Remembering Bill

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

I was a classmate of Ted Blatch’s above and one of those more quiet students that Wild Bill never knew he had an important influence in my life. In English class, his favorite expression of encouragement was “Good point! Excellent point!”, and although I did not get many of those directed at me, Bill’s enthusiasm was contagious. I enjoyed his classes tremendously and that comes from someone whose teachers would be surprised to learn that I actually enjoyed anything at school that was in a classroom.

What Ted does not mention above was that he was captain of our powerful single-winged football team (at least we were powerful in practice during the weeK). So, Ted was a jock, but still drawn to a non-teacher-coach of the traditional school sports, the man who found solace far away from campus in the mountains. Hiking was never much mentioned as a school activity, but eventually stories of weekend adventures with Bill began trickling in from Ted B. and Peter Ward, both of whom would have summer jobs working as “crew” in the famous AMC Lakes of the Clouds Hut a mile below the summit of Mt. Washington, NH. Several years later these stories began to turn into stories of my own as I became a school teacher and an Outdoor Program enthusiast leading trips into the White Mountains and beyond. Backpacking has become an important element of my life and I discovered what Bill Biddle was quietly trying to teach so long ago and which I have passed on successfully to my own three kids. So, finally here is my thanks to “Mr. Biddle”, one of my true mentors. Note worthy, too, is the fact that many schools now offer Outdoor Programs in their curriculum. It is great to discover that Bill took his passion of the outdoors with him wherever he went, spreading the gospel!