William Tyree

Philosophy

William Earl Tyree spent his entire career at Ripon College. He was a professor of philosophy for 33 years from 1950-1983, 23 of those years as chairman of the department. He was the first to hold the Helen Swift Neilson Professor of Cultural Studies title, from 1969-83.

Tyree retired in 1983 and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Ripon College in 1989. An endowed scholarship, the William E. Tyree Endowed Philosophy Scholarship, was established by generations of his former students in 1997.

One of his former students, movie actor Harrison Ford, Class of 1964, paid tribute to Tyree in the 1989 movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” Ford’s fictional character was a college professor who tells his class: “Archaeology is the search for facts, not truth. If it’s truth you’re looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.”

Tyree was born Aug. 14, 1917, in Rushville, Illinois. He received degrees from Illinois Wesleyan University and Garrett Evangelical Seminary, his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in 1949 and the Master of Sacred Theology program at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He also did post-graduate studies at Cambridge University.

He was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II and chaplain from 1944 to 1946 in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater aboard the USS Joseph T. Dickman. He was a Methodist minister and was known for his singing and baseball.

Henry Holzkamper, Class of 1962, recalled the greatest words of wisdom he learned from Tyree: “Sometimes you have to put aside the books and tend to the education.”

Donna Haubrich Reichle, Class of 1959, said that in her classes with Tyree, “We were exposed to religious philosophies around the world and encouraged to form our own personal credo while being tolerant of those of others.”

Don Schober, Class of 1964, said, “Dr. Tyree opened up my mind to the world of existentialism. … Dr. Tyree impacted me deeply on the emotional and philosophical side of things.”

Tyree died Jan. 2, 2016, at age 98.