William Wheeler Anderson Jr., 77

William Wheeler Anderson Jr. died on Father’s Day, June 15, 2025, a few months after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. On Saturday, June 20, at 11 a.m., friends and family will gather for a memorial service at First Parish in Acton, 20 Lexington Road.

Bill was born in Acton on October 22, 1947, to Mary R. Anderson and William Wheeler Anderson. Bill was a fourth-generation photographer and a longtime scholar of Emerson, Thoreau, and, later, Timothy Leary. He was educated in the Acton public school system, with additional studies at Proctor Academy, Colby College (1971), The Museum School of Boston, and Harvard Divinity School. 

On Memorial Day 1977, during the Acton Independent Battery’s cannon salute, Bill endured an accident that altered the trajectory of his life. In response, he dedicated his photographic profession to celebrate creativity. With extraordinary determination, he learned to use his mouth to load film, enabling him to continue working as a photographer. When not managing Anderson Photo, his father’s store in Acton, he organized poetry readings, musical events, and gallery exhibitions. Bill invariably walked with his camera through forest and field. 

On February 22, 1983, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Bill underwent the last of many operations. He was the first recorded person to undergo a reconstructive hand transplant, in which his right hand was attached to his left arm. In preparation, he trained his body and found a lifelong means to mitigate pain. Thereafter, he was known to build a bathroom, deconstruct a wall, and cook using his hook to make the most perfect lamb you had ever tasted over a fire at a home he designed in Rockland, Maine, called the Temple of Light. 

Bill loved where he was and saw beauty wherever he went. He traveled the world by train, plane, pickup truck, yellow lawn chair, boat, car, and, most commonly, by foot, always documenting, with film, words, or video what he saw: the landscape, architecture new and historic, the human condition, trees, and artists in action. As an artist first, he reveled in ideas and was often ahead of his time. 

Bill carried on the work of his grandmother, photographer Esther Howe Wheeler Anderson, performing her slide presentations of Thoreau Country, which he then produced as a video and, ultimately, a book. He also endeavored to bring both Esther’s and his own art into hospitals to aid the healing process, well before such practice became commonplace. 

Bill loved to dance — with babies, friends, and family — whether in the front hall of 52 Hubbard Street, at honky-tonk events, or in hole-in-the-wall music bars. By the end of his life, he had shed all but his letters, photographs, and books. He spent his last few years in California, revisiting his vast photographic archive to print work for an exhibition. In that time, he was surrounded by animals, memories, family, and friends. Amongst his handwritten papers was a credo by which he lived: “You know what freedom is? Doing something yourself and not having somebody else tell you how to do it.” 

Bill lived between Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Washington, and California. At times he lived with his beloved daughters and families, at times with friends, and at times alone. He was always astounded by the now of wherever he was. 

Bill is survived by his two daughters and their families, Augusta Sparks (Dylan; Henry, Clementine, and Grace) and Elizabeth (Aaron; Anderson and Cordelia Mae); siblings Kenneth Anderson (Lynda), Kristin Emerson (Richard), and Elizabeth Monaghan (Richard); nieces and nephews; and his former wife Katharine Bell.