Bill Ernest Marsh passed away on January 24, 2023. Born on November 11, 1939, Bill survived polio as a child, growing into a young man who helped on the family farm and played football in high school. He earned a full-ride scholarship to Dartmouth College and graduated with a PhD in Mathematics in 1966. This ignited a life-long pursuit of education and teaching.

Bill taught at Talladega College and was a founding faculty member of Hampshire College, doing an exchange with Evergreen for a year. He later taught classes at various schools and colleges until his retirement. He was instrumental in bringing Blockfest, an early mathematical education program for children and parents, to the Olympic Peninsula.

He enjoyed singing and participating in our democratic process. He believed our country could continue to offer the next generation greater opportunities, and he worked towards this. He believed in peace and practiced the martial art of Aikido.

Bill was preceded in death by his parents, Grace and Harry, and his brother Jack. He is survived by his wife Ellen, his sisters, Ann, Mary, and Rachel, and his three children, Harry, Becca, and Stephen.

There will be a Celebration of Life on Saturday, August 12, 2023, from 1-3 pm at Asha's Place, located at 254 N Bagley Creek Road, Port Angeles, WA 98362.

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by Peninsula Daily News from Aug. 12 to Aug. 13, 2023.

Memories and Condolences
for William Marsh

3 Entries

Gary Shrager

September 24, 2023

I was a student of Bill´s in the early ´70s when he taught a class named "Strings, Trees, and Languages." I had been a total math type in high school, but I decided that I would go in a completely different direction (Journalism) when I went to college, and for the first semester, I did just that. But who could resist a course with such a great name? Thus began my reentry into math and then into mathematical linguistics and automata theory. The class was truly a revelation. After taking the course, I was a TA for the course the next year, and eventually, when Bill took a sabbatical, he asked me to teach the class in his place. That began my decades-long (and still continuing) teaching career. I ran into Bill many, many years later at a conference, and he still had a million ideas that he was working on and still seemed to have that wide-eyed excitement about discovery. He was a true intellect.

Michael Greenberg

September 21, 2023

I was a student of Bill Marsh´s at Hampshire College during a January Term course in the early 1980s on computer language compilers. Bill gave a lecture about parsing sentences that was one of the stand-out best lectures of my undergrad career. His energy, knowledge, clear method of presentation, and joy in the subject was incredible. He made a subject I was struggling with become clear and easy. I´ve always remembered that lecture. I´ve never struggled with that subject again. RIP Bill, and thank you!

Suzane Van Amburgh

August 11, 2023

I first met Bill Marsh at Amherst Aikikai in 1982, the year I started aikido. After I graduated I moved to the west coast and then eventually to Oregon. I was delighted to discover he was also in the Pacific Northwest. He came down to Portland for an aikido seminar at Multnomah Aikikai and stayed at my house. Gosh this must´ve been the late 1990´s. I recall he was standing in the kitchen telling me a story and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

I stood amazed as I watched him.

Why? It sounds like a simple enough action. Well, everytime I poured a cup from that coffee carafe, it dribbled. I had examined the carafe, changed up my pouring technique in several ways, and had finally come to the conclusion that there was some defect in the carafe itself. Until I could afford to buy a new coffee pot, I had adopted a habit of pouring my coffee over the sink and then wiping the carafe of dribbles.

Here Bill was just "freehanding" that pour, standing in the middle of the kitchen, one hand holding the cup and the other expertly handling that carafe. He paid some attention to what he was doing but really he was mostly focused on telling me a story. It never dribbled - he never spilled a drop and he made it look simple.

I vowed to myself that I would not buy a new coffee pot! Bill Marsh was proving to me that the carafe was fine. It could be done. I mustn´t blame the tool but instead reexamine my technique and take up the challenge of pouring that carafe without dribbling.

This moment, this story, illustrates for me just a few of the many gifts that come from practicing a martial art.

- The practice transfers into everyday life and simple everyday actions.
- Our practice cultivates attention skills - the ability to attend to the task of pouring while telling a story and never missing a beat in the delivery of that story. Holding multiple points of attention is cultivated in martial arts practice.
- We often are unaware of the moments when we inspire someone else. It can happen in the most mundane actions - the way you pour a cup of coffee.

Bill was a math teacher and later became an aikido teacher. When I was at Hampshire College I carried some resistance to studying mathematics. My interactions with Bill at the dojo softened my hard stance on the subject of math. I remember a seminar in San Diego where Bill was testing for something (maybe a teacher certification test?). Chiba Sensei presided over the tests and he spoke to all of us afterwards. I would not dare to quote him directly (it was many years ago) but this is what I heard and carried forward from that day.:

1) The test was not to determine whether Bill is a teacher. It is a given that he is a teacher. It is an essential part of who he is. I sensed in that speech that Chiba Sensei held a great respect for Bill and acknowledged a deep quality inherent within Bill. He is a teacher by nature.

2) As we grow older we must mature in our art. It is no good to attempt to perform your movement as you did when you were 20 years old. Not only is it impossible, but it´s wrong-headed to think that your aikido was better when you were younger. We must embrace aging and the maturity process. It is appropriate for your aikido to change. We must generate power in new ways, study subtlety, mature our movement and our embodiment of the art. Even as the body gets weaker, we should get better.

To this day, decades on and many coffee pots later, if the carafe dribbles as I pour it, I think "Bill Marsh would´ve poured it perfectly."

-Suzane Van Amburgh