Dr. William "Bill" Edwards McCarron Collection

Collection

Identifier: 2008.002

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Dr. William "Bill" Edwards McCarron Collection documents aspects of his military service, his teaching and writing career and his family life.

The materials are divided into four series, including his own graduate student college notebooks, his fiction and nonfiction works, documents on his period of service in Vietnam, and material on his teaching career.

The first series, McCarron’s college notebooks, is subdivided into three sections, dealing with his master's and doctoral work at Boston College, University of Wisconsin, and University of New Mexico.

The second series, Writings, is subdivided into two basic sections: Published Writings and Unpublished Writings. The published writing section consists primarily of articles, essays and reviews in various publications including books, journals and magazines, listed by the title of the work from the most recent works to the oldest works. This sub-series includes McCarron’s thesis and dissertation. The section of his unpublished works is subdivided into three sections, novels, short story collections and textbooks. This section keeps any correspondence with publishers and editors about a work in the same sub-series as the individual work itself.

The third series, Vietnam, is divided into four sub-series, Correspondence to and from Vietnam, Tourist Wars: Notes on Vietnam (used as background material for his novel Beneath the Red, White and Blue), notes and various print and video teaching materials from a Texas A&M-Commerce capstone course entitled Vietnam: Literature, Film and Music and Then and Since: Perspectives on Vietnam: A Monograph.

The fourth series, Teaching Course Materials, includes materials from National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Iowa Institute on Writing, student enrollment notebooks from the United States Air Force Academy, student class cards from Texas A&M University-Commerce (formerly East Texas State University), and McCarron’s Honors Handbook written for the same school.

Dates

Creation: 1964-2008, inclusive

Creator

McCarron, William E. (Person)

Conditions Governing Use

Items in this collection are protected by applicable copyright laws.

Biographical / Historical

Dr. William "Bill" Edwards McCarron was born in Massachusetts and educated at Holy Cross, Boston College, and the University of New Mexico. He served 20 years and seven months in the United States Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1987. He taught for 21 years at Texas A&M-Commerce, retiring as a full professor. He has published more than 100 articles, essays, notes, and stories. His most cherished work is his unpublished material, including four novels and two thematic collections of short fiction. He is married to Adele Baker McCarron and they have two children and three grandchildren. His leisure pursuits include walking, cataloguing wildflowers, and researching family history.

Note that Dr. William "Bill" Edwards McCarron is not actually a "Junior", nor is his father, William Edward McCarron technically a "Senior" because Professor Bill McCarron's middle name comes from his mother's maiden name and ends with an "s" while his father's middle name uses the traditional given name spelling of Edward, without the "s". This is noted here to help the researcher avoid confusion since, as of this writing, the collections of both Dr. William "Bill" Edwards McCarron and his father, William Edward McCarron, are housed in the Special Collections Department at Texas A&M University-Commerce.