Santa Fe Living Treasures – Elder Stories

Willard's expertise as a printer and his congeniality were praised by others. "My print shop was my living," Willard said There he did "all types of printing," including the Newman typeface Willard used, which has come to be associated with Santa Fe. He printed "thousands of letterheads, office forms--everything a printer has to do," he said. "I wanted to use my art to embellish my printing." Willard learned to make woodcuts and engravings so he wouldn't have to wait ten days for zinc etchings to be sent to Denver. "Nobody in those days waited ten days for a print job. You got the job in the afternoon, you delivered the next day. That's the way it was." .

Willard went to work in Los Alamos in 1943. "I was a machinist, a tool and die maker. After the war stopped, I was planning on coming home and reopening my print shop, but it seemed to me at the time that the family would be better off if I stayed with what I was doing." He retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory in the mid-1970s.