Meri Lynn Whitaker (1957-2009)

WHITAKER, GOODE, GALDO, KRUMM, THOMAS

Posted By: Ames Tribune
Date: 10/28/2009 at 08:26:34

THE AMES TRIBUNE, Ames, Story County, Iowa, Saturday, October 24, 2009.

Meri Lynn Whitaker, 51, died Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009, at her home in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, of complications following cancer treatment. A memorial service will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, at the Coal Ridge Church in rural Knoxville.

Born on Dec. 25, 1957, in Dallas, Texas, Meri attended Pella Community High School in Pella. As the teenage daughter of a biblical scholar, she also lived in Zahle, Lebanon, and Amman, Jordan. As a college student, she became actively involved in advocacy groups seeking just solutions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did some master’s work at Iowa State University, and earned her master’s and Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Stanford University.

At Stanford, Meri began focusing on the problems of environmental and economic sustainability for subsistence farmers in Third World countries. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied how farmers in northwestern Syria make production decisions. In 1990, she joined the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, based at ICRISAT’s headquarters in Hyderabad, India. She worked primarily with millet farmers at the edge of the desert in Rajasthan. Later, Meri worked at the Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. As a consultant to the World Bank, Meri evaluated farming operations in sub-Saharan Africa.

From 2005 until her death, she served as director of the Virgin Islands Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR) at the University of the Virgin Islands. The program focuses on marine and environmental studies in the Caribbean region.

She enjoyed gardening, cooking and traveling.

Dr. Whitaker is survived by her husband of 32 years, Steve Goode; her daughter and son-in-law, Carey and Frank Galdo, of St. Thomas; her parents, Richard and Anita Whitaker, of Knoxville; her sisters and brother, Sheri (Dave) Krumm, of Ames, Lori (Mike) Thomas, of Mason City, Rick (Kim) Whitaker, of Pella; and other relatives and many friends.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations are sent to the Friends School in Ramallah, Palestine, or to Oxfam International.

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