The Quiet Man
My friend Bill Moulton is gone. We all feel the loss. I worked with him for over 25 years. He was a quiet force in the community. Very few know the impact he made, but they could feel it.
He and his charming wife Bev were key volunteers in the community. If work needed to be done, Bill was there. He and Bev worked tirelessly to help the aged especially at Elgin Lodge.
I remember his help with a mutual friend of ours. The friend was in his mid-eighties and needed to do normal things like acquiring groceries, cleaning out a garage and going to the bank. Bill literally donated an entire day per week to help this man, driving him everywhere and above all being kind to him, listening to him. All this work and more was done without fanfare.
The above picture in the woods shows Bill right in the centre of volunteering. He was very strong having been a University Football player. I worked for hours and hours with him on Chantry Island. I appreciated his physical and spiritual strength. He is shown in the photo felling the trees that we used to obtain the lumber for restoring the Island. He was there at the beginning in his quiet way. Bill was an engineer by training and a sports fan by birth. He loved sports and knew the box scores every day, like a preacher knows a Bible.
Bill could gather volunteers to do tasks like charity burger flips at Home Hardware in Southampton. This event took place yearly managed by Bill. He had it down to a science. Bill never took centre stage. He worked so well with people from the background. The real Bill was so charming. Nobody would say no to his smile.
Bill had a large family. He cared deeply for them. His family extended to all of us who knew him. What a smile!
He always reminded me of a character out of a John Ford movie … ‘The Quiet Man’.
