Message regarding the passage of John H. Willis, Jr.
2012年7月6日，教务长Michael R. Halleran向校园社区发送了以下信息——Ed。
Dear Colleagues,
I write with great sadness to share the news that John H. Willis, Jr., who retired from William & 玛丽 in 2002 after a distinguished 43-year career, passed away Friday morning, June 29, at MCV in Richmond.
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Throughout his years at William & 玛丽 Jack worked in several administrative capacities – as Administrative Assistant to the President (1962-65), as Associate Dean of the College and as Assistant Vice-President for Academic Affairs (1967-1972), as Acting Dean of Graduate Studies, and as Branch College Liaison Officer from 1968 to 1972, during which time Christopher Newport emerged as a four-year institution. From 1985 to 1989 he served as Chair of the Department of English during a time when the department began to hire a significant number of women faculty for the first time. He also served on virtually every significant committee in the English Department, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and College, including the Ferguson Publishing Seminar Committee, the Procedural Review Committee, the Faculty Affairs Committee, the Faculty Assembly, and the Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure, which he chaired from 1991 to 1993.
As Jack emphasized in a 2006 interview available in the College’s Special Collections Research Center, his first love throughout his career remained teaching, and legions of students in the classroom and in the Christopher Wren Association, through which he offered courses nearly every semester for the past ten years, can testify to his energy and dedication. A specialist in modern poetry and modern British literature, Jack was famous for courses on every level, from freshman writing classes to graduate and senior seminars on James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, and Virginia Woolf. He was awarded the Alumni Teaching Fellowship Award in 1981, and right up to his retirement received enthusiastic accolades from his students. Not one to rest on his laurels, Jack continued teaching in the Christopher Wren Association, where his classes on James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Joseph Conrad, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and T. S. Eliot’s poetry always attracted full classrooms and long waiting lists.
He is survived by his wife Anne R. Willis, and their three children John Willis, Tom Willis, and Susan Brodie. A memorial service will be held at Bruton Parish Church at 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 21, followed by a memorial reception in the Wren Great Hall at 4 p.m. In lieu of flowers, Anne Willis and her children ask that contributions be sent to a fund being established at the College of William & 玛丽 in memory of Jack Willis. Gifts can be sent to the College of William & 玛丽, P.O. Box 1693, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187. Checks should be made payable to the College of William & 玛丽 Foundation, with a note or memo line indicating that the gift is in memory of Jack Willis.
Sincerely,
Michael
