To William O. Brown

For those of us who have been members of the African Studies Association since its founding in 1958, it is hard to believe that Bill Brown will no longer be with us at our annual meetings and as an ever willing member of our committees. We became so accustomed to calling on Bill for advice and guidance at moments of crisis that we are just a bit at a loss when we realize we can no longer turn to him in need. Bill was a founding member of the ASA, a member of its board, and its past President. These offices, to which Bill was overwhelmingly elected, were no more than fitting tributes to his qualities as a scholar and a leader in his field of study -- qualities which the members of the Association recognized and to which they gladly paid tribute. But Bill was much more than a founding father; he was one of the small group who saw in the early fifties that African studies were to grow from the concern of a handful of devoted men to a major branch of area studies in the American academic roster. Bill was a member of the small committee which met from time to time in 1956 and 1957 to lay out the goals and purposes of the future association. Bill's wise counsel then, as it has so often since, prevented us from making irretrievable errors. I can remember sitting in several long and confused planning meetings in the Spring of 1958 in which alternative forms of the Association were brought up, one after another, and at the end, the group turned to Bill, who, seemingly, had absorbed all the confusing threads of the discussion. He was able to weave them together into a series of decisions which sounded much more intelligent than they ever were, I am sure, during our discussion; and out of them came the Association as it now is.