Deb briefly attended Bryn Mawr College and then spent a year at Bedford College (while her father was on sabbatical there), a constituent college of the University of London, before completing her undergraduate education at the Royal Victoria College at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, graduating with an honors degree in French. While at McGill, she began studying Russian. She later remarked, “It was the cold war era, we were young and optimistic and wanted to find a way to forge peace in the world. Understanding the Russian language and culture felt like a way I could contribute to this.”

Wanting to take a break after her undergraduate studies, Deb accepted a Swiss fellowship and studied Russian and then translation at the universities of Lausanne and Geneva. Always an adventurous wanderer, she traveled, often on her own, throughout Europe and eastern Europe. In 1967 she returned to graduate school at New York University (and obtained a grant for work on her thesis from the American Association of University Women) where she received her doctorate in Slavic  linguistics in 1975. During graduate school she travelled on a prestigious IREX fellowship (International Research & Exchanges Board) which allowed her to study at Moscow University and travel to many parts of Russia and Europe in 1971 and1972. Few of her letters survive but many of her photos. She also studied and then taught at the University of Vermont’s Russian summer school from 1972-1979.

In 1976 Deb accepted a tenure track position teaching Russian at Dartmouth College where she remained until her retirement in 2019, years she found both rich and rewarding. She was granted tenure in 1982, after which she played a major role in mentoring new female faculty seeking tenure in the newly coed Dartmouth. She was among the first wave of women professors to receive full tenure at Dartmouth College. Farther to the left than the rest of the family in her politics, she was the only one of us to go to the March on Washington in 1970.

Publications were not the major focus of Deb’s life at Dartmouth, her passion was teaching while interpreting came next in importance. Her areas of expertise were in Russian linguistics, bilingualism, second language acquisition, consecutive and simultaneous interpretation and cross-cultural issues. She also studied the psychological aspects of interpreting. Deb strongly believed that language scholarship and teaching should be immersed in cultural experiences, and thus her deep commitment to leading groups of Dartmouth and ivy league students to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in her study abroad program. She dealt with the stress of academic life by adding a horse (Kary Mar) and a dog (Promises) to her family. Throughout her life she followed an active life of riding, hiking and skiing and often spoke of her “horsey” and “doggy” friends. Among her closest friends at Dartmouth, however, were the “birthday sisters” (Lynda Boose, Joy Kenseth and Nancy Frankenberry). They regularly celebrated each of their birthdays with a communal meal each year.

In addition to her teaching and research, Deb began working as an independent contractor, interpreting for the State Department’s Russian language division in 1985, just as the relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were beginning to thaw. She worked in Geneva as an interpreter for the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaties (START I and START II) which she considered some of her most important life work. She served as interpreter at the summit in Malta, for two Secretaries of State, Schultz and Baker, as well as for Admiral Crowe and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The highpoint of her interpreting career, however, came when she interpreted for Barbara Bush and Raisa Gorbachev during the latter’s visit to the US in 1990 for the “summit of the first ladies” at Wellesley College in 1990. In 2009 and 2010, during the Obama administration, she served as interpreter for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) which was intended to further reduce U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arms. Deb described her participation in this crucial treaty as arduous and rewarding and received numerous letters of commendation. The US formally suspended this important treaty in 2019.

There was a hiatus in her ever active life in the 1990s when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  By the late 1990s she was declared cancer free and resumed interpreting and also made two trips to Ethiopia between 1998 & 2000 to help a family adopt a child.  Also during this time, she worked as a hospice volunteer for over a decade in New Hampshire’s Upper Valley. In the early 2000’s, Deb found a spiritual home in her practice of insight meditation and a serious study of Buddhist thought. She attended numerous retreats at centers in the U.S. and abroad, including the Insight Meditation Society, the Forest Refuge, and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts. In later life she returned to Africa, visiting and sitting meditation at several meditation retreat centers in South Africa as well as working in an orphanage. The depth of her practice has inspired many, and she has been considered an integral member of several Buddhist communities, including the Valley Insight Center in Lebanon, NH. After retiring from Dartmouth College, and in keeping with her love of scholarship and her desire to understand the earliest strata of Buddhist literature, Deb undertook a serious study of Pali, the ancient language in which the Buddhist canon is transcribed. Several of her translations were chanted at her memorial service.

In 2003 she returned to Russia after a long absence due to her health, and was shocked by the major changes there.  She resumed taking students to study abroad in St. Petersburg in 2004 and continued to do so, mostly only every other year, for ten years. “Her diplomatic skills as a negotiator were a marvel,” says a colleague John Kopper. “Debby’s attitude of cheerful persistence, the ability to convey ‘I’m happy to be talking with you but I’m not going to leave until I get something for Dartmouth,’ brought her many concessions – and the respect of Russian colleagues sitting across from her.”

In 2010 she resumed interpreting with the new START talks.  In 2019 she retired and besides studying Pali renewed her interest in French, her first foreign language love.  Deb formed and maintained many deep friendships hailing from every aspect and phase of her life. She was a loving and attentive friend, colleague, professor, and family member. Her joyous laugh and infectious goodwill will be missed by all. 

Dartmouth professor Victoria Somoff remembers how Deb hosted her and her family for waffles soon after she arrived at Dartmouth as a new faculty member. “My three young children ran through the house, their syrup-sticky hands leaving traces everywhere as they played with her big gentle dog. Debby didn’t mind the mess or the chaos – she just smiled, made more waffles, and shared remarkable stories about her work as an interpreter for world leaders and diplomats at some major political event of the 1980s and 1990s,” Smoff says. “That afternoon, for the first time, I though this new place might actually become home.”

As her close friend Janet Hoffman insists, Deb did everything with GUSTO. She lived with gusto and put everything into life every moment. She was always upbeat and caring.

She is survived by her brother Peter Garretson, her sisters-in-law Betty Maddox and Rufina Alamo;  cousins – Susan Garretson Daniel, Martha Garretson Wright, Nancy Garretson, Amy Fraher, Patricia Harris, Jay Harris, Lynne Harris and nieces and nephews: David Maddox, Karen Maddox Manukas, Michael Maddox, Tamara Maddox Otten and Debby Maddox.