'To take Rotary seriously, but, not myself,’

promised Will Manier, in his acceptance speech.

Here is a sketch of the man himself. 

TRADITION has it that a North Carolina mountain man was engaged in giving biographical data in connection with an application for insurance. Under the heading Father the paper asked, "Born?" He wrote, "Yes." Then it asked, "Died?" He wrote, "Not yet."

True or false, the incident is a reliable pointer to the method that will be pursued in writing this informal personal character sketch of Will R. Manier, Jr. Statistical details of Bill's career are on record, interesting, and easily available, but this is just not that type of thing.

Babies obviously have no control over the matter of which family they are born into, but it is conceivable that Bill Manier, given the choice, would still have decided not to interfere at all with what actually happened. If it was a matter of fate in any sense that he became the child of his parents, it was a very favorable fate.

The Maniers are and have been the veritable salt of the earth, with enough pepper and vinegar added to keep the flavor of the dish nicely balanced. In his home and from his parents Bill got the heritage of a good name and the inspiration of association with and guidance from people genuinely anxious to be right, and equipped to make their effort intelligent and successful.

There were enough other young Maniers around, too, so that Bill ran small risk of being spoiled. The Maniers lived well and thought well. They had good food and good books. They exemplified the best traditions of Southern hospitality, and it is worth noting that the children said, "Yes, sir," and "Yes, ma'am," when answering Father or Mother.

Bill Manier was fortunate, too, in that he grew up between the city of Nashville, Tennessee, and the rural settlement of White Bluff, where the family rusticated most actively and agreeably in the Summer months. In very brief, the child received fine training for being the father of the man.

Education, to the subject of this sketch, is a self- induced and self‑conducted process and the number of years of it he has had are the same as the number of years he has lived, but he went actively and rather joyfully through an adequate term of formal training in an interesting variety of institutions.

At Wallace School, in Nashville, under the keen and sympathetic eye of a fine old Roman, Clarence B. Wallace, Bill took the old‑fashioned classical course: Latin, Greek , English, mathematics, and history. In his classes he ranked high when he graduated somewhere near the turn of the Century.

Next there came two years in Vanderbilt University, then three years at the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and finally two years that brought him out of the Vanderbilt Law School with an LL.B., well won. 

TO catalogue the activities of Bill Manier in school and college and the honors he won would be to run far over the limitations of space for this entire article. The picture must be indicated in broad strokes. Let an old teacher and lifelong friend wield the brush. He writes:

"As a boy in the Wallace School, he was community- minded. The Wallace School was to him a social group to the management of which he was loyal and to the membership of which he tried, with success, to be helpful. He was a member of the Honor Committee, The strength of the hold of the Honor System on this school is due in large part to the courageous enforcement of the Honor System by its early members, such as Manier. Bill established the school paper and was its first editor. These and other activities in our little school community gave early evidences of his wider and larger interests in later life.

The sample is a valid one and may stand for the whole bolt of school and college as Bill Manier lived and enlivened them. One who keeps that "community‑minded" idea in mind will be on the right track.

And now, before getting out into the field of less statistical matters, if anything can be less statistical than what has gone before, Bill Manier has practiced law in NashviIle ethically and successfully, which is rather a neat trick in itself.

There is a splendid record of Captain Will R. Manier, Jr., in the files of the War Department and it has do with service in the World War‑attested by the distinguished Service Cross. The writer has a notion Bill would honestly not care for details to be gone into, if he knew this writing was in progress, and so let us just say no man did his duty more loyally and efficiently. That says a great deal, a very great deal.

Likewise there is the fact that Bill Manier is most fortunately and happily married, as any number of Rotarians who have been in his hospitable, comfortable home will testify. There are two sturdy boys and a lovely little girl, and the house is a home under the direction of "Miss Ruth." Bill Manier's home, though, is a subject on which this particular commentator always tendency to grow lyrical.

Probably no character sketch can make any just claim to being such without some mention of a man's hobbies,  is found here in the original text with the subtitle: 

Here are presented the other members of Will Manier's charming family (left to right): Jimmie, aged 10, Katherine, 5; Mrs. Ruth Manier; and Bobby, aged 7 and in this instance the writer is left fearfully embarrassed by riches.

It is something like the analysis an eminent minister once made of Paul. He claimed that Paul, if he had lived in our day and generation, would have rephrased his famous statement into, "This one thing I do, these 40 other things I am deeply interested in and dabble with." At any rate, that sizes up Bill Manier pretty well. He practices law and he is deeply interested in at least 40 other worth‑while matters.

Maybe, though, Bill's outstanding hobby is organizing things, getting them going on a sound, substantial footing, turning them over to the community in which he lives, and looking for something else that needs a series of good setting‑up exercises. 

IN that field, we dare say, Bill is one of the world's finest successive infiltrationists. He sees a community need. He conceives a sane means of meeting it. He begins to have conferences with steadily expanding groups. He convinces two or three and they each convince two or three more. The first thing anyone knows the machinery for enterprise is built and manned.

That goes for undertakings as widely different as the building of the fine athletic stadium of Vanderbilt University and the formation of the Nashville Iris Society, which is rapidly making Nashville the iris capital of the world. Bill always reminds this writer of the self‑starter on a motor car, except that he also can and will pull the load as long as may be necessary. Anyhow, he is always starting something and making it a useful part of Nashville's life.

It is not by any means that Bill lacks perseverance and loyalty, either; but he is specially gifted in powers of origination and is content to step aside quietly when the community is ready to take over.

Another of Bill Manier's hobbies is conversation‑a lost art in many instances, but not with him. Good talk grows and flourishes in and around Bill Manier, and he is as willing to listen as he is to talk. One of the things he organized in Nashville during recent years was a group that specialized in conversation. It was made up, almost literally, of butcher and baker and candlestick maker. It had no name, no by‑laws, no constitution, and no purpose except to get a group of a dozen or so congenial men ‑in varying lines of endeavor together to swap ideas and gets points of view. It is typical of Bill's possession of constructive curiosity and his desire to find out what is right rather than to prove some preconception.

To be truthful, though, one ought to say that Bill's one outstanding hobby is or are butterbeans, which he eats whenever he can get them, and in any available quantity. A meal at Bill's house that does not include butterbeans is indeed a reliable sign that there are no butterbeans on the market.

Talents? Well, Bill Manier has many, in the informed opinion of this writer,. But his best one is for friendship and friendliness based on sound reasons. Somebody said no man was useless while he had a friend, and on that score Bill must be one of the most useful men anywhere. He has a sort of genius for human relationships and he exercises it among high and low and in between.

An odd thing about Bill Manier, in the writer's opinion, is that he knows  how to read in the best sense of that very exacting word. That is to say, he has a catholic interest that keeps him aware of the trends of the times and keeps him abreast of them. A nice sense of humor keeps him balanced, by the way as does an inveterate dislike of rationalizing. If he should answer any one of the countless questionnaires professional men receive, his would come closer than most do in representing what the executor actually thought rather than what he thought anyone outside would expect him to think.

And what, someone may logically ask, of this much written about Bill Manier and no mention of Rotary? Well, the idea, no matter how ill it has been executed, has been to show by random example how thoroughly he translates Rotary into his life in all its phases. But it should be mentioned en passant that he is a charter member and a former President of the Nashville Rotary Club, has served as District Governor and on various committees of Rotary International, and chairmanned the Resolutions Committee which prepared the now famous Resolution 34 defining Rotary's attitude toward community cooperation. To tell Rotarians more about Manier and Rotary would be supererogation.

It is possible that anyone who has come this far will get the impression that a certain newspaperman feels a certain lawyer is a rather remarkably fine fellow, able seaman, and excellent citizen. That being true, the writer enjoys the sense of pleasure that comes to him who manages by words put on  paper to let others get an accurate notion of what is in his mind and heart.

Written for the August 1936 issue of The Rotarian by W. C. Teague of the "Commercial Appeal" Memphis, Tennessee

Prepared by Wolfgang Ziegler 31 August 2003