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#164494 12/23/06 09:30 AM
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I'm very sorry to hear this. I also met Dr Bill during my early time in AWAD board, and I was always interested and entertained by what he had to say. He was long missed here; now my thoughts are with him and his family.

#164495 12/24/06 02:10 AM
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Greetings to all of you who remember 'Dr. Bill'. My name is Gretel and I am Dr. Bill's granddaughter. I live in Toronto with my family. In the long years since he moved from New England to California I know that this forum provided him with a great deal of comfort and that he savoured the kind words and the able sparring partners, alike. At times when long gaps opened up between his email replies, I'd log into Wordsmith and 'eavesdrop' just to make sure he'd posted something recently - usually receiving my assurances that he was well enough to use the computer. His deafness and his unwillingness to embrace hearing technology has long isolated him from face to face conversation - and as the years have passed his eyesight has also gradually failed him to the point that he was no longer able to use the computer at all for the past year. Sadly, I fear that with the exception of a very few family members, you folks are the only ones with recent fond memories of Dr. Bill - so I thank you for thinking of him in his passing. I am planning to construct a tribute webpage with some photos and information about my grandfather. I'd like his passing to be marked - 90 years is a long time to spend on this planet - and he lived in some very interesting times. If anyone wishes to share anything for inclusion in this page, please contact me. Also, I noted that some of you were wondering where to send condolences. Two of his children were actively present in his life for the past several years and contributed to his care. I can provide a mailing address for Dr. Bill's namesake, my uncle, who is an airline pilot and flew to L.A. a number of times each month to visit him. Please contact me if you would like that. I'm afraid I do not have current contact for Dr. Bill's daughter who he lived with in California prior to being moved to a home. Perhaps Jackie has it? I will point my mother to this thread. She lives in Prince Edward Island and has not been able to visit her father since he moved to California - she will be moved to hear how he is remembered. I can be reached directly, off list at (gretelmoATmac.com).

#164496 12/24/06 02:17 AM
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He was a real pain in the butt sometimes but we loved him.

#164497 12/24/06 02:26 AM
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A challenge for those of you who 'knew' my grandfather. Please offer up some words to describe him. (They don't all have to be complimentary...he WAS a curmudgeon sometimes!) I would love to collect some of your very best words for his tribute. Ordinary and extraordinary words would be great!

#164498 12/24/06 03:57 AM
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One thing I can tell you, Gretel, is that your son gave Bill more joy than anything else in all the years I knew him. Bless that baby!

I can't rejoice that Bill isn't with us any longer, but I am glad he doesn't have to be so cut off from everything any more. It just gave me the shudders, thinking of that fine mind walled off behind a curtain of darkness and near-silence.

He invested a lot of time and energy here, and for that I will always thank him.

#164499 12/24/06 01:47 PM
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We had a bad time here once with a poster who was threatening to destroy the board. Many of us left with no intention of returning. Dr. Bill almost single-handedly kept the board alive posting about anything he could think of. Slowly we returned and the threatener was barred from posting, something that has happened only once in the board's history, as far as I know. We owe the continued existence of this board to Dr. Bill.

#164500 12/24/06 06:41 PM
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As Faldage has stated, with 13858 total posts, he is still, by far, the most prolific poster on this board. I believe he once began posting a whole dictionary of odd words, yet I don't remember from where but I do remember it was during the afore mentioned *lean years.

One of the many PM's he sent me was this little ditty that I saved:

Dear Musick:start the morning off with an ancient joke.
It was told on radio new in early thirties. Oil was discovered on an Indian Reservation in Oklahoma. So the Indians were given a token settlement and moved. One chief got enough money to buy a jug of whiskey and a big red convertible. A couple hours later, he was brought to hospital, having wrecked the car. Reporters asked him what happened. "Buy jug whiskey. Buy big red car. Drive down road fast. Drink much whiskey. Bimeby big red bridge come down road. Me turn out let bridge go by. Boom! Here I am."


Most PM's from DrBill were either jokes, adult limericks or stories from his past... like this one:

Dear Musick: Back in the twenties and thirties there were quite a few collection of gags.
"as the monkey said: That runs into money as the monkey said when he pissed into the cash register". "It won't be long now, as the monkey said when he stuck his tail into the lawn mower."

When Llittle Audrey heard of the Virgin Islands, she laughed and laughted, because she knew the Marines had been there.

Millions of knock knocks. I was in movie Frankenstein. somebody who had already seen the movie, stayed for second showing, and just as the Monster was to come into the boudoir of scientist's bride, somebody pounded on metal paneled wall twice, just before the girl called out 'Who's there?' It got a good laugh.

There used to be dozens of that type of gag circulating.
Too bad nobody ever collected them. Bill


It seems DrBill did.

He knew I'd spent a couple of years in Boston and, as I believe he enjoyed being a story teller, this allowed him to make them more personally *real - for both of us. His stories reminded me a bit of my Dad's.

Dear Kevin,
Since you know the Arboretum, you might know that the State Public Health labs were there. I worked there a few years. The Hungarian graduate student was a fanatic about rifles. amd had a gorgeous Mannlicher-Schoenauer (quite out of keeping with his minimal income).Both rabbits and squirrels were destructive of experimental plants, so there were a half dozen .22 rifles, which graduate students were ordered to use on any rodent seen. The Hungarian shot a rabbit one night, and put it into a flowerpot tail first, so that when rigor mortis set in, it would maintain a sitting position. He put it at one end of a blind alley, and got one of the senior grad students to yell that he'd just seen a rabbit, and point to where it had gone. The eager beaver grabbed the .22s, and blazed away. When the went up to the now riddled rabbit, there was a sign around its neck: "Nice shooting, fellows!"

When I was in med school, BU had a 'medical district' to which Junior year students made house visits, including delivering pregnant women at home. I delivered one woman right close to front window looking out at Forest Hills elevated station platform. We had quite an interested group of spectators as I shaved her perineum, delivered the baby, took care of its umbilical cord. She said she didn't give a damn. None of those people knew her or would ever know her.

Incidentally, that station gave me the heebie-jeebies whenevery a train stopped, It would sway enough that if it caught you in mid-step you might take a tumble. *** (Insert this story's punchline here... I've edited it as I think Bill might have been embarrased... I'll PM it to anyone on request) Bill


I'll always have his words to remember.

Sincerely.

(ps - The stories below render my edit a bit... invisible!)

*** As the guy said about his fat girlfriend, it sagged but it didn't give.

#164501 12/25/06 03:32 AM
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Thank you for these memories and these excerpts! He definitely had a ribald sense of humour! Keep 'em coming - my mother and I are comforted by them and are collecting them for his tribute page. I have inserted a tiny photo of Dr. Bill as my id photo for you folks - I doubt any of you ever got to see a photo. There will be more on the webpage. He walked miles a day until very close to the end. He would head out to walk always with a wide-brimmed hat and massive shades behind his glasses. When he walked in New England, I remember he used to wear a fluorescent orange hunting cap when he went out - quite a sight. he always wore suspenders too - for as long as I can remember. A mark of his era, perhaps? Thanks to you all for seeing his need to reach out and share his stories, and for forgiving the parts of them and of him that refused to conform to modern standards of (for lack of better words) political correctness/sensitivity. I've been reading stories of his all day and I still gasp with shock now and then! Yet there is so much history preserved in them. It is amazing to me how he can describe the clouds and the way the ocean moved on a day in his youth when he served in the marines - that mind was a bit of a steel trap! Over 13 thousand posts? Wow.

#164502 12/25/06 03:46 AM
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I can't tell you how many times he told me that 'Indian' joke...from the time I was a little girl! Good to know I wasn't the only 'lucky' one!

#164503 12/25/06 09:53 AM
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Hi! Nice to meeet you Gretel. Any friend of wwh is a friend of mine.

Doc Bill and I had interesting conversations; sorta like two bank robbers faulting each other for robbing banks. I've a collection of "Uncle Bill" stories registered in the memory banks here on AWAD but my own instigations to these stories are not recorded so I'll just guess at the context when necessary. Here's one...
_________________________________________________________

SWIMMING UNDER WATER

Dear Milo: Speaking of g.g.son swimming under water reminded
me of incident that might amuse you.

Before I had the acute
labyrinthitis of which may have told you, I lived in Levertt
House, close to Weld Boathouse, and could go out in single
to scull up the Charles. One day as I was coming back,
opposite the other boathouse (for the eights) a guy in a
speedboat started harrassing me by cicling me. He made
a wake that tossed my single violently. By gripping the oar
handles firmly in my lap, I survived about three circles.
But an extra violent wave make me lose grip on on oar,
and instantly I was upside down. As I went over, I knew
how I was going to get revenge. I unlaced my feet, came up
under the single with lots of air trapped under the hull,
overbreathed vigorously. I could hear the guy exclaiming
'Why doesn't he come up? They're supposed to be able to
swim!'

He couldn't see me,the Charles was so dark brown.
I did a sneaky surface dive, and swam underwater, and
came up under the landing apron of the eight boathouse,
without anyone one seeing me. And waited until Charles
River police boat arrived, and heard the cop say to the
guy:'You could be charged with manslaughter!' I waited
until cop had finished filling out the ticket, then
feebly called:'Help!'.

I can't remember how
I got out from under that pier, or how I got back to
my room. Fortunately nobody questioned me about how
I got under the landing pier float.
____________________________________________________

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