Bill W. Hamrick
Bill W. Hamrick (1926-2011)
Bill W. Hamrick, long-time faculty member and Professor Emeritus of Human Services at Stephen F. Austin University, passed away on January 16, 2011 in Nacogdoches.
Bill was 84 and the only child of David Elmer Hamrick and Allie Carson Hamrick and was born on March 21, 1926 near Bonanza Texas, in south Hopkins County. He joined the U.S. Navy at age seventeen and began training while still in school. After graduating from Sulphur Springs High School in 1944, he began sea duty on L.S.T. 495, which operated in the Pacific theater and made three combat landings on Okinawa and two occupation landings on mainland Japan. He was honorably discharged in April, 1946 as a Quartermaster, Second Class.
Bill Hamrick married Carolyn Lemon of Sulphur Springs, Texas on January 16, 1949 and the couple had two sons, David and Joe.
Thanks in part to the G.I. Bill, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in 1949 and a Masters of Education in secondary education in 1954, both from East Texas State Teachers College at Commerce. In 1962, he received a Doctorate of Education in counseling psychology from the University of Missouri at Columbia. In September 1962 he joined the faculty of Stephen F. Austin where he taught and was a Department Chairman for 26 years. He was instrumental in helping establish and develop many human services programs at SFA including: guidance and counseling, social rehabilitation, speech and hearing, and mobility for the blind. He served as Chairman of the Department of Counseling and Special Education until he retired in 1989. He was devoted to the University and believed that Stephen F. Austin had some of the finest faculty and students in the state.
Always active professionally, he served four years as president elect and president of the Texas State Teachers Association and president of the Texas Personnel and Guidance Association. Dr. Hamrick was a licensed, Texas board certified psychologist and a member of Psi Chi, The National Honor Society in Psychology.
Bill was also active in the Nacogdoches community and served as president of the Kiwanis Club, president of the Nacogdoches Treatment Center board, was a board member for Project Head Start, and was a lifelong member of Westminster Presbyterian Church. He was also a Master Mason of more than sixty years.
As a trained psychologist he was a splendid listener, caring, compassionate, never judgmental. He once wrote in a note to his sons that he had been lucky all of his life; that he was not rich in the monetary sense but that he was rich in the things that he believed counted most: good parents, good wife, good children, good in-laws, good friends. Life can’t get better than that he believed.
He is survived by his beloved wife of 62 years, Carolyn Hamrick; his youngest son, Joe Hamrick, of Lufkin, Texas; and his eldest son David Hamrick and his wife Kathy Dunn Hamrick and grandchildren Jacob and Hannah Hamrick of Austin, Texas.
Services will be held on Thursday, January 20, beginning at 2:00 P.M. at Cason Monk-Metcalf Sunset Chapel at 5400 North Street in Nacogdoches, followed by entombment at the Sunset Memorial Park Mausoleum. In lieu of flowers, friends may make a contribution to any of several Special Giving Funds at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Condolences may be offered at www.casonmonk-metcalf.com
