The Life and Times of BILL EASTERLING
By Mike Kaylor
(As published in Old Huntsville Magazine No. 198, August 2009)
Dressed in pajamas, he sat on the edge of his bed with feet on the floor. His voice was weak, but his determination was strong. It was the last week of December, and he was flipping through the pages of a book just off the presses. It missed the bulk of the gift-giving season because of a series of printing snafus. He struggled to flash a smile.
By Mike Kaylor
(As published in Old Huntsville Magazine No. 198, August 2009)
Dressed in pajamas, he sat on the edge of his bed with feet on the floor. His voice was weak, but his determination was strong. It was the last week of December, and he was flipping through the pages of a book just off the presses. It missed the bulk of the gift-giving season because of a series of printing snafus. He struggled to flash a smile.
“We’ll sell these books for many Christmases to come,” he said, emphasizing the word “we.” Bill Easterling knew he had cancer; he knew how hard it was to sit up in bed. He even labored to breathe. But the determination never faltered. That was Bill’s last night alive. Barely past his 60th birthday, a gloried and storied life came to an end on Dec. 28, 2000.
Bill Easterling was a sage to sports fans across Alabama during the 1960s and ’70s. He was the sports editor of The Huntsville Times, and his grasp of Alabama and Auburn football, Huntsville and North Alabama high schools had boosted him to legendary status. His behind-the-scenes antics and fast living made him an idol among his cohorts in the press box.
Young Bill had arrived in Huntsville in 1949 at the age of 9. His father, William Rhodes Easterling, was a government employee transferring from Texas to Redstone Arsenal. The family consisted of “Slim,” as friends called the elder Easterling, his wife Eleanor, and three boys – Edward, Bill and Charles. They lived first in the Farley community south of Huntsville before moving into an area known as the old Dallas Mill village. Bill attended Rison School, which had been built by the mill, and graduated from Huntsville High School. He was toying with college classes when he landed a job at the newspaper.
Copy carriers were the so-called “gophers” of the press. They raced from department to department with scraps of paper that would eventually land on readers’ doorsteps as news. The copyboy might run to the nearest sandwich shop when editors were hungry or fill up bosses’ cars when they were too busy. Most of them knew their places in the organization. Not little Bill.
A new editor named Leroy Simms had arrived from Birmingham in 1961, and he had summoned all personnel of The Huntsville Times to meet him. As they gathered, he asked each to give their name and position. This bubbly teenager listened intently, and finally his time came to speak. “I’m Bill Easterling, and I run this damned place,” he said. Instantly, the publisher took a liking to him, and Bill’s career at The Times began a meteoric rise.
Bill’s insights in large part made The Huntsville Times one of the foremost newspapers in Alabama. He shifted to the news desk in the mid-1970s and became state and then city editor. He was climbing a ladder that began at the lowest rung.
His rise continued despite a few small bumps along the way. Not long after New Jersey newspaper magnate S.I. Newhouse bought The Times, the new owner was in town checking on his investment. He made a necessary stop in the men’s room one morning, and young Bill just happened to be there too. Bill saw a pair of shoes in the next stall that he thought belonged to a co-worker. He stomped the toes. The response was silence. Bill later learned those were not his friend’s feet.
Bill had already enjoyed a successful career of nearly 25 years at The Times when he became the newspaper’s daily columnist. It was a coveted job for any writer, yet a constant chore to crank out a new tale five days a week. The words that began to flow bared the writer’s soul – his empathy, his mood swings and his unfaltering opinions. His became a household name.
A preacher’s wife who lived on Huntsville’s Country Club Circle stopped in at a neighbor’s house one day to collect for the Heart Fund. When she heard that Bill Easterling was on his way over, she seemed in no hurry to leave. She had read his columns regularly in The Times, and she was anxious to meet him.
Suddenly, the front door flew open and a man with wispy grey hair, squinting eyes and a prominent nose burst into the room. “Those damned drivers on the Parkway scare the hell out of me,” he roared. Then he looked at the elderly stranger. “Isn’t that the truth?”
The woman’s eyes were wide with dismay, but her look slowly changed to admiration as Bill’s grin spread from ear to ear. His warm expression could melt away any sort of tension. The woman babbled about how many people she knew who had been featured in his columns. She told him she hoped he would write a book. She beamed as she headed out the door and back down the lane.
No one could predict what words might explode from the mouth of Bill Easterling; however, they would likely be profound. In the same way, his columns were equally honest. That’s why so many people turned to the second page of the newspaper first.
His readers knew Bill’s likes and dislikes. When he was struggling for a topic for the next day’s column, he might begin with the words: “These are the things I love….” On another day it might begin “If I could be in charge of 1992:” or “Some Wisdom in the Still of the Night.” He was always chiding himself in print about his smoking or other habits. He wrote on April 4, 1993, about the second anniversary of his conquest of smoking. He mused that “So many people have turned against smokers, I’m almost sorry I deserted.” Bill wrote a similar column in October 1994, a year after he had quit drinking. He vowed at the end of the article to never mention it again, and he probably never did in print. He did point out his lifestyle change, though, to friends who kept living life on the edge.
Concerning alcohol, Bill said he kept drinking for years because he “didn’t want to surrender my image as a fast-playing, hard-drinking newsroom legend.” His image had found him married just out of high school, missing many of his two children’s firsts as he buried himself in Alabama’s sports rivalries and the festivities that surrounded them. By the time he had begun writing human-interest columns at The Times, he had ended one marriage, started a new one and made amends with his almost-grown children.
He had a love-hate relationship with golf, and the game fueled a fiery temper. He could throw a golf club about as far as he could hit the ball. He talked of Alabama’s legends, such as Paul “Bear” Bryant and Ralph “Shug” Jordan, as if they were ordinary people. He shared many hours solving the world’s problems with his one-time brother-in-law Floyd Hardin on a porch swing at Jackson Way Barber Shop.
Bill said time and again that he couldn’t believe someone would pay him to do what he did. After leaving sportswriting, he loved the human-interest columns about people he found on backroads and dusty country lanes. He had corralled all of his addictions except his zeal for the written word. Then his whole world changed. Medical exams and blood tests were showing something awry in his body. His energy level was faltering.
On July 18, 1999, he told his readers the whole story. It began with the words: “I woke up one morning and something didn’t seem right.” Later in the column he proclaimed that he had “written about people who just simply refused to let life’s slings and arrows destroy their faith,” and he said their stories were an inspiration to him. “Now I get a chance to see if I can handle what’s ahead of me with the same kind of dignity and class and bravery those people displayed.”
That he did for the next 17 months and 10 days. He kept his followers apprised of his condition from month to month. His column might disappear for a few weeks during surgery and recovery, but it always returned. While going through the stress and pain, he collected many of his favorite columns from the 1990s for a book to be published in time for the Christmas shoppers. It was called “A Locust Leaves Its Shell.”
Scheduling at the printing company carried the production into November. A truck driver quit his job and left a trailer filled with Bill’s books on the side of the road between the printer and binder. Soft cover copies arrived around Thanksgiving, and Bill was treated with a handful of autograph parties. But his health was getting worse. He struggled to sign copies of the hard cover books when they arrived only days before Christmas.
His last column in The Huntsville Times was published on Nov. 28, 2000. It was a light-hearted tale about losing his hair and how it was growing back black and curly instead of thin and grey. His beard also had a distinct five o’clock shadow look. A summary of his cancer columns published in mid-December included a letter to Santa Claus. “I’m not afraid of facing what every man with a potential life-threatening disease faces: I’m not afraid to die. I was before I got ill, and stayed that way for an awfully long time. Then it went away, that feeling of apprehension, that dreading of what was in front of me. I just quit worrying and let THE expert take over.” He said he was thankful for the arrival of a granddaughter several weeks earlier, for his wife Pat and his children Leigh Ann and Mike.
From his bed, Bill saw no reason for fuss. He had told Santa in his letter that no one needed good health to celebrate the true reason for Christmas. “So, Santa Claus, I believe that’s about all I have to say about the subject as this Christmas season quickly approaches. But I naturally feel sure you and I will be talking about it some more in 2001. Thanking you kindly, Billy.”
If you would like a copy of Bill’s book, “A Locust Leaves Its Shell,” send $5 (includes shipping and handling) to Mike Kaylor, P.O. Box 737, Huntsville, AL 35804. Books will be mailed U.S. Postal Service book rate or hand-delivered to the address included. For multiple copies, contact Mike at the e-mail address: mike@thebestofhuntsville.biz.
