Only Online: In Memoriam
James William (Bill) Whedbee, Ph.D.

Nancy B. Lyon Professor of Biblical Studies
September 24, 1938-January 22, 2004

From Stephen Erickson, E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanites and Professor of Philosophy

I usually do not work from notes, but I’m afraid I need a little emotional anchoring today.

There were a lot of things you could count on Bill to do.
But one was not to help you organize your office.

Bill’s seemed mostly to be on his office floor.

Someone once suggested to me that tying a rope around my waist and securing its other end to Bill’s door handle might best keep me from losing my way and getting disoriented, maybe never finding the way back out.

But about anything Bill and I were reading together – a student paper, a journal article, a funny piece from a popular magazine – Bill would always say: “It’s here somewhere!”

And Bill would always find it.
He always did.

But that was not all Bill always found:
He found the good in all of us, en he encouraged and enjoyed it.
He really did. He really did.

He so much identified with and cared about his students that a certain order and status as a professor was almost foreign to him. He felt most as home, it seemed, in jeans and a turtleneck sweater.

Bill was just Bill. The focus was not on himself. He focused on us, whomever we were – and he enjoyed and found good in us.

Few understood the Hebrew Prophets as Bill did – especially those who spoke wrath and judgment.

And he always told me, though with a strange twinkle in his eye, that there was surely something to it, that those Prophets had it largely right.

But in the midst of this Bill laughed, and loved, and found the best in all of us – and he enjoyed us.

Oh Bill. Our Bill.

Bill actually gave me a deep insight into insomnia, something I had – until Bill’s insight.

“Steve,” he said, “you only have insomnia if you’re trying to get to sleep.”
“Stop trying. If necessary, stop sleeping!”
(The twinkle-eyed one had spoken.)

It actually worked.

I still don’t sleep much, but, thanks to Bill, neither do I try. I got the cure.

When I informed Bill of my transformation a few weeks later, he just grinned and said,
“More time for books!”

And, of course, in Bill’s office, yes, they were everywhere.

Let me end my brief remarks with a reflection on the humility in Bill.

Bill got one wish today that we didn’t want to have come true for years and years.

He always told me that we had to hope that Martha outlived us at the College.
“Why, Bill?” I said.

“She can make anybody sound good, Steve. She’d be the one for our eulogies.”

Bill always undervalued himself. He often told me that he wouldn’t have minded being an associate professor for the rest of his life.

But Bill wasn’t anything but a Full Professor, a complete professor, as full and complete as a professor could ever be:

Full of Knowledge
Full of Generosity
Full of Kindness

Bill was simply and wonderfully Bill.