Billy was part of our skate group at the beginning. He didn't exactly have a sparkling personality and a lot of guys didn't get along with him. I think he may have presented a slightly different personna to adults and we became friendly.....or maybe I was just more tolerant of his sometimes foul moods.
The way I remember it, at some point his father and stepmother moved back East, but Bill refused to go with them. Although he hadn't finished High School yet he was 18 and so there was nothing they could really do to persuade him. I believe they helped to set him up in his own little apartment to finish school but he had get down to business and cut out the non-essentials. For a while he did work at the Marina Park (which is why I still have a couple of Marina Skatepark Staff tee shirts....collectors: eat your hearts out!)He wanted to be a paramedic but had run up too many moving violations so he joined the Coast Guard Reserves.Then he was discovered as a fashion model and sent off for a season on the runways, first in Tokyo and then in Milan.When he came back from Italy, something seemed off balance. At this point I think he slid into some kind of emotional crisis, which broke my heart (and also loosened my bottom teeth when they came into contact with his knuckles)I couldn't think of anything to do for him...I didn't even have his father's phone number. I really had no option but to take a defensive step back away from him and his problems (and eventually pull those teeth.)I very sincerely hope that he managed to grow out of it or get some meds. (I really don't think it was a matter of simply sobering up.) I still regret that I couldn't help him more...