{"id":42961,"date":"2013-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2013\/04\/01\/williams-remembers-his-roots\/"},"modified":"2013-04-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T05:00:00","slug":"williams-remembers-his-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2013\/04\/01\/williams-remembers-his-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams remembers his roots"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\"><p>\nIn the College of Pharmacy dwells the Joseph D. Williams Auditorium &mdash; the one with the name on the wall next to the oil painting and bronze bust and plaque. That&rsquo;s Joe Williams, World War II vet, pharmaceutical salesman, company president, proud UNMC alum.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe 1950 graduate rose through the ranks of the pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis. After a merger, he was eventually president, then chairman and CEO of Warner-Lambert. But he was first &ldquo;fascinated&rdquo; by pharmacy as a kid visiting his granddad&rsquo;s Pawnee City, Neb., drugstore.<\/p>\n<p>\nHe&rsquo;d become the kind of guy they name auditoriums after at his alma mater. The kind of guy who can start a story with: &ldquo;We were in Howard Baker&rsquo;s office. And I said to Howard&hellip;&rdquo; This was when Baker was President Reagan&rsquo;s chief of staff.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt would be easy for a guy like that to forget where he came from, but he hasn&rsquo;t.<\/p>\n<p>\nOn a recent visit back to UNMC he said he&rsquo;s accomplished what he has because he had a good background, a good education. And because he enjoyed what he did.<\/p>\n<p>\n&ldquo;I had an aptitude for it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I liked it a lot.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>\nHe succeeded, he said, because he was a pharmacist. His was a drug company that excelled at research in part because its CEO was a guy who knew the business from the ground up.<\/p>\n<p>\nWhen he started his career, Williams&rsquo; home base was in Beatrice, Neb. By the time he retired, he had access to a corporate jet. So what did he do on his last day? He flew back to Beatrice. It looked like they were going to land on Main Street. &ldquo;It looked like a strafing run,&rdquo; Williams said.<\/p>\n<p>\nThat night, he had dinner with his pals from the old days.<\/p>\n<p>\nNow long retired, Williams recently made a gift commitment of $2.5 million toward a proposed new $35 million College of Pharmacy building. Construction is expected to begin in February 2014 with completion in July 2015. The building would be located just east of the Sorrell Center.<\/p>\n<p>\nWhen he was back, Williams met with College of Pharmacy investigators, who were excited to meet with an alum-done-good. He was excited to hear all that they were working on.<\/p>\n<p>\nThey&rsquo;ll be able to do even more soon, Williams said. The new building will mean more graduates with good educations, who go on to love what they do.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe College of Pharmacy building project is one of UNMC&rsquo;s top priorities for the Campaign for Nebraska: Unlimited Possibilities. To support this project, contact the University of Nebraska Foundation&rsquo;s Patty Sherman at 402-502-4114 or psherman@nufoundation.org.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the College of Pharmacy dwells the Joseph D. Williams Auditorium &#8211; the one with the name on the wall next to the oil painting and bronze bust and plaque. That&#8217;s Joe Williams, World War II vet, pharmaceutical salesman, company president, proud UNMC alum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","department-connect-old","author_override-kalani-simpson"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Williams remembers his roots<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the College of Pharmacy dwells the Joseph D. 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