The Bill Whaley I knew
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena ... his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Taos is a place of magic. For me, it’s in the unanticipated, surprising people you meet. It is the quintessential “you can’t judge a book by its cover” kind of environment. You never know who you may encounter just around the next corner, and you absolutely cannot tell by someone’s looks who they might be.
Bill Whaley is a case in point. How could I have anticipated that this Fedora-fancying, Walter Winchell-Nathan Detroit-Daymon Runyon emulator with the inviting grin and twinkling eye, would turn out to be a kindred soul and frequent ally? Bill was a reservoir of local history, culture and politics, with a fund of knowledge ranging from the classics to contemporary art.
A persistent practitioner of the political power of the pen, Whaley was a ubiquitous voice of the unheard, tribune of the downtrodden. If some 80 percent of life is showing up, Bill convincingly beat the percentages. He could be counted on, either in person or in print, to show up, to stand up and to speak up in pursuit of social, economic and political justice. He deplored authoritarian bullies. This was the nexus of our mutual attraction: a sentient connection, one of ideas and analyses, shared values and moral judgments mostly expressed in frequent published essays and private emails.
Though unplanned, Whaley and I invariably wound up on the same side of hotly contested local political issues. We routinely joined the fray de jour in print. Bill’s aim was deadly. His powerful prose projectiles were predictable head shots. My fire power was likely less lethal, typically wounding, but not annihilating. Bill chided me for this, sometimes branding me a naive do-gooder and at other times a co-opted sell-out.
The first of our shared crusades involved governance of Taos’ hospital. I had stumbled into the role of hospital critic and authored a series of 10 Taos News op-ed’s between May, 2013 and January, 2016. Bill actively cheered me on, as the series commenced replete with ridicule, parody and sarcasm. He stood with me as long as I excoriated the HCH board, far preferring my full attack-dog/take no prisoners mode to anything mildly conciliatory.
But when my goal of change in the board’s membership and leadership seemed within reach and I began to celebrate the emergence of a new day in hospital governance, Bill would have none of it. He remained wary as my tune changed from critic to convert. He believed I had sold out. Nevertheless,
he cautiously accepted my invitation to a “give the new guy a chance” lunch with the new CEO, and subsequently held his fire.
Along the way, Bill began characterizing me as a “gadfly.” This appellation, bestowed by the community’s quintessential gadfly, suggested that I was finally making the grade to his critical eye. In our most recent and final lengthy exchange of emails just prior to last November’s general election, Bill paid me what I took as a high compliment. He called me a “f***ing radical.”
Bill was my guide through the thicket of complicated local history, culture and politics. He always seemed to know where the land mines and bodies were buried and the likely identities of the perpetrators. And though he could be a fierce combatant, I was often the beneficiary of his protection. He could spot my penchant for quixotic fools’ errands from afar, and his trusted counsel sometimes saved me from myself.
But Bill didn’t simply give advice or opinion, he was willing to offer up his online Taos Friction platform as a ready and reliable alternative publication platform when others demurred. I took him up on this offer on a number of occasions. As recently as last Fall, two of my essays saw the light of day in Taos Friction’s pages.
Colleague; counselor; confidant; confessor; critic; coach; cynic; curmudgeon; co-conspirator; cultural history conservator; conscience of a community— take your pick. All were facets of my relationship with Bill Whaley. Though carefully crafted words, clauses, and phrases were our common bond, none are anywhere near adequate in this time of his passing. He will remain forever prominent in my thoughts. One like Bill Whaley will not soon pass this way again. He was truly the man in the arena.