Dear Janet, Julia and Sarah
I came to know Bill in his last career. Bill’s task, which he took on voluntarily, was to drag me into the world of online teaching. Bill was a great teacher. Each new skill required Bill and I to talk, and bicker, and practice some skills and it was in those hours working together that I learned how wonderful Bill was. Bill taught by telling stories and that is how Bill taught me too.
One of the things I know is that the average person as seven careers in a lifetime. Bill was an outlier on that metric: telephone poles, cameras and photojournalism, diving, military service, cutting edge instructional technology, building, being a military history student, cooking, baking and a hundred other experiences were absorbed and turned into stories.
As my friendship with Bill grew those stories would bubble out, sometimes with a purpose but often simply reliving an adventure: diving a wreck with friends, realizing the cloud in front of his diving mask was the life teeming in the ocean, almost hitting a moose as he drove to the birth of his child, watching Janet jump into crisis management mode when they came upon an accident, and a hundred other stories about friends and family.
What I learned from his stories is that he cherished family and friends. Bill simply adored Janet. The stories he told were full of love and devotion. Bill was immensely proud of his daughters. Bill loved and honored his mother. Bill was a devoted grandfather and proudly explained what his grandchildren were the world’s smartest. Bill was a great friend and as we talked long and hard about his loves and passions. He always remained in awe of the world around him. I will miss his story telling, his laugh and that smile he got when he knew he had taught me something new about life, which was often.
My condolences to Janet and “the girls.”