April 30. 1936 – August 21, 2024
Vick Williams of San Antonio, TX, and Boulder, CO, died on August 21, 2024, aged 88.
Vick is remembered fondly and with devotion by his family and friends, especially for his dry wit and pithy, erudite commentary. His quiet and gentle way left an indelible mark on all of us. He was a doctor and professor who loved teaching and reading in equal measure to carpentry and hiking the trails behind his house in Boulder, CO. Until recently you might have mistaken him for a ranch hand at the house he renovated near Bandera, TX, where he wrangled juniper, built barbed-wire fences, and helped his wife Dorothy transform their Hill Country property into a bird sanctuary for black-capped vireo, a threatened species. He built houses and water wells in Nicaragua and vaccinated children in Mexico. He helped lead groups of high school students on backpack trips in the New Mexico mountains and on canoe trips on the rivers in the Hill Country. He said the sunset was so beautifully burnt orange because the sun was sad to leave Texas. He was a staunch environmentalist who definitely put his money where his mouth was in terms of choosing green, and whose growing concern for democracy led him to toast the Constitution every Thanksgiving (“because we’re really going to need it,” he would say). He was also the most humble man you’d ever meet.
Vick will be remembered by his colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he was an emeritus professor of anatomy, specializing in the head and neck. He belonged to an esteemed group of founding faculty members who laid the groundwork for UTHSCSA; these pioneers played a crucial role in shaping the institution and establishing its reputation for excellence. The relationships he built with his fellow teachers and the technical and ethical questions they wrestled with in the classroom and lab were one of the pillars of his life. Another was the generations of medical and dental students he taught in his 45 years at UTHSCSA, during which he received many teaching awards. His mantra was that medicine was an art, not a science; he taught his students to treat the body’s mysteries with respect and humility. One of his enduring contributions was to oversee the willed body program, through which thousands of his students were able to participate in anatomy lab. He arranged to become a silent teacher by donating his body to science. He created a dissection manual for the anatomy lab and then, in the 1990s, filmed and digitized every dissection so that students could access the material remotely. (He always included a corny pun at the beginning of every lecture.) He will also be remembered by the anatomy faculty at the Vellore Christian Medical School in Tamil Nadu, India, where he taught for two years on a leave of absence. Even in his emeritus status, he continued to inspire and mentor others as a volunteer in the anatomy lab.
Vick is survived by his wife Dorothy of Boulder, CO; daughters Jeannie Williams of Sweden and Sarah (Robert) Heilbronner of CO; grandchildren Rachel Heilbronner of RI, Samuel Elmstrom of Sweden, Adam Heilbronner of UT, and Camilla Elmstrom of the Netherlands; brother Vern Williams of NE, sister Ann Williams Gael of NY; cousin Ed Franklin of TX; nieces and nephews Eric Williams (Janie Powers), Finn Williams, and Elle Williams of NE, and Andrew Gael (Danielle Egic) and Gavin Egic-Gael of NY. He was devoted to all of us.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to the Belton High School Class of ‘54 Scholarship at the Belton Educational Enrichment Foundation, 400 North Wall St, Belton, TX 76513.
A memorial service is anticipated in October in San Antonio.
