William D. Conner is a native of Chillicothe, Ohio and a graduate of Chillicothe High School. After serving in the U.S. Air Force in Wyoming and Texas, he returned home to attend Ohio University at its branch campus in Chillicothe for two years. He graduated from February in 1963 after another two years at the main campus in Athens, Ohio with a B.S. degree, majoring in journalism with minor studies in the sciences.
In 1962 he began his Ohio newspaper career with the Chillicothe Gazette. He also gained experience at the Columbus Dispatch before joining the news staff of the Springfield Daily News, where he realized his ambition to write about science and medicine. He became a weekly science columnist in 1969 and wrote his "Science Scene" column for seven years for the Springfield, Ohio newspaper.
He left Ohio in 1977 to join the public relations staff of AT&T's Bell Laboratories at corporate headquarters in New Jersey. He was a staff writer for the weekly Bell Labs News, and as a science writer produced articles about research and development projects. In 1980, he was publicity chairman for the company's United Way campaign. Also at Bell Labs, Mr. Conner coordinated production of a video for employees to promote the 1980 United Way campaign.
After AT&T began its breakup of the Bell System, he moved in 1982 to the Washington, D.C. area of suburban Maryland. There became editor of a Washington newsletter, Satellite News, an aerospace and telecommunications industry weekly. . In this position, Mr. Conner was a member of the Press Gallery of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
In addition to experience in corporate public and employee relations, Mr. Conner also worked with public relations agencies and with officials of local, state and national government agencies. In 1983, he produced a video on cartoon animation software for the Daniel J. Edelman public relations agency in Washington, D.C. and presented it at the first international personal computer convention in San Francisco.
In 1989, Mr. and Mrs. Conner returned to Ohio to be close to elderly parents and to archaeological sites such as those investigated by Arlington Mallery that he wished to investigate.
Mr. Conner is the author of nationally published articles on science, medicine, technology and archaeology. Now retired, Mr. Conner was also a substitute high school teacher for the South-Western City School District in suburban Columbus, Ohio, during the period September 2001-January 2004.