William Ward was a long-term Waldorf class teacher at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School (HVS) in New York State. He was responsible for the completion of Three full classes grades 1 through 8. He was taken from his fourth class in their fourth grade year because of a diagnosis of a cancerous brain tumor and he left this world three years later. He was a brilliant story teller, a beloved member of the school community, a gifted woodworker and a fine father of his two daughters.He is still missed to this day. He was a pillar of the faculty responsible for the free religion lessons held at HVS until 2007, the last school in North America to hold these important, story-based lessons for the young.