Architect of Texas Tech law school funding dies at 79

I felt overcome with sadness today when I read of the July 14 death of W. Reed Quilliam Jr. As a state representative from Lubbock in the 1960s, he helped pass legislation that authorized the original funding for the Texas Tech University School of Law. Quilliam recalled the fight over funding for the law school in his 2006 book, “Texas Tech University School of Law: the First 35 Years: 1967 – 2002.” Quilliam, a Democrat who served in the Texas House from 1961-1969, noted in his book that then-Rep. Bill Heatly, D-Paducah, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, had opposed funding for the Texas Tech law school and included a rider in the 1965 appropriations bill that all but ensured that the school would not receive funding. According to Quilliam’s book, a little behind-the-scenes horse trading that assured Heatly $200,000 for a boll weevil eradication program in Heatly’s district freed up funds for the law school in Lubbock, which opened in September 1967. Quilliam joined the Texas Tech law school faculty two years later and taught there for 26 years. Dan Benson, a Tech law professor, says Quilliam taught courses in wills, trusts, estate and gift taxation, and marital property. Benson says Quilliam also practiced law in Lubbock for 12 years prior to joining the law faculty. Quilliam had a wry sense of humor and didn’t mind a joke at his own expense. Benson says Quilliam once overheard a law student commenting that Texas Tech must not pay its law professors very much, because the student had seen “poor old professor Quilliam mowing some rich man’s lawn.” The lawn that Quilliam was mowing was his own, Benson says. Quilliam was 79 at the time of his death.  He was a good man.
-- Mary Alice Robbins