Ken & Marilyn Gregerson

Ken and Marilyn Gregerson were born in the northern central states, Ken in Bemidji, Minnesota and Marilyn in southeastern North Dakota where her family farmed.  Ken spent his high school years in Butte, Montana where his father worked as a miner. After his high school, he spent four years at Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada graduating in 1958, followed by two more years at Seattle Pacific University, graduating in 1961, then went on to complete a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Washington.  Marilyn spent her college years at Northwestern College in Minnesota followed by graduate work in anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She later received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Texas as Arlington. Ken and Marilyn met while studying at the Summer Institute of Linguistics program at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks.  They later trained at “jungle camp” in Chiapas, Mexico after being accepted as members of both the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

In March 1965 the Gregersons arrived in South Viet Nam, for their first field assignment.  The first 14 months were spent studying the Vietnamese language followed by a 14 month assignment in Saigon with Ken as a government liaison person and Marilyn as the Saigon Guest House manager.  In 1967 they moved to Kontum to begin work on the Rengao language. During the following years their work included learning the Rengao language, devising an alphabet for the hitherto unwritten language, making a dictionary of the language, writing linguistic papers about the language, writing cultural anthropology papers about the culture, producing literacy materials so that Rengao people could learn to read their own language and translating portions of the Bible into Rengao.  Ken also taught from time to time at the University of Saigon and advised graduate students there. They both spent a considerable amount of time serving as technical consultants to their colleagues, Ken in linguistics and Marilyn in anthropology.  Their two children, Susan and Jonathan were born during their first term in Viet Nam. During their furlough in 1970-71, Ken wrote his dissertation, a grammar of the Rengao language, receiving his Ph.D. in 1971 from UW.  In April 1975, shortly before the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese communist army, the Gregersons left Vietnam.

From Vietnam they carried their language materials to Mindanao in the southern Philippines where they continued their work on Rengao until August 1975 when they were asked to go to Irian Jaya, Indonesia and serve as technical consultants to the new teams that were assigned there.  Ken consulted teams in the area of linguistics and translation and Marilyn in the area of cultural studies and literacy.  Ken also worked with a survey team in the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia to determine  needs for allocating new language teams.  In 1983 when Susan, their oldest child, graduated from high school in Papua New Guinea, the Gregersons left Indonesia to return to Dallas, Texas to work at SIL’s International Linguistic Center.

At SIL’s international conference in 1979, Ken was elected President of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, International, after Kenneth L. Pike stepped down from that position.  He served in this position for the next eleven years, being re-elected by his colleagues four more times. During that time, Ken and Marilyn lectured at the invitation of SIL branches in South America, Africa, Asia and Europe.  In 1987-88, Ken took a part-time “sabbatical” which was spent at Rice University where he taught linguistics half time and did research half time in additional to his SIL President duties.

After moving to Dallas in 1983, Marilyn continued graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington and spent the 1987-88 academic year studying anthropology at Rice University.  She completed her doctorate at UTA in 1991 with a dissertation on the culture of the Rengao people of Vietnam.

In 1989 the Gregersons were invited along with Dr., and Mrs. Kenneth L. Pike to lecture at government academic entities in Vietnam, and the Gregersons continued to make visits to build contacts with government entities in Vietnam for trips of between two weeks and two months in 1990, 1991, 1992 and went to live in Hanoi in 1993 to work with the Ministry of Education on ethnic minority education for a year, leaving Vietnam in 1994.

In 1995, the Gregersons went to Chiang Mai, Thailand to continue their service as consultants to the Mainland Southeast Asia Group of SIL with Marilyn consulting in anthropology and Ken consulting in linguistics making trips to three  adjacent countries in that capacity. Marilyn also served on a literacy team for a pilot project in one of the minority languages of Thailand.  In the autumn of 1996 they spent one semester teaching at SIL’s Asia training course in Singapore.

In early 1998 Ken and Marilyn went to Cambodia to begin work there.  Marilyn worked with Tampuan language speakers to develop a literacy program in that language, Ken did language survey in some of the minority language areas of Cambodia and worked with others to secure government approval for alphabets in five minority languages of Cambodia including Tampuan.  He also served as a translation consultant checking translated materials.  In October 2003 they moved back to the U.S. but since that time have made two consulting trips to SE Asia for nine weeks in 2005 and for seven weeks in 2007.  On both of those trips they also did consultant work with teams in Malaysia, as well as mainland Southeast Asia.  They continue their work of consulting with language teams in Southeast Asia via e-mail and internet while in the U.S. and make periodic trips to Southeast Asia for consulting with colleagues face to face.