William C. McCoy Jr. ’45

Bill died March 9, 2023. He was 99.

Finishing Exeter in 1941, Bill turned 18 three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor and volunteered for the Navy Reserve. He studied engineering at Princeton and Cornell, graduating in 1944. He was a member of Charter Club.

After serving on the USS General J.H. McRae, he returned to home to Ohio, graduated from Case Western Reserve Law School, joined his father’s firm, and married Julia Millikin Nash.

As an intellectual-property lawyer, Bill argued twice before the Supreme Court in Kewanee Oil v. Bicron and General Motors v. Devex Corp. In private life, as mayor of Hunting Valley, Ohio, he prioritized conserving open space. He helped the Cleveland Museum of Natural History conserve fragile ecosystems in northeast Ohio. He was a founder of the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, the Great Lakes Basin Conservancy, and in Ontario, the Georgian Bay Land Trust.

Bill was predeceased by his two wives. After losing Julia in 1985, Bill married his longtime friend, widow Eleanor Yager Bonnie, in 1996. He is survived by children Sarah, Louise Franke, William, and Peter; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.