My family knew Bill when he first came to Maine as an aspiring American novelist in the 1930's. They had great folk song parties together and Bill discovered that singing folk songs is what he really wanted to do, and he devoted the rest of his life sharing that joy with as many people, young and old, as he could reach.

He was a pioneer for bringing folk songs to the classroom, starting in the 1940's. He and his wife Gene produced a whole series of historical albums of folksongs on their own Heirloom label. They also collaborated on a wonderful book called Full Hold & Splendid Passage with excepts from diaries and letters of people who went to sea from 1815 to 1860, and the songs that time.

I aso fondly remember the song parties in their living room on Westport Island, and boating back late at night to our home across the cove.

And I'm pleased that Brett, Fred and I could join Bill at the Mystic Sea Port Museum when he was part of a program honoring Gale Huntington.

I also fondly remember the trip we took together a year before that to revisit Lunemburg, Nova Scotia, to present their Museum a collection of photographs Bill had taken aboard a fishing schooner after convinvcing them to sign him on as an overgrown ship's boy.

Damn, I'll miss Bill!