Professor Tozzer married Margaret Castle from one of the wealthy and famous “five families” of Hawaii that he became a member of the elite in Cambridge.
At the age of 12 Willey moved to Long Beach, California, with his parents. At Woodrow Wilson High School he excelled in academics and in track. He set several school records, including the 60- and 220-yard dashes. Upon graduation from high school the University of Arizona recruited him.
After reading William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and Peru he had decided he wanted to study archaeology. His Latin American history teacher persuaded Willey that he should study under Professor Byron Cummings, the renowned field archaeologist and Southwestern expert at the University of Arizona. Cummings served as dean of the Faculty of Sciences, Arts, and Letters and was an athletic booster. Willey fondly remembers his arrival in Tucson in the autumn of 1931, when he was greeted by the University of Arizona band, which had marched to the station to meet his train. He later recalled this experience as one of the high points of his early career.
At Arizona Willey took many courses with Byron Cummings (he especially enjoyed his courses on Mexico) and with Charles Fairbanks, who taught the courses on dendrochronology (the study of tree rings to date archaeological sites). Cummings took Willey along on field expeditions in the Southwest and to dig at the site of Kinishba in east-central Arizona. After completing his A.B. in anthropology in 1935, he continued on at Arizona, obtaining his M.A. the following year. During this year in graduate school Willey earned extra money by serving as the freshman track coach.
Willey applied to several schools with leading doctoral programs, including ironically Harvard, but he was denied admittance. When Dean Cummings secured a Laboratory