The Brown University Library will pay tribute to three individuals for their extraordinary service and generosity by giving them the William Williams Award. Established in 1988, the William Williams Award is the Library’s highest honor. The award commemorates William Williams, Brown Class of 1769, who sequestered the College library in his home in Wrentham, Mass., throughout the Revolutionary War This year the Friends of the Library Board has unanimously approved the nominations of Abbott Gleason, Brenton Thurston, and Don Wilmeth.
A brief ceremony will take place immediately preceding the Library’s commencement forum, “Garibaldi Panorama makes its Virtual Debut” at 1:15 p.m. in the Lownes Room of the John Hay Library. Abbott Gleason and Don Wilmeth, Professors Emeriti in the Departments of History and Theatre, Speech, and Dance respectively, will accept their awards while Brenton Thurston will be recognized posthumously.
“All three of our honorees have helped to make the Brown University Library a vibrant center for research and scholarly life on campus,” said Harriette Hemmasi, Joukowsky Family University Librarian. “I am pleased to have an opportunity to publicly acknowledge their thousands of hours of volunteer work and tremendous generosity. Our library, indeed our university, is a community effort; its success is the result of countless acts of charity, both in terms of money and in gifts of time, that make Brown and College Hill such an intellectually rich and invigorating place to live, work, and study. Our honorees demonstrate the spirit of engagement and philanthropy that is integral to maintaining a truly first-rate academic institution.”
Both the ceremony and the subsequent forum are free and open to the public.
Abbott Gleason
Professor Emeritus of History Abbott Gleason, known as “Tom” to his many friends and colleagues, has been a longtime supporter of the Brown Library. His Brown affiliations began when he joined the Department of History in 1968 and continue today, post Emeritus, through his activities as a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies. The Library has benefited from Tom’s generosity for many years, his gifts of books, numbering well over 2,500 volumes, ranging in subject matter from early Americana to Russian art, and from single items to entire collections. His most recent gifts illustrate both his wide-ranging interests and reflect the breadth of Brown’s Library collections. In 2005, he gave some 700 books in the field of Russian art, including many scarce titles published during the Soviet era. More recently still, he has given books in diverse areas, from a first edition of Tennyson’s A Dream of Fair Women, to a recent limited edition of The Laying on of Hands by Alan Bennett to a signed copy of On Nineteen Eighty Four, of which Tom is one of the editors.
Tom is a prime example of faculty-library symbiosis at its best, spanning both tangible gifts and the gift of time, knowledge, and encouragement as the Library supports the academic and research goals of the University.
Brenton Thurston
Brenton Thurston exemplified the spirit of town and gown in that he had no ties to Brown other than his devotion to its Library. For over thirty years, he gave literally thousands of hours to the expansion and maintenance of the Library’s world-class postage stamp collections. The Webster Knight Stamp Collection arrived at Brown in 1938 and since that time, through gifts, notably those of George Champlin and Robert T. Galkin, and financial support restricted to the collections, Brown’s holdings have grown to the point where they are among the three largest publicly accessible collections in the US. The work of expending the funds, mounting the stamps and providing basic access has been, since 1938, the responsibility of a self-perpetuating Stamp Committee. Brenton Thurston faithfully carried out his responsibilities as Committee member not only through his thirty years of diligent effort but through his deep knowledge of the international stamp trade. Without the Committee, Brenton Thurston and his Committee colleagues, the stamp collections at Brown would wither.
Don Wilmeth
Don Wilmeth, Professor Emeritus of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown, is a long-time benefactor of the Library, both in material terms and in terms of service. As one of the nation’s most eminent scholars in American theatre history, he helped to build Brown’s Library holdings in his field, especially in the John Hay Library. He was instrumental in securing gifts of collections over the years including the Jenner Collection of Theatre Posters, the Albert Collection of George Bernard Shaw and recently, the Maitland Collection of Shaw manuscripts. Here at Brown, his interest in popular culture led to his being made honorary Curator of the H. Adrian Smith Magic Collection, in which he worked providing access and context as we cataloged and made the collection available to scholars. He donated his own research papers to the University Archives as well as, from the Department, a very extensive historical group of theatre related materials from many decades of student productions. He has long been a valued member of the Friends of the Library Board and has continued his membership post retirement and his move to New Hampshire. When he retired, he designated that the funds raised in his honor from a host of friends, colleagues and former students be donated to the Friends to establish the Wilmeth endowed lecture series, now in its fifth successful year.