Wilton Dillon is a Senior Scholar Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution. He worked at the Smithsonian for forty years, where he was the director of symposia and seminars and the founder of the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies. He received a BA in anthropology at UC Berkeley and a PhD in anthropology at Columbia University. He studied with Margaret Mead and Claude Levi-Strauss. Dillon has written or edited a number of books and articles. He and RK were personal friends.

September 29, 1977

Dear Wilton,

It was good to get your postcard. Ever since that delightful late afternoon lunch in 1974 I had intended to communicate, but as you may have certainly heard, my health, and for a time as I now have to admit, my morale took a downward plunge from which I seem to have been recovering only recently. Between April 1974 and August 1976 I cancelled all concerts and accustomed myself to a plastic heart valve installed in November 1974. During my convalescence during the winter of 1975 I amused myself with the drafting of some five hundred pages of memoirs.

By June 1976, it was evident that I would be completely blind by the end of the year, and I made a still totally unregretted retirement from teaching at Yale. I began playing again at Versailles in August 1976, and now after a few concerts here I am about to leave for the making of two films, one in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and the other in the music room of Frederick the Great in Potsdam. An Italian tour begins on November 4 in Rome, and from the beginning of December until toward the end of January I shall be installed in Paris. Life at the Quarry continues to be delightful, and I have all the help I need and a never-ending succession of visitors. I shall be here at least from the end of January through April before taking off for further European adventures.

Please give my best to Virginia and to Harris.

Love,

Ralph