ALUMNI PROFILE
Dr. William Hammitt
Professor emeritus, parks, recreation and tourism management, Clemson University
Bluffton '65
Major: material science
Scrolling down the alphabet. Encouraged by his high school guidance counselor, Bill began looking at colleges with baseball programs. He flipped through a copy of Toward College in Ohio, starting at the beginning of the alphabet. When he reached the “B”s and Bluffton, he liked what he read and sent a letter. Bluffton invited him to visit, and that sealed the deal. “I attended classes and met the baseball team; that was my introduction to college and college life,” he says.
All about the experience. Bill’s college career was filled with Beaver baseball games; a “certain lady, Sally (Brookmyer x65) Hammitt, who became my wife;” and science classes, as he was a material science major. He played four years of baseball and was a member of the 1962 team that was inducted into the 2006-07 Athletics Hall of Fame.
A textbook case. While still a student at Bluffton, conversations with Ollie Diller and Robert Kreider guided Bill toward a forestry career and graduate school. Bill was teaching in the Goshen (Ind.) public school system when he began studying forestry at the University of Michigan (UM), going on to earn bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. He ended up teaching classes at UM and the University of Tennessee before moving on to Clemson University, where he joined the parks, recreation and tourism management department. Bill was able to use a textbook he co-authored—Wildland Recreation: Ecology and Management—at bothinstitutions. He has since retired from teaching but still enjoys doing research and consulting work at Clemson.
Money grew on trees. Very few people can claim ownership of a black walnut tree plantation, and Bill is one of them. In the early 1970s, when black walnut trees were highly profitable, Bill decided to plant trees at his family’s farm in southern Ohio. At one point he had more than 2,200 trees! He has thinned the plantation to 800 veneerquality trees. Bill and his wife travel to Ohio about five times a year to spend some quality time relaxing in their circa-1850 log cabin and to care for the trees.
For love of the game. While his baseball-playing days ended after Bluffton, Bill’s love of the game takes him to Florida each spring to be a ticket seller at the Cincinnati Reds spring training camp. While he claims he’s too old to play baseball, he still gets a thrill from being near the team and watching the Reds take the field.
Doing what he loves. Bill has had numerous opportunities to share his love of outdoor recreation science with the world. Most recently, he was invited by the Outdoor Recreation Society of the Republic of China to present on recreational resource management in Taiwan. Bill spent his free time in Taiwan visiting national parks and museums and enjoying the unique landscapes.
— Andréa Ressler ’09
