MinerAlert
MinerAlert
For the past 21 years, William Franklin "Willie" Quinn has been a member of the UTEP Heritage Commission and a celebrated chronicler of the University’s history.
His first project was a chronology describing the construction and name changes of every building on campus. It took two years to complete, and a banner with the timeline still hangs in the Heritage House today. Quinn’s research was essential to the celebration of UTEP’s Centennial in 2014 as well as the ongoing 75-year celebration of the first Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering degree.
Quinn was born and raised in El Paso. His father, Franklin Clingman Quinn, was born in the Philippines and served in the military. The family moved throughout Texas, California and Florida before Franklin and his wife, Mildred Ann Nowell, returned permanently to El Paso.
Quinn attended Austin High School and started his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at Texas Western College, now UTEP, in 1950. While at Texas Western, he was a member of the notoriously mischievous Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. He insists he didn’t play a part in their most memorable prank, placing a live alligator in a professor’s office. As for other pranks, he says “We haven’t passed the statute of limitations yet.”
In his final year at Texas Western, Quinn won a senior engineering competition for his design of a timber plate girder. The prize was a free one-year membership to the local American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which he credits with helping him start his career.
“I thought I might as well participate,” he said. “That eventually led to positions with the state ASCE and the national ASCE. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t gotten a free membership, thanks to the civil engineering department.”
After graduation, Quinn enlisted and served in the Army’s Anti-Aircraft Artillery Unit in Baltimore, Maryland. He met his wife, Patt, on a blind date in Washington, D.C., while she was working as a chemist for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
After leaving the Army, Quinn found a job at El Paso Natural Gas, where he worked for 41 years before his retirement in 1997. He and Patt raised four children in El Paso. They now have six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Of the Distinguished Alumni Award, he said, “I’m humbled and honored to have been selected … I’m still asking, ‘Why me?’”
