This is the photo Bill used on his Seaman's Papers, issued in San Francisco on 12/29/1977. He and Tom Blymyer and I shared a nice house on Vicente Street then. It's 2 blocks from the Zoo and probably a little more than 1/4 mile from the ocean. It gets foggy there a lot, and very still, and at night we could hear the animals calling as if they were right next door. Lions and elephants and peacocks and chimps and baboons---all sorts of wild calls were part of living there, as well as fog horns on buoys offshore.
Bill had a nice room in the basement. It wasn't gloomy at all because the house was made like many in SF where the garage/basement is on the ground level and the house is the second story. He had a large window and his own door to the backyard and a half bath, stereo, TV and of course, tons of books. He was as happy there as at anytime that I knew him. Lots of times if we had people visiting he would go over to Leon's BBQ a couple of blocks away and buy chicken and ribs and links and beer for everybody. He took my son Ben to to the zoo a lot too. Ben was 10 and 11 at the time and idolized Bill. They were good buddies. We always considered Bill to be his uncle.
Terry
Thanks to Bill's brother Scott for sending this.