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Memorial to Harold Bowen Willman 1901-1984 JACK A. SIMON and ELWOOD ATHERTON Illinois State Geological Survey, Champaign, Illinois 61820 Harold Bowen (“Bo”) Willman, died on July 4, 1984, in Urbana, Illinois, after a brief illness. He was an emi­ nent geologist performing basic and applied research for nearly 60 years in stratigraphy, structure, mineral deposits, and utilization of strata ranging from the Cambrian through the Pleistocene Systems primarily in Illinois and other midwestern states. He had a far- reaching impact on knowledge of the Ordovician, Silurian, Pennsylvanian, and Pleistocene Systems. Harold Bowen Willman, the son of Ernest Floyd and Gay Bowen Willman, was born July 30, 1901, in Newcastle, Indiana. He grew up and graduated from high school in Hartford City, Indiana. Bo went to the University of Illinois with an eye on courses in jour­ nalism, but he took a course in geology, and the expe­ rience changed his career. He received a B.A. in 1926, an M.A. in 1928, and a Ph.D. in 1931, all in geology. In the summer of 1924, he worked in British Columbia as a field assistant to Francis P. Shepard. In the summer of 1925, he worked for the Kentucky Geological Survey. In the summers of 1926 and 1927, he worked at the Illinois Geological Survey (ISGS), and was a graduate teaching assistant in geology at the University of Illinois. In 1928, Bo was appointed to the part-time staff at the Illinois State Geological Survey. Initially he worked with J. Marvin Weller in the Areal Geology and Paleontology Division during the summer, and with Gilbert H. Cady in the Coal Division during the school year. He was assigned to assist Albert H. Bell in the Oil and Gas Section in 1930, and he was promoted to associate geologist. In 1937, he was transferred to the Nonfuels Division (later Industrial Minerals Division) under J. E. Lamar, and in 1943, he was appointed full geologist. In 1945, he was named to head the Areal Geology and Pale­ ontology Division, replacing J. Marvin Weller, who accepted a position as professor at the University of Chicago. Although the name was changed to Stratigraphy and Areal Geology Section, Bo continued to head this section for 24 years until he retired in 1969. Sub­ sequently, he worked in the section officially part-time through December 1976, and con­ tinued later, unofficially, until shortly before his death. Bo’s doctoral dissertation was on the general geology and mineral resources of the deep valley of the Illinois River between Chicago and Peoria. It was completed in 1931, and it included Bo’s proposed revision of the Pleistocene and Pennsylvanian stratigraphy for the area. A report by Willman on the geology and mineral resources of the Marseilles, Ottawa, and Streator Quadrangles, supplemented by subsurface studies by J. Norman Payne, was published in 1942 as ISGS Bulletin 66. Bo worked with J. E. Lamar and with him published reports on limestone and dolo­ mites. During World War II, Bo was engaged in resource studies, including feldspar in 57 58 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA Illinois sands, high-purity dolomite in Illinois, and the zinc-lead resources of northwestern Illinois. Reports of these studies were largely published in Illinois Survey series. After the war, Bo and M. M. Leighton, chief of the Illinois Survey, studied the stratig­ raphy, character, and origin of the loess in the Mississippi River Valley. Their work included a two-week field conference in 1949 in the area extending from Iowa City, Iowa, south to Natchez, Mississippi, in cooperation with the state geologists of the states involved. Their findings appeared in ISGS Report of Investigations 149. As discussed in later paragraphs, a similar study was undertaken in the late 1970s. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bo worked with J. S. Templeton in a major study on the Champlainian Series (middle Ordovician) of the central United States. Their intensive study led to a detailed lithologie differentiation of the series. In Illinois they dif­ ferentiated 16 formations and more than 50 members. Most of the units were widely trace­ able outside of Illinois, as far as Colorado and New York. A final revision of the report, prepared by Willman, was published as ISGS Bulletin 89. In 1954, John C. Frye became chief of the Illinois State Geological Survey following the retirement of M. M. Leighton. Leighton had maintained a strong program of Pleisto­ cene research in Illinois, and Frye continued this as a major program. Willman and Frye made an unusually capable and productive team for more than 25 years, and they have many publications to their credit. A prominent feature of much of their work was the application of clay mineralogy to the study of Pleistocene stratigraphy. In this they were assisted by Herbert D. Glass, clay mineralogist at the Illinois State Geological Survey. One of Bo’s main interests, born of his breadth of experience, was stratigraphie nomenclature and policy. In 1958, he, with D. H. Swann and John C. Frye, revised the Illinois State Geological Survey policy regarding stratigraphie nomenclature, and pub­ lished a new multiple classification method for the Survey in ISGS Circular 249. In 1970, Willman and Frye collaborated in a publication on Pleistocene stratigraphy of Illinois as ISGS Bulletin 94. Using a multiple stratigraphie classification scheme, they organized the Pleistocene of Illinois into four categories: rock-stratigraphic, soil-stratigraphic, morpho- stratigraphic, and time-stratigraphic. Geologic maps of Illinois had been prepared by James Hall (1843), A. H. Worthen (1875), Stuart Weller (1906, 1907), F. W. DeWoIf and others (1917), and J. Marvin Weller and others (1945). In 1967, the Illinois Survey published an updated 1:500,000 geologic map of Illinois compiled by Willman with the collaboration of other members of the Survey staff. It shows two geologic columns for the state, six cross sections, and six small state inset maps showing special features. Nationally, Bo also participated in compilation of two maps of glacial deposits of North America east of the Rocky Mountains; the last was published by the Geological Society of America in 1959. With the help of several others, Bo also compiled a bibliography and index of Illinois geology through 1965, published in 1958 as ISGS Bulletin 92. A major project undertaken by Bo, with others, was the preparation of a handbook of Illinois stratigraphy, published in 1975 as ISGS Bulletin 95. It briefly described 730 strati­ graphie units named in Illinois, with references to original descriptions, charts showing development of the stratigraphie classifications, and maps indicating the distribution, thickness, and structure of many units. Parts were written by Elwood Atherton, T. C. Buschbach, Charles Collinson, John C. Frye, M. E. Hopkins, Jerry A. Lineback, and Jack A. Simon. In addition to the parts he wrote, Willman edited and extensively rewrote contributions from the other authors. In part as a preliminary to this major project, Willman wrote a summary of the geology of the Chicago area, published in 1971 as ISGS MEMORIAL TO HAROLD BOWEN WILLMAN 59 Circular 460, and a report on rock stratigraphy of the Silurian System in northeastern and northwestern Illinois, published in 1973 as ISGS Circular 479. After John Frye retired from the Illinois Geological Survey in 1974, he returned each summer through 1982 to continue field studies with Willman in Illinois (John Frye passed away in the fall of 1982). In 1979, they published a revised map of the glacial boundary in southern Illinois, issued as ISGS Circular 511. In addition, a study of possible old glacia­ tion and origin of the geest in the Driftless Area of northwestern Illinois was prepared by Willman with Frye and H. D. Glass; it was published in 1989 as ISGS Circular 535. In 1975, work was begun within the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois for an Illinois Natural Areas Inventory. John White, a biologist, approached Bo with a “few pages [of] crude landform classifications” to show what “they needed to know.” Bo agreed to help, and was hired through the university. A descriptive list was prepared of 160 sites that might be protected in order to represent the geologic diversity of Illinois, and Bo identified the landforms and geologic formations of each. The work was completed in 1978, and White and Willman became lifelong friends. In 1979, Bo was asked to participate as an advisor in a Natural Landmark Evaluation Panel on Geologic Sites for the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Bo sold his home in Urbana in 1978 and lived alternately with a daughter in New York and a daughter in Oregon (later in Tucson, Arizona). He continued to spend several weeks each summer, in or out of Urbana, working with Frye and Glass and others on field work, research, and manuscripts concerning the Pleistocene. Starting in the late 1970s, Willman, Frye, and Glass embarked on a major project to study the loesses of the lower Mississippi Valley, renewing work done in the late 1940s by M. M. Leighton and Willman. In this new study, more than 1300 samples were taken by 1980 along the Mississippi Valley in the states of Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, with the help of state surveys and other interested geologists. Initial efforts began in 1980 to develop a manuscript. John Frye’s death in late 1982 resulted in some delay. In the summer of 1983, Willman, Glass, Leon Follmer, and E. Donald McKay conducted a field trip to the lower Mississippi Valley. In January of 1984, from Tucson, Bo wrote a long letter to Charles Collinson, Glass, Follmer, and McKay calling attention to a few problems that needed work before the manuscript could be completed when he returned to Urbana in June.

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