William McCormick ’63

A remembrance by Bob Seddig

I first knew Bill McCormick on First Burton as a freshman from Schererville, Indiana, near Gary. I remember him not only as bright (and bright-eyed), but also as intense, and for that intensity he became known as “Bullet.” I remember him in those first months worrying about a weakening relationship:  a girlfriend back home. 

We stayed close, and our families got to know each other. In our junior and senior years, Bill and I and John Wenzel (also ’63) and our parents and siblings got together for picnics in White Pines State Park in northwestern Illinois.

Bill majored in economics and went on to the Harvard Law School after Carleton, adequate testimony, I think, to his abilities as a student. He went to work as corporate counsel for Inland Steel Corporation, where his father had worked as a safety officer in the mill in Gary. The family loved Inland Steel, probably because it was one of the “small guys” in the industry fifty years ago. Bill remained at Inland for all of his working life.

Bill and his wife Char had one child, then adopted a baby who was severely disabled, perhaps more so than they realized at the time of adoption. Care for their second child consumed the family. Bill died of cancer at an early age. I often wondered if he was burdened by worry with his second daughter.