Born in Pontiac, Michigan, Bill was the youngest of four children of Bertha (Sherman) and William James LeMessurier Sr., owners of a dry cleaning business.
He later transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned his Master's Degree in building engineering and construction in 1953.
In June 1978, Princeton University engineering student Diane Hartley contacted LeMessurier's office after she identified winds that could topple the building under certain circumstances.
This realization triggered a hurried, clandestine retrofit which was described in a 1995 article in The New Yorker entitled "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis".
[4] In 1999, he received the American Institute of Steel Construction's J. Lloyd Kimbrough Award, its highest honor.