William Webster Lammers; USC Political Science Professor

William Webster Lammers, 60, a University of Southern California professor and expert on presidential politics and policies on the aging. Lammers, a faculty member since 1964, was a professor of political science at USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He developed a databank on presidential activities in the United States and other countries to research executive behavior and policy formation. Although he worked in the rarefied world of theory, he never forgot the elderly. “All of us should remind ourselves of the importance of ordinary acts of kindliness, like offering to drive an elderly neighbor to a physician or just calling up your 80-year-old grandmother to ask how she’s doing,” Lammers said in 1983 after the publication of his book “Public Policy and Aging.” In Los Angeles of colon cancer on Oct. 7.