By BRIAN TYNES

Staff Writer

Legacies live on in many ways. For one former Tech professor, part of the legacy he left was himself.

Dr. Bill Elmore, academic director of biomedical, chemical and industrial engineering, and Dr. Ronald H. Thompson, a professor of chemical engineering, both received a present from a former colleague that neither would have ever expected: his ashes.

While Thompson opted to give his share to Tech's chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers to spread them at his colleague's favorite fishing spot, Elmore kept his share as a memorial.

"He was a great supporter of the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi, and so I keep them on my desk in his honor just as a sort of tribute to him," Elmore, also a professor of chemical engineering, said, speaking on condition that the deceased remain anonymous. "When my time at Tech is done I always thought I would have a ceremony and probably bury them under the Tau Beta Pi sign out front [of Bogard Hall] as a lasting legacy.

"I keep them as a memento and reminder of what he stood for and how I have a responsibility to always serve Tech."

Thompson said Tech's students benefited from the work of the deceased.

"His number one goal was to help the men and women from this area become great engineers, and they have made a big mark in this world," Thompson said. "He loved the kids, and the kids loved him."

Elmore also said he was always ready for a laugh.

"He was a real cut-up, and he always loved a good joke and had a real dry sense of humor," Elmore said.

The professor died in November 1997, and Elmore received the ashes about a year later. The professor's widow suggested the ashes be spread from the roof of Bogard Hall, but Elmore said he was unable to do it.

"She suggested I might want to have a ceremony and I just couldn't bring myself to do it at the time, but I thought 'I'm going to keep them out of respect'," Elmore said. "To me, it was a pretty unique thing to be given somebody's ashes."

Kimberly Ortiz, a senior chemical engineering major, said keeping memories of loved ones is useful in the healing process.

"It's a physical reminder of what they were," Ortiz said. "For some, it's a way to mourn and remember what they were and what they stood for."

Having a piece of someone around every day might be disconcerting in the eyes of some, but receiving a message from that person long after they are gone, might be too much.

"What is unusual is in 2001, several years after his death, I got an e-mail from him dated 1992, and all it said was 'Shape up, Billy, you need this job'," Elmore said. "I don't know how it wandered around out there in the ether of electronic domain but somehow it did, and I got an e-mail nine years after he sent it. That really got my attention, and it really changed my behavior for about a week."

Elmore said his colleague's dedication to Tech was unyielding.

"His wife had retired and moved to her home in Fair Hope, and she wanted him to come down there and join her, but he just couldn't leave Tech," Elmore said. "He loved it and wanted to stay as long as he could."