AN ORAL HISTORY: other stories
An oral history
Friends and others remember Bill Whaley. The mayor
We long ago got over any animosity there might have been between us. I was very sorry to see him go, and I feel for his family, who are grieving their loss.
Look, I was in public service for 28 years, first in the legislature and then as Mayor of Taos. You can’t please everyone all the time – I beat Gene Sanchez by 20-odd votes – that means half the town did not vote for me, but I took that in stride and did my best for the community. That’s what one does in public service.
In a way I think Whaley was very good for Taos – he kept us (politicians) on our toes, held us accountable. By being the way he was, he forced us to look at things differently and maybe try another approach.
He brought up a lot of issues we might not have paid attention to, but even when we disagreed, we always respected one another, and after I retired, we were always friends; there was never any animosity between us.
When you are in the public eye, there are always going to be people who disagree with you, but you can’t let that stop you from doing what you think is right.
When you take on a job in public service, you have to relinquish your own life and business for the time you serve. I did and Dan Barrone, the current mayor, has had to as well. And I think they (the current administration) are doing the best they can considering the pandemic and its effect on the budget; when the gross receipts go down, everything goes down.
I am very sorry Bill is gone. After all is said and done, I don’t bear any grudges.
Bobby Duran
The publisher
When I first arrived in Taos in the summer of 2000 and picked up my first copy of the HorseFly, I was taken aback by Whaley’s first-person point of view. He inserted himself in his stories masterfully using hyperbole, humor, sarcasm and some bending of the truth. After working for a half dozen newspapers peppered over the Southwest, I had never seen a publication with his type of brash journalism and the exaggerated writing style.
When I got back to the office and started talking about the HorseFly, I was shocked that the majority of our reporting staff laughed it off and said, “Nobody takes it seriously, It’s just Whaley bloviating, and it’s gonzo journalism.”
I said, “Well, he seems to be picking up several ads, and he looks like he has a loyal following.”
Over the years, Bill loved to poke and antagonize our reporters, editors, the owner and yours truly. In the beginning, I have to admit, it bothered me, and I would hate to pick up the HorseFly to see if Taos News was once again in his crosshairs. But as time marched on, I thought the HorseFly made us a better newspaper. Bill’s coverage forced our reporters to look at things through a different lens and dig deeper on their own reporting.
Bill and the HorseFly were made for Taos. I doubt if it could work in other communities, but for Taos, with its unique history and the three cultures, complicated race relations and nasty politics, a publication like the HorseFly was the perfect venue to capture the political and social fabric of a community that is extremely complex and hard to describe.
Chris Baker, publisher, Taos News
There were lots of lessons for gringos, who were still trying to live down “the hippie invasion” in the 1970s in Taos, and no one learned them better or shared that knowledge with more wit than Bill Whaley. He might have called it “20 years of terror,” but all we gringos in his orbit saw Bill as a survivor, a philosopher, a man who believed that the best story, the best business, was just around the corner.
While some at the Taos News had a contentious relationship with Bill during his HorseFly days from 1999-2009, I always thought there was room for an alternative voice in Taos. I had already left then for the big city of Santa Fe and became a devoted HorseFly subscriber, reading about Las Tres Brujas and other mitote only Whaley could dig up. A friend, who tended bar at La Cocina in the early ‘70s, recalls that Whaley regularly dropped by at noonish – not for a drink, just to catch up on what was happening.
Our paths crossed, as did all the paths of young gringos in Taos in the ‘70s and ‘80s. People used to keep tabs on “What is Whaley doing now?” One of my Hispanic friends once said, “People in Taos don’t care what you do as long as they can talk about you.”
So we talked about Bill. When he owned the Plaza Bar, we wondered whether it was Saki Karavas or Harvey Mudd who financed it. Also, the theater. “Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe” was showing on my second date with my second husband. Later, Bill and his girlfriend lived over the theater and rarely came out, except to venture across the street to La Cocina for enchiladas. Bill and Brad Hockmeyer started KTAO, a solar-powered lift to the Taos airwaves, and we talked about that.
Bill’s great gift to Taos was “West Side Story,” the musical production at Taos Community Auditorium, that cast favorite Hispanic musicians as Sharks and a young Bob Draper and Randy Raiser (now Isabella) as Tony and Maria. We watched them fall in love right before our very eyes at rehearsals. Yes, we snuck in the back from my Dragoon Lane duplex to watch rehearsals almost every night. Finally came
Top: John Nichols and Bill Whaley at Paul O’Connor’s book-signing in 2012. Bottom: Whaley taking notes at a meeting about the Abeyta Settlement, in January 2015.
opening night and we donned our finest. Bill, too: a tuxedo. There was an after-party. At La Cocina.
He was quietly generous to his employees and to people who just needed a hand up. It was a time when people shared houses, shared cars, shared clothes, shared whatever money, love or time they had to spend. It was a ripe time for gringo lessons. Thanks, Bill, for teaching us.
Billie Blair, former associate publisher and editor of the and publisher of the
The Patrons
Oh, dear Bill you have left us. You were such a part of the early days, the days when Taos won our hearts. Our first interaction with you was as patrons of your Plaza Movie Theater. Soon after we moved here, Michael and I bid on a raffle ticket for a year of free movie-going … we had the highest bid. We lived a few blocks from your movie theater and our television had broken. We took brazen advantage of our prize. You had an intricate schedule of movies ranging from soft porn to classic Bergman. I think you were in love with Julie Christie. We went to movies at your place at least twice a week. Soon our children caught on, and they would even bring “cousins” to watch cartoons. You just smiled and welcomed us all. Thank you.
We were regular patrons of Whaley’s Taos Plaza Theater in the 1970s, the days of one-screen cinemas. Bill showed an eclectic variety of films and you had to catch them fast. You needed to be nimble, for after a day or two even the best ones might be gone. Bill made sure the merchandise was fresh. In a bold gesture, Bill booked the celebrated and notorious trio of X-rated films into the theater: “Deep Throat,” “Behind the Green Door,” and “The Devil and Miss Jones.” This event was well-advertised and highly anticipated. I was terrified there were going to be howls of disapproval, pickets, riots and arrests. After all, this town was at its heart a conservative family-oriented town, despite the legends to the contrary.
The series was a hit. Everybody came to see those shows, folks you knew from the grocery store, the bank, the acequia cleaning, the gas station, probably your kid’s school teachers, maybe even the school principal. It was the broadest cross-section of the community, every walk of life and social category, creed, color, etc., united by curiosity and perhaps a love of high fine art.
The line to the underground box office snaked down the stairs and extended back towards the Plaza and down the block. Folks filled the staircase, socializing without a hint of embarrassment at being in line for these films that everybody had talked about, but just couldn’t get to see, in our isolated town.
It was festive. The patrons seemed to appreciate the chance to get together for a unique community event, and it wasn’t just the guys. Gals, too, adults of all ages. Such a hit, there were multiple showings to meet the demand. Bob Bishop, one of Bill’s projectionists along with Jim Levy, used to speak of the vascular pastiche, the perfect collection of films in a successful series, that really hit a vein with the audience. Bill sure did hit a vein with that program. He knew his town, and he was willing to take a risk to prove his theories, and to keep the doors of the Taos Plaza Theater open for another week or month.
Bill inscribed our copy of his “Gringo Lessons – Twenty Years of Terror in Taos”: To Hank and Cynthia – My best movie customers, Thanks, Bill.
Cynthia Patterson and Hank Saxe
The Salonniere and Costume Designer
Dori Vinella owned Dori’s Bakery next to the Taos Post Office for 20 years. It was the epicenter of café society here, although its proprietress says now, “I had no idea.”
Married to well-known Taos artist Ray Vinella, Dori had three sons with him – by the time she opened Dori’s in January of ‘71, the boys were pre-teens and her marriage was already over. She and Vinella called it quits in March that year.
Dori’s became a hub for the bohemian, artsy crowd in Taos. Over coffee (and Heavenly Hash) world problems were dissected and solved. It was a lively scene where you’d be sure to run into everyone you knew.
Statuesque and glamorous, Vinella ran the joint like a tight ship while treating her regulars with the utmost respect and deference. John Nichols wrote there almost every day at “his” table, and along with Bill Whaley and a few others, had his own cup.
“I knew Bill forever, Vinella said, “I think I got here two or three years after he did.” Once she opened, Whaley became one of the regulars. “Oh Bill was there a lot,” Vinella recalls, “he drank a lot of coffee, I don’t think he ate much there, but he was a big coffee drinker.”
“I remember one day, Bill coming in with Judith Crooker – I think he was the TCA Director at that time, or the President of the Board, at any rate, he was having meetings at Dori’s while getting ready to produce West Side Story.”
“Call Carolyn Kalom,” Vinella said, “she’ll remember.”
Kalom and Vinella’s friendship goes way back when the Kaloms arrived from Chicago with their toddler daughter, Noelle, whose art was featured on
Tempo’s cover last year. Both became involved in theater here – Carolyn had worked at Second City in Chicago – with she and Ron Kalom appearing in the TCA production of “Fiddler On The Roof” around that time.
“It was the Golden Age of theater in Taos,” Kalom remembers. “They were awarded a large grant by the National Endowment for the Arts,” she said, “which enabled them to do Project Discovery and they called me in to make around 50 costumes for the kids!”
“Ron and I met Bill early on,” Carolyn Kalom remembered. “We had already opened our restaurant, The House Of Taos on Doña Luz Lane, when Bill bought the Plaza Theater from Bill Beutler.”
“I remember all they showed were John Wayne movies until Bill bought it, and then he showed such great stuff – art movies, foreign films and even a few soft porn movies after midnight, I remember ... No one cared, it was pretty loose back then, not like now.”
“I really got to know Bill,” Kalom continued, when he produced West Side Story at the TCA, and he asked me to do the costumes.”
“It was the first really big production there,” she remembered, “an orchestra in the pit, a mixed cast – that was groundbreaking then – and it was fabulous!”
“I think he put a lot of his own money, as well as energy into it,” Kalom said.
“I’d run into him over the years,” she said, “Not too long ago he called and asked if he could get my input on something or other ... He deserves a big tribute, he gave a tremendous amount to this community over the years.”
Vinella agreed. “Look, he wasn’t perfect, but he was a very good person; he was there for me with my boys especially one of them – he mentored them and advised them at difficult times in their teens.”
“I knew him well, and was friends with his first wife Susie,” Vinella remembered, “when I was going back and forth to Denver, I’d bring or take their son, Fitz with me.”
“He was brilliant, a great mind, I remember when he left and went back to Nevada to get his degree,” she recalled, “he came back a lot more grounded, I think Bill was a true philosopher.”
“Bill’s roots here run very deep,” Kalom noted, “he was a big part of this community.”
The Leading Ladies
“Bill’s death hit me hard,” Pamela Parker said. Parker, whose family moved here when she was a small child, knew Whaley from the beginning and worked with him in many of his theater productions.
Parker and Larry Audette own Taos Gems and Minerals. Audette is an artist and musician, Parker a classically trained actor. Their son, Max, is a hospice nurse in Albuquerque, currently working with COVID patients.
“I had training from RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art],” Parker explained, so I was a bit particular about the plays I worked on, but even if I wasn’t in them, like the musicals, I’d help by working the box office. I loved Bill, he was brilliant, complex, and full of extraordinary ideas and energy.”
“He was a good director,” she remembered, “he never got in your way, he trusted the actors.”
Barbara Paul who remains close friends with Parker, appeared with her in several of those productions at the Plaza Theater after it had been repaired from the fire damage, enough to serve as an alternative venue to the TCA. She remembers “going back and forth between theaters, ‘there were musicals and Mamet plays, and children’s plays. I went from one to another, in between my various jobs.”
“It really was a very creative period for theater in Taos,” Paul said, “and although I loved it, I was a single mom and knew I had to make some choices, so I went back to school to get my degree, and became a teacher.”
Years later someone asked her if she missed acting. “I realized I didn’t, but now that I’m retired, I really miss teaching – teaching was my calling,” she said.