William A. Price 1953-2024
Gospel Justice Family and Friends —These were the guiding principles and greatest loves of Bill’s life.
Born in Champaign IL, he experienced many moves during his childhood due to his father’s career in the US Foreign Service. He got to enjoy Bermuda (kindergarten); Silver Spring, MD, West Berlin (when JFK visited), and Champaign again (various grammar school years); Halifax, NS, Canada (high school at the Halifax Grammar School); and Vienna, Austria, and Stuttgart, Germany (study abroad as an undergraduate and during law school). This experience left him with close friends in Canada and Western Europe as well as those in the US.
Bill had a broad range of legal knowledge and was given the ISBA’s Matthew Maloney Tradition of Excellence Award by his peers, recognizing his pro bono and ISBA volunteer work, but his life held much more than simply his legal work, whether paid, pro bono, or volunteer with bar association committees and IICLE, where he exercised the interests in policymaking that drew him to earn a Masters Degree in Public Policy as well as his JD from Duke University. For instance, Bill never lost his love of history, and especially military history, that he studied as a UIUC undergraduate. He stayed in touch with his thesis advisor, Professor “Nick” Nichols until Prof. Nichols died, and the family stopped to see Nick on a number of trips east to visit family in Canada. Bill also accumulated a number of books about the Black Hawk War in Northern Illinois, hoping to someday be able to write a book about the young Abraham Lincoln’s development as a leader from his time fighting in that war. And Bill’s sons can testify to his extensive knowledge of Civil War battles from their personal experiences on the fields of Shiloh and Gettysburg.
Bill married Susan N. Currie in May 1978, having gotten to know her at both a graduate student Bible study and the Blacknall Presbyterian Church choir in Durham NC, while Bill was in law school and just after Susan had decided against pursuing a PhD in Zoology in favor of a writing and editing career. They lived about 20 years in Wheaton before moving to their current Warrenville home. They raised two sons, Ian and Charles, and along the way the family has been companioned by an assortment of cats, dogs, and ferrets, and even a couple of gerbils when the boys were young.
Bill enjoyed the family’s annual road trips, mostly to see his mother and brothers in maritime Canada, stopping in at the Currie family in upstate NY along the way. However, at least one year saw the family taking an epic camping trip to explore the northern Rockies (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and the Dakotas), and Bill and Susan managed a handful of trips to connect with friends in Europe, as well as a memorable trip to Vancouver on the occasion of the publication of Bill’s reference book on LLCs.
Bill died January 14, 2024, of an unexpectedly aggressive metastatic cancer. Bill’s father Arthur L Price Jr., grandparents Dorothy and Arthur Price, and M. Herbert and Hazel Alexander, predeceased Bill. Family members still alive and feeling Bill’s absence include his mother Nancy Price, wife Susan NC Price, brothers Paul and Daniel (Basia) Price, sons Ian and Charles, beloved nieces Meaghan (Gabriel Painchaud), Hilary (Adrian C) and Avery (Marc), and nephew Colin (Lacey), along with granddaughter Ekaterin Price, and numerous cousins and grandniblings.
A memorial service will be planned later in the spring, probably in April or May, when the weather is friendlier to travelers. Bill’s family does not need flowers. Memorial gifts given through his church, the Congregational Church of Batavia, will be put towards the continuing needs of the church’s music ministry. Gifts in his honor may also be made in his name to the chorus he and Susan have enjoyed for years (first listening to and then singing with), Acappellago, or whatever charity is closest to your own heart.