William Maxwell became a Baha’i in 1952, just before graduating from Oregon State University. Soon thereafter he was deepened in the Faith at the Geyserville Summer School and in the Baha’i Community of Berkeley, California.
The U.S. Army drafted him in 1953, accorded him “Non-Combatant” status, assigned him to the medical corps, and sent him to Korea to serve at the 43rd M.A.S.H. (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital). He was the first U.S. soldier to be honorably discharged in Korea, 1955, to teach at a university there where he became the first Baha’i pioneer to that country during Shoghi Effendi’s Ten Year Crusade, 1953 -1963.
He has served on local spiritual assemblies in Kwangju, Korea; Taegu Korea; Seoul, Korea; Kaduna, and Port Harcourt, Nigeria; Raleigh, NC; Phoenix, Arizona; and Suva, Fiji. He has served as an Auxiliary Board member in Northeast Asia under Hand of the Cause Agnes Alexander and Northeast U.S. and Canada, under Hand of the Cause Zikrullah Khadem. He was the first chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of Northeast Asia, headquartered in Tokyo, 1957; and was also elected to the National Spiritual Assemblies of the United States, on two different decades, between pioneering in Korea, Nigeria and Fiji. He is probably the only Baha’i in the world to serve on four national spiritual assemblies, being elected chairman of three. In 1968, he was among the first appointees to the newly established Continental Board of Counselors, with responsibility for Northwest Africa.
He has offered courses at Baha’i schools and institutes around the world at such places as Korea; Green Acre; Annecy, France; Bosch; Honolulu; Albania; Banff; Croatia; Kosovo; Northern Ireland; Landegg, Switzerland; Fiji; Greece; Samoa; etc.
His favorite courses are God Passes By, Parenting, and “The Power of Dreams to Improve Individuals and Cultures.”
Academically, William earned his doctorate at Harvard University and has written or edited seventeen books published by such publishers as Collier-MacMillan, London; Baraka Press, Kaduna, Nigeria; Franklin Institute Press, Philadelphia. Some have been translated and published in French, Korean and Albanian. His most popular is “SuperParenting: Child Rearing for the New Millennium, available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.
William now lives at the Desert Rose Baha’i Institute, Eloy, Arizona. His wife, Mary Elizabeth, also pioneered to the Indian tribes of Idaho, to Koror, Caroline Islands in the South Pacific. She passed to the next world in September, 2001.
William’s unfinished goal or dream is to help establish somewhere on this blue, brown, and green planet, a model university for the future.
