Billy loved children. His favorite noise in life was the sound of their laughter when at play. A week or two before he went into hospice I paid my last visit to Bill. We were sitting on his back deck, watching his girls and my Thomas at play. Tom was pushing over the lawn chairs. Billy said it reminded him of a long ago trip to Dublin. He was in the park at St. Stephen’s Green and a young lad was tossing lawn chairs into the creek, brushing off his hands after every chuck of a chair. Bill said he got the biggest kick out of that.
Another time we were playing in Perth Amboy at an INA fundraiser. While on break we went down to the bay and there a young boy of 10 or so had been fishing, but his pole had broken. Billy tried to give the kid $20 to buy another. Well trained by someone, the lad refused the money, not persoanlly knowing Bill. The thought of the lad thinking he was a pervert or something never crossed Bill’s mind. He simply loved children and he often said we should all be like children–that life was all about that and little more.
