Yesterday my best friend, mentor, and example I occasionally lived up to passed away. He was 95 years old and his passing was gentle. Bill, ever humble, would have been the first to say that he wasn't anybody special. I beg to differ. Bill grew up on a sheep ranch near a very small Nevada town. his first real job was traveling all over the eastern Sierra with his pack mule, Pete, supplying his uncle's sheepherders. He got in a lot of fishing and hunting and saw unspoiled country before it was heavily occupied. Later on he worked in the banking business. Bill's banking career was interrupted by "air and naval forces of the Empire of Japan." Before Christmas of 1941, at age 29, he was on a train headed for San Diego. He never said he volunteered, but the time window implies that he couldn't have been drafted. Bill was fortunate to be stationed at the torpedo shop at Pearl Harbor, and he must have done a good job because he eventually became a Chief Torpedoman. After the war, he went into the boot and shoe and sporting goods business, and was also the local Western Union operator. (It was a very small town and one had to diversify to stay in business.) Bill married and raised three children. I met him when he was 51 and I was a wet behind the ears 27. We hit it off pretty good and I was highly honored, for a lowly prunepicker, to be invited on hunting trips all over northern Nevada with Bill and several other friends I met through him. Sure, Bill taught me how to hunt deer, and showed me a lot of good fishing spots, but mostly he taught me, by his example, how to be a better man. I remember the quiet times grilling steaks in the pasture, or just hanging around his store, and the big times when we laughed our way from one side of Nevada to the other. I will always be indebted to Bill for giving me the state of Nevada and for improving my character. I will miss him, but not mourn him. Remember Bill, his kind is getting rarer all the time.