William “T” Woodruff Taylor, Jr. ’32 passed away May 14. He was born April 1, 1912, in Warrenton, N.C., to Dr. W.W. Taylor and Elizabeth Wallace Poindexter Taylor.
He studied as an undergraduate at Davidson and the UNC Chapel Hill. He was forced to quit school because of the Depression and worked in numerous small jobs. He then attended Wake Forest Law School from 1932 until August 1933 when he passed the North Carolina Bar examination.
Immediately after Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for service in the U.S. Army and served until he was honorably discharged.
He practiced law in North Carolina for 60 years, and, in 1962, was a founding member of the Raleigh firm of Maupin Taylor & Ellis, where he practiced until his retirement on Dec. 31, 1993.
While practicing in Warrenton, he served as a prosecuting attorney of the local recorder’s court, as county attorney, as attorney for the town of Warrenton, and represented Warrenton in the N.C. General Assembly for four sessions. He was elected to membership on the board of directors of the Citizens Bank of Warrenton and served on the board for 18 years. He was active in the N.C. Bar Association for many years and served as its president-elect and president, and, as one of the 12 members of the N.C. Bar Association appointed to study problems arising from a limited malpractice insurance market, he became a founding member of Lawyers Mutual Liability Insurance Company of North Carolina and served on its board of directors. He also served on the N.C. General Statutes Commission.
He served on the board of trustees of East Carolina University for 15 years and on the board of governors of the University of North Carolina for three years.
In 1991, Mr. Taylor received the honorary degree of doctor of laws from Campbell University. He was appointed to the Campbell University Presidential Board of Advisors in 2001.
Active in Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Warrenton for many years, he served in all positions open to laymen and taught an adult Bible class for 10 years. After moving to Raleigh and becoming a member of the Church of the Good Shepherd, he taught an adult Bible class there for five more years. Mr. Taylor retired to Lexington, Va., in 1993 where he became a member of St. Paul’s Anglican Church and served on its vestry for three years.
A staunch Southerner, Mr. Taylor could tell endless stories of the experiences of his ancestors during and after the Civil War. He wrote a book about the position of the South during the tragic era of the 1860s published under the name Let’s Tell Our Side of It for a Change.