G William Woerner

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska on December 4,1928 to Ruth Ann Spencer and George William Woerner, and grew up in California with his parents and younger sister, Phoebe Anne.

He graduated from University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in Civil Engineering, and played on the tennis team. He went to Officer’s Candidate School in the Navy and served for 2 years in the Korean war. Upon return, he realized that he had a gift for leadership and went to Harvard Business school, where he met his wife Patty.

Following business school Bill started working in sales at IBM, living in San Jose and Palos Verdes, California, and after a brief time in Connecticut, settled in Lake Forest, Illinois. Here with his wife, he raised his three children, Scott, Leslie, and Kirk. While in the Chicago area he was promoted to midwestern regional manager of sales at IBM. He eventually left IBM to launch several businesses in the information technology arena; Computer Technology, and Distribution Sciences, Inc. and his real love Lift, Inc. Together with Charles Schmidt, he founded this not-for profit company,which identified, trained, hired and placed physically disabled people in computer programming jobs. He continued this work for the next 25 years, until he retired.

In retirement Bill and Patty lived in Santa Fe, NM, Portsmouth, NH, Vero Beach, FL, and finally moved to Tampa, FL. Bill and Patty also established a family camp and cabin on Moosehead Lake, Maine that the extended family has enjoyed and continues to enjoy to this day. Aside from Lift Inc, this beautiful camp on Sand Island was his proudest achievement.

Bill is survived by his children: Scott Woerner and wife Betty, Leslie Finnemore and husband David, and Kirk Woerner and wife Mary. Additionally, he was blessed with four grandchildren: Nathan and Michael Woerner and Samuel and Katherine Finnemore.

We will miss his sense of humor, his songs, his love of life, family, and of the wilderness, and his constant and restless creativity. He was truly a force of nature.

A small service for family and friends will be held at the family camp in Greenville, Maine in mid August.

In lieu of flowers please send donations to the Santa Fe Mountain Center

https://themountaincenter.org/donate/