A Tribute to Bill

Yesterday I was led to the art of Joe Jones online and was admiring his aviation art.  This reminded me of the many connections I have had with airmen such as a Tuskegee pilot who recently showed up in a group and many other’s I have had the pleasure of speaking with.  I have always loved heroic people and as a child was an artist, drawing and painting many pictures of WWII planes and spent a lot of time building model planes.  I was also very much inspired by the heroics and self sacrifice of pilots in the comic magazines about wartime.  And then, I thought about my friend, Bill.

So, here’s to you, Bill!

I met Bill and his wife Joan as clients and we became fast friends.  Bill was an older British gent and Joan was Canadian.  They had lived in Canada for many years and eventually moved to the U.S., where they lived in Southern California.  

As a young man, Bill was apprenticed as a Rolls Royce engineer and as I loved auto mechanics, we spent hours talking cars.  I would also get Bill talking about his past, story after story. 

 His father was an inventor and helped develop television and actually installed the first television in Buckingham Palace.   Bill got to play in the royal playroom with the future Queen of England, Elizabeth.  He told me that after the war he was on parade and Princess Elizabeth passed by him in the line.  She recognized him as her childhood playmate and she paused in her inspection to chat with him.  His commanding officer seemed perturbed and asked her highness if everything was all right, to which she told him to send Bill out of the parade line up so she could talk privately with him.  You can imagine his officer’s face!

 Before the war, Bill lived with his parents at a house that backed onto a small airfield.  One day, he was playing on the far side of the field where he spotted a biplane, all in pieces, on a trailer.  He was told by the owner that he was going to junk it, so Bill asked if he could have it and the man agreed.  With the help of his father, he rebuilt the plane and he learned to fly it.  By the time war broke out, he had over 400 hours of flying time and could perform every stunt possible in it.  

Bill had to lie about his age to enlist in the Royal Air Force since he was only 17 at the time and he wasn’t a big guy at that.   On one assignment, he promptly flew onto the base in his own little biplane in civilian clothing.  Needless to say, this did not impress the Commander of the base and Bill was summoned to his office, where he was given a good talking to in the presence of another ranking officer.  When there was a pause in the rampage, Bill opened his flying jacket and exposed his uniform underneath.  To the horror of the officers, Bill out ranked them both and swiftly stood at attention and saluted him.  “You should have seen their faces, Mike!” he told me.  He also said he was in charge of about three thousand men, mostly mechanics, and trained spitfire pilots.  He advanced so fast because of his training at Rolls Royce and his extreme skill as a pilot.   

“Sometimes they would get shot down and they would be afraid to fly.  To get one man past his fear, I had him follow me in my plane as I flew straight through the supports of an aqueduct.  He panicked and flew over the top.  So, after a pep talk, I made him follow me again and I flew under a seaside pier through the pilings.  This time he did it and passed the test and gained the confidence to continue flying.”  I suspect that Bill saved many pilot’s lives though his expert training.

I once asked Bill if he had ever met Douglas Bader, the famous English air ace.  “Yes, he once flew into the base where I was, just to meet ‘the fellow he’d heard so much about’!”   

After the war, he met Joan, moved to Canada and got into semi-professional race car driving, driving a Shelby.  He once met the creator of the Shelby, who happened to be at a race where Bill won.  Impressed with Bill’s driving, he asked if he would be interested in driving for him professionally.  Bill declined for reasons that I don’t remember. 

Bill was in his late seventies when we met him and we only had the privilege of knowing him for a few years before he got seriously ill and ended up in the hospital.  His health had been failing for awhile, but he was such a stalwart (and stubborn) guy, he just pushed himself until it was finally too much.  When Marti and I went to the hospital he looked so frail and thin, but his spirit was strong and he could only think about going home and working on the new lathe he had ordered.  Sadly, I knew that would be the last time I would see Bill on the physical plane.  We gave him some healing and I told him I would see him again soon and then left.

Days went by and all the time I waited for a call from Bill’s wife, Joan to let us know that Bill had crossed.  Three days – nothing.  I would ask my “friends” on the other side if he had crossed and continually got the answer – “No”.  I was surprised at how long he lingered.  (I did say he was stubborn, didn’t I?)  Almost a week went by when Bill appeared in our living room in front of the TV I was watching, smiling from ear to ear.

“Hi, Bill!” I said in my mind.  

“Just arrived Mike, Call Joan and tell her I’m ok, will you?”  he replied.

“Sure will, mate” and then he was gone.

I immediately picked up the phone and dialed Joan at home.  I got her message machine and left a message telling her that I had just gotten a visit from Bill and that he’s fine and he loves you.  Then I put in a call for his daughter and left a similar message and carried on watching TV.  The phone rang about five minutes later.  It was Joan telling me that Bill died just ten minutes ago.  I thought at first she was responding to my phone message, but she said she hadn’t gotten the message as she was at the hospital still.

People ask all the time if there is a waiting period between the time a person passes to when they can communicate and this truly illustrates that there isn’t.