A Life

I've lost close friends in the past, but no friend as close and as decent a man as my pal, Bill Gronroos. This past weekend I drove down to my hometown of Brunswick, Georgia to deliver the eulogy for him at his memorial service at the Palmetto Cemetery.

I cannot imagine ever having a more depressing thing to do. It was very hard and the entire time I was traveling to and from my hometown a cloud hung over me which has yet to dissipate.

Here, then, is the eulogy that I delivered, and some photos from the service and from a series of displays that were set up by his cousin, Mauri, to celebrate his life.

Bill as a radio DJ and from about the time he was the Voice of Woolworth's.

Bill's favorite Superman actor was George Reeves, but his cousins found this pen sketch he tossed off from memory of Kirk Alyn as Superman.

Me, delivering the eulogy.

One of the many displays of photos and memories of Bill's life. Created by his cousin, Mauri Lazaro.

One of Bill's Superman collectibles.

“Never Ending”

A Eulogy for Edward William Gronroos, Jr.

I knew Bill for most of my life. Since I met him when I was 18 and I’m now almost 61—that’s over 42 years--it is easy to say that he was the closest friend that I’ve had for the longest time. We knew one another well.

One thing that I want to mention today is the fact that Bill and I occasionally talked about sensitive subjects that lots of friends avoid because they want to stay friends. I think that says a lot for our friendship. You know the two subjects—religion and politics. Specifically, though, I think of what Bill had to say about the human soul.

Because Bill did believe in the soul and that it was ever-lasting. He thought that it was created, that it was here for the duration of his time on Earth, and that when he died it would continue on. Ever-lasting, as he insisted.

Another thing about Bill came from almost the first day I met him--he sincerely took to heart something that we both had heard and read as children and it went straight to the core of who he was.

You’ll recognize it if you ever spent much time around him. It originated with his favorite bit of pop literature—Superman, and it meant as much to Bill as anything can mean to anyone.

He believed in the never-ending battle.

He felt that a person was in for a never-ending battle as long as they were alive. And I saw it every day that I spent in Bill’s company. People gave him a hard time. Even his friends sometimes were less than charitable to him. But Bill persevered. It was all part of his eternal struggle. Not for truth and justice, maybe. But for as much of dignity as he could find and grasp while he was with us.

I knew that Bill suffered from depression. He told me about it from time to time, and what a burden it was for him. It was especially hard in the face of cruelty, and in the wake of all manner of personal disappointments and broken plans and dreams. But Bill was true to the creed that he’d first heard as a kid. It was important for him to keep up that never-ending battle because only a coward would do otherwise. More than anything, it was Bill’s job to be as strong as possible against whatever adversary the world chose to throw his way.

And now Bill is gone. Now he doesn’t have to struggle against the cruelty and harshness that sometimes found him. I often saw Bill create a solid wall of stoicism through things that would have reduced me to tears or rage or even violence. I watched Bill deflect hardship and callousness with humor, humility, and compassion. Bill was far and away a better man than I am.

This was because he displayed a kind of courage that I know I could never match. I could try for another forty years to do it and I’d never measure up.

And I know that Bill was right, that his soul is ever-lasting because of everyone who is here. If you knew Bill then a little of his personality is present in your hearts. When you hear music you will hear Bill’s voice. If a person is being bullied and responds with a smile you will see Bill. Someday when you are passing a bookshelf and spot a kid reading a superhero comic, you’ll know that Bill just gave you a wink. And if you are sometimes lonely you can think of Bill’s voice and his tendency for reason and his cool response with love in the face of difficulty, and you will be better for it.

Bill Gronroos fought that never-ending battle to the last beat of his heart, and his kind soul is certainly ever-lasting because I have felt it and heard it almost every day since he left this place where the rest of us still reside.

My Rabbi of Rock (and Voice of Reason).

My pal Bill Gronroos died sometime over the past week. We're not sure of the exact date, but I suspect it happened last Saturday.

I normally hear from Bill every couple of days. So it was unusual for four days to pass without so much as a brief e-note from him. And—as with so many modern US citizens—this is how I stayed in touch with him. When I hadn’t heard from him I asked if any other people had spoken to or visited him and this cascaded into a request from a relative for the police to visit his house and they found that he had died.

Bill was not a shut-in by any means, but he did live alone. He was a gregarious sort who enjoyed the company of other people, but he lived by himself as he had since his family had died one by one. He had an on-again off-again relationship with a girlfriend who finally left him some years ago and broke his heart. But that was a while back. Since then he had the company of various friends and cousins, an aunt, and a host of local pals. His adopted dog, Nicky, died not many weeks ago and I wonder if this small tragedy may have played a bit of havoc on his already precarious health.

My pal had all sorts of health problems, mainly resulting from his chronic obesity that had beset him as a kid and with which he dealt the rest of his life. At times he would shed a vast amount of fat, but of course it created a strain on his system. As a clerk for the United States Postal Service he got a viral infection which settled in his heart, thus ending his career there, after which he lived on disability.

There were many health scares over the years since that viral infection—some of them severe—but he always recovered. But apparently the weak ticker finally took him down.

I used to refer to Bill as “my rabbi of rock”. He had an almost supernatural knowledge of rock and pop music. Personalities, dates, writers, producers, agents, earnings, chart positions, tour dates—you name it. Whenever I had a question about any kind of 20^th Century pop music, Bill could answer it. Last week I asked him the title of a Statler Brothers song giving him only vague hints and he reminded me that the tune was “This Haunted Old House”.

I met Bill through a shared love of comic books when I moved to Brunswick Georgia in 1975 after graduating high school. He came into my dad’s shop to sell some old comics that he had from his childhood. From there we struck up a friendship that lasted to his death.

When I met Bill he was a DJ on a local radio station in town. His love of rock music had dictated that he would be a musician and he was an exceptionally talented guitarist. I only saw him perform once at an oldies show in town and was amazed at his proficiency, nailing Bill Haley tunes perfectly. But his career as a musician could never earn him a living, even though he did have a regional comedy hit some years back that did make him some money for a while until the royalty checks dried up and people mainly forgot his song “You Don’t Steal Hogs in McIntosh County”. Bill thought that pigs were an exceptionally funny topic and from a local news item he turned the event into a humorous song that enough southerners liked to make it a small hit.

Never happy with the radio business, Bill also fell into another career path that dropped into his lap. Millions of people heard Bill’s golden voice and never knew his name. During the last ten years or so of the F.W. Woolworth Company’s existence, Bill was the official voice of Woolworth’s. If you walked into one of their stores and heard the recorded ad on their P.A. system, that was Bill. A Woolworth’s executive while driving down the Interstate had tuned in and heard Bill on the radio. Impressed with his vocals, he took the exit, found out where the radio station was and asked Bill if he’d be interested in the job as Woolworth’s voice. The company eventually even offered Bill an executive position in New York City, but after a visit to the offices there he decided against it, figuring he’d reached his high point as the in-store pitch man for the company.

Over the years, Bill had many opportunities to leave the horrible town of Brunswick, Georgia behind, but he never took any of them. For some reason that I could never fathom, he was hooked permanently into the polluted dust of that trash village and would not leave it, except for brief excursions. Now and again Carole and I would invite him to visit us, to join us on camping trips, or to take him canoeing and tubing down clear crystal rivers in Florida. We enjoyed his company. Easily, far and away, he was one of the funniest people I ever knew.

That’s the way it is with people like Bill. Life had not often been good to him, not even in his childhood. Battered, bruised, all but broken by the world, guys like Bill can turn one of two ways—bitter and angry, or sadly sweet and funny. Bill’s demeanor led him down the latter path. And I am glad for that, and happy for the company he provided over the years.

We’ll miss him terribly.

My pal, Bill Gronroos.

Ironically, this was the last pop tune Bill helped me recall. A bit of sad nostalgia for which the Statler Brothers are famous.