Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Willard Allen III SPEAKMAN
WILLARD ALLEN SPEAKMAN, III, 67, of Greenville, DE, died suddenly in Antigua, B.W.I., on April 11, 2006, after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Willard, known by all his friends and family as Bill, attended Tower Hill School and graduated from Westminster School in Simsbury, CT in 1956. After receiving his BA degree from Princeton University in 1960, Bill completed his military service at Fort Benning, GA.
Great-grandson of the founder of the Speakman Company, Allen Speakman, Bill began his career with the Speakman Company in 1962. He succeeded his father, Willard Allen Speakman, Jr., as president of the company in 1971 and became chairman in 1978, a position he held until his death. A prominent member of the business community in Wilmington, Bill also served as the chairman of the board of JB Brown (Portland, ME). He was the former president of the Foundation for Economic Education and was on the board of directors of the Independent Institute, institutions that were established to advance free market principles and ideas. Bill strongly believed in the moral good of work and enterprise and gave life-long support to these ideas as well as leadership by example. In the last year of his life, he was quietly proud to be acknowledged for this support in a recently published economic study.
Bill's lifelong commitment to education and learning is reflected in the many boards that he served on to promote education, reading and literacy. In addition to having served as a member of the steering committee of the Campaign for Delaware, a comprehensive five-year capital campaign to raise $225 million for the University of Delaware, and as a trustee of Tower Hill School, he was serving on the board of trustees of Sweet Briar College and was a member of the board of the Wilmington Library, the University of Delaware Library Associates and the Nantucket Atheneum when he died. To adapt the words of his personal hero Winston Churchill, Bill was a modest man who had little to be modest about. Even close friends and family often had little idea of Bill's many achievements across a range of fields and geographies.
Bill was a member of the Vicmead Hunt Club, the Nantucket Yacht Club, the Mill Reef Club in Antigua, B.W.I., the Turf Club in London and the Wilmington Club, where he served as president, an office held by both his father and grandfather, Willard Allen Speakman. It is altogether fitting that Bill should have spent his final days at the Mill Reef Club in Antigua. A valued edition of his wide-ranging library was Quakers of the Caribbean. Bill was proud of his Quaker heritage and exemplified a dedication to thrift and selflessness and a commitment to quietly serve his community and many friends. It was at the Mill Reef Club that Bill's commitment to help and better the lives of many local Antiguans was most apparent and is well remembered. And it was at the Mill Reef Club that Bill and Stephanie fell in love many years ago.
He is survived by wife, Stephanie du Pont Bredin Speakman, his daughter, Isabella Pearson Speakman Johnson, his granddaughter Isabella Speakman Johnson, his sister Susie Speakman Sutch, his nieces Elliot Davis Bernard, Edwina Davis Dutton, Cordelia S. Nickelsen, stepson Samuel Irenee du Pont Hyland and stepdaughter Octavia du Pont Bredin Jones.
A Memorial Service will be held 11 A.M. Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1108 North Adams St., Wilmington, DE. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his name to the University of Delaware Library Associates, Morris Library, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19717-5267, the Mill Reef Fund, P.O. Box 133, Mill Reef, Antigua, B.W.I., or the Nantucket Atheneum, 1 India St., P.O. Box 808, Nantucket, MA 02554.
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