William A. Wilson

Early life and education William Albert Wilson was born in Tremonton, Utah, to Bill Wilson, who worked as a railroad foreman for Union Pacific, and Lucile Wilson. He was best friends with Eugene England. He became the first of his family to attend university when he enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1951. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Finland in 1953.

While in Finland, he gained an appreciation for Finnish culture, especially the collection of epic poetry, The Kalevala. As a missionary, he met Hannele Blomqvist who was serving as a sister missionary. They studied at BYU together and were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 31, 1957. They had four children together.

In 1967, Wilson resumed teaching at BYU and developed thyroid cancer, undergoing five surgeries to keep the cancer at bay. In 1973, he took a leave of absence from BYU to complete his dissertation in 1974. While at first Wilson focused on supernatural tales and legends, he worked to extend folklore studies in Mormondom to include everyday life.

Wilson revitalized the Folklore Society of Utah in the 1970s by holding meetings with the Utah State Historical Society. He gave lectures to various societies and "anyone who would listen" about the importance of folklore studies. From 1976 to 1984, Wilson chaired the Folk Arts Panel on the Board of the Utah Arts Council. He served on the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Arts Panel for four years in the 1980s, during which he applied for and received funding for an annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. He edited Western Folklore from 1979 to 1983, with the goal of publishing articles that the average college student could understand.

Developing Mormon folklore archives Wilson worked as the director of the folklore program and archives at Utah State University from 1978 to 1985, expanding and formalizing the collection that Austin E. and Alta S. Fife started. established a taxonomy for archiving folk materials, which he developed from Jan Harold Brunvand's system printed in The Study of American Folklore. Wilson's new system is infinitely expandable, allowing for additional classifications within classifications. Wilson also worked to expand undergraduate courses, and helped to enable a new master's program: American studies with an emphasis in folklore. While working at Utah State University, Wilson directed the Fife Folklore Conference, which was becoming more and more popular.

Wilson chaired the English department at BYU from 1985 to 1991. When he returned to BYU in 1985, he began organizing a new folklore archive, using the method he had developed at Utah State University. The archive began with papers that students wrote for Wilson, John Sorenson, an anthropologist, and Thomas E. Cheney, another folklorist. The collection's papers report on legends, beliefs, jokes, songs, and material culture popular with Mormons and/or in the Intermountain West. The first permanent archivist was hired in 1995, and the collection became part of the Harold B. Lee Library's collection when Wilson retired. In 1999, the collection officially became part of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections division of the library, and is called the William A. Wilson Folklore Archives.

Selected works

with

Awards and honors Fellow, American Folklore Society Fellow, Utah State Historical Society Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Scholar, 1990 Utah Governor's Award in the Arts, 1998 Leonard J. Arrington Award, Mormon History Association, 2002 Américo Paredes Award, American Folklore Society High honors, Finnish government and Finnish Literature Society Charles Redd Award from the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters The Aimo Turunen Medal from the Kalevala Society of Finland