Alan Williams Hortondied peacefully on Monday 24 February 2020 at the Kendal retirement community in Hanover NH. He was 98.

He was born 31 July 1921 in Middletown, CT, a son of Douglas and Carol (Williams) Horton. After spending a year in France at the University of Strasbourg, he entered Princeton in 1939 and graduated in 1947. In the 1950s he earned a doctorate at Harvard in social anthropology.

During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy for nearly four years (largely in the Pacific) as both enlisted man and commissioned officer and was awarded a Silver Star for action at Okinawa with the Underwater Demolition Teams (the precursor to what became the Navy SEALs).

In 1947 he began the study of Arabic at the American University in Cairo, traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, and worked for the American Friends Service Committee in the distribution of relief to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, where he met his wife-to-be Joan. Later he worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as the Deputy Chief District Officer in Lebanon. In 1952, Alan started a PhD in Anthropology at Harvard. He and Joan moved to Aleppo, Syria, for a year, where Alan did field work for his dissertation. In 1955, after graduate studies, he was appointed Dean of the Graduate Faculty at the American University in Cairo, and in 1962, remaining in Cairo, he became the Middle East correspondent for the American Universities Field Staff (AUFS). Asked to become Executive Director of the AUFS in 1968, he moved its headquarters from Manhattan to Hanover NH where he served for ten years. In 1978, in semi-retirement, he took the job of director of the AUFS Center for Mediterranean Studies in Rome, Italy. In 1993, he and his wife returned to their family home in Randolph NH, and then moved to their retirement home in Hanover NH.

At various times, Horton was a member of numerous boards having to do with the Middle East and related matters. Among them were the American Friends of the Middle East, the Advisory Council for Middle East Studies (Princeton, chair), and several committees working on problems of reconciliation. In Rome, he was a warden of the Episcopal parish, chair of the Rome Committee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, member of the Fulbright Commission, and trustee of the Anglican Centre in Rome. More recently he was a founding trustee and principal money-raiser for the American Friends of the Anglican Centre. His writings include articles for AUFS on the politics and society of the Middle East as well as a novel, "The Road to Ramallah."

Alan is predeceased by his wife of many years, Dorothy Joan (Ryder) Horton, always known as Joan, who died in 2010, and his siblings Alice Tibbetts and Margaret Grant. Survivors include a daughter Carol of Randolph NH; two sons, James M. of Hanover and wife Nancy, and Edward (Ted) A. D. of Surrey, England, and wife Zoe; one sister Elizabeth Breunig of Hanover NH; four grandchildren; and many nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.

Burial will take place this summer at the town cemetery in Randolph NH.

A memorial gathering will be held in the Living Room at Kendal at Hanover (67 Cummings Road, Hanover, NH 03755) at 3pm on Friday 6 March.

Any donations can be sent to The Randolph Foundation, Treasurer, P.O. Box 283, Gorham, NH 03581.

Arrangements are under the direction of the Rand-Wilson Funeral Home of Hanover, NH.