Sam Richard Turner

Sam Richard Turner (Richard) passed away on October 16, 2025, one day before his eighty-third birthday, after a nine-year battle with cancer waged bravely and without complaint. His wife of fifty-six years, Pamela, and his two daughters, Lindsay and Lauren, were by his side.

The son of Pauline “Fritzie” and Gilbert “Shag” Turner, Richard was born in the factory town of Old Hickory, Tennessee, near Nashville. He attended Tennessee Tech University as a first-generation college student, where he played baseball and planned to continue as an athlete until, as he liked to remember, a professor suggested he might be a better scientist than baseball player. He earned his Masters degree at Tennessee Tech and then moved to Gainesville, Florida, to complete his chemistry PhD in 1971. He married Pamela Sue Webb in 1969. The two moved to Germany for a year in 1971 for his postdoc at The Technical University of Darmstadt and had many adventures on their travels around Europe in a VW bug with no gas gauge.

Across his five-decade career as a research polymer chemist, Richard was employed at Xerox, Exxon, Eastman Kodak Company, and Eastman Chemical Company. His work at Xerox and Eastman Kodak led him and Pamela north to Rochester, New York, where his two daughters were born. In Rochester, he and Pamela became avid downhill skiers, a passion that continued into Richard’s seventies, enjoyed alongside distance running and hiking and camping with his family in the Adirondacks and the Blue Ridge. When Eastman Kodak became Eastman Chemical in 1993, the family moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, returning Richard to his Tennessee roots. In 2004, Richard “retired” into higher education, taking a job as the director of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute at Virginia Tech, where he loved mentoring many graduate students and working with colleagues across the university, following his research curiosity, and watching the sun set over the ridge beyond his and Pamela’s home in Blacksburg.

Richard received numerous honors and awards across his career, and his discoveries helped shape the field he worked in, but he will be remembered most of all for his steadfastness as a friend and colleague, his dedication to his work and his students, his absolute integrity, his humor, love of life, and kindness, and his devotion to his family.

He is survived by his wife, Pamela, his daughters, Lindsay Turner (Walt Hunter) of Shaker Heights, OH, and Lauren Turner Ferrell (Chase Ferrell), of Chevy Chase, MD, and his two grandsons, Julian Henry Turner Hunter and Declan James Ferrell.

A Celebration of Life will be held in the Inter-Faith Chapel at Leisure World in Silver Spring, MD, at 2pm on Friday, November 14.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the S. Richard Turner Memorial Scholarship Endowment at Tennessee Tech University by sending a check addressed to the Tennessee Tech University Foundation, PO Box 1915, Cookeville, TN 38505 with “from [name] for the S. Richard Turner Memorial Scholarship Endowment" in the memo field, or online at https://www.tntech.edu/univadv/giving/online-giving.php, with “for S. Richard Turner Memorial Scholarship Endowment” in the comment box.