For a Gentle Warrior

Bill would have turned 48 years old today. Forty-eight really doesn’t sound all that old but, as fate would have it, he never lived to celebrate this day with his family and friends.

My early foray into studying the meaning of birth, death and what lies in between was pretty much occupied with chasing Rebecca Springer around the room at Sunday school class in the middle Sixties. So I can’t come up with a good answer as to why Bill was taken so young, and it’s not for a lack of time spent pondering, either. Maybe it’s just as the Bible and the Byrds pointed out in different mediums: “To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Something tells me the answer isn’t as simple as a Biblical passage or Pete Seeger lyrics.

I know Bill thought often about his mortality after our parents died at a younger than average age. As a result he was reconciled with most everything and everyone in his life and was able to pack nearly a full life in a little more than 47 years. I have also recently given in to quietly sneaking up on my own mortality and being careful not to wake it. It brings up fairly weird thoughts, most notably how long it would take for my own family to begin to lose touch with seemingly unimportant memories. This happened with my parents and grandparents and after awhile you look around to find someone who might remember a small event and you realize there is nobody left for the answer.

I don’t want time and distance to fade away some of my own memories of Bill so I will recount a few in this space and hope like hell that Blogger doesn’t go out of business in my lifetime.

I was almost two years old when Bill was born. Peter and I were just 11 months apart and, although I have no conscious memory of this, it has been noted that that the two of us felt we had a pretty good thing going and that three was a crowd. Frankly we didn’t much care for the competition for attention. There are some old photographs that indicate Peter and I were fascinated by our younger brother but I am sure we hatched a few elaborate pleas to convince our mother to leave him behind at the grocery store.

Being the third wheel in anything is tough to live with, especially when it’s with your brothers. Being the middle kid it was a constant pull to want to follow my older brother and be protective of my younger brother. Of course this was all before he grew to be several inches taller than both of us when he was 11 years old.

My earliest memory of Bill is when I was about four and the three brothers were horsing around at the top of the stairs at our house on Pinecrest. I think Peter remembers he was the one who gave Bill the nudge that evening but it seems it may have been me (there goes that “no one to ask” problem again). Nevertheless he rolled down the entire flight of stairs, tumbling out at the bottom and hitting his head at the corner of a wall. I remember two things: my dad appearing just in time to witness the final summersault into the wall, and all the blood that pours out from a head split open. I don’t remember Bill crying but I may have been more concerned about my own complicity in the crime and the coming punishment than the particulars. Well-thought-out alibis are particularly difficult for a two-year-old but I seem to remember Peter got the blame.

I’m not sure if he even mentioned this to you Sue, but Bill and I shared a bedroom together for about three or four years just after we moved to our house on Lake Drive in East Grand Rapids. I doubt there would have been any comparisons made to the world’s great minds, but I know we talked about a lot of things and, just like all men of thought, made a lot of fake bodily function noises. We weren’t short of friends but Bill and I made up imaginary friends in that room – although there was a distinct lack of imagination as my friend was a ceiling light (aptly named “Lightly”) while Bill’s friend was the beam of light from the hallway that the two of us insisted stay on lest we be gobbled up by evil monsters.

The hallway light became a bone of contention at various points between the three brothers as at least one of us wanted it off while the others fought hard for the protection it offered. I remember a few late night battles while one of us would turn off the light from a switch at one end of the hallway while one of the other of us would just as quickly turn it back on from a switch at the other end. On and on it would go. It’s quite amazing how long little kids can stand at a light switch gripped in a never-ending battle for hallway light supremacy. But when the stakes are very real monsters one has to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice – usually being yelled at by my dad who was wondering why there was a light show going on down the bedroom hallway.

When Bill was about four, I sort of poisoned him. It wasn’t intentional, I was just a curious six-year-old involved in a science experiment and Bill was part of my Control Group. I made a potion of various bathroom liquids, including perfume, for Bill to drink. It says a lot about his willingness to trust to even think of drinking the concoction. The fact is, he put a little on his lips and spilled a bit more on his neck and shirt.

Eventually our mother came around to see what we were up to and I proudly told her I had made a magic potion and Bill drank it. She smelled the perfume on Bill and immediately drove her three boys to the hospital to have Bill’s stomach pumped out. During the entire trip to the hospital, Bill insisted he never drank the magic potion, but my mom was not one to take chances or fail to make a point – forcing me to watch Bill have a rubber tube stuffed down his throat. It’s not something that is easy to forget and was probably even more difficult for Bill to forget, although I have no memory of him being angry at me for what happened.

In fact, I remember only one altercation that Bill and I got into in the 47-plus years we knew each other. He was 11 and I was 13 and I was probably feeling threatened that he was now bigger than me. We were eating hot dogs and beans for lunch and Bill told me I had a done a poor job of cooking and he wasn’t going to finish eating the lunch I had slaved over. Fueled by teen lunacy, I told Bill I had ways of making him finish his meal. Likely the rest of the exchange went something like “no you don’t,” “yes I do,” “no you don’t,” “yes I do,” (this is beginning to be reminiscent of the light-switch affair noted above). Usually a “yes you do, no you don’t” standoff ends with someone having to step up and actually do something so I grabbed a handful of cold beans and attempted to stuff them in Bill’s mouth. He resisted. While I don’t remember any punches thrown, I do remember a lot of wrestling around and a lot of beans on the floor. I think we were angry with each other for a few days but I’ll bet it looked pretty hilarious if you weren’t a party to the Big Bean Battle of 1969.

There are other stories best off going to his grave, like his first Steinberg and Sternbach sleepover on the cliffs overlooking Blacks Beach, his bachelor’s liar above the garage at the Shores, his shoplifting caper with Fred Hopper when he was 10, the knife stuck in the refrigerator that was aimed just a bit left of Peter, and how Peter and I had to barricade ourselves in my bedroom for about an hour after we had teased him into a rage (it took the two of us all of our strength to keep him out and from likely murdering us – deservedly so).

These are a lot of things I remember about Bill that would probably surprise a lot of people. Bill had an uncanny ability to meet people where they were. He befriended just about everyone he came in contact with and overlooked personality and dress issues that would turn off most. As a result, there is no simple way to describe him. To the uninitiated he was large and loud. True he was big in stature and his voice could boom, but the largest thing about him was his capacity to love his family and enjoy life.

As big and loud as he was, he was also one of the most gentle and sensitive people you would ever meet. There were countless times he would be loudly setting an employee or sub-contractor straight and a few minutes later he was joking around with them. He was always available to hear the challenges of his friends and colleagues and he helped literally dozens of people get through very tough times. This included me, his kids, the friends of his kids, co-workers, and even people he didn’t know that well. He was generous with his advice whether solicited or not and he was often right in what he had to say.

Among the many hobbies that interested him, he finally found one that must have seen like going home. Most of his life he talked about being a warrior of sorts and living the life that comes with it. When he was introduced to Japanese Sword he approached it with the enthusiasm of a young Samurai. He became very good at the art and was in Japan to compete when he died. I heard he told a friend that his life was complete after arriving at the scenic Japanese setting that was hosting the competition. I don’t know about the others, but I am warmed by the thought he was at such peace when he passed. Just the same, I never thought I would be writing about him missing this birthday and all the others I expected to share with him. There are so many other things that I have come to realize I miss about him, which begs the question: Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?

Bill, in case you’re around and for some reason you have the inclination to read a Blog while you’re convening with angels, Happy Birthday!