He was a friend of mine for almost three decades. Paraphrasing Mark Antony, I didn’t come to bury him. I come to celebrate his life.

At a testimonial dinner in 2005 to mark Bill’s retirement, due to his advancing illness, as the director of the Reves Center as well as from teaching, I recalled my first encounter with him. I met him in his tiny office on the second floor of the building, adjacent to Merchants Square, now housing a specialty shoe store. He had a secretary, a native of East Asia, whose command of English was questionable.

This was the operation that was called the Center of International Studies at the College of William & Mary. When I mentioned to him that our friend Wendy Reves might be interested in endowing the center, his eyes lit up as if he were perusing Persian rugs in a Teheran bazaar and found a big bargain. The image wasn’t far-fetched because Bill, who subsequently had become an internationally recognized expert on Iran and the Middle East, spent his honeymoon with his young bride Ann in Iran. The honeymoon was followed by months of field- research for his doctoral thesis at Princeton University. In fact, he was among the first American scholars who foretold the coming revolutionary upheaval in that country.

But let’s go back to the beginning of the Reves Center. When Bill heard me out, he said, “Let’s get into action.”

Our task was to make Paul Verkuil, then-president of William & Mary, interested in inviting Wendy Reves to the campus. Verkuil’s first reaction was lukewarm. But a few weeks later, when I received an invitation from the Dallas Museum of Art to the opening ceremonies of its new Wendy and Emery Reves Galleries, a bunch of color slides were included. The slides depicted some of the art treasures Wendy had donated to the museum. They included paintings by van Gogh, Picasso, Gauguin and other world-famous artists, worth millions of dollars. In fact, the art treasures donated by Wendy to the Dallas Art Museum are now estimated to be worth in excess of $400 million.

As I have recalled, those slides did the trick. Wendy made her visit to campus, was impressed and endowed the Center for International Studies with $3 million, until then the largest single private contribution to W&M.

In a span of a few years, Bill transformed the center into an institution that has produced, in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, “the best undergraduate program in international studies in our country.” In fact, it serves as a role model to other universities across the land.

“If Jim Bill,” I said, “had accomplished nothing more in his life than to lead the Reves Center to such heights, it would be plenty. But he has also written much-quoted books, was teacher whose classes overflowed with students, and took the name of W&M to prestigious international conferences around the world.”

In addition, I noted, he helped his wife Ann raise a son and a daughter. Both of them have become highly successful in their chosen professions. Their son Tim is a well-known surgeon, a specialist in hand and reconstructive surgery. Their daughter Rebecca is deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere.

I asked Ann how she would like her husband to be remembered. She said, “Jim has been my life for so long, how am I going to adjust to carry on without him? As I think about what I want Jim to be remembered most, it boils down to his deep love for his family. He loved me, our children and their families unconditionally.”

James Bill’s passing away left not only his family bereft, but also William and Mary’s academic community. They have lost a trailblazer in the field of international education.

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Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from the Virginia Gazette. Shatz is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compellation of his selected columns.