Chapman Gets First Law School Endowment : Education: The $250,000 gift by Fritzie Williams to the Orange university will create the Frank L. Williams Jr. criminal law position.

A Newport Beach woman has donated $250,000 to Chapman University, creating the first endowed professorship at the campus’s nascent law school, university officials announced Friday.

Fritzie Williams made the gift in honor of her husband, Frank L. Williams Jr., former head of the Orange County public defender’s office who died in 1981. The gift creates the Frank L. Williams Jr. Professorship in Criminal Law, the second new endowed professor position at Chapman this school year.

“My late husband practiced what he called pure law in the public defender’s office,” Fritzie Williams said, “and now, criminal law has gotten so bizarre, maybe this will help foster some of the pure meaning of the law.”

Campus officials are seeking to make Chapman University’s law school the first in Orange County to be accredited by the American Bar Assn. Graduates of ABA schools are eligible to join the bar in any state.

The school will open Aug. 21 at a temporary site in Anaheim, and within two years, the school is expected to move to a permanent location. Officials are still filling the final teaching positions at the law school.

Chapman has hired eight full-time professors, three full-time deans and one full-time library director for the law school so far. They have not selected anyone to fill the Williams professorship yet.

Fritzie Williams said her husband did not attend Chapman--rather, he went to the University of Missouri and Yale Law School--but he would have wanted to support the study of law in Orange County.

“He had a history here,” she said of her husband, who was a Marine fighter pilot based at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. “Like many Marine pilots who flew after Korea, he settled in Orange County.”

Williams joined the public defender’s office in 1956 and became director of the office 10 years later. He died at age 59, and had reached the rank of colonel by the time of his death, Fritzie Williams said.

“I hope this professorship can encourage students to think more about the law,” she said, “rather than just the monetary benefits of being a lawyer.”