Led Oakwood University during accreditation period, hosted Dr. King
Garland J. Millet, 95, the fifth president of what is now Oakwood University and a former associate secretary of the Adventist world church Education department, died September 7 at his home in Huntsville, Alabama.
A native of Oakland, California, Millet was president of Oakwood College from 1954 to 1963. During that period, enrollment at the historically black Seventh-day Adventist school doubled, the number of faculty increased to 55, and 13 new buildings were constructed.
Millet and Oakwood also hosted a 1962 visit from the late Martin Luther King, Jr., an American civil rights pioneer whose legacy is today remembered with a Federal holiday.
After leaving Oakwood in 1963, Millet continued in the field of African-American education, as well as Adventist ministry. In 1965, he earned a doctorate in education from Vanderbilt University.
At the 1970 Adventist Church world session in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Millet was elected as the first African-American worker in the church’s Education department. He served for eight years as an associate director, coordinating overseas higher education evaluations, editing The Journal of Adventist Education, and helped issue a review of Adventist nursing education.
He was presented with the Education department’s highest award, the Medallion of Honor, at the 1990 world church session in Indianapolis, Indiana.
From 1978 to 1982, Millet served as a special assistant to the president of Loma Linda University. One of his tasks was to encourage more black and other non-white employment at Loma Linda University and Medical Center, which together comprise one of the world’s largest Adventist institutions. The number of African-American employees grew and some 60 invitations were extended to other ethnic minorities.
After his “retirement” to Huntsville in 1982, Millet participated briefly in a faculty exchange program at Bethel College in The Transkei, South Africa. He taught classes at Oakwood between 1984 and 1990.
He had been married to his wife Ursula, herself a teacher, for 70 years when she passed away in January.
Millet is survived by a son, two daughters, a sister, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Memorial arrangements are pending.