Since hearing of Bill's death, I have been struggling to write a remembrance, because I simply don't have the words to express the depth of my sadness knowing that Bill is gone, or the depth of my appreciation for everything that Bill did for me, and for all of his students, during his too-short lifetime.

I have been thinking a lot about Bill lately, and especially today because it is both his birthday and the first day of the annual Vision Sciences Society conference. I am only here at this meeting today because Bill was such a terrific role model, teacher, supervisor, collaborator and mentor during my time at Pomona. Having now had more undergraduate and graduate students of my own than I can remember, I appreciate even more the dedication Bill had to guiding his students through their programs, letting them make their own mistakes, cheering them on when they found success, and helping them find their own voice. Without Bill's support, I would never have done a vision research project during my semester abroad in London; I would never have had the opportunity to work with Bill and one of his graduate students, Robert Lunn, to complete a publishable (but, alas, still unpublished) thesis; I would never have gone to Berkeley to do my PhD in vision science; and I certainly never would have ended up as a Professor, teaching in the very same field that I learned from Bill.

Bill taught me science, but he also taught me the importance of work/life balance -- he loved his work, he loved his students, he loved Pomona, but most of all, he loved his kids. His office was beautifully chaotic -- artwork from his children hanging every which where from the ceiling, and he was always proud to show off the latest masterpiece. He had a sign that summed it all up: "A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind."  It was clear that Bill's mind was anything but sick, so I've taken heart that perhaps my own messy desk may be a good thing after all. The chaos was an illusion in any case - any time Bill needed to find something, he knew exactly in which pile to look, and the practice he had in piecing things together in real life was mirrored in his academic life:  he was better than anyone at taking in what seemed to be a mess of disjointed, complex information, and synthesizing it to come up with novel approaches to age-old questions.

But Bill was also incredibly modest. He accomplished an extraordinary amount in his own research career, developing new paradigms and helping foster new scientific fields of inquiry, and all of that compounded through the tremendously positive impact he had on the lives of so many students. But he never rested on his laurels, and he always encouraged his students and colleagues to try to go that extra step.

At 12:01 this morning, Facebook prompted me that it was William Banks' birthday. With tears in my eyes, I visited his page, and saw my birthday greeting from last year, and his response. Around this same time last year,  I had been invited to give the annual public lecture at the Vision Sciences Society, talking about my research on vision and the amazing, changing, aging brain. Bill's response to my birthday greeting was, "Thanks for the birthday message. Pretty soon I'll be old enough to be one of your subjects. I circulated the announcement of your VSS talk in the department. Very good! I'm sorry now that I decided not to go this year. Thanks also for taking the time when you are getting ready for the talk and all. All the best, Bill." Nearly a quarter of a century after I'd left Pomona, Bill was still cheering me on. He took so much pride in his students' successes, but he must have known that we could never have succeeded without him, and our greatest pride is in having had the chance to be inspired, mentored and guided by him. I wish he could have lived to be old enough to be one of my subjects. And I wish we could have seen him this year at VSS -- there is a tremendous hole at the meeting today. But rather than spend the day wishing for things that could not be, I spent the day remembering Bill, and celebrating his life, because, more than anything, Bill always celebrated life.

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Allison B. Sekuler, Ph.D.
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour (PNB)
Associate Vice-President and Dean (Graduate Studies), McMaster University