I was very shocked to receive this news. Bill was still a young man. It's a
terrible tragedy for his young family and I pass along my deepest
condolences to them.
This is also a great loss for the contesting community. Bill was one of the
best ops in the world and it would be hard to think of anyone more dedicated
to the sport and helping others to enjoy it. I first became aware of Bill on
Tower Talk back in 1997, when I sought advice on building my first tower.
Bill was just finishing up his super station on the mountain in Georgia. I
didn't have any direct communication with him for a while, but very much
admired his huge project and quest for perfection. I learned a great deal
from Bill's descriptions of what he had done, and incorporated as many of
his ideas into my own station as I could. Later, I was not surprised at all
when he won USA in CQ WW CW 1999, spending a full 48 hours in the chair. I
gather that in the past few years Bill was very busy with work and didn't
have time to do the major contests. I really missed his presence there, and
was always happy when he dropped by to give me a contact or I heard him
handing out QSOs. Well, sort of happy -- I knew if Bill was doing a serious
effort there would be one more person ahead of me in the standings! Also, I
made sure to send my best CW to Bill -- he was a great op and I didn't want
him to think I was a lid.
Like many of you, I never met Bill in person. I knew him only from QSOs,
numerous e-mail exchanges and his website. I was looking back though my
e-mail archives and was amused to see that my first interaction with Bill,
in May 1998, was when he slapped my wrist rather hard for posting a "test"
message to Tower Talk. Bill did not suffer fools lightly, and never pulled
any punches. That was Bill, and I came to appreciate that about him more and
more as time went on. Not one to take it lying down, I engaged him in a
little back-and-forth in which I tried to justify my post as a last resort
to debug an ISP problem. As usual, I was verbose to a fault and Bill was as
terse as could be. Eventually the conversation ended in a stand-off with
Bill saying, "I love you, too, man. I thought for a second there that we
were going to get into a flame war... ;-)" After that, we had a number of
pleasant exchanges on technical and business matters (we both were working
on startups in Seattle.) I always learned something from Bill.
Bill had a very strong sense of right and wrong. One thing that really
impressed me was when he quickly banned a certain person from one of the
reflectors for making Nazi-like hate comments. I was also impressed with how
he kept the contesting.com reflectors going even when it became apparent
that they were hurting him financially. I donated whenever he asked. If you
think about it, these reflectors have made one of the greatest contributions
to contesting and amateur radio of any innovation since the beginning of
the hobby. Whatever becomes of them, I hope that we will find a way to
permanently remember Bill as the founder and visionary who made it possible.
Good-bye, Bill, and thanks for all you did for us.
73, Dick WC1M
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