Roll Call Tribute

Strickland Funeral Home obituary

William Clinton Elsik

Born in Burleson County, Texas on Oct. 8, 1935
Departed on Jan. 21, 2011 and resided in Snook, TX.

William "Bill" Clinton Elsik
Bill Elsik has passed away Friday January 21, 2011 at the age of 75. Born October 8, 1935, to Isabel Valentine Matcek Elsik and Vilem Tomas Elsik in a sharecropper's house on Indian Camp Prairie, part of the paternal grandparents John Frank and Teresie Kocurek Elsik's farm and ranch in Burleson County, Texas. He was christened in the Caldwell Catholic Church, and he was later confirmed in the Evangelical Unity of the Snook Czech Moravian Brethren Church.

Bill grew up on his parents' farm and ranch between Snook and Tunis, Texas. His favorite pastime was hunting and fishing. During rainy periods he and his younger brother would make clay dams in the roadside ditch in front of the house and catch crawfish. During the summers he chopped, picked and weighed cotton. One particularly hot, dry summer he recalled standing over a six inch wide, six foot deep crack in the black gumbo soil and thinking, "This is not for me."

He attended grade school at Happy Hill School near Tunis and later Snook Independent schools. He graduated as valedictorian from Snook H.S. in 1953. During high school he managed football and played basketball and softball. He drove a mechanical cotton picker for his father in Burleson and Victoria counties. He attended Texas A & M University and attained a BS, MS and PhD in geology, finally specializing in palynology, the study of fossil pollen and spores.

Bill spent one summer hustling jugs on a seismograph line in west Texas for Gulf Oil. At that time he would drive the highways at night with his wife and first son looking to harvest rattles from snakes run over on the road. He found one still wriggling, stopped a short distance away and walked back with a stick to dispatch the snake. As he approached it, a large truck drove by and one of the tires picked up the rattler and swung it through the air a few inches from his head. "God gives us many more lives than cats," he often said.

Bill married Mary Lynn Mikeska on June 29, 1957. They had two sons, William Jr. and Curtis, and one daughter, Cheryl Lynn. Bill joined Humble Oil & Refining Co. in 1962, retiring 28 years later from then Exxon Corp. He was a founding member and a president of the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists. He had the honor of having a colleague name a newly discovered spore after him.

He is survived by his loving wife Mary Lynn, his two sons; Bill Jr. and wife Jennifer Curt and wife Kristi, brothers and sister-inlaw; Gene & Janice Elsik, David Elsik, sister; Sandi Elsik, sister-in-law; Georgia & Jimmie Cummings and five grandchildren; Clint, Jacob and Rachel; and Christopher and Jonathan.

Bill was preceded in death by his parents and daughter Cheryl Lynn.

Visitation will be 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. Saturday January 22, 2011 at Strickland Funeral Home, 530 S. Hwy. 36, Caldwell, TX 77836. Services will be held at 2:00 p.m. Sunday January 23, 2011 at Snook Brethren Church, FM 2155, Snook, TX 77878. Memorials can be made to Snook Christian Sisters or Snook Brethren Church, PO Box 247, Snook, TX 77878, Snook Brethren Church, Snook Volunteer Fire Dept., or the Snook Cemetery Association.

Pallbearers are Christopher Elsik, Clint Elsik, Jacob Elsik, Jonathan Elsik, Rob Schleider, Gabe Matcek, Gene Elsik, Jr., Scot Elsik, Clint Machann and Steve Elsik. Acting as honorary pallbearer is Rachel Elsik.