Former Winthrop mass communications professor William A. Fisher, 97, passed away in his Rock Hill home on Jan. 15. He is survived by his wife of 72 years and three children. Fisher was from Indiana and received his bachelor’s degree from Franklin College and his Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism. He worked at multiple newspapers before teaching at Kent State for 34 years, according to his obituary at greenfuneralhome.net.
After retiring from Kent State, he came to teach at Winthrop University in 1984. He then retired from Winthrop in 1993 but kept teaching part time until the early 2000s and stayed connected with Winthrop into his early 90s.
“He remained involved in the program even after he completely retired. He would come to our functions like our awards dinners… he was able to maintain an incredible sharpness of mind well into his 90s… last time I saw him, he was maybe 92 years old and he was sharp as a tack. It was amazing,” said Dr. Guy Reel, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication.
“We usually have our mass comm week and we have alumni panels almost every year and we would ask the alumni what their most useful class was and almost always say it was the media law class taught under Mr. Fisher… the stuff they learned in there they used in their jobs and I will say that the class was a little bit terrifying for some students, but terrifying in a good way. In other words, they were compelled to excel in that class and if they didn’t, then they would hear about it and that’s the class they remembered the most when they left Winthrop.”
Fisher was a dedicated professor who created a classroom environment that was conducive to learning and hard work.
“He was very outgoing and very confident… He was a demanding professor. He taught communication law for a long time and he had a certain structure to it that he insisted on. I couldn’t recite the whole structure, but it was something like an exam every two weeks, and he would offer to help students prepare for it if they wanted to make appointments and come into his office… He was tough but fair,” said Dr. William Click, Professor Emeritus of Mass Communication and former chair of the Department of Mass Communication.
“When he came to Winthrop, there was no mass communication department, they lumped it in with speech and journalism and I don’t think there was even any public relations, so he started trying to put his stamp on it and he created that by going to the president and the dean apparently and he got them to establish a lab for news writing. At that time, it was typewriters and not computers and he added several courses to the curriculum that he thought was needed to make people better journalists.”
Fisher was integral to developing Winthrop’s Department of Mass Communication and his work readied young journalists to enter the workforce.
“He was definitely one of the key players at the ground level in getting the department elevated to the status it holds today [as a nationally accredited program]. There are not too many nationally accredited journalism departments in the country and Fisher has played a big role in jumping through a lot of those hoops. The accrediting committee looks closely at your curriculum and the quality of your graduates, they sit in on your classes, look at your technology and at your faculty and their credentials, so Fisher definitely helped us with that,” said Dr. Larry Timbs, Emeritus Associate Professor in the Department of Communications.
“He was one of a kind and he’ll be missed. He touched a lot of lives and I’ll never forget him, that’s for sure, so he’s left his mark on Winthrop. He loved Kent State University where he came from before he got to Winthrop, but he came to love Winthrop, too.”
Photo courtesy Bissler & Sons
