17 October 2009

Former Outlook Editor receives award

A former Far Eastern Division worker and Outlook editor, Don A. Roth, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the awards banquet of the Society of Adventist Communicators on Saturday evening, October 17, at the Marriott Hotel in Newport Beach, California.

“I was totally surprised at the award, and appreciated the recognition,” Roth said.

Roth served in Secretariat at the division headquarters in Singapore from 1965 to 1975 and was editor of the Far Eastern Division Outlook during this time. He considers his years in the Far East as “the best years of my life”!

In his nearly 60 years of professional experience, Roth has significantly contributed to reporting Seventh-day Adventist Church news and features in the denomination and in the public press. A reporter, editor, press relations specialist, book author, and special events organizer, he has worked at every level of the church organization, from his local congregation to the General Conference.

Roth’s love of writing and editing began in 1944, when he edited his school’s paper at Greater New York Academy. During his college years at Washington Adventist University (then Washington Missionary College) in Maryland, this love continued as he worked at the College Press, joined the staff of the Sligonian, the school paper, and in his senior year edited the paper.

From the day his byline appeared over a feature story in the Sligonian to his present articles in this local paper, Roth has always had a story to tell.

During the height of the Vietnam War, Roth was the church’s chief reporter on the work of Adventists in Vietnam. Numerous articles under his byline documented events such as the visit of the Loma Linda University heart surgery team, and the closure of the church’s work in Vietnam and evacuation of personnel associated with it.

Roth’s personal relationship with the U.S. news agencies in Saigon was a key to the evacuation process for over 430 Vietnamese when South Vietnam fell to Hanoi in April 1975. Through his AP and UPI contacts, Roth learned the evacuation procedure for 36 women and children he escorted to Guam. On Guam, he found the U.S. Navy pressroom, where he composed a five-page, single-spaced description of his final hours in Saigon which served as a valuable document that he and others used as a reference for later articles and books.

Much of Roth’s legacy as an Adventist communicator is the record of actions, events, news, and human interest stories published in the journals and newsletters he edited: the weekly Columbia Union Visitor, 1954-1965; Far Eastern Division Outlook, 1965-1975, and currently the AIMS Journal for the Association of International Medical Services, Loma Linda School of Medicine Alumni Association. He also edited several newsletters, including the Far Eastern Division Furlougher, and most recently the Calimesa News and Notes, the newsletter of his home church in Calimesa, California, which he edited for 14 years.

The SDA Periodical Index lists more than 420 articles published under his byline, primarily in the Adventist Review. However, the list is incomplete; it does not include articles he wrote for the Visitor and other church periodicals before going to Singapore in 1965 as assistant secretary and public relations director, nor the hundreds of articles he has written for non-Adventist papers.

Roth has written or coauthored four books including a story of a Borneo witch doctor who converted to Christianity called Mundahoi, and autobiographies of himself and his wife, Called to Serve, and has assisted and/or encouraged a number of other persons to write books of their own.

If asked, many Seventh-day Adventists would name Roth the PR person of the Adventist Church in the past 60 years. Few others possess his breadth of experience and length of service in communication and reporting for the benefit of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. [Karen Porter]