Western North American Naturalist Volume 72 Number 1 Article 17 4-5-2012 Obituary: Wilmer Webster Tanner, 1909–2011 Stanley L. Welsh Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/wnan Part of the Anatomy Commons, Botany Commons, Physiology Commons, and the Zoology Commons Recommended Citation Welsh, Stanley L. (2012) "Obituary: Wilmer Webster Tanner, 1909–2011," Western North American Naturalist: Vol. 72 : No. 1 , Article 17. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/wnan/vol72/iss1/17 This Obituary is brought to you for free and open access by the Western North American Naturalist Publications at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Western North American Naturalist by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Western North American Naturalist 72(1), © 2012, pp. 118–124 OBITUARY: WILMER WEBSTER TANNER, 1909–2011 Wilmer W. Tanner in British Columbia, summer 1998 On 28 October 2011, two months short of his parents were John Myron and Lois Ann Tan- 102nd birthday, Dr. Wilmer W. Tanner passed ner, descendants of early Utah pioneers, who away, leaving a lifetime of accomplishments. resided on a ranch in the open and meadow- His most enduring achievement was his mar- bottomed valley at Indianola in Sanpete County. riage to Helen Brown on 4 January 1935, which They had 5 children: Vasco, Ray, Laura, Wilmer, resulted in a family consisting of Lynn, David, and Jean. and Mary Ann. Helen died in 1995, following Wilmer attended public schools in Sanpete 60 years of marriage. At age 90, Wilmer, always County, Utah. Following graduation from high an optimist, married again, to Otella Tyndal school, he served as a missionary between Devey, who died in 1999. Wilmer was a caring 1929 and 1932 for the Church of Jesus Christ person, who showed consideration and kind- of Latter-day Saints in the Netherlands, where ness throughout his life to each of his wives he learned Dutch by immersion, there being and to his 3 children, 10 grandchildren, and 24 no language training prior to the mission. great-grandchildren. Wilmer considered his Upon his return to Utah, he attended Brigham posterity to be his greatest legacy. He was Young University (BYU), where he earned a proud of them! Wilmer’s career success came B.A. degree in 1936, and an M.S. degree in about in large part because of the sacrifices 1937. His earliest publications dealing with and hard work of Helen and the children. snakes date from 1939 and give indication of a Wilmer was born 17 December 1909 in life-long interest in herpetology. Economic Fairview, Utah, the fourth of five children. His conditions of the time were difficult. Helen 118 2012] OBITUARIES 119 worked at a laundry in Provo for $7.00 per to a bonafide teaching and research institu- week to aid in keeping the family economi- tion. These new faculty members worked along cally viable. Wilmer, meantime, had completed with the amazing trio to build research collec- requirements necessary to be come a biology tions and to teach literally tens of thousands of teacher and was eventually employed by the students who entered to learn and went forth Provo School District. Among his students to serve as productive individuals. The faculty was one Joseph Richard (Dick) Murdock, who also devoted time to numerous graduate stu- would ultimately serve as an assistant director dents, who became important teachers and of the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. researchers at various institutions across the How Wilmer survived live-wire students such country and beyond. Vasco developed an as Dick Murdock and his close friend Tom Pur- insect collection to be envied (curated later by vance is open to consideration. “They didn’t Wood) and an ichthyological collection; Hay- fool me!” Wilmer said of the boys’ shenanigans. ward built representative collections of birds “I knew what they were up to!” And he smiled! and mammals; Beck (and later Allred) added Work began on a Ph.D., but exigencies of greatly to the collections of ticks and fleas; and the time, mainly World War II, intervened. In Wilmer assembled a sizeable collection of 1946, he began studies with Edward Harrison amphibians and reptiles. Not one of these Taylor at the University of Kansas. And in dedicated professionals ever had the collec- 1948, Wilmer completed his dissertation on tion of zoological specimens formally listed as comparative anatomy of slamanders of Mexico part of their job descriptions! They built the and Central Mexico. collections in addition to their assignments as Vasco M. Tanner, the eldest child of John classroom instructors, committee members, and Lois Tanner, was some 17 years older than and student advisors. Their devotion and last- Wilmer and served as a role model for him. ing legacies to the University, the community Vasco earned a Ph.D. from Stanford Univer- at large, their students, and their families speak sity and joined the faculty at BYU in the early volumes (including hundreds of published 1920s, where he founded the zoological natu - papers in their respective disciplines). One ral history collections and the Department of wonders how they achieved balance in their Zoology and Entomology. Vasco was the one lives, but they did! person always available, Saturdays included, Wilmer’s name appeared sometime during in his campus office on the west side of the the 1970s in a sensational news article with a second floor of the Brimhall Building. He kept title that read, “Brigham Young University Pro- track of his former students, followed their fessor Missing in Mexico.” Wilmer was on a col- careers, and found employment for many of lecting trip to Barranca del Cobre, a deep gorge them as opportunities surfaced through his in northwestern Mexico, and the party had not connections. returned at the specified time. A search was Wilmer officially joined the BYU zoology undertaken and there was much to-do, but faculty in 1950, but he was teaching summer according to Wilmer, the group was never in school at the university in 1949 when one of danger and all were completely unaware that his students and life-long associates, Stanley they had been reported missing. Everything L. Welsh, completed a genetics class taught by came out well, except for short-lasting orders him. The faculty he joined was championed by from the Dean of Biology and Agriculture that an awesome trio: Wilmer’s larger-than-life all personnel had to check with him prior to brother Vasco, D Elden Beck, and C. Lynn leaving campus—an edict ignored at first and Hayward. Among them, they taught a bevy of later discarded as unnecessary. courses that covered the entire breadth of By the 1970s, it became apparent that the zoology, an assignment whose difficulty in - invertebrate/vertebrate collections, then housed creased vastly with the postwar arrival of with the Department of Zoology and Entomol- thousands of young men, who desired an edu- ogy, and the herbarium, then under direction cation and a chance to get on with their lives. of the Department of Botany, required a cen- Wilmer was soon joined by numerous newly tralized location apart from their departments. minted Ph.D.s—including Steven L. Wood Rationale for a change in administration of the and Dorald M. Allred—as the University tran- collections involved their perpetuity, with his- sitioned from a teacher-preparation institution tory of departmental collections being degraded 120 WESTERN NORTH AMERICAN NATURALIST [Volume 72 and sometimes destroyed by nonresearch re - Ephraim Hatch. Plans were drawn up and lated activities. Around 1970, Dr. Kent H. presented to Monte and Birdie; and construc- McKnight, professor of botany, was given the tion began in the mid-1970s. Money for con- task of exploring development of a collections struction, some $3.5 million, was donated by related facility separate from the departments. Monte L. Bean and his wife, who also estab- Upon his removal to the eastern United States, lished an endowment fund for the museum. Dr. Wilmer Tanner was chosen as his succes- The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum was sor. He selected Dr. Stephen L. Wood, then occupied in fall 1977 and officially opened in curator of insects and related groups, and Dr. spring 1978. It now houses research collec- Stanley L. Welsh, then curator of the herbar- tions of arthropods, mollusks, fish, birds, ium, as committee members. They worked mammals, reptiles/amphibians, vascular plants, together to outline goals and procedures for and nonvascular cryptogams, as well as a mas- establishment of a separate entity to initially sive inventory of trophy animals from through- oversee and ultimately house the collections. out the world. The individual specimens in The committee was already functioning the museum now number in the millions. under established guidelines when a letter Monte, in a meeting with the committee in arrived at the BYU Development Office where the physical plant offices, looked at Wilmer Helen, Wilmer’s wife, was working as a secre- and stated, “I know that you have sufficient tary. That letter was from a person in Seattle room for the trophy animals, but do you have who desired to divest himself (actually at his sufficient room for the natural history collec- wife’s insistence) of his collection of trophy tions?” He then stated that the trophy mounts animals. The letter was shunted aside! No one were ephemeral and could and should be dis- would wish to receive such a collection of carded ultimately, but the natural history col- “stuffed animals,” they decided. Helen re - lections were the most important.