William Gurney Mattox ’52

William Gurney Mattox ’52 of Meridian, Idaho, died on March 7 of natural causes. Bill was born on October 3, 1930, in Philadelphia. He attended Cheltenham High School in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Dartmouth with a geography degree. He was a member of Sigma Chi. He continued his education from 1952 to 1955 as a teaching fellow at Dartmouth; American Summer School at the University of Oslo, Norway; Uppsala University in Sweden; and University of Iceland. Bill then served in U.S. Army from 1956 to 1958 in Stuttgart, Germany, where he met Joan (Burkland), whom he married in May 1957. Bill then went to grad school at McGill University in Montreal. Bill was always interested in the environment, conservation, and nature. His career took him from assistant professor of geography and director of McGill’s subarctic research laboratory to appointment as a fellow of the Institute for Current World Affairs in Copenhagen, Denmark, for four years. He then completed his Ph.D. dissertation for McGill in 1971. In 1972 he started work in the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Office of Planning and Research, serving as deputy chief and assistant chief of the water division until retirement in 1992. He then worked on many conservation projects in Idaho, starting in Boise in the mid-1990s and then in Meadow Lake Village in Meridian, where he and Joan moved in 2015. He is survived by Joan and sons John, Timothy, and Daniel and their families.