William T. "Bill" Curtis, age 78, died Monday, June 2, 2025, in Foley, Alabama. Bill was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Jack Lee and Mary Lou (Rogers) Curtis on April 19, 1947. Along with their daughter, Jane Ellen, they made their home in Centerville, Ohio. The family was very musically talented, singing in their Westminster Presbyterian Church choir, and enjoying choral music, which Bill participated in and loved throughout his life. He also sang in the Dayton Rotary Club Boys Choir and traveled around the country as they performed. The Curtis family also had a love of the outdoors and began camping long before it became popular. Bill and his sister, Jane, also spent their summers in the Adirondack Mountains of New York at Hawkeye Trail Camps, where he found his next loves: hiking in the mountains and forests and paddling a canoe. During Bill's high school years, when folk music became popular, several of his friends also in the Centerville H.S. band decided to form a folk singing group that they called "The Ten of Us." They ended up performing all over the area, singing with guitars, a banjo, and Bill on the stand-up bass. They stayed in touch with one another throughout the years since their graduation in 1965 and still have regular reunions around the country to play and sing together and perform a free concert for whoever will listen.

After high school, Bill headed west to college at Utah State University, in Logan, Utah, where he intended to study forestry and become a forest ranger. However, he quickly discovered that the science classes required were way beyond his abilities. He had been involved in plays in high school, so he switched his major to theatre and speech with a minor in music. He performed in many shows there during the school year, and as a member of their summer repertory theatre in the historic Lyric Theatre in Logan. He also was a member of "The Balladeers", the college folk singing group. Even though he wasn't studying forestry, Bill could enjoy the mountains and forests of northern Utah and began his hobby of scenic photography there.

After graduation, Bill returned to Ohio to teach theatre and speech at West Carrollton, Ohio. It was there he met his future wife and love of 54 years, Martha Jane Horney. Martha was attending Miami University nearby, and student taught in the classroom next to Bill's. They were married on August 15, 1971. in Dayton. Bill taught for three years in Ohio and then headed west again with Martha. He spent the summer of 1972 at the acting school at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. He decided after that experience to not pursue a professional acting career and so returned to Utah State to study for his masters' degree, intending to teach in college eventually. After receiving his MFA, college jobs were very scarce, but one of his professors had heard of a unique opportunity in nearby Brigham City, Utah.  Intermountain High School there was looking for a theatre and speech teacher. This was an intertribal boarding school that was housed in what had been a former Army amputee hospital during World War II. This was a U.S. Government facility, and so Bill began his 30-year career with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He taught students from many different tribes from all over the country, including Alaska natives. He enjoyed his students and encouraged many with naturally shy natures to appear in plays and broadcast over the campus wide radio station he installed there.

Bill and Martha bought a turn of the century farmhouse in the little mountain village of Mantua, Utah, up the canyon from Brigham City. Using a do-it-yourself book from Readers' Digest, they renovated it into a beautiful home. Their son, Seth Robert, was born on May 8, 1977. The three of them loved their time in Utah, including the life-long friends they made there. They also added cats to their family, the firsts of a long line of felines in their lives. Bill's and Martha's time in Utah is especially notable as the time that they both came to know Jesus as their Savior. During the last year Intermountain School was open, Bill began teaching himself to use the new invention of "video equipment." As the Bureau of Indian Affairs began to see the need of this new media, Bill became the head of video production for their new unit called the Office of Technical Assistance and Training (OTAT). Within a year, the school was closed in Utah, but Bill's unit was moved to Lawrence, Kansas to Haskell College (now Haskell Indian Nations University.) The family moved there in 1984 and settled in another old home to remodel in Old West Lawrence. In his new program there, Bill taught native college students television production, with he and his students producing videos for Haskell, the Bureau and other government agencies. Bill also had his students involved in local television in Lawrence and running cameras at Haskell and KU football games. In the summers when the students were gone from campus, Bill arranged to be detailed to the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska to produce training videos for them. He then used the video footage he took there as footage that his students could work on during the school year. He was able to see and photograph some incredible scenery in Alaska while he worked with forest service employees. As an added blessing, he could experience a bit of his childhood dream to be a forest ranger! There he was constantly awed by the majesty of God's creation.

Bill and Martha enjoyed their time in Kansas, as they had Utah. They made many life-long friends, were happy in both homes they owned there, were always involved in church and Bill with church choirs and both taught Explorers' Bible Study and followed Jayhawk basketball. He also sang in the Lawrence Civic Choir. Bill retired from Haskell in 2005. At that time, they began attending reunions of Martha's father's World War II group: the 8th Air Force Historical Society. Bill became the official videographer for the society and interviewed many veterans and produced videos for their historical records. They also traveled twice to England, the first -time escorting veterans, with Bill producing videos from their memories of their planes and missions and also interviews with local English people who lived in the vicinity during the war. Bill also created photographic art of the planes and crews, especially of the B-24 bomber, that art often commissioned by the veterans or their families. His photographs now hang in a restaurant in Norwich, England that is called: "The B-24". The other special trip Bill and Martha made was to the Philippines to produce a video for a friend who is a Wycliffe Bible translator there. It was an incredible visit, especially since Martha was born there on Clark Air Force Base. Beginning in 2012, they also took volunteer jobs with the Michigan State Parks as campground hosts in northern Michigan. The beautiful scenery there on Lakes Michigan and Superior and their many lighthouses became subjects for more beautiful photos taken by Bill.

In 2013, they decided to move south to Foley, Alabama to be near Martha's parents in Pensacola, Florida. They enjoyed hosting old friends from the north there, walking the beach at Gulf Shores and eating lots of seafood. In Foley, Bill continued to sing in choirs, they camped along the Florida coast and learned to appreciate Southern living and retirement years together. Despite his worsening struggle with heart disease, at the end of his life, Bill was thankful that his life had been so interesting and wonderful. He told Martha that, "It couldn't have been better."

Bill is preceded in death by his parents, his sister, Jane, and her husband Karl Gurokovich.

He is survived by his wife, Martha Curtis, Foley, AL; their son, Seth Curtis, and his wife, Kate; grandchildren, Paige, Levi, and Simon, (all of Lakeland, MN); niece, Ellen Browne, TN; nephew, Andy Gurokovich, CO; and many cousins.

Visitation will be held at 9:30 AM on Thursday, June 26, 2025 at River City Church, 3001 Lawrence Ave., Lawrence, KS with Memorial Service to follow at 10:30AM. Committal Service will directly following at Sutton Cemetery, 1201 N. 300 Rd- State Rt 56- Baldwin City, KS. Memorial contributions may be made to Grace Fellowship Church, 1740 S. Juniper St, Foley, AL 36535.