William Bonner was born in 1921. He received his bachelor’s degree at Michigan State College, and his Masters’s in Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina in 1948. He was an instructor at the University of Oklahoma from 1947-1948 before becoming City Planning Analyst for El Paso, Texas from 1949-1950. Bonner joined the American Institute of Planners in 1949 and became the first planner in Arkansas to be elected to full membership in 1961. He served as President of the Great Plains Chapter as well as President of the Arkansas Valley Chapter, was a member of the Institute’s Chapter President’s council and was also an active member of the national A.I.P. board of Examiners. He began his work at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville as an associate professor of sociology in 1950. He established the UA city planning division in 1950 and directed its planning activities for 101 Arkansas cities across eight counties. Bonner was the Chairman of the Committee on Short Course Training for the Southern Regional Congress on City Planning in 1953 before becoming Chairman of The Department of Community and Governmental Affairs at U of A in 1955. From 1955-1967, he was responsible for the administration of the Federal Urban Planning Assistance Program pertaining to cities with populations under 50,000 as well as counties in Arkansas. Bonner also testified on Congressional legislation that resulted in the Rural Development Act of 1972 and co-authored the paper “Regional Communities: A Planning and Development Concept for Nonmetropolitan Areas”. He was elected as the first president of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Planners in 1975. He published several papers and other publications on urban planning such as the “Highway Planning and Local Implementation” in 1977 which covered the roles of state highway and transportation agencies and local governments in highway planning and implementation. He was selected to be a member of a task force for creating a rural development policy for the American Planning Association in 1983. Bonner and other members of the U of A faculty directed several workshops and seminars on citizen participation in rural development throughout his time at the university. Bonner belonged to the U.S. Southwestern Sociological Association and the Board of Governors of the American Institute of Planners. He retired from the university in 1987. In 1988, as Professor Emeritus at U of A, Bonner received an Honorary Life Membership in the International Institute of Municipal Clerks at its Annual Conference and continued an association with the U of A through 1991, served as Institute Director, and assisted the Arkansas Clerks, Recorders, and Treasurers Association.