In Memoriam: Bill Eadie

Editor’s Note: Plans are pending for a celebration of life in honor of Bill Eadie. Details will be posted here when they become available.

About halfway through his time at San Diego State University, first as its director of the School of Communication and then as a professor in the School of Journalism and Media Studies, Bill Eadie moved from academia to a more artistic sphere.

Eadie’s exuberant reviews of the San Diego County theater scene, published online in both local and national websites, continued well past his retirement from the SDSU faculty and the two brief administrative positions he held subsequently. 

As a critic, he tended to keep the long knives sheathed, focusing on what he liked about a particular play or musical and its production values, mentioning but rarely dwelling on anything that may have gone amiss.

“Most of the time, I chuckle in response to a play’s jokes,” Eadie wrote in 2023 about a first-time director’s production of a comedy at The Brooks Theatre in Oceanside. “In Ms. (Sandy) Campbell’s production of Good People, I found myself laughing out loud a lot.”

Eadie, characterized by SDSU colleagues as a calm presence amid academic reorganizations and the sometimes contentious realm of university governance, died Nov. 15 at an assisted living facility in San Diego. He was 79.

“He was very respected at the university as someone who would pitch in and do things,” said sociology department chair Norah Shultz, who first crossed paths with Eadie when they both served on the University Senate and then became a friend who attended plays and musicals with him. “Not only was he just this really genuine person, but he professionally could handle things with a calm demeanor.”

His final academic project, “How Communication Became a Discipline” (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), had been a labor of love over many years, said Shultz. 

“This book was something he really wanted to do and he kept getting side-tracked from it,” she said. “This book was his heart…something he really had to say about his field.”  

Bey-Ling Sha, former director of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS) at SDSU and now dean of the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University, said Eadie’s four years as director of the School of Communication, “was a difficult job.” It came, she noted, in the aftermath of a three-way merger of three separate departments, one of which (radio, television and film) had already left the school.

“One of Bill’s important contributions to San Diego State was holding together two sets of faculty, from speech communication and from journalism, with their own distinct cultures and academic traditions,” Sha wrote in an email. “He did this by respecting all faculty members’ perspectives, modeling calm and patient leadership, and mentoring younger faculty like myself.”

Eadie chaired the search committee that recruited Sha to SDSU as an assistant professor of public relations in 2004, and “had a tremendous influence on me, my faculty career and my trajectory in higher education leadership,” she said.

Professional achievement

Eadie taught communication studies for 16 years at California State University, Northridge. He left Northridge in 1995 to become associate director of the National Communication Association, a scholarly membership organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was the only time in his professional career not spent on a college campus.

He was hired at SDSU as director of the School of Communication in the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts (PSFA) in August 2001.

His teaching in JMS was from 2005 to 2014, and he was chair of the University Senate for two years at the end of his faculty career. He came out of retirement and returned to campus in 2017 for two short-term interim positions, vice president for faculty advancement and director of academic relations, then fully retired in January 2019.

William Fisher Eadie II was born Sept. 22, 1946, in Evanston, Illinois. His family moved to Orange County, Calif. in 1958. 

“We came to San Diego quite frequently, in the family,” said Craig Eadie, his younger brother. In 1978, their parents moved to San Diego. “He certainly knew the area very well.”

Eadie attended UCLA for his undergraduate and master’s degrees; he received a Ph.D. in communication from Purdue University in 1974.

During his time on the JMS faculty he was area coordinator for the media studies major and he taught media studies and journalism courses.

Kim Perigo, chair of the School of Communication Alumni Advisory Board, said Eadie was instrumental behind the scenes in keeping a forensics team afloat at a time its future was in question, allowing her to direct the competitive speech and debate group in her last year of graduate school and then continue in the position.

“He could have said no,” Perigo wrote in a remembrance for PSFA. “Aztec forensics owes him a lot because I’m pretty sure if the team had been canceled it would’ve been quite impossible to resurrect it.” 

Recognition in field

He received the Distinguished Service Award from the Western States Communication Association in 2016, and was described in a glowing award presentation as “the person whose service contributions will leave the longest legacy,” “the person who has mentored the most WSCA presidents,” and “the person in the room who has most graced our association with kindness, generosity and goodwill.”

In addition to “When Communication Became a Discipline,” he edited or co-wrote six other books. 

According to his curriculum vitae he began writing about theater as a regional reviewer for the online website Talkin’ Broadway, then branched out as a staff reviewer for sandiego.com and a regional performing-arts review site, San Diego Story. He was a member of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.

“That was a huge part of his life,” said Craig Eadie. From Shakespeare to experimental productions, “he went to all kinds of theater. He did everything.”

“I’ve always loved the arts,” Eadie said in a 2013 interview with The Daily Aztec. “That’s what I really wanted to do when I went to college. I wanted to major in theater, but my parents wouldn’t let me do it. Instead, I majored in communication because I was very interested in that.”

The San Diego Rep’s first post-COVID live stage production, “Mother Road,” was a smashing success in Eadie’s review. He praised its scenic, lighting, sound and costume design, singling out each of the members of the production by name who were responsible for the work.

He delivered a rare pan in March 2022 when an opening-night production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” in Oceanside lost its lead actor and experienced technical problems with its sound design so severe that Eadie switched seats during intermission.

“Words are of consummate import in anything by Stephen Sondheim,” he wrote, “and if one can’t hear the words all is lost.”

Nine months after a rave review of a North Coast Repertory production of “Pippin” in Solana Beach — he called it “the best show I’ve seen at NCRT” — Eadie announced in an April 2024 Facebook post he had retired from reviewing.

“Thanks for reading,” he wrote in a signoff.

Condolences on a Talkin’ Broadway message board praised Eadie for “an encyclopedic knowledge of the Southern California theater scene” and his general appreciation of theater.

He sang with the Orange County Gay Men’s Chorus: MenAlive for 20 years, the organization said in an Instagram remembrance, and served as its chorus care coordinator. He also had a long record of church-related service, most recently with St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego’s Bankers Hill community. At the time of his death he had been a longtime resident of San Diego’s North Park community.

Eadie is survived by his brother, Craig, and a sister, Lynne Oddo. Another sister, Janet Cohen, is predeceased.