Rear Admiral William Stubblefield was born and raised in Medina, Tennessee.  He attended Memphis State University and graduated in 1962 with a major in secondary education and a minor in chemistry.  After graduation, Stubblefield was commissioned in the United States Navy and attended Naval Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island.  He served on a minesweeper and ice breaker at sea, operating all over the globe.  Following his time in the Navy, Stubblefield enrolled in a geology master’s program at the University of Iowa and graduated in 1971 when he started his career with the NOAA Commissioned Corps.  His first sea assignments were onboard the NOAA Ships Pathfinder and Rainer.  Stubblefield then served as Deputy Director of the Marine Geology and Geophysics Division at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. He was awarded the NOAA Corps Achievement medal for his work there.  Stubblefield returned to sea duty aboard the NOAA Researcher and then returned to school, earning his PhD in geological oceanography from Texas A&M University.  He then came back to AOML, where he served as co-scientist on a series of dives and made use of the Deep Diving Research Vessel Alvin.  Then, Admiral Stubblefield served as Commanding Officer of the NOAA Ship Surveyor, where he traveled to the Antarctic peninsula and retraced Ernest Shackleton’s final expedition.  Stubblefield returned to Washington, DC, and led NOAA’s Fleet Replacement and Modernization study before being selected as the Executive Director of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Later, he becAME director of the Office of NOAA Corps Operations, until he retired from NOAA in 1999.  Since retiring from NOAA, Admiral Stubblefield and his wife Dr. Bonnie McGregor Stubblefield has moved to West Virginia, where he served on the Berkeley County Public Service Water District and then as the president of the Berkeley County Council.  In 2019, the Stubblefields sponsored the Bonnie and Bill Stubblefield Institute for Civility in Political Communication at Shepherd University, and Bill serves on its board.