Bill Cramer was a Gifted Historian

Commendable civic efforts are underway in Williamsburg to organize a historical society to document and preserve the celebrated history of the town and surrounding area. Roane Lytle was elected president of this fledgling organization. Other officers are Cathy Over, Peggy Mingle and Lugene Shelly.

The group hopes to acquire space to exhibit the town’s memorabilia and highlight its illustrious history. According to Lytle, one of the projects being considered is a William Cramer Room that the society would fill with some of his historic acquisitions.

For people who might not recognize the name of Bill Cramer, he was founder and chief executive of the original Williamsburg Heritage and Historical Society that was located in the town’s high school. From 1990s onward I always consulted Bill before writing anything about Williamsburg. Many of our conversations were in his office/archive/confectionary center at the school. In order to help finance the activities of the society he sold snacks and candy to students during noontime and class breaks.

His filing cabinets brimmed with meticulously correlated newspaper clippings and details about the town’s history and people. If someone wanted to know what school football teams had undefeated seasons, the answer was at Bill’s fingertips. If there was a question about how and when the community transitioned from the canal era to its mill period, historian Cramer could supply the details.

The display cases updated and maintained by Bill in the high school’s lobby contained information and artifacts from Williamsburg’s past. A photograph, for example, of the most senior Cove officer to ever serve in the U.S. military, Army Lieutenant General (three stars) Vaughn Lang, class of 1945, shows Lang with his boss at the time, President Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of Bill’s work with the Heritage and Historical Society was his planning and execution of the 1998 centennial reunion celebration of Williamsburg High School. Cramer was the guiding force in arranging a full schedule of events--everything from a dinner-dance at the Jaffa Shrine to historic and nostalgia exhibits in the school’s old gymnasium. It was during this time that Bill suggested to me an activity that put money in my pocket and funds in the coffer of the historical society.

The cover of my first book on Cove History, “The Cove–Then and Now,” published in 1997, had a photo showing the entrance to Williamsburg High School, framed, I thought, rather majestically by the trees in front of the school. Bill liked the photo, and the book, and suggested I set up a card table and sell the publication at the reunion’s Saturday afternoon open house. I did, and sold more than 50 copies in two hours. I split my profit with Bill’s organization.

In later years, slowed by cerebral strokes, Bill shuffled while going about his activities. But on Jan. 29, 2001, he suffered yet another stroke when driving from Hollidaysburg to Williamsburg. He managed to guide his car safely off the highway, but died five days later at the Van Zandt VA Medical Center in Altoona. He was 72.

From a community that has produced some of the most notable “ Cove Giants of the 20th Century,” William H. Cramer proudly stands among those luminaries.