Upon returning home, I needed to find ways to spend time formerly overbooked. Bill Bundy, the father of Amy's younger friend Jessica, invited me to join him at the Mira Costa High School football game. His daughter was still on the color guard team that Amy had captained before graduating.
Just like that, I had re-filled my Friday nights by returning to games which I formerly attended primarily to watch Amy's halftime show, becoming a booster of the football team alongside the always enthusiastic Mr. Bundy.
The Mustangs went all the way to win the championship in 2009. Bill and I gave celebratory high fives as if we had something to do with it, and indeed we did, because the crowd energy at a game can be infectious, as you might know. We cheered loudest for the receiver Kyle Nunn, who repeatedly dragged would-be tacklers an extra ten yards into the end zone to score when it seemed like he should've been on the turf short of the goal.
We would also go out to lunch every week or two, and Bill always knew some great restaurant that I had to try, whether that be Swiss Chalet Edelweiss in Westchester, Alpine Village in Torrance or Pancho's Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach. At Pancho's, we happened to be there when Lakers co-owner Jeanie Buss and her more famous boyfriend, ex-Lakers coach Phil Jackson, were there having lunch with GM Mitch Kupchak. Bill also brought me as a guest to a Norwegian heritage club in San Pedro for a buffet to try authentic Nordic dishes, because Bill was a proud Viking.
He tagged along with me to a CSUN basketball game up in Northridge, where my son Jay was playing trombone in the booster band. The Matadors ended up making a run all the way into the NCAA Top 32 during March Madness that year, where they lost a close game to one of the favorites in the tournament, Memphis.
Every time we got together, we bragged about our families, and I doubt any two men on earth could have been more proud of their children than Bill and me. He sent his three daughters to private colleges which he had personally checked out and verified to be the perfect schools for each, though they were in three distinctly different cities. When he went to visit his oldest daughter in Memphis, he liked it so much that he bought a house there to go for long stays, but he always loved Manhattan Beach, too.
In fact, he seemed to have a deep love for everything in his life.
He even loved managing his rental properties, seeing problems as opportunities to use his engineering knowhow and occasionally literally be in the trenches (with pick and shovel) himself. He was also always ready to help his friends, including me, when we needed any kind of assistance.
Whenever we got together, we would at least briefly discuss politics, and Bill would proclaim his conservative viewpoints quite loudly, usually knowning someone at a nearby table in liberal L.A. County would not want to hear his truths. Undoubtedly it would have embarrassed his daughters, just as me doing the same would embarrass my own kids, but it was amusing to me.
We discussed movies occasionally, and after he saw "Ghost Protocol" on my recommendation, we watched the first "Mission Impossible" movie on Blu-Ray together at his house, planning to watch the others eventually, though we never got around to that.
We also reminisced about our pasts. Not surprisingly Bill always seemed to have lived in the best of all possible worlds, which was the mindset with which we found ourselves in greatest sympatico.
Bill talked of playing basketball, being an officer in the Navy and being a bartender in college before learning to make the perfect Margarita from a master of his craft in Mexico. Bill enjoyed his time attending Vanderbilt University, during which time he was inspired by attending a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King in person, and getting his Master's of Physics in Wisconsin, where he came to truly appreciate beer and sausages.
When he moved to California, he laughed about holding an open house Wisconsin-style only to realize he may be in a different world when guests expected Chardonnay and brie when all he had was beer and sausages.
As Bill told the story, at his job as a supervisor in California, a young lovely associate looked across the room and told herself Bill was going to be her husband. Patti made that intuition become reality. Bill always spoke of his wife in glowing terms, including the magic of their first date and subsequent candelight dining at the Bottle Inn with her over the years.
He had retired a few years ago, saying he had a certain amount of wealth in mind as being enough to retire, and when he reached that level, he walked away from a very successful and lucrative career as an engineer. However, he understood that Patti loved her work and never expected her to give that up prematurely.
So, it was with true shock and sadness that I read in an email from Patti that Bill had passed away.
Realistically, I know none of us live forever in this human form, and Bill was 69, but he was like a force of nature. A mountain of a man, he would still go for long bike rides with Patti. I guess I thought he would live to be at least as old as his mother, whom he visited at her rest home down in Carlsbad every week.
Over the last few months, I hadn't been able to get Bill to meet me for lunch, and I had thought I must have said something that irritated him, but perhaps he just wasn't feeling his best, something which I never considered to be even possible.
In any case, I will miss Bill a lot. He was a good friend who became prominent when I needed him. He will be deeply missed by all who knew him, though I have no doubt that he's on to heaven, where undoubtedly he's in awe of the wonderful experience.
As one more note, when Bill would drive, which was most of the time, he was usually accompanied by his gentle dog Mia. At his Christmas party in his home a few years ago, Bill was particularly happy when Mia immediately acted as something of a caretaker for my granddaughter Emma, who was visiting from New York with her mom. Bill frequently recounted what a terrific little girl Emma was, and how Mia immediately took to her and watched out for her. I think Bill would be happy to know that Emma happened to be visiting me again when I learned of his passing, something which helps me make the transition, just as he helped me carry on when Amy moved on to her next experience in this world.
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