[copied from: http://www.aaie.org/Hall_of_Fame/R_Downs.htm]
(with some minor editorial changes)

I began my life as a Third Culture Kid and have continued in the mold ever since. I was born in Japan and attended The American School in Japan from kindergarten until March 1941, by which time the U.S. Embassy was urging Americans to leave Japan. I returned to Japan with my missionary parents in 1947 and finished high school in the ASIJ buildings, though they were then in the hands of the Allied Occupation as a prototype of today's Department Of Defense schools. After undergraduate and graduate school in the U.S. I returned, with my wife, to ASIJ, where we have been enthusiastically occupied since 1959.

My graduate degree is in Japanese Studies, and the relationship between Japan and the U.S. has been the professional focus of my life. In 1961, the International Schools Foundation, received a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to establish Language Area Programs in three international schools. It was a dream fulfilled for me to serve as the founding Director of the Japan Language Area Program at ASIJ, and to develop high school courses on Asia and Japan which I taught until becoming Headmaster of ASIJ in 1977. My aim in teaching was to help students to recognize that the true learning laboratory lay between home and school.

My fourteen years as Head[master] of ASIJ were dominated by the normal challenges - faculty recruiting, the ebb and flow of enrollment, building programs, and such unusual moments as ASIJ's75th and 85th anniversaries. 

Since 1991 I have been teaching a university course in international education, volunteering service with six organizations, and enjoying some activities which just didn't fit with a full-time job - such as a memorable two-week voyage as a trainee on 150 ft. brigantine.