Bill started his journalism career during high school with the Greeneville Daily Sun as football reporter. He enlisted in the US Naval Reserve at 16 and served his country during World War II, seeing combat in the Pacific. Afterwards he attended University of Tennessee and managed the UT Band, where he was instrumental in the band’s transformation into the Pride of the Southland under director Walter Ryba.

Bill’s goal of working for the Chicago Tribune led him on a path from the Greeneville Sun to the Knoxville Journal to the Nashville Banner to the Dayton (Ohio) Journal Herald where he covered military aviation. His Tribune ambitions then led him to take a position as bureau chief in Okinawa with the Pacific Stars & Stripes.

After a year, he returned to the Knoxville Journal briefly, barely escaping death during school integration riots in Clinton, Tenn. The notoriety from this reporting got him hired at the Chicago Tribune in 1956. He became a Washington correspondent, covering military and manned space events. He returned to Chicago as the Tribune’s day city editor and then city editor. He took great pride in the Tribune’s environmental coverage spotlighting pollution in the Great Lakes and the Pulitzer his team won for exposing an ambulance patient scandal. In 1970, the Tribune sent Bill back to Washington as national correspondent. Over the next five years his syndicated columns focused on political and national energy policies.

Bill joined the late Sen. Henry M “Scoop” Jackson’s staff when he left the Tribune in 1975. Over the next decade, Bill managed editorial services for the Department of Energy, then became public liaison officer of US Information Agency and Director of English Broadcasts for Voice of America. The capstone of his federal government career was as special assistant to the Secretary and Director of Public Affairs at the newly formed Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bill enjoyed over 30 years of retirement in the Lexington, Va., and Hendersonville, N.C., areas. He continued to mentor young people, identify talent and call out corporate malfeasance.

Bill’s life will be celebrated at a graveside service at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 27, at Buena Vista’s Green Hill Cemetery conducted by Pastor Anita Mays Lucord. Arrangements are by Harrison Funeral Home and Crematory. NG