William C. Carson ’50

Bill died Oct. 30, 2021, in Lutherville, Md., where he lived in recent years.

A St. Louis (Mo.) Country Day School graduate, Bill majored in geology and belonged to Dial. Following navigation training in the Air Force, he was commissioned. For the next three years he flew on the Strategic Air Command’s B-29s and B-36s.

After earning a Stanford MBA, he worked for several companies over 10 years, leaving the last one, Bell & Howell, where he ran its education division, to become involved with technical education. In 1979 he founded a company to manage private trade schools. In 1996, funding conflicts with the Department of Education forced closure of his last school, Detroit’s only auto-mechanic school.

Having moved from Illinois to Santa Fe, N.M., in 1992, he and his wife founded the highly respected Salazar Partnership, which provided books and other needs to elementary schools.

Bill’s enduring love for the West dated back to boyhood summers in Los Alamos. He was an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and delighted in storytelling. His book, He Moved West with America, was about his great-great grandfather, who was New Mexico’s second territorial governor.

Bill is survived by his wife of 65 years, Georgia; daughters Laura Banes ’84 and Chapin; and three grandchildren, all Princetonians.