William Lawton Maner, Jr., of Williamsburg died Tuesday, May 19, 2009, after suffering a stroke. A resident of Williamsburg since 1971, Maner was born November 16, 1918, to William Lawton Maner and Katherine Norborne Henry-Bell in Barnwell (now Allendale) County, South Carolina. He was graduated from the University of Richmond in 1940 and received his master's degree in English from the University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill in 1942.

Mr. Maner served in the Coast Guard as a communications and executive offiver during World War II, from 1942-1946 aboard destroyer escorts in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters. He retired as a commander after 26 years in the Coast Guard Reserves following the war.

Mr. Maner married Virginia Stanard Forbes of Atlanta on July 8, 1944. Mrs. Maner died in 2000. They had two sons, William Lawton Maner, III, of Williamsburg, and Forbes Maner of Washington, D.C.

Mr. Maner was an assistant profesor of English and the University of Richmond from 1946 to 1951, when he was also the book editor of the Richmond Times Dispatch. He was a public relations officer for the State of Virginia form 1951 to 1956, after which he joined Virginia Electric & Power Company (now Dominion Resources). Mr. Maner held a number of executive posts at VEPCO, retiring in 1982 as a District Manager, based in Williamsburg.

In the 1940s through the 1970s, Mr. Maner wrote fiction and poetry for The New Yorker, Colliers, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and McCall's, as well as for magazines in Australia and Great Britain. He published five mystery novels in the U.S. and Europe.

The Maners moved to Williamsburg in 1971. In Williamsburg, at various times, Mr. Maner was member of the boards of Williamsburg National Bank and the advisory board of the Southern Bank & Trust Company, President of An Occasion for the Arts, campaign chairman and president of United Way of Greater Williamsburg, chairman of the Williamsburg City Planning Commission, Chairman of the Williamsburg Democratic Committee, vice-president and artistic director of the Twentieth Century Gallery (now This Century Art Gallery), and an artist- member of of Virginia Watercolor Society. After moving to Williamsburg, Mr. Maner studied watercolor painting, which he exhibited in Virginia and North Carolina Galleries. He later taught watercolor classes to inmates at the Lower Peninsula Regional Jail.

In 2001, Mr. Maner told his physician to keep him alive until there was a Democrat in the White House. He lived to achieve this goal. He remained an active gardener until the day before he was stricken, listening to his iPod as he dug.

Mr. Maner studied painting under Jewett Campbell and sculpture under Milo Russel at Richmond Professional Institute, watercolor under Jim Pittman in Williamsburg, Morris Shubin, Alex Powers and Skip Lawrence in Myrtle Beach, and Frank Webb in Arlington, Vermont.