The art director
“I’m from a different century,” Bill said to his students just days before he died.
Bill Whaley was a place holder and record keeper. He anchored justice, generosity, integrity of word and integrity of who he was. Values he’d learned growing up and values he’d cultivated through scholarly relationship with great philosophers of centuries past.
He was my Taos initiator, colleague, teacher and friend. Bill always had my back.
We first met in early 2005 when I was scouting a place to be my home. He related the ins and outs of living in Taos. His openness and welcome inspired my adventure. I made the move. Bill offered a back room office at HorseFly to me. There was an old wooden desk in my room; in the drawer a shot glass. Imagination noir played in my mind; the fedora-clad protagonist in the next room.
Within the year, designer Lisa Pelletier moved to Santa Fe and the baton was passed to me.
Politicos to eccentric poets, the full spectrum of community shared stories with Bill. Light-hearted laughter and compassionate listening created the ambiance at HorseFly.
When Bill and I collaborated with Paul O’Connor on Taos Portraits, former Fly editor and writer Dory Hulburt and contributor Lynne Robinson were called in. I’ll never forget Bill saying, “Kelly! We’re getting the band back together!”
In 2015, Bill conceived of and we organized, the Taos Writers Write Taos book fair. It was a weekend event starting with keynote speaker John Nichols, followed by two days of local writers presenting their works. Held in the Historic County Courthouse Mural Room, entry was by donation. Proceeds were used to buy quasi-permanent electric lights for the Mural Room. If those walls could talk, they’d include Bill in decades of their history.
Taos won’t be the same without Bill.
As I wrote the date of his death on my Magnolia calendar, I saw it was Nirvana Day. I picture the molecules of his spirit spreading through the mountains where his Taos journey began and where it ended, over the valley, touching all he loved and all who love him.
Thank you, Bill, for being you.
Kelly Pasholk
Bill Whaley and I got off to a rough start. I got to know him during the winter when another big bearded guy and I were running a ski taxi service — up to the ski valley, down to Albuquerque, down to Albuquerque, up to the ski valley, seven days a week — for Fred Fair. Bill had something to do with skiing. I didn’t really like skiers, and in the few times we got to be together there didn’t seem to be much chemistry between us.
Our next getting-together hardly boded better, but, though we were socially distanced, we sensed a mutual appreciation of irony.
Bill was running a little movie theater, maybe in 1970, can’t be sure, for Dennis Hopper. Bill had been running the big movie theater on the Taos Plaza, but the plaza theater burned down. In fact, two theaters burned on the same night: the auditorium owned by the Arts Association, an old barn out beyond the Taos Inn, and the Arthur Manby house, that burned, too.
Seeing as how now it was the only available movie theater in the area, Dennis Hopper’s property, the longunused 300-seat El Cortez, four miles south in beautiful downtown Ranchos, suddenly became a prize, and within maybe minutes Dennis had hired Bill to clean it up and run it. This arrangement had been going for a while, maybe a year, when I wandered into the picture.
I’d met Dennis on more than a few occasions, and I’d mentioned to him casually that if he ever needed a reliable hand in some project, I was willing. One day his brother, David, sought me out to ask me if I’d be interested in running El Cortez: Dennis wants to know. I said I needed to hear it from Dennis himself, and after some hemming and hawing, I was brought to see the great man. Dennis repeated the offer; I could run the theater. Turned out there was a catch, though.
“I thought you had Bill Whaley running the theater,” I queried. “And I’ve heard people think he’s doing a good job.”
“Well yeah,” Dennis admitted, “but I don’t want him running the theater anymore. I’m unhappy with how he’s running the theater. He thinks he owns it. I want him out, and I want you to take over the theater. All you’ve gotta do is go see Bill, and explain to him he’s not needed anymore, and that you’re taking over.”
“You want me to fire Bill for you?” I was young, and I hadn’t heard that one before. “Hold on,” I remonstrated. “I don’t think it works that way. I’d be glad to run the theater, Dennis, but you’ve got to fire Bill, not me.”
– Staff Report