CATAGORIES: REST IN PEACE — FloridaBill @ 8:49 am

I first met Bill L. in 1977. My family had moved from Brandon to Sarasota and almost immediately we became the best of friends. There were several other guys in the neighborhood named Bill, and several other kids in our circle of friends, but none came close the friendship we shared for close to 30 years. His memorial service for his family and friends is Sunday in New Jersey and I can’t make it due to business reasons.

I was 15 at the time I first met Bill and thru our 16th and into our 17th years, we were very close. We learned a lot about life together. He didn’t introduce to me rock and roll, but did introduce me to bands like RUSH (I remember his sister Sue being very angry that we had taken her RUSH albums and listened to them) and REO and Aerosmith and others that remain among my favorites to this day. It was also about this time that we learned, regrettably, to smoke and drink. I won’t share all of our adventures together as it wouldn’t be appropriate, but suffice it to say that we learned a lot together and that I could always drink him under the table, even when we were very young. I will say that I had nothing to do with and did not participate in sneaking out his dad’s LaSabre. I was not involved.

I nearly killed him in a car accident on October 13, 1978, when I lost control of the car I was driving and hit another vehicle, both cars traveling at a very high rate of speed. It was (and still is) the day and event I regret most in my life. Bill was riding in the passenger seat and another friend, Greg was in the back along with two guys we had seen at school, but really didn’t know. We had picked them up hitchhiking! We were followed by other neighborhood hooligans, Donny D. and another kid named Corky riding in Donny’s car. Bill was critically injured in the accident as we slid broadside into oncoming traffic with the passenger side of my parents LTD impacting the front end of another large four door sedan, both going at least 60 miles per hour. He took the full force of the impact and broke his pelvis in several places and had lacerated internal organs. He was in the hospital for way too long after that event and he taught me a very valuable lesson as the result; forgiveness. I always took full responsibility for the accident. It was, after all, completely my fault, but he never accepted that. He said that he bore some of the responsibility for urging my reckless driving that night and while that was not true, it always made me feel a little bit better to hear it. The last time I saw him, he said it again and it reminded me what a forgiving person and great friend he truly was.

I still have the pictures of the cars and the articles from the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the school paper (The Ram Page) about the accident (one of many that year at Riverview High School, including a couple that involved fatalities) and share them with friends and relatives (including my oldest daughter) when they are learning to drive. I show them where Bill was sitting (it is amazing even now to think that he even survived that night) and warn them about the dangers of driving, especially when there are other young people in the car and even more importantly when you have been drinking. I will share them with my other children and others I know when they are learning to drive. I will also tell them about my friend Bill and how I nearly killed one the best friends I ever had.

I knew Bill for nearly 30 years. We were not in contact during many of those years, but amazingly enough, when we did talk or get together, it was as if we had never lost touch. When his family moved to Selma, Alabama, my family was living just north in the Birmingham area and we rekindled our friendship then. Many of my Birmingham friends remember Bill and his visits fondly.

When I first interviewed for a job in Hartford, CT, I managed to get out to Long Island (a trip that involved me traveling on the subway in New York City for the first time in my life; quite alone and somewhat terrified) where Bill was living with his parents. I remember Dana showing off his drumming skills in the garage. Bill took me back into the City where he showed me the town and gave me a tour of the greatest City in the world. We visited Broadway, Times Square (before they cleaned it up) and the South Street Seaport and 42nd street and ate and drank and I will never forget it. That was just over 20 years ago.

A few years later, on another trip to Hartford, Bill and Heidi drove up from Jersey to meet me for dinner. Regrettably, it was the only time I met Heidi. I remember we ate at a horrible steak house in Hartford called Chucks that is thankfully no longer in business. From that point on for several years, we gradually, slowly lost touch.

We did keep in touch periodically somehow. I learned about the birth of his children after the fact. I learned that he had become a successful cameraman, that his sister had been married and was having a family of her own and that his younger brother Dana was a successful producer and his older brother Steve had stayed in the Sarasota area and his parents were doing just fine.

Through the power of the internet, I “googled” Bill’s name and found a phone number for him about five or six years ago and once again, we began to stay in regular touch even though we had not seen each other since that dinner in Hartford. In all honestly, I lived somewhat vicariously through his exploits; after all, I was never going to hang-out with the Rolling Stones, or lend Stone Phillips my shirt or be photographed with Drew Barrymore on the beach or win an Emmy. He updated me on his family, his purchase of a place in Bradenton, his adventures as a well respected cameraman as well as his troubles and woes.

A couple of years ago, I got a call from him, completely out of the blue, saying that he was at a hotel in Skokie, IL (working on a film on Opus Dei for the History Channel, for which I believe he won his Emmy) and could I come up and see him? It took me a while to get there, and I think we had more telephone calls in that hour and a half stretch of time than we had had in years. I arrived and was surprised to see that he had not changed one bit in the years since I had seen him. I had put on more than a few pounds and had quit smoking. He looked like he did when we were teenagers and smoked like a chimney. We sat in his hotel room and reminisced and got caught up on each other’s lives. We had a good night together and it turns out that was the last time I would see him.

I know Bill had his foibles and issues, don’t we all. But I also know these things: he was a fiercely loyal friend, one of the best anyone could ever hope to have. He loved his parents and his siblings and his children and his wife (despite their issues) very much. I never got to see him as a father, but he was intensely proud of his children and loved them as much as any father ever loved his kids. I know he wanted to reconcile his marriage and was determined and committed to working on doing so. I know that he was a good man, with a good heart who died way too young. I know that I miss him very much.

His death hit me hard; harder than I expected it would. I guess I never expected it at all. There hasn’t been a day since I got the e-mail and subsequent call from his brother informing me of his death that I haven’t thought about Bill and his entire family and how this must have affected them and how he was such a great friend to me for all of those years.

Since his death, I have quit drinking and have vowed to take better care of myself for not only me, but my family as well. I am sorry that I can’t attend his memorial gathering, but I think he would understand and forgive me.