The Good Ones

We lost one of the good ones this week.  Bill Usher, my wife's uncle, passed away in the early morning hours Monday, and my family is reeling from the effects.  Bill Usher was a good man.  One of the best.  He was an amazing mix of characteristics that drew people to him like moths to a flame.  His passion for life expressed itself in so many aspects of his life.  Here are just a few moments that epitomize that.

One of the first times I met Bill was on a ski vacation to Sunriver, Oregon.  I was with a large group of my wife's friends and Bill came over with his wife Mary to have dinner with us.  The night was a festive one.  Bill drank and ate with gusto and his laugh was infectious, filling the room with his presence.  Towards the end of the night, when we'd all had a "little" bit to drink, the party evolved into a dance party.  Bill laughed and danced with the best of us.  The boys started getting rowdy and all of a sudden I saw this sixty year old man pick up our friend Shad and "body slam" him into the couch.  It wasn't hurtful, merely playful, but I remember being impressed by how strong and powerful he was.  I'd learn more about his strength and fitness on the ski slopes.

We met Bill at Mt. Bachelor one sunny weekend morning.  He was strapped in and ready to go.  Being that I was on my high school ski team and have skied for years, I didn't worry too much about keeping up with him.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  The man was like a dart down the mountain.  I don't know if he took a single turn down the entire run.  He simply pointed his skis down the hill and flew.  I found myself having to push it to keep up.  He almost always beat me down the mountain.  He was in his sixties at this time and I was in my mid-twenties.  I marveled at him and remember deciding in that moment that I wanted to be him when I was older.  I wanted to have that same gusto about life that he did.  I wanted to have passion and joy about the things I did.  I wanted to take risks, to feel the wind in my hair, my laugh trailing me down the mountain as his did.

I got to know Bill better over the coming years.  His passion for life continued to marvel me, and when I took a job as a teacher, I found a new reason to enjoy our conversations together.  Bill was a fantastic teacher, as is evident by his many former students who stopped him in restaurants and on the street in Bend.  When Tracy and I visited Bill and Mary, he was full of curiosity and questions about my students, about how I was trying to reach them, about how I maintained the standards in my classroom.  He cared, not only about me, but about the profession as well.  He found it a noble calling, a worthy occupation, and he understood the pitfalls and the drawbacks of it as well.  I could talk to him about things that were happening in my classroom that some folks either wouldn't understand or didn't care about.

He was a good one.

That's the closest I can get to summing it up.  A good one.  We know those good people when they come into our lives and we feel it when they leave us.  Bill Usher came into my life in a flurry of laughter and joy.  He always made me feel welcome in his home and in his life.  I've been lucky to share these last 14 or so years with him.  He taught me a lot of things about how to be in the world.  His presence will be missed.  So, I raise my glass to him (as he would want all of us to do) and drink to the good one himself.  We'll miss you, Bill.