Roll Call Tribute

Published in The Bryan-College Station Eagle from May 18 to May 20, 2012

Dr. Betty Miller Unterberger
Dec. 27, 1922 – May 15, 2012

Dr. Betty Miller Unterberger, 89, of College Station passed away peacefully Tuesday morning, May 15, 2012 at her residence. A Memorial Service is set for 2 p.m. Sunday, May 20 in the All Faiths Chapel on the campus of Texas A&M. Services have been entrusted to Trevino-Smith Funeral Home.

Dr. Unterberger was born December 27, 1922 in Glasgow, Scotland to Joseph "Scotty" and Leah Milner Miller. She was a graduate of Syracuse University, magna cum laude with an A.B. in 1943; an M.A. from Harvard University in 1946, and in 1950 received her Ph.D. from Duke University where her dissertation was awarded "Best Dissertation in any field, 1950-53." Her first book, The U.S., Revolutionary Russia, and the Rise of Czechoslovakia, received universal praise for its sophisticated and very detailed analysis, and is seen as the classic study in the field.

Unterberger was the first tenured female professor at Texas A&M, shattering the glass ceiling. She was a founding member and the first female president of the Society for Historians in American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). She served on the Texas A&M Athletic Council and was an avid Aggie fan. Unterberger was also a leading voice for the Freedom of Information Act and served on the CIA Advisory Committee for Access to Documents and Open Information. Following her retirement from Texas A&M, Unterberger received a personal letter of appreciation for her service from Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA.

She was responsible for nominating Rev. Pandurang Shastiji Athavale for the 1.2 million dollar Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion which was awarded to Athavale by H.R.H. Prince Phillip in Westminster Abbey in 1997, which it was her honor to attend. For 36 years she was a remarkable presence in the lives of her colleagues and those she taught, receiving numerous teaching awards. She was particularly proud of the role she played mentoring and inspiring her female students.

For nearly 40 years Dr. Unterberger led a prayer and meditation group every Sunday night centered on the Edgar Cayce readings and the book A Course In Miracles.

She is preceded in death by her parents; two sisters, Mimi, and Diane; a son Glen Unterberger; and a niece Melissa Miller.

Survivors include her loving husband of 67 years Dr. Robert R. Unterberger, Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M; her daughter, Rev. Dr. Gail Unterberger and husband Randall Adams; her son Gregg Unterberger; two brothers Harold, and Mike Miller; 2 grandchildren, Ben Adams and Maureen Dominguez and 3 great grandchildren, Carina Maria Adams, Luca Adams, and Gabriel Dominguez.

In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to any of the following: UNICEF; the Texas A&M Foundation for the Betty Miller Unterberger Memorial Fund (401 George Bush Drive, College Station, TX 77840), or to Dr. Jon Mundy, The Institute for Personal Religion and Miracles Magazine (miraclesmagazine.org/donate_counseling.htm or 845-496-9089).

Please View and Sign the Guestbook at: TrevinoSmithFuneralHome.com
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(Published in) The Bryan-College Station Eagle (on) May 18, 2012

Texas A&M trailblazer for women dies at 89

Betty Miller Unterberger’s eyes filled with tears and her vision blurred as she left a meeting with her department head, who told the graduate student she was a fool for entering the field of history since women would just get married and abandon their academic careers.

“But I said to myself that I was not going to give up,” Unterberger recalled in a 1971 story in The Eagle about the incident that unfolded in the 1940s. “I would do what I set out to do because I was there working in the field I wanted to be in.”

Unterberger, who in 1968 became Texas A&M’s first woman to make full professor at the once-all-male university, died peacefully Tuesday at the age of 89 at her College Station home.

“Betty Miller Unterberger is the reason I became a historian,” said Sara Alpern, an associate professor in the history department. “I was a graduate student, and every conference I went to it seemed that there were rarely any women on the program. But there was often this Betty Miller Unterberger, and I thought, ‘Women can be historians!’”

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1922, Unterberger received a bachelor’s from Syracuse University in 1943, master’s from Harvard University in 1946, and doctorate from Duke University in 1950.

According to a 1971 Eagle story about Unterberger, she did fashion modeling in New York to earn money while in graduate school, and was appalled that she could earn more modeling than being a scholar.

Before arriving at Texas A&M, she was a history professor at California State University Fullerton and at Whittier College, where the president told her the board was uneasy about the use of the Communist Manifesto in class. She met with a board member and explained the importance of discussion in a free society.

“He was a total convert,” she said of the board member in a 2004 interview.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, she became one of the first Western scholars to gain access to key historical documents. She was a leading voice for the Freedom of Information Act, and served on a CIA advisory committee for open records, receiving a personal letter of appreciation from former agency director Leon Panetta.

She had numerous awards and distinctions, including being a founding member of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. She is remembered as having a knack for cultures.

“I realized that the only way change could be brought about was through education,” she said at the Bush Library in 2004, the year that she, at age 81, retired from Texas A&M. “And that’s what I set out to do.”

Unterberger’s reluctance to make the move to College Station when her husband was offered a job in Texas A&M’s geophysics department in 1968 was alleviated after she met with the university’s transformative president, James Earl Rudder.

In that meeting, the vice president for academic affairs offered her a full professor position and asked her to help internationalize the history department and build a graduate program.

“She was a trailblazer,” said Olga Cooke, a faculty member in Texas A&M’s international studies department, who knew Unterberger for 24 years as a colleague and friend. “Her personality was completely, totally giving. She’s the most loving person I know. It’s a rare thing in academia to combine the rigors of your intellectual life, which tends to be very logical and scientific, with the generosity and loving nature that Betty represented.”

A memorial service has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday at All Faiths Chapel at Texas A&M.

Unterberger is survived by her husband of 67 years, Robert, a retired A&M professor; daughter, Gail Unterberger, and husband Randall Adams; son, Gregg Unterberger; brothers, Harold and Mike Miller; grandchildren, Ben Adams and Maureen Dominguez; and great-grandchildren, Carina Maria Adams, Luca Adams and Gabriel Dominguez.
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(Published in) The Bryan-College Station Eagle (on) May 30, 2012

Unterberger helped move A&M forward

We are a nation that loves to celebrate firsts: the first man on the moon, the first black president, the first American Idol winner. Some of the firsts truly are historic, while others are less so. It doesn’t matter, we never seem to run out of “firsts” to mark and remember.

As with the rest of the country, A&M is a place of many firsts and no doubt will continue to be so. One of those important firsts occurred in 1968, not long after women began to appear in classrooms in appreciable numbers. Membership in the proud Corps of Cadets no longer was mandatory. With those changes came an explosive growth that would propel A&M into the ranks of the largest universities in the country.

Into that new world on campus came Betty Miller Unterberger, the first full female professor at A&M. At the time, some people might have considered her a novelty, but her colleagues and students soon learned that Unterberger had earned that position through scholarship and hard work.

A native of Scotland, Unterberger earned a bachelor of arts from Syracuse University in 1943, going on to earn her master of arts from Harvard three years later. Unterberger earned her doctorate from Duke in 1950. As a faculty member at Whittier College in the early days of the Cold War, she shocked some members of the school’s governing board by teaching about the Communist Manifesto. Called on the carpet, she told the board that knowledge was paramount and it was important for free societies to discuss a variety of issues.

She brought that passion for honesty and truth to Texas A&M, sharing her drive, zeal and convictions with colleagues and thousands of students over the years. Unterberger ensured that none of her students endured the indignities she had when told by one professor that it was a waste for a woman to earn a doctorate because she would soon get married and stay home to raise a family.

A story on a Texas A&M website quotes Sara Alpern, an associate professor of history at the school, became a historian because of Unterberger. “I was a graduate student, and every conference I went to it seemed that there were rarely any women on the program. But there was often this Betty Miller Unterberger, and I thought, ‘Women can be historians!’ She was always a role model and an inspiration to me before I even met her.”

Betty Miller Unterberger received many honors over the years, but perhaps none more important than her historic first. She may have been Texas A&M’s first female full professor, but she was hardly the last. She helped guide A&M on its tumultuous path from a small, all-male college to a great university. She was first in so many ways, including first in the hearts of the faculty, staff and students who loved her.

Unterberger died Tuesday at the age of 89. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today in the All Faiths Chapel on the A&M campus. Memorials may be made in her honor to the Texas A&M Foundation, Betty Miller Unterberger Memorial Account, 401 George Bush Drive, College Station, Texas 77840.

There will be many more firsts at Texas A&M, but few will be more special than the one set by Betty Unterberger

http://www.theeagle.com/editorial/Editorial-May-20