William Wilson, Deceased October 18, 1999

This obituary is written from the ‘heart and soul’. It was my pleasure to room with Bill Wilson for 4 years at Yale and one summer in New York City. For 3 years we shared bunks in the same room of a 2 bedroom suite, and only by senior year did we have separate rooms in a 3 room suite.

I’ll begin on day one and week one. Our bonding started that early. I arrived a few hours before Bill as a Freshman on the fourth floor of Vanderbilt Hall. Unconsciously, I left my ‘mouth retainer’ and a toothbrush on the dresser in our small room. Of course, Bill found these immediately upon his entry and never let me forget how dumbfounded he was at this first impression !!  When I finally arrived, I was friendly and engaging, and all was forgiven. My first impression of Bill was friendly but somewhat stand-offish. Bill was tall and overly pudgy with a childlike and slightly forlorn face. I immediately thought he was going to be a ‘project’ at Yale and I felt a little sorry for him. All of this was soon to change !!

Our first ‘bonding’ experience was a trip in a borrowed van to his grandmother’s house in Middleton, CT to pick up some furniture for our room. It was foggy and dark and with my preppy vernacular, I said it looked like a dismal ‘abyss’ outside. Bill retorted in a self-effacing aside that he always wanted to pronounce ‘a byss’ as ‘ab’ yss if you get my drift. This got my attention immediately that he might be ‘quick’ and ‘funny’. Little did I know the subtlety of humor I was about to engage in for four years. It would always be difficult to say anything that Bill did not have a wry interjection about.

Later, in a walk to commons for dinner during our first week, I found out that Bill was in 3 Advanced Classes…One in French, One in English, and one in something else. I was dumbfounded. This pudgy, effeminate roommate was a major brain. As it turns out, Bill had scored 800’s on his SAT’s and on two Advance Placement tests. That was almost unheard of in my world. I was no slouch, having completed three years at Phillips Andover. But I was no match for that level of academic success. It was only my first lesson that Andover held no lock on scholarship pre-eminence.

Bill and I were completely comfortable with each other from the beginning…. At dinner, on walks, in the room…. Bill was not good at starting conversations, but he was always an energetic participant, usually in a funny and off-putting way. I played on this tendency and he gleefully responded. Years later, my lifelong partner, Sally told me that she always loved our long distance phone conversations because of the tete-a-tete interplay that went on and on. She said my personality changed when I was around Bill….I became much more child-like and fun.

As with all personalities, there was another side to Bill. In 1965, it was not acceptable to be ‘gay’. In fact it was categorically scorned. I always suspected that Bill might be gay. But I liked his personality and as long as nothing was ‘overt’, it didn’t matter to me. I dated frequently and always had an attractive girlfriend, not because I was anything special, but because I worked hard at it. Bill was polite but stand-offish. Occasionally he would tag along with us, which I didn’t mind because he acted like a gentleman and was frequently humorous. As a senior, I split up with a long term girlfriend from Vassar that Bill knew well. He asked me if I minded if he dated her and I said ‘go ahead’. Well, by senior year, Bill had transformed from a tall pudgy effeminate freshman to a tall dashing movie star senior. His confidence had grown and he was developing a worldly demeanor. After the two had dated for a while, I became slightly miffed and jealous. They were going to events and restaurants in New York and I felt left out and left behind. My imagination played tricks on me and it was only later that I learned that it was all a charade. Bill needed an attractive statuesque date and my former girlfriend provided the role. She later told me that she felt like a mannequin. This Vassar Debutante and I started dating again later and she is the one I should have married !!

So, as it turned out, Bill was indeed gay. I did not find out for sure until Senior year. I found a letter on his desk from another Yale student about a gay party in New York. The friend was talking about how hard it was for Bill to relax and enjoy himself. I ignored it all, and we never discussed it directly for 30 years of friendship. Then, on a visit in New York City, I found Bill with a bandana covering his bald head. At this point, he had to admit his problem…and it was lymphoma, resulting from AIDS. I was not taken aback, but I was at a loss as to what to say. Bill filled in the gaps of his New York City life including drugs, late night clubs, and other counterculture experiences. He once told me that if he had known that I had never tried cocaine, he would have insisted that I try it. He gave me an article he wrote for a Greenwich Village publication about how he contractedAIDS. One poignant description was about how he would be walking home from a Chelsea club at 5:30 am and stumble in front of the Chinese shopkeepers, just opening for business … a contrast of lifestyles.

In spite of the trauma induced lifestyle to which Bill was addicted, he managed to create an outstanding resume of accomplishments as a writer, first at Esquire, then at National Enquirer, and finally with Random House as a freelance writer. His most important success was a five year endeavor to write a book with his lifelong friend Judy, ‘The Incomplete Education’. This book is a compendium of the most important academic knowledge expected of a college graduate, all in 600 pages. His favorite section in the book was somewhat surprisingly American Studies. I don’t think Bill took a history course ever at Yale but took great pride in compiling this section! The book became a New York Times best seller and supported Bill in his most trying years.

The last time I saw Bill, he was living in a spectacular Greenwich Village apartment with a two story widow wall overlooking NYU and the Empire State Building. One wall of the living room was a full height bookcase, crowded with books of all descriptions and genres. On this visit, I watched Bill tip his cleaner $20 for helping that day. Bill was in a wheel chair and let me guide him to the street level where we met a few of his friends for dinner at the Knickerbocker Restaurant on Washington Square. It was our second but last dinner there and one to which I would return frequently.

As you can tell, I miss Bill. He was like a brother… funny, loving, caring, sometimes critical and demanding, other times lazy and insouciant. For most of my post-Yale life, he was my only link to the experience. We could be together in a dorm room, at dinner in New York, or 2000 miles separated in a phone conversation. His spirit lives on !!

From the New York Times, OCT. 22, 1999

Paid Notice: Deaths WILSON, WILLIAM H.

WILSON-William H. On October 18, 1999, at home in Manhattan, from AIDS related illness. Born April 18, 1948, Middletown, CT. Predeceased by father, William F. Wilson Jr., and by mother, Dorothy Tefft Wilson; survived by sister and a family of loving friends. Author, editor, scholar; graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Yale 1969; attended Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Memorials may be made to The Robert Mapplethorpe Laboratory for AIDS Research, C/O Jerome Groopman, M.D., Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Institutes of Medicine, West Campus HIM 351, Deaconess Road, Boston, MA. 02215. Memorial service to be announced.

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