I missed this thread the first time around, probably because in 2001 I was busy missing Bill so much, I didn't spend much time browsing.

Bill Bonyun was my mentor. I met him at a fortunate time – I was 12 years old, just like one of the posters above.

It was Christmas season 1949. Pearl Buck was holding a Christmas gala at her fixed-over barn in Perkasie, PA. I lived nearby. There was word a guy was going to be at the party, singing folk songs.

I was immediately excited and curious, because those were the sorts of songs I was already liking best. Over the past year I'd heard a few Burl Ives recordings, listened to my grandfather's album of Carl Sandburg, and started fooling around on my father's college ukulele. Recently I'd pestered my parents into getting me a guitar. It was a steel-strung Harmony. I was struggling with it.

So I was in the small audience when a burly man opened his guitar case and took out a guitar, casually strolled up on stage and sang a dozen or so wonderful songs. One he did that night was his own "Oom-Paul Bonyun" about his recently born son Paul. But m0st of all I'll never forget his cheerfully mad rendition of

There were thr-r-r-r-r-eeeee craws,
Settin' on a wa' …

It was the first of many songs he taught me. Afterward, all starry eyes, I had to go up and shake his hand.

Bill was instantly a friend – something I hadn't even imagined could happen. He generously came over to my house the next day and spent the afternoon inspiring me. He drew me a chord chart (wish I still had it!), showed me strums, told me anecdotes of a friend who'd inspired him named Richard Dyer-Bennett, and tales galore of other folk singers in New York that made folksinging as a livelihood seem attainable. He at once advised me to re-string my guitar with nylon as he and Dick did.

He was patient, kindly, endlessly helpful, cheerful and delightful to be around. He and Tom Glazer, a Philadelphia singer, did a joint concert at my Quaker grade school the next day. Even after he went back to New York he sent me letters full of encouragement.

For years I knew no more of Bill than that. Then in 1968, wonder of wonders, I found my parents-in-law in Wiscasset, Maine, knew this person down on Westport Island who sang folk songs. It proved to be Bill Bonyun! "Sure, we'll invite him over," they said.

So on a memorable evening I met the hero of my childhood once again. And for the first time I met Gene. Friendship all over again. It lasted the rest of her, and his, lives.

Wouldn't you know it, Bill, out of the goodness of his heart, at once interested himself, unfazed and unasked, in my music and my prospects. After years of performing only traditional songs, I was just then trying my wings at contemporary songwriting. Bill was again endlessly helpful. He taped my songs, put me in touch with singer-promoter Manny Greenhill, did everything in his power to advance my shaky steps in that direction. It eventually led to Boston concerts and to my being briefly a federal employee, singing for the Treasure Hunt program that brought singers, dancers, actors and others in the arts to the rural schools of Maine, many of them bleak and regimented, letting kids know there was a wider and more entertaining world out there, things ordinary people could do, even they could do, not just figures on a stage or on TV.

I'm sure dozens if not hundreds of young singers could tell you the same. Bill encouraged the world to sing and play, and showed how you could do it with a bouyant spirit like none I've ever known.

But great as his helping me was, that isn't what I now remember most vividly. Best of all were the parties and visits at Bill's saltwater farmhouse, and his visits to my in-laws'. Of course we spent lots of time singing, but he also brought a wealth of talk, laughter, kindliness and fellowship of a kind only Bill could create.

He was an extraordinary personality. No matter what gloom might threaten elsewhere, Bill knew, and practiced, the secret of joy. He spread it around to everyone – the kids up and down the East Coast who were his best audiences, the tourists at Sturbridge, the endless audiences who learned from Bill just how to be happy with a simple song.

He had that secret: enthusiastic happiness with simplicity. I can't forget the time, aged sixty or better, he'd just gotten his cutaway Martin 12-string guitar, and was like a kid at Christmas, showing it off. Good things happened around Bill. He taught us all what "blithe" meant.

Gee, I miss him. I dunno about any afterlife, but somehow I can't help feeling that we'll meet him further along the road somewhere. Maybe it's just that, for me, he never quite left.

Bob