Dr. William "Bill" Pulte's Obituary
Dr. William Pulte passed away March 20, 2023, and will be laid to rest at Church of the Incarnation at 11AM Friday, March 31, 2023. Visitation will take place Thursday evening from 6-8PM at Restland Funeral Home.
Dr. William “Bill” Pulte was born in Gainesville, Texas on January 13th, 1941. Bill was a pre-war baby who lived through the struggles of World War II and rationing. As a child, Bill developed a love of reading, especially comic books, which blossomed into a love of knowledge, adventure, and intellectual pursuits. Bill was a student at Gainesville High School, but ultimately graduated from the Franciscan junior seminary on the Mission Concepcion grounds in San Antonio, Texas in 1959. Bill graduated from North Texas State University in Denton, now the University of North Texas, with degrees in Spanish.
Realizing his love of language, he become an educator and taught Spanish at Gainesville High School, and later German and Latin at North Texas State University. At North Texas, Bill met Kathleen Burrow. The two married on his birthday in January 1968 and headed off to Austin where Bill received a PhD in Linguistics. After graduate school, the need to document Native American languages took Bill and Cathy to Tahlequah, Oklahoma where Dr. Pulte worked with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma on language revitalization projects laying the groundwork for Cherokee language preservation and bilingual education programs. At the Cherokee Nation, Dr. Pulte developed Cherokee language learning materials for elementary school students and published the Cherokee English Dictionary with Durbin Feeling. These experiences provided the foundation for the development of academic programs in bilingual education at SMU in Dallas, where Dr. Pulte became a professor in the anthropology department in January 1973. Dr. Pulte remained at SMU for 42 years teaching linguistic anthropology and bilingual education courses and mentoring thousands of bilingual teachers in the Dallas area. Dr. Pulte’s work in bilingual education established a far-reaching network of bilingual educators across Texas and the United States.
Bill Pulte is preceded in death by his parents William and Harriet Pulte of Gainesville and his wife Cathy. Bill is survived by his sister Helen of Virginia Beach, Virginia, his son Greg, his daughter-in-law Claudia, and granddaughter Graciela Pulte of Dallas.
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