Remembering Bill

Remarks by Ted Blatchford ’62 on the Peoples Memorial website related to the Celebration of Bill’s Life in Seattle on July 21, 2012:

Bill Biddle – Wild Bill, as we called him – was my English teacher for several years and the leader of the Outing Club at Noble and Greenough School 50+ years ago. I went on to a long career in education, and he came with me. He was in my classroom – many of his lessons became mine – as a novice English teacher. When I became head of a school and wanted to encourage younger colleagues to trust their natural enthusiasm, his example was there. He was a regular companion at teacher conferences I attended when the topic turned to “the teacher who meant the most to me” as an adolescent.

Nobles had many excellent and wonderfully memorable teachers in my day, and for me, Mr. Biddle was tops. His joy in teaching was infectious. It didn’t seem to matter what he was teaching—grammar, vocabulary, short stories, Shakespeare— he was as charged up about a dry definition of an unfamiliar word in last night’s homework as the witches’ chant in Macbeth. His enthusiasm was matched by his rigor. He gave me the confidence that I could write a decent paragraph: rewrite and rewrite. He celebrated classmates’ insights in stories or poems we were reading as if they were real discoveries. I remember submitting the final draft of an essay on the theme of courage in the short stories of Stephen Crane, and a few days later as I was walking past his classroom he called me in. He was teaching a class of younger boys, and he wanted me to read from my essay as an example of some point he was making about effective writing. That gesture meant the world.

In the buttoned-up world of Nobles in the late 1950’s, Wild Bill’s exuberant love of the outdoors was a bit un-cool. He was a runner and a hiker when most of the teachers excelled at the traditional, manly team sports. He helped us found the Nobles Outing Club, then led unforgettable trips to the White Mountains and Katahdin, full of adventure and fun, in all seasons. During the Christmas vacations of 1960 and ’61, he took a group of us climbing on Mt Adams with snowshoes and crampons, in wildly cold, windy weather. I can hear him gleefully reading sub-zero temperatures on his little thermometer or exclaiming over his hot cup of Constant Comment tea. But more, I can see now how generously he gave of himself on those trips: his knowledge of the mountains, his skills in camping and hiking, his ability to help each of us stretch our limits, his unstated conviction that these adventures were every bit as important to our growth as what he taught in English class. And we had a great time together!

Thank you, Bill.

Ted Blatchford, Nobles 1962