Frederick L. "Rick" Williams

1942 - 2021

Frederick L. "Rick" Williams

1942 - 2021

NAMPA, ID - Acclaimed SIUC Classics professor Rick Williams, 78, passed away peacefully in Nampa, Idaho, on June 12, 2021, with his beloved wife Brigitte Williams at his bedside.

Rick was born in Denver, Colorado, on October 6, 1942, the only child of Jean Emmett Williams and Frederick Williams, who soon moved to Worland, Wyoming, where his mother had grown up. An exceptionally intelligent student, he blazed through school. After graduation, Rick attended the University of Wyoming in Laramie before enrolling at the University of Texas in Austin, where he majored in philosophy and English. At UT Rick fell in love--it took him six weeks, he later said--with ancient Greek. He went on to earn a Master's degree in Classics at the University of Colorado in Boulder and his Ph.D. in Classics at Cornell University.

In 1977 Rick and his first wife moved to Carbondale, where he spent his entire professional career in SIUC's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. It did not take long for his excellence in the classroom to be recognized. In 1979 he won the College of Liberal Arts' Outstanding Teacher Award. In 1984 he won the award for Outstanding Teacher in the University. In addition to teaching Greek (and occasionally Latin) at all levels, during most fall semesters in his thirty years on campus Rick offered the wildly popular lecture course, Classics 230: Classical Mythology, which typically filled with an enrollment of 300 students. In 1983 he published with Southern Illinois University Press a well-received textbook, "Elementary Classical Greek" (a revised version appeared in 1991). Among other favorable reviews, one in the scholarly journal "The Classical World" said that "the author's sensitivity to style is apparent throughout, as is his ability to convey this to his audience" in a book that also provided "much more than the usual basics."

With his broad education in English, philosophy, and the Classics, Rick was well prepared, as the famed astronomer David Levy once noted, to head SIUC's University Honors Program. He became its director in 1987, the year he and Brigitte married, and held the post with distinction until 2006, the year he retired. From first to last, Rick's guiding principle remained the same: "It is the aim of the Honors Program," he said, "to try to shape the student not just in one academic subject." In pursuit of that aim, he led faculty members from various departments to develop dozens of new undergraduate Honors courses, many of them interdisciplinary seminars capped at twelve students. They always filled. After one of his several visits to campus, Levy recalled having breakfast with a small group of Honors students "who were learning the classics, modern languages, English literature, and physics. The session was just between me and the students; no faculty members were there to moderate or grade the discussion. Our interaction lasted more than an hour, covering both the humanities and the sciences." One student wondered how Seneca managed to write a book on comets while facing execution by the Emperor Nero, while "another student," Levy continued, "asked how comet impacts could have affected the origin of life on Earth. When I explained how comets deposited water and a rich assortment of organic compounds when they collided with our planet, a third student made the connection between chemistry and the evolution of amino acids and DNA. During the session the students built a unifying academic force out of the various branches of the arts and sciences. I left the session invigorated." Levy was only one of dozens of eminent lecturers the Honors Program brought to campus, among them novelist John Updike, ethologist Jane Goodall, actor Louis Gossett, religious historian Karen Armstrong, feminist social critic Naomi Wolf, and writer Elie Wiesel.

Rick deeply respected the theatre--an esteem rooted in the ancient dramatic traditions he knew so well. For years he directed students and faculty in a popular series of script-in-hand performances of Greek and Roman plays. These were held monthly on a Friday night in what was then Quigley Hall Lounge, usually to crowds with standing room only. One hallmark of these performances was that often a university administrator--including the President, Vice-Presidents, and Deans--would join the cast to be handed a script Rick had doctored to guarantee at least one entrance onstage at the wrong time. The crowd would roar, while the VIP always seemed to enjoy it as much as anyone else. Rick himself was an accomplished actor who appeared regularly in SIUC productions. Among other roles, he played Colonel Pickering in "My Fair Lady," President Roosevelt in "Annie," and Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." In the summer of 1986, he starred as Cornelius "Con" Melody in Eugene O'Neill's "A Touch of the Poet" at Chicago's Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. The "Tribune" reviewer hailed his "extraordinary" performance: "Williams is a complex mixture of blustering egotist, disillusioned drunkard and increasingly detached participant," the reviewer wrote. "His portrayal brings an admirably sardonic, cerebral quality to all the O'Neill passion."

After he retired, Rick and his wife Brigitte lived in San Jose, California, where she continued her distinguished career as an architect. After she retired, in 2018, they moved to Boise, Idaho, and then to Nampa. No faithful account of Rick can omit commemorating the enduring joy Brigitte brought into his life. His friends will always remember his profound love of her, as well as her devoted care of him in his final illness. The death of Rick Williams leaves many people--friends, colleagues, and not least scores of students--mourning their loss.

A memorial service at SIU is planned for the fall semester. In lieu of flowers, donations to Rick's favorite charity, aspca.org, would be welcome.