Archives West Finding Aid

William E. "Bill" Ames was the former director of the School of Communications at the University of Washington and an active member of the Democratic Party in Washington. Ames was born May 22, 1923 in Brookings S.D. and reared on a farm. He earned an undergraduate degree in history from South Dakota State University, and a PhD in history and journalism from the University of Minnesota, working on newspapers in Iowa, South Dakota and Washington. Bill Ames taught journalism at Iowa State from 1949 to 1952 and from 1954 to 1957. He joined the UW faculty in 1957, and was acting director of the School of Communications in 1961-62 and director from 1962 to 1964. He resigned because of illness in 1964, was director again in 1983, until his second retirement from the school in 1984. For three decades he was a major figure in the Washington State Democratic Party, beginning as precinct committeeman, and working his way up through Democratic Party ranks to become state committeeman, then national committeeman; he attended many Democratic conventions as a delegate. Ames wrote or co-wrote several books, including A History of the National Intelligencer (one of this country's early political newspapers) and Unionism or Hearst: The 1936 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Strike. He met and married Janice Fondy when they were at the University of Iowa. Jan Ames began in journalism and later earned her library degree from the University of Washington, eventually becoming the Director of the Washington Talking Book and Braille library until her retirement in 2002. They had a daughter, Laurie Nichols, and a son, Timothy Ames. Bill Ames died in Seattle on July 6, 1989, after a four year battle with lung cancer.