this is not a simple life my friends and
there are no simple answers these words
the late editor of the Miami News bill
bags would stamp on postcards and send
out to the readers who sent him hate
mail this happened often by the way
because bill as editor tended to promote
ideas that weren’t popular at the time
for instance he and his front page daily
column he would talk about protecting
the environment he would talk about
saving OD segregating public schools and
he would talk about peace in Vietnam
under his leadership the Miami News
earned three Pulitzer Prizes bill earned
a bullet hole through his office window
plainclothes police guard standing
outside of his home and a old Mercedes
outfitted with a remote starter so that
it had been rigged with a bomb it would
blow up before he got in it in spite of
his accomplishments and his causes when
bill died at the age of 46 from
pneumonia in 1969 his story nearly died
with him
and that would have been a tragedy
because bill has so much to teach us
about how to find the answers to those
not so simple questions like how do we
live in peace with one another I first
discovered Bill here at the beautiful
tip of Key Biscayne
it’s called Bill bags cape Florida State
Park in Miami that historic lighthouse
led ships through Biscayne Bay later on
it became a landmark for enslaved
Africans escaping along the Underground
Railroad to freedom in the Caribbean in
2004 when I was working on a Biscayne
Bay public access
and this this I learned so much more
about what Bill did to save this place
from advocating for its in his column
for finding the funding for negotiating
the purchase price he wrote people need
roads and bridges and places to work and
live of course they do but people need
parks they need places to rest and
recline to walk quietly to dock a small
boat to listen to the soft drawl of the
sea these words became my landmark as I
wrote the plan and for years this place
became my respite a place where I could
go to renew my flagging spirits because
what Bill and I learned across the
decades is that saving land in Florida
was never simple a couple of years later
I was sitting I had taken a seat in this
creative writing class and I took a seat
near a little old lady and we started
talking about the projects we were
working on what we wanted to write about
and she mentioned that she really wanted
to write about her husband
her name was Freck bags her name that’s
the nickname bill gave her and she was
known by because of the freckles across
her nose for the next year Freck and I
would meet once a week she needed a
sounding board for what would become her
self-published memoir and I got to you
know indulge my curiosity and learned so
much more about how this son of Colquitt
Georgia ultimately took on the world and
now I am in this amazing and humbling
space not by birthright or by
inheritance but by being in the right
place at the right time to share his
story and also I want to carry on his
unfinished work one thing that Fred
confided in me that Bill had confided in
her was that at the age of nine he
witnessed a lynching and the next day
the white murderers were passing the
plate at church I have absolutely no
idea what that does to someone’s soul
but what I learned about Bill as I
studied his writings is that from that
moment on for him religion and
righteousness were not equal and
authority would always be questioned at
the age of 19 he volunteered for the US
Army Air Force and served as a
Bombardier and a b-24 Liberator over
Europe in his letters home you get a
sense of that widening perspective he
was developing while he was laying in
the belly of that beast and one of those
letters dated July 28th 1944 he wrote
one thing is certain war must be stopped
there’s only one good that can come from
this conflict and that is a deeper and
fuller appreciation of peace after
flying 50 missions and sustaining
multiple injuries he was sent to Miami
for R&R and there he said this is where
I want to be a newspaperman and he also
dedicated his entire profession to that
deeper fuller appreciation of peace as a
reporter he lifted up the voices of
those marginalized by prejudice as an
editor he befriended the powerful like
Senator Robert Kennedy and nudged them
along that arc toward justice as a
community leader he would suffer the
slings and arrows of his detractors and
his friends and he worked really hard
not to stop an argument just to prove
that he was right and sometimes he went
over hearts and minds one of those
hearts belonged to the Reverend Theodore
Gibson seen here with the white collar
the first time he was able to sit in the
by the time that they met by his own
admission
Reverend Gibson had grown so filled with
hatred and have lost so much faith in
his fellow man that he said it burned
like acid and he felt he had no right to
wear the cloth but when he met bill
together they served on the Community
Relations Board that eventually
desegregated Miami’s public schools bill
would hold in trust the negotiated
settlement between the n-double-a-cp and
the local department stores which opened
up the lunch counters and their
restrooms to black patrons two years
before the Civil Rights Act passed and
these two men create entered into a
secret pact unbeknownst even to their
families that they would not leave the
south until the south lived up to
America’s highest ideals and they wanted
to vanquish the stain of racism together
he restored my faith the Reverend would
later say a bill and he returned that
favor to Bill
bill made two trips to North Vietnam as
a writer the first in 1967 was to
interview Ho Chi Minh he was the last
American journalist to do so the second
time in 1968 was when he returned to
help lay the groundwork for the Paris
peace talks and to assess the state of
the war as the American bombers were
bearing down he awoke his colleague
Harry Ashmore and said come with me and
they walked down to a deserted Buddhist
temple there bill knelt and delivered an
Episcopalian liturgy by that afternoon
said Harry Ashmore the bombing had
ceased 1968 was a terribly tumultuous
year and it was a time when the tide has
was violently turning against the
Johnson administration bill also had
grown concerned and decided to write his
friend Robert Kennedy a letter
encouraging him to get into the race
if you do not make your views known now
you will lose whenever you choose to run
a month later Kennedy and every the race
two weeks later while bill was still in
Vietnam
Johnson stunned the world by saying he
was not going to run again now I don’t
know if Bill’s
letter had any sway on the senator but I
do know silence did not track with Bill
bags
he used the bully pulpit of his column
to state very clearly what he was for
and what he was against and he was very
clear that a paper wasn’t even worth
printing if you were seeking to be
popular and for that he was called a
commie a pinko a traitor this decorated
World War two veteran but he suffered it
and he bore it with great humor as one
of his colleagues said he would never
use a broad axe that the scalpel Nick
would do and he confounded his enemies
because they figured he rather loved
them and so bill would stamp those
postcards and send them out one by one
this is not a simple life my friend and
there are no simple answers and his
words are just as relevant today as they
were then he is proof that our lives do
not end when that our stories don’t end
when our lives do so let’s do something
here today you and I let’s make a pact
together that we will not leave this
place until we live up to our highest
ideals thank you you
there are no simple answers these words
the late editor of the Miami News bill
bags would stamp on postcards and send
out to the readers who sent him hate
mail this happened often by the way
because bill as editor tended to promote
ideas that weren’t popular at the time
for instance he and his front page daily
column he would talk about protecting
the environment he would talk about
saving OD segregating public schools and
he would talk about peace in Vietnam
under his leadership the Miami News
earned three Pulitzer Prizes bill earned
a bullet hole through his office window
plainclothes police guard standing
outside of his home and a old Mercedes
outfitted with a remote starter so that
it had been rigged with a bomb it would
blow up before he got in it in spite of
his accomplishments and his causes when
bill died at the age of 46 from
pneumonia in 1969 his story nearly died
with him
and that would have been a tragedy
because bill has so much to teach us
about how to find the answers to those
not so simple questions like how do we
live in peace with one another I first
discovered Bill here at the beautiful
tip of Key Biscayne
it’s called Bill bags cape Florida State
Park in Miami that historic lighthouse
led ships through Biscayne Bay later on
it became a landmark for enslaved
Africans escaping along the Underground
Railroad to freedom in the Caribbean in
2004 when I was working on a Biscayne
Bay public access
and this this I learned so much more
about what Bill did to save this place
from advocating for its in his column
for finding the funding for negotiating
the purchase price he wrote people need
roads and bridges and places to work and
live of course they do but people need
parks they need places to rest and
recline to walk quietly to dock a small
boat to listen to the soft drawl of the
sea these words became my landmark as I
wrote the plan and for years this place
became my respite a place where I could
go to renew my flagging spirits because
what Bill and I learned across the
decades is that saving land in Florida
was never simple a couple of years later
I was sitting I had taken a seat in this
creative writing class and I took a seat
near a little old lady and we started
talking about the projects we were
working on what we wanted to write about
and she mentioned that she really wanted
to write about her husband
her name was Freck bags her name that’s
the nickname bill gave her and she was
known by because of the freckles across
her nose for the next year Freck and I
would meet once a week she needed a
sounding board for what would become her
self-published memoir and I got to you
know indulge my curiosity and learned so
much more about how this son of Colquitt
Georgia ultimately took on the world and
now I am in this amazing and humbling
space not by birthright or by
inheritance but by being in the right
place at the right time to share his
story and also I want to carry on his
unfinished work one thing that Fred
confided in me that Bill had confided in
her was that at the age of nine he
witnessed a lynching and the next day
the white murderers were passing the
plate at church I have absolutely no
idea what that does to someone’s soul
but what I learned about Bill as I
studied his writings is that from that
moment on for him religion and
righteousness were not equal and
authority would always be questioned at
the age of 19 he volunteered for the US
Army Air Force and served as a
Bombardier and a b-24 Liberator over
Europe in his letters home you get a
sense of that widening perspective he
was developing while he was laying in
the belly of that beast and one of those
letters dated July 28th 1944 he wrote
one thing is certain war must be stopped
there’s only one good that can come from
this conflict and that is a deeper and
fuller appreciation of peace after
flying 50 missions and sustaining
multiple injuries he was sent to Miami
for R&R and there he said this is where
I want to be a newspaperman and he also
dedicated his entire profession to that
deeper fuller appreciation of peace as a
reporter he lifted up the voices of
those marginalized by prejudice as an
editor he befriended the powerful like
Senator Robert Kennedy and nudged them
along that arc toward justice as a
community leader he would suffer the
slings and arrows of his detractors and
his friends and he worked really hard
not to stop an argument just to prove
that he was right and sometimes he went
over hearts and minds one of those
hearts belonged to the Reverend Theodore
Gibson seen here with the white collar
the first time he was able to sit in the
by the time that they met by his own
admission
Reverend Gibson had grown so filled with
hatred and have lost so much faith in
his fellow man that he said it burned
like acid and he felt he had no right to
wear the cloth but when he met bill
together they served on the Community
Relations Board that eventually
desegregated Miami’s public schools bill
would hold in trust the negotiated
settlement between the n-double-a-cp and
the local department stores which opened
up the lunch counters and their
restrooms to black patrons two years
before the Civil Rights Act passed and
these two men create entered into a
secret pact unbeknownst even to their
families that they would not leave the
south until the south lived up to
America’s highest ideals and they wanted
to vanquish the stain of racism together
he restored my faith the Reverend would
later say a bill and he returned that
favor to Bill
bill made two trips to North Vietnam as
a writer the first in 1967 was to
interview Ho Chi Minh he was the last
American journalist to do so the second
time in 1968 was when he returned to
help lay the groundwork for the Paris
peace talks and to assess the state of
the war as the American bombers were
bearing down he awoke his colleague
Harry Ashmore and said come with me and
they walked down to a deserted Buddhist
temple there bill knelt and delivered an
Episcopalian liturgy by that afternoon
said Harry Ashmore the bombing had
ceased 1968 was a terribly tumultuous
year and it was a time when the tide has
was violently turning against the
Johnson administration bill also had
grown concerned and decided to write his
friend Robert Kennedy a letter
encouraging him to get into the race
if you do not make your views known now
you will lose whenever you choose to run
a month later Kennedy and every the race
two weeks later while bill was still in
Vietnam
Johnson stunned the world by saying he
was not going to run again now I don’t
know if Bill’s
letter had any sway on the senator but I
do know silence did not track with Bill
bags
he used the bully pulpit of his column
to state very clearly what he was for
and what he was against and he was very
clear that a paper wasn’t even worth
printing if you were seeking to be
popular and for that he was called a
commie a pinko a traitor this decorated
World War two veteran but he suffered it
and he bore it with great humor as one
of his colleagues said he would never
use a broad axe that the scalpel Nick
would do and he confounded his enemies
because they figured he rather loved
them and so bill would stamp those
postcards and send them out one by one
this is not a simple life my friend and
there are no simple answers and his
words are just as relevant today as they
were then he is proof that our lives do
not end when that our stories don’t end
when our lives do so let’s do something
here today you and I let’s make a pact
together that we will not leave this
place until we live up to our highest
ideals thank you you
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