Marjorie Joan Williams

Dr. Marjorie J. Williams, first female civilian director of Pathology of the Veterans Administration, recipient of both the National Civil Service Award and the Federal Women’s Award (1967), and the Stitt Award of the Association of Military Surgeons (1972) died --- in her 102nd year. The cause of death was related to CV 19.

Marjorie led the Veterans Administration’s Pathology Division from 1962 – 1980, through an exciting period of growth and modernization. As a colleague, Dr. Bill Reals, Dean of the University of Kansas noted in 1982, “Some of us are privileged at least once in our lifetime to know a genuine leader, an individual who towers above all others, and whose intellect encompasses much more than a limited discipline. Such a person is Marjorie Williams.” She retained these characteristics throughout her life.

Marjorie was born November 22, 1919, in Calcutta, India, to Alfred Norman Dix and his wife, Catherine Bagshawe Dix. Her parents were the fourth generation of English expatriates working in India. Children of such families normally were sent back to England to be raised by grandparents and extended family, as was Marjorie.

Marjorie attended Malvern Girl’s College (now Malvern St James) in Worcestershire, and graduated in 1943 from the University of Bristol Medical School specializing in Pathology.

Marjorie met Bill Williams, a physician attached to the U. S. Army in England, while in Medical School and they were married in 1943. She emigrated to the United States in 1944. Together, the couple completed specialist training in New Orleans (Tulane University), and then moved to Joplin, MO where Bill practiced Pediatrics. Their only surviving son, Bob Williams, was born in Joplin in 1946. In 1948 they moved to Temple, TX to join a substantial medical community. Marjorie began her 30-year distinguished career with the Veterans Administration. Unusual for a woman at the time, Marjorie rose rapidly within the Veterans Administration, building and championing diverse staffs, laboratory modernization, and collegial relationships throughout the medical communities within the US and abroad.

Marjorie quickly became a sought-after medical conference presence, presenting research papers on cancer, advocating adoption of new technologies to aid research, and fostering relationships between military and university medical institutions. In 1964, Marjorie was elevated to a leadership position the VA Headquarters in Washington DC and, in the same time frame, her husband Bill joined an NIH research team at its Maryland campus. Both Drs. Williams took great pleasure in fostering formal relationships between their respective medical specialty groups and around the world. Beyond individual research papers, both Drs. Williams published ground-breaking books; she, a review of Soviet approaches to pathology (1979), and he, a summary of NIH research, covering 20 years and 12 regional hospitals, of perinatal indicators of birth defects and disabilities (1972). She retired from the Veterans Administration in 1980.

In retirement, Marjorie continued Grand Rounds at George Washington University Hospital into her 80s, inaugurated the English-Speaking Union of Washington DC Shakespeare Competition for high school students, joined the Capital Speakers Club and The Sulgrave Club, and began to

work on her autobiography in earnest. In April 2018, the University of Bristol Medical School Archives accepted Marjories’s autobiography, published in 2017 by Posterity Press, for their wartime archives.

Bill and Marjorie traveled extensively all over the world. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1993. Bill died in early 1994. Marjorie’s involvement with the English-Speaking Union led to her second marriage in 1996, to the widowed Walter Wright III (known as Tony). Marjorie and Tony enjoyed life and extensive travel together until his death in 2006.

Marjorie is survived by her son, Bob (Anne) of Tampa, FL; two grandchildren, Cory Williams of Tampa, FL, and Dylan Williams of New Orleans, LA; her brother-in-law, Dr. Frederick Wright of Southwest Harbor, ME; and close friends and relations on both sides of the Atlantic. A memorial service at St. Albans Church, Washington, DC, and interment at Arlington National Cemetery will occur at a later date.