Willis Lloyd Pitkin Jr.

1936 - 2013

Willis Lloyd Pitkin Jr., the son of Willis L. and Dorothy Shuler Pitkin, died July 21, 2013. He did not expect to meet "Heavenly Father," but if such a meeting occurred, Willis was likely the less flabbergasted of the two.
Will was born Feb. 20, 1936, and lived till 1969 in California. He was married three times - to Mary Frederica Calligan (who gave him a stepdaughter, Regan, and two sons, David and Paul), to Sandra Sanderson (who gave him a son, Joe, and two daughters, Sara and Clarity), and to Teri Haynes Boschetti (who gave him four stepsons - Rock, Brian, Tim, and Russ). Thorough and conscientious training from his first two wives prepared him for a wonderful third marriage. He lived to mourn the loss of Brian, Dave, and Regan's first daughter, Mary Helen.
Will received his bachelor's degree in English from the University of Southern California in 1958, promptly began graduate school, and received his doctorate from the same university in 1973 (when he finally applied for graduation, the dean of the USC graduate school emerged from his office to congratulate Will as the student who had made the slowest progress towards a doctorate that he had ever encountered). During his graduate studies and for many years afterward, Will worked as a teacher of college English, most of these years - and the best of them - at Utah State University. He helped and inspired and loved thousands of students, who remember him for his wit, his generosity, his deep knowledge and his disdain for academic fashions. He was likelier to wear a T-shirt and shorts to class than a coat and tie; he preferred always to be called "Will" rather than "Dr. Pitkin." He wrote a textbook on writing called Generating Prose, a book considered unfashionable almost as soon as he had finished it. But it was no less a good book for that.
Like his father, Will was a lifelong gardener: he kept many dozens of chickens, cultivated hundreds of heirloom varieties of tomatoes and squash and garlic and strawberries, spared thousands of tomato hornworms. Over his life he gave away great piles of fruit and vegetables to friends, colleagues, his children, neighbors, strangers, visiting home teachers, and anyone who looked like he would be cheered up by a handful of fresh tomatoes.
Also like his father, he was deeply troubled by any kind of waste. It pained him to see people treat as garbage anything which could be spread on his garden as fertilizer. In broad daylight, and sometimes by night, Will took the grass clippings that neighbors had left at the curb for garbage pickup: the whole community had contributed to his compost heap. It was harder still for him to watch someone throw into the trash anything which might be eaten by one of his beloved animals (including his most beloved animal, Homo sapiens). He regarded the expiration dates on food packaging as quaint advisories which he might, at his discretion, disregard.
He spoke slowly but tirelessly. He wrote hundreds of letters to the editor of The Herald Journal (at least it seemed that many), letters shining a light wherever he saw thoughtlessness or hypocrisy or self-righteousness. Nonconformists, gay people, misfits, and anyone who felt friendless in the Cache Valley knew from his letters that they had a friend in Will.
Years of linguistic training and a natural talent for goofing off made him into a formidable Scrabble player. He impressed hundreds of opponents with his ability to make one word into another, to dredge up long-forgotten words, and to concoct plausible-sounding terms that no one at the table dared challenge. Language was, for him, a source of joy and mystery and beauty, and people who spoke with him or read a note from him or played a game with him came away feeling as though language was richer than they had realized.
He is at peace now, survived by his wife, Teri; daughters Regan Pitkin Butler, Sara Sanderson Pitkin, and Clarity Sanderson Jonker; sons Paul, Joe, Rock, Tim, and Russ; 15 grandchildren; and one great-grandson. We miss him.
A celebration of Will's life will take place from 3 to 6 p.m. Aug. 25 at the house of Bill and Carol Strong, 947 Sumac, Logan, UT 84321.