Thomas P. Hamilton
Died March 19, 1999
Five years after graduation, Thomas Hamilton listed his address as CORDS MACV and that was the last we heard from him. MACV was the acronym for the American military command in Vietnam and CORDS stood for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, which was the pacification program aimed at winning the hearts and minds of South Vietnam’s rural population away from the Viet Cong.
His widow, Liliana Hamilton, wrote to say that “Tim was a very private person and would not have wanted her to give out any more information about his life than would be publicly available.” Lilianna says that “after graduating from Yale he got a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Claremont University and worked for the State Department as a U.S. diplomat for 30 years until he retired in 1996.”
The American Foreign Service Association adds that Tim “served in several Southeast Asian posts, in Columbia and as director of the Office of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore Affairs. . . He received the State Superior Honor Award for outstanding service.”
Tim passed away from leukemia on March 19, 1999.