WARE COUNTY GA Obit - William R. Darden File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Walker Winge, barbarawinge@yahoo.com) http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/ware/obit/darden.txt Table of Contents page: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/ware.htm Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm SOCIETY FOR MARKETING ADVANCES SMA Newsletter, Fall 1999 Vl. 2 #2 TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM R. DARDEN, 1936-1999 The marketing discipline suffered a great loss earlier this year when Bill Darden, a distinguished SMA Fellow, was killed in an airplane accident. Bill was a native of Waycross, GA where he excelled in football, among other things. After attending Georgia Tech, Bill enterd the Ph.D. program at the University of North Carolina where Dick Levin served as his mentor. Bill became well schooled in quantitative sociological methods and left a major impact on the marketing discipline. Bill held academic jobs LSU, the University of Georgia, the University of Arkansas, and LSU again. He held the R. A. and Vivien Young Chair at Arkansas and was the Picadilly Distinguised Professor of Marketing at LSU. Bill had a way of getting more out of students than they ever thought they could give. He was demanding, but, every doctoral student wanted him on an examination committee because we all knew that in the end, he was on "our side." He wanted so badly for his students to do well. Bill was an early pioeer in structural equations modeling and began teaching casual modeling classes before most of us knew what LISREL was. He epitomized what it is to be a scholar. Bill's professional achievements are far too numerous to list. A few highlights represent his contribution to the discipline. Bill always told his students that "the worse thing that ever happened to him was getting the first academic paper he ever wrote published in THE JOURNAL OF MARKETING." He said he thought that we shouldn't think it was that easy. The truth is, Bill was a tireless worker and his research scholarly article appearing only weeks before his death. For a time in the 70s, it is quite certain that he was the most prolific contributer to THE JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH if not to all of the marketing discipline. Bill's vitae more resembled the thickness of a dictionary. His service to the discipline was exemplary as well. Bill served as Editor of THE JOURNAL OF RETAILING, THE JOURNAL OF THE ACADEMY OF MARKETING SCIENCE, and THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH. He was named SMA Fellow in 1990. Bill had two passionate hobblies: flying and fly-fishing. He got great enjoyment from both. Perhaps its somehow appropriate that he spent his last hours doing something we all knew him for so wll. Ther are many of us who are better scholars and better people because of Bill. Barry J. Babin ======================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for FREE access. ==============