230929 In Memory Of

This is the Bill Taylor I remember.

I heard about Bill Taylor’s passing and the first thing that came to mind was, I want to write an obituary for him. I have spent the last two days thinking about Bill. This morning I realized that an obituary is something one sees in the newspaper. The obituary is usually a short record of birth, marriage, and who he left behind. Those facts really tell very little about the man and how he lived.

I never met Bill’s wife or his daughter; I only know that he loved both of them. From what Bill told me, I can only surmise that those two changed his life and made him a better man.

I met Bill when I started working at Litton. He worked in the electrical test area when I was working in the final test area. When we met, I felt like we were two tomcats. He had his domain and I was an intruder. We kept eyeing each other, waiting to see what would happen. I was in the test area frequently borrowing their materials to run failure analysis on faulty circuit boards. I didn’t have to look to know that Bill had his eyes on me.

Lucky for me, Bill transferred into the HVAC department with Kelly Hampton and we met on a different plane. We even began to speak in a civil manner. There was no longer any perceived animosity toward each other.

Sometime later I wrote a post about Kelly and how he would willingly help people in different departments with their projects. That led to a post about how maintenance men were true superheroes. That kicked off the concept of my stories about the Maintenance Man Superhero. He and his apprentice (Bill Taylor) went about saving the Litton workers from evil doers. 2001 and 2002 were the best years at Litton for me. I did a lot of work and had a lot of fun writing my Maintenance Man stories featuring people who worked at Litton as the characters in the stories. Joyce would shake her head and say she didn’t know how I/we did not get fired. The lead characters were Kelly Hampton as Maintenance Man and Bill Taylor as Apprentice. Along with Carla from personnel as The Marla and Rob Painter as Goliath. Many pictures for the stories were shot up on the roof of the building.

Bill and Kelley up on the roof.

Here is the fun side of Bill Taylor.

That was when Bill and I became good friends and we talked a lot. That is how I learned about how good a man Bill had become and how different he was from his earlier days. I learned a great respect for Bill and how much he loved his wife and his daughter. A man who has love in his heart is a man who lives a great life. Bill found his love and his passing leaves a legacy that his family, friends and especially Kelly Hampton and myself are mourning the loss of a man who was a worthy friend, someone we will always remember.