Memorials › William Clinton "Bill" Elsik Sr
William Clinton "Bill" Elsik Sr
8 Oct 1935 – 21 Jan 2011
| Birth | 8 Oct 1935 |
| Death | 21 Jan 2011 |
| Cemetery | Snook Cemetery Snook , Burleson County , Texas , USA |
| Added by | KAM on 16 Jun 2024 |
| FaG | https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/155951481 |
Bio
William "Bill" Clinton Elsik Bill Elsik has passed away Friday January 21, 2011 at the age of 75. Born October 8, 1935, to Isabel Valentine Matcek Elsik and Vilem Tomas Elsik in a sharecropper's house on Indian Camp Prairie, part of the paternal grandparents John Frank and Teresie Kocurek Elsik's farm and ranch in Burleson County, Texas. He was christened in the Caldwell Catholic Church, and he was later confirmed in the Evangelical Unity of the Snook Czech Moravian Brethren Church. Bill grew up on his parents' farm and ranch between Snook and Tunis, Texas. His favorite pastime was hunting and fishing. During rainy periods he and his younger brother would make clay dams in the roadside ditch in front of the house and catch crawfish. During the summers he chopped, picked and weighed cotton. One particularly hot, dry summer he recalled standing over a six inch wide, six foot deep crack in the black gumbo soil and thinking, "This is not for me." He attended grade school at Happy Hill School near Tunis and later Snook Independent schools. He graduated as valedictorian from Snook H.S. in 1953. During high school he managed football and played basketball and softball. He drove a mechanical cotton picker for his father in Burleson and Victoria counties. He attended Texas A & M University and attained a BS, MS and PhD in geology, finally specializing in palynology, the study of fossil pollen and spores. Bill spent one summer hustling jugs on a seismograph line in west Texas for Gulf Oil. At that time he would drive the highways at night with his wife and first son looking to harvest rattles from snakes run over on the road. He found one still wriggling, stopped a short distance away and walked back with a stick to dispatch the snake. As he approached it, a large truck drove by and one of the tires picked up the rattler and swung it through the air a few inches from his head. "God gives us many more lives than cats," he often said. Bill married Mary Lynn Mikeska on June 29, 1957. They had two sons, William Jr. and Curtis, and one daughter, Cheryl Lynn. Bill joined Humble Oil & Refining Co. in 1962, retiring 28 years later from then Exxon Corp. He was a founding member and a president of the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists. He had the honor of having a colleague name a newly discovered spore after him. Bill was preceded in death by his parents and daughter Cheryl Lynn.
Inscription
GO IN PEACE. REJOICE AND PRAISE GOD. OUR WISHES FOR YOU ARE: MAY ALL YOUR DAYS BE BLESSED, KEEP YOU WELL, NEAD AND AFAR WM C. ELSIK 3 JULY 2007 SON OF WILLIAM & ISABEL (MATCEK) ELSIK UNITED IN HOLY MATRIMONY JUNE 29, 1957 BLESSED WITH THREE LOVING CHILDREN WILLIAM CLINTON JR., CURTIS MICHAEL & CHERYL LYNN
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