Message on Fred Adair
A Celebration of Life Service for Fred Adair on Oct. 22 at 2 p.m. at Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, 3051 Ironbound Rd.
Provost Michael R. Halleran sent the following message to the campus community May 23, 2017 - Ed.
Dear colleagues,
I write to share the news that Fred Adair, Professor of Education, Emeritus, died on May 19, 2017. He retired from the College in 1992 after 21 years of devoted service to the university.
When Professor Fred L. Adair enrolled in Duke University's Master of Arts in Teaching Program in the early 1960s, he had already served his country as a Marine Corps pilot in the World War II, earned a baccalaureate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, and devoted nearly fifteen years to building a successful retail hardware business in his hometown of Washington, North Carolina. After completing his Master's degree in 1964, he taught for a year and then returned to Chapel Hill where he began work on a Ph.D. in Counselor Education. During his doctoral work and for several years after completing the degree in 1968, he served as assistant registrar at Duke, taught at Temple University, and directed the career planning, testing, and placement office at Franklin and Marshall College. As a result, when he joined the faculty at William & Mary in the summer of 1971, Professor Adair brought to the School of Education an unusually diverse and rich background of experience and expertise.
Throughout his years at the College, Professor Adair distinguished himself as an exemplary and popular teacher, a wonderful role model for aspiring counselors, and an unswerving and highly respected advocate for the counseling profession. His leadership of the Family Counseling Center in the School of Education enabled the Center to provide unique practicum experiences for advanced graduate students and invaluable counseling services for more than 100 children and their families each year. And through his service to counseling organizations and on critical licensing boards at both state and national levels, including most recently his service as Chair of the National Board for Certified Counselors, Professor Adair provided consistent, significant, and highly respected leadership for the counseling profession, not only here in the Commonwealth, but increasingly at a national level as well. In recognition of his many contributions in the Commonwealth, Professor Adair received the Lifetime Service Award in 1988 from the Virginia Association of Clinical Counselors and the Career Service Award in 1989 from the Virginia Counselors Association.
Dean of the School of Education Skip Niles said, “Fred was a force in the counseling profession for decades. His influence on the profession and our program was substantial. He was a wonderful mentor to our students. Our current counseling clinic, in which 600 clients per year receive counseling assistance, is the result of Fred's pioneering work to create an active counseling service as part of a vibrant counseling program. He will be greatly missed.”
Any information we receive regarding a service or memorial will be passed along at a later date.
Sincerely,
Michael Halleran