William R. Curtis
Veteran mariner and former Naval Academy teacher volunteered aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown
William R. Curtis, who had been an officer aboard ships of the old United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and later volunteered aboard the Liberty ship SS John W. Brown, died of melanoma July 15 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Sykesville resident was 85. The son of Ford E. Curtis, a professor of English literature at the University of Pittsburgh, and Harriet Baird Ralston, a homemaker, William Ralston Curtis was born in Wilmington, Pa.
He was raised in Pittsburgh and graduated from Shady Side Academy, then attended Oberlin College and earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1952.
While at Oberlin, he met and fell in love with Sadie Garrett. The couple married in 1952, and then both attended Purdue University. Each obtained a master’s degree in chemistry.
In 1955, he was drafted into the Navy and attended Officer Candidate School as a Naval Reserve officer. He earned a master’s degree in meteorology with a minor in oceanography from the Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
He was stationed for a year at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and left just before the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
He was then assigned to duty in the Mediterranean, joining the heavy cruiser USS Macon as radar officer. After that, he spent two years on an amphibious ship that supplied bases in Antarctica, and from 1963 until 1965 he was on the faculty of the Naval Academy, teaching chemistry. He then left the Navy.
In 1965 he joined the Coast and Geodetic Survey — now part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — as operations officer aboard the USC&GS Explorer, making charts of U.S. territorial waters and tracking Gulf Stream temperatures from Norfolk, Va., to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
He was sent to Seattle as a visiting scientist aboard the Oceanographer and studied the effects of deep-sea mining in waters south and east of Hawaii. He was promoted to rank of commander.
From 1973 to 1976, Mr. Curtis served aboard the NOAAS Mount Mitchell near Puerto Rico, serving as operations and executive officer.
He retired but launched a second career as an instructor at the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies in Linthicum, training merchant marine deck officers from 1976 to 1992.
Since the mid-1990s, the former Arnold and Severna Park resident was a duespaying member of Project Liberty Ship, which owns the Liberty ship SS John W. Brown.
In 1998 he joined the band of volunteers who have restored and now operate the vessel.
“Bill Curtis played music to his own metronome. He has been a teacher, scientist, Navy commander, deckhand, able seaman, quipster, world-traveling tourist, insomniac and colorful character,” wrote Ernest F. Imhoff, a former Baltimore Sun editor who wrote “Good Shipmates: The Restoration of the Liberty Ship John W. Brown.”
“He taught a tough able seaman course to allow the Brown to upgrade deckhands and satisfy more stringent Coast Guard requirements due to terrorism,” Mr. Imhoff wrote. “He was known to give tests moments after handing out course material for study.”
Mr. Imhoff described Mr. Curtis as “a free spirit, intellectually on the prowl, curious about others, ready with a joke or play on words at most any moment.”
Mr. Curtis also did not mind getting “Brown-filthy” when working on the ship. “One day, I entered the ship’s mess and Bill was reading a book. I sat down near him and he kept reading and grabbing popcorn from a bowl. Finally, he said about 10 minutes later, ‘How long have you been here?’ ” Mr. Imhoff recalled with a laugh. “That’s why we gave him the nickname of ‘The Professor.’ ”
Mr. Curtis and his wife had been active members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis. They also enjoyed attending the Baltimore Symphony, Baltimore Opera and plays at the Colonial Players in Annapolis. They were also fans of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
The couple enjoyed bowling and playing bridge, and loved traveling by ship.
His wife died in 2010, and two years later, Mr. Curtis moved to the Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville.
He had been planning a trip to Iceland this summer with a group from the retirement community.
“A colorful, unconventional and gregarious character, he was known for his quirky and funny quips, his love of adventure and pursuit of knowledge, and his seemingly inexhaustible energy,” daughter Carol Curtis, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., wrote in an email.
“He was generous with his time and money, particularly in relation to the three things in his life he felt most passionate about: Oberlin College, his Unitarian church community, and the S.S. John W. Brown,” she wrote.
A memorial service for Mr. Curtis will be held 2 p.m. Oct. 2 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, 333 Dubois Road, Annapolis.
In addition to Ms. Curtis, he is survived by a son, Bob Curtis of New York City; another daughter, Cindy Curtis of Severna Park; and three grandchildren. William R. Curtis was an “unconventional and gregarious character,” his daughter said.