Sometimes, Someone a Little "larger Than Life" Can Set Your Career

It's funny how a year can mean so many things to so many people. For me, 1969 was a real watershed. I was one of the lucky ones to have been young enough to see Neil Armstrong's first "step for ... and giant leap ..." in some grainy black-and-white streaming (for the time) video from the moon.

At the same time, for whatever reason why (I really can't remember it as it was four decades ago), my Dad and I were having a heated political discussion as we both readied ourselves for another night at the office. Dad fought the postal wars, while I was a very young scribe (mainly coffee kid and occasional police reporter) on a major Boston newspaper. I considered by position to have been a lucky stroke for me because it set me on my way. Unfortunately, my Dad was playing out the string, although he didn't know it yet, and he would be gone from us less than three years later to a rare cancer.

But, this isn't what this piece is about, it's about the buy who took on the role of mentor to me (as he did so many others) and he became -- not an older brother because that slot was already filled -- something like a surrogate uncle.

Bill was from the old school of hard-knocks journalism. He came from the generation of writers who grew up in the 1920s and who seldom, if ever got their facts wrong, and they left you scratchng your head (yes I did have lots of hair back then), wondering "how'dhedothat???" By that phrase, I mean, how did this short, very unassuming guy from Southie (South Boston) was the first on the scene and the first with a call to rewrite.

I can remember one particularly hot summer afternoon 40 years ago when Bill and I were lounging around the main desk of the local cop house waiting for something to happen. It was hot and sticky and we were actually just kind of happy to be in a building that was air conditioned.

Looking for something to keep me busy, I was checking the daily log for the umpteenth time when Bill cocked his head to the radio turret and he heard something about pipe bombs being found under a car on a rather ritzy street in a rather posh neighborhood of this particular city (it can be anywhere you want it to be, I'll just leave the cit out of it but this is a true story, so help me).

Well, Bill looked at me and I looked back at him and he said "Let's go!" and for some unknown reason I headed out to my radio car (it was a big thing back then; cranked up the two-way to let my editor know what was going on and I was driving to the site).

I still can't figure out to this day just how he got there ahead of me in a very beaten up old Volkswagon Fox, but when my clean white Chrysler rolled to the scene -- within a minute of Bill's arrival anda full five minutes ahead of the local gendarmes -- there was this little old guy (his age was indeterminte to me, he could have been 60 or 100, he just looked old to a 20-year-old, but he didn't miss a beat.

He pulled out his beaten up twin-reflex camera (it might have been a Yashika) and he was on two rather creaky old knees snapping photos away while we waited for the police to arrive. And, when they did, Bill did the right thing, heoffered the police a second set of prints, but he wouldn't hold the story, even though it involved some rather prominent folks.

He also took me under his wing then and pointed out various things that gave me a healthy respect for what a piece of cast-iron piping with caps on either end and wiring to an electrical source could do to you. He especially pointed out the traces of black powder explosive that leaked out and he said that we could be safely certain that had that piece of handiwork (it was part of the famous Winter-Hill mob war of the 1960s in New England) would scythe anything in its path, even a couple of reporters.

I found Bill at more than one event and he always had some advice or a cheery hello for you.

Well, for reasons that I don't think are important to this piece, my path led to the copy desk, management, freelance and technical writing. Bill just found a new kid and began to train him on how to really be a reporter. I know that kid and he took a different path -- public relations -- and he became rather well-known himself.

The years passed and I was into my career as as newlywed husband and editor and Bill and I lost touch, thus it was shocking one day when I was standing near my page layout boards in the composing room when someone told me that Bill had gone. He had a chest pain and never made it to the hospital.

I'll be honest with you, I grieved that man because next to my Dad and a couple of beloved uncles, he set me in a direction that I've never regretted taking, but a long shot. So this one's for you Bill and I hope you're always somewhere looking for that story. I can't see you doing anything else.