Bill Marshall’s Retirement Reception

Special Collections is just a little bit less special now. After working for 36 years at UK, Bill Marshall is retiring. A well-attended reception in his honor was held in the Great Hall of King Library on January 8th. Many of Bill’s friends from the University of Kentucky – especially the Library and the History Department - as well as the greater Kentucky archives community were in attendance. In the speeches, Bill’s career as an archivist was celebrated, as were his other roles as administrator, teacher, and scholar. Not surprisingly, the theme of baseball, Bill’s passion and area of expertise, came up over and over again.

Terry Birdwhistell began the remarks. He spoke in his role as Interim Dean of the UK library system, but also as a friend and close colleague of Bill’s for many years. He talked about the varied improvements that marked Bill’s directorship of Special Collections including modernizing the facility (bringing in the first computers as well as adding environmental controls and improved security systems) and establishing the audio-visual and oral history departments. He noted Bill’s involvement with the Library Associates and the Kentucky Council of Archives and also mentioned the popularity of Bill’s Library School Class on Archives. He reminisced about the snowball fights Bill organized back in the 1970’s, and, finally, mentioned Bill’s love of baseball, highlighting the book he worked on for many years and published in 1999 as a major addition to the scholarship in that field.

State Archivist Barbara Teague spoke next. She praised Bill for his ability to cooperate with the other archives throughout the state, noting that Bill had the type of personality that was ideally suited to working with people. She also praised Bill for his role as a teacher, saying that many of the people currently working in Kentucky archives (as well as those in the rest of the country) got their start in Bill’s UK class.

After Gail Kennedy made a few brief comments about how much she had enjoyed working with Bill and how much she had learned from him over the years, Gordon Hogg spoke, reading an email from Bill’s oldest daughter, Anne, currently working as a history professor at Mississippi State University. Gordon then presented Bill with several books about baseball as parting gifts.

Bill finished off the speeches with a few comments of his own, sprinkling his talk with baseball allusions. After thanking his wife and daughters and telling an anecdote about a mishap-laden trip to California with Terry, he finished, appropriately enough, with a quote from Joe DiMaggio.