Drew Allbritten

Drew William Allbritten was born in Akron, Ohio, on 24 April 1947, the only son of William and Anne Allbritten (nee Coulier). The family settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he spent his life until his early thirties.

He graduated from Creston High School, where he made lifelong friends, and went on to Grand Rapids Community College. He later earned a doctorate in education from Western Michigan University in 1984.

Allbritten started his career as a middle school and high school mathematics and science teacher and then worked as a college administrator. On 7 November 1978 he was elected as a Republican to the Michigan House of Representatives for the 93rd district, serving from January 1979 to 1980. His obituary says the legislative achievement he was proudest of was authoring a child passenger safety seat act, described there as the first in the nation.

In 1981 he was appointed to lead intergovernmental relations in the Reagan administration, on assignment to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Over almost eight years he worked on national urban policy, enterprise zones, block grants, community reinvestment, affordable housing and job training, and his obituary credits him with the E-rate amendment that channels technology funding to schools, universities and libraries through the Federal Communications Commission. He went on to advise on technology and education under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

From 1987 to 2006 he was chief executive of five bodies: the Iowa Association of Community College Trustees, the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education, the Georgia Association of Educators, the Council for Exceptional Children and the Association for Middle Level Education. He then advised the board of Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles from 2006 to 2009 and was a senior fellow in public sector management at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji from 2011 to 2014.

Allbritten was married to Dr Susan Anne Kelly, a retired university president and psychologist. He had three daughters, Brandee, Kimberly and Alexis, a son, Austin, two stepdaughters, and grandchildren and great grandchildren. His sister is Tamlin K. Allbritten.

He was a Civil War re-enactor for 20 years, writing poetry in the voice of a Union soldier that became the book I, Soldier (2025). He was a 32nd degree Freemason. A Republican for nearly 30 years, he became a Democrat in 2006 after opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After his first cancers he retired in 2014 to Cessenon-sur-Orb in southern France, living in a 400 year old stone house with his wife and their dog, Sydney. He took up expressionist painting, helped plant 1,250 trees and played tournament level petanque, where his club knew him as l'Americain.

Allbritten died of cancer at his home in Cessenon-sur-Orb on 4 November 2026, aged 79, after six months of chemotherapy. His family wrote that he had pushed on in order to vote in the US election and died on election night after seeing the early results.

His obituary was published by the Grand Rapids Press. His funeral was set for 17 November 2026 at the cemetery in Cessenon, with his petanque team attending in uniform, and he asked to be buried in his petanque uniform with a US flag cravat. In place of flowers he asked for donations to help victims of the war in Ukraine.

Allbritten's publications are held in the Adult Education Special Collections at Syracuse University's Bird Library and at the Grand Rapids Public Library. In 2021 the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education gave him its Outstanding Service Medallion for lifetime achievement in advancing adult learning.

His family remembered him as kind, generous, funny, open minded and always an activist, whose choices were driven by social and racial justice, affordable housing and healthcare, and educational opportunity.