JA M ES E. BROOKS Institute fo r the Study o f Earth and Man, Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas 75275-0274

Tom W illiam s w as, above all else, a superb teacher o f geology and paleontology. His premature death following prostate surgery deprived a decade or more of students of a solid, w ell-crafted , and stim ulating education in the courses he taught.

Tom was born in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and spent a part of his youthful years on a farm in that area. This expe­rience gave him both a solid conviction of the importance of the work ethic and a sense of pleasure in being out o f doors which must have contributed to his lifelong enjoy­ment o f field work— although from his own accounts, he w as seized of neither o f these convictions at the time.From Pennsylvania he went to the University of Rochester in 1948. While there, he was on a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship. Upon completion of his B.A. degree in general science in 1952, he was commissioned in the U.S. Navy, where he served until1955 when he was discharged as a lieutenant (j.g.). The Navy gave Tom a sense of personal and professional principles, the importance of doing things right and doing them on time and of the importance o f self-discipline in accomplishing these goals.

In 1955 Tom entered graduate school at Southern M ethodist U niversity in Dallas and embarked upon a Master o f Science degree program, which he completed in 1957. His thesis was on detailed correlations in the Austin Chalk of southern Dallas County using insoluble residue techniques as a basis for establishing stratigraphic divisions within this otherwise rather homogeneous unit. From SMU he went to the Ph.D. program in geology at Yale University and was in residence there until 1959, by which time he had completed all o f the formal require­ments for the Ph.D. degree, save the completion of his dissertation. He was offered a teaching post at SMU as instructor and returned to Dallas in that capacity as an ABD. The next three years were indeed strenuous for him. Not only was he crafting new courses in paleontology and stratigraphy, but he was immersed in finishing his dissertation study on the Fusulinidae of the Hueco Group (Lower Permian), Hueco Mountains, Trans-Pecos Texas. This study was done under the direction of Carl O. Dunbar and Karl Waage.

During this time also, Tom began to shoulder his part of the responsibilities that go along with being a faculty member at any college or university. Because he was sincere and hard­working and possessed unusually good judgment and interpersonal skills, he soon found himself taking on more and more responsibilities for the development o f courses that he perceived were needed and for the other kinds of chores that beset any faculty member. In all these activities, his excellent judgment made him a logical target for committee work not only in the depart­ment, which he chaired from 1974 to 1978, but in the university as well. Over the years and beyond the department, he chaired the faculty of the Division o f Science and Mathematics and the University Library Committee, and he was a member of the University College Council (general education), the Faculty Senate, the Honorary Degrees Committee, the Dedman College

Memorial to Thomas Ellis Williams1929-1988

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Undergraduate Council, and a university ad hoc commission appointed to study and completely reconfigure the general education requirements for all undergraduate students.

As a further indication of the respect in which he was held and of the confidence the uni­versity administration and faculty had in him, Tom was appointed director of the university’s field research center outside of Taos, New Mexico (Ft. Burgwin) and served with great effec­tiveness in this capacity for four years, from 1977 to 1981. Its remoteness, its multicultural set­ting and its use by a variety of faculty and students from a number of institutions all contributed to the challenge of this post. Through it all, Tom steadily and effectively led the center, stepping out only because, as he said, “Enough is enough!”

His interests in and research on Permian fusulinids continued throughout his career. This work inevitably kept him in the field in the western United States, and, as a result, the interest in the regional geology of North America which had begun with a course in his graduate education at SMU expanded and led him to plan and begin preparation of a volume on the regional geol­ogy of the United States. Tom’s death came before this volume could be seen through a pub­lisher, and thus it is available only in a privately printed and distributed form. Given his under­standing of regional stratigraphy, structure, and tectonics, this book would have been a major contribution to the study of geology at a time when courses, faculty members, and students are becoming more and more specific and less prone to regional integration and synthesis.

Tom was recognized as a superb teacher and as a faculty member with high standards who worked hard himself and expected students working under his direction to work hard also. Stu­dents who studied under him have done well after graduation and moved on to responsible posi­tions in oil companies, agencies of the federal government, other colleges and universities, and graduate programs at leading universities. In addition to the usual lecture and laboratory experi­ences, Tom was a great believer in field work and gave generously of his time to make sure that students were given major exposure to field geology in the southwestern United States. He was a solid researcher. He was never preoccupied with turning out a high volume of publications, but each of his papers constituted a significant contribution. If one were restricted to a single term to describe him, it would be that he was a preeminent teacher. As such, his contributions lie significantly in the lives of the students he touched—from the introductory course through the Ph.D. For all who knew him as a professor, a professional associate, or as a faculty colleague, Tom Williams was universally and affectionately respected and is sorely missed.

SELECTED BIBLIO G R A PH Y OF T. E. W ILLIAM S

1957 Remains of a Pleistocene turtle from a terrace deposit near Seagoville, Dallas County, Texas: Field and Laboratory, v. 25, no. 1, p. 34.

------ Correlation by insoluble residues in the Austin Chalk of southern Dallas County, Texas:Field and Laboratory, v. 25, nos. 2-3, p. 37-45.

1963 Fusulinidae of the Hueco Group (Lower Permian), Hueco Mountains, Texas: Yale Univer­sity Peabody Museum Natural History Bulletin 18,152 p.

1964 Permian Fusulinidae of the Hueco Mountains, Otero County, New Mexico [abs.]: Geolog­ical Society o f America Special Paper 82, p. 225.

1966 Permian Fusulinidae of the Franklin Mountains, New Mexico-Texas: Journal of Paleon­tology, v. 40, p. 1142-1156.

1967 Laboratory exercises in historical geology: Dallas, Texas, privately printed, 117 p.1968 (with Steiner, Maureen B.) Fusulinidae of the Laborcita Formation (Lower Permian),

Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico: Journal of Paleontology, v. 42, p. 51-60.1969 Fusulinidae of the Americus Limestone Member (Lower Permian), Kansas and Oklahoma

[abs.]: Geological Society of America South-Central Section Annual Meeting Program,p. 34.

1985 Laboratory exercises in physical geology: Dallas, Texas, privately printed, 57 p.1986 Outlines of invertebrate paleontology (textbook and laboratory exercises for Geology

3369—Invertebrate Paleontology): Dallas, Texas, privately printed, 205 p.------Regional geology of the United States (third draft of textbook for Geology 3340—Face of

the Earth): Dallas, Texas, privately printed, 270 p.1987 (editor) Selected readings in North American stratigraphy: Dallas, Texas, privately

printed, 497 p.

MEMORIAL TO THOMAS ELLIS WILLIAMS 135

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