WEBVTT - Because of William 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.800 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:08.440 This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:16.680 William was a boy. The way they used to make 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:20.279 them what he would call the platonic ideal of a 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:24.400 boy building things and breaking them, fixing them back up again. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.960 But there were two Williams. One was the man with 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.240 no name, the William all of us knew. There was 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.600 another we didn't know, a man who wanted to be named, 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.840 to be known, the William who lived in his own 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:42.159 secret room. The narrow confines of an interior life with 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.680 space for only one, and a much darker space than 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:48.239 I'd ever imagined it would be. 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.560 That's Daniel Wallace, author and professor of English at the 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:00.400 University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, reading from his recent 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:04.200 memoir This Isn't Going to End well, the true story 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:08.440 of a man I thought I knew. Sometimes, in our 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.399 most impressionable years, a person comes along who changes the 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.479 course of our lives. We develop a kind of crush 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:20.000 on that person and model ourselves after them. Daniels is 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:23.479 a story of just such a relationship, one of emulation 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:40.240 and unknowability, and finally, the uncovering of a very secret life. 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.320 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:47.880 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:50.440 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:02.280 I grew up in Birmingham, in Suburbsingham, Homewood at first, 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:07.040 and then Mountain Brook. Birmingham is this constellation of neighborhoods 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:09.600 and doesn't really feel like one place, but just this 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.840 collection of places. And my father, when I was in 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:19.520 sixth grade, after many false starts, started making money, became 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.320 very successful at the work he was doing. He was 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.080 a great salesman. So we moved from Homewood, which is 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:29.520 a sweet little neighborhood, to a metrorieskier place called Mountain Brook, 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:35.000 and it had everything. It was a vaunted place to 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:40.160 live and my mother and father and I lived there 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:45.120 with my little sister Barry and my two older sisters, 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:51.160 Holly and Rangely. And it was through this mix and 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:56.400 mingling of people in ages that was definitely not sequestered. 0:02:56.440 --> 0:03:01.760 We were all part of this hive. I started growing up. 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:03.560 What was your mother like? 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.160 She was a lot of fun. She was for the 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:12.640 first few years of my life until I was probably 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.880 in sixth or seventh grade, not employed, worked at home, 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:22.760 and she and my father had a kind of tepid relationship. 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:27.600 She was not an admirer I don't think of my father, 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.600 and they were not always at odds, but they were 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.360 always sort of dueling with each other, and there was 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:41.280 this shimmering hostility and competition that sometimes would boil over. 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:50.360 But she was really affectionate and did anything, almost anything 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:56.440 that we asked of her, very very supportive, and was 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.400 there in the beginning in my early life a lot 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.960 more often then my dad was. He had to travel 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.720 so much for his business that he was gone in 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.440 a way that made his return to the house feel 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:14.520 as if he were a border. We established this routine 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:18.000 while he was gone, and if he was gone, you know, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.080 eighteen nineteen days out of the month, we would have 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.320 our own little routines which he would interrupt when he 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.480 would get back. And so he felt that, I think, 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:32.599 and we felt his presence too, as being something of 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:38.440 an imposition on the freedoms that my mother allowed us 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.440 to have, as much as we wanted to believe that 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.760 it was this kind of ideal Kennedy esque sort of family, 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.440 which is, you know how we would imagine ourselves being, 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:54.279 you know, smarter, better looking. Whatever it is that we 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:59.880 wanted to believe about ourselves wasn't true. When my dad 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:05.119 found his success, he became the person that he wanted 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:09.400 to become because he was so so ambitious and so 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:14.839 hard working. He sort of filled his own shoes and 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:20.840 saw me, I think, as the next chapter. He never 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.440 had the success that he needed in order to see 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.839 me in his sights as a potential follow up to 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:33.000 who he was. So one we moved from Homewood, I 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:37.400 left public school and went to the private school a 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.760 couple of miles away. He and my mother actually were 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:46.200 no happier with his success. She wasn't really supportive, I 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:50.320 believe it or not. She had said to him that 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:55.000 she didn't want him to make more than twenty thousand 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:59.400 dollars a year because if he did, he would become insufferable. 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.320 So I was in this position of being in this 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:08.240 private school beginning in sixth grade, wearing ties every day, 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:14.400 and not really in touch with any sense of myself. 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:19.159 I tend to think of these years leading up to 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:24.760 the seventh grade as this continual, almost fetal evolution that 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:29.080 I am still growing, that I haven't assumed a real 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:35.560 self yet, and that's when I met William. So I 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.280 came home from school and was standing at the back 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:45.080 door in the kitchen looking out, and the perspective was 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.279 at the roof of the house where we lived, in 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.160 addition to the house where we lived, which is my parents' bedroom, 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:55.280 and it was a flat surface with the rest of 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.720 the house was not And on the edge of that roof, 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:05.000 looking down twenty five feet or so to the pool below, 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:14.240 was William. He was cut off, jeans, nothing else, spotlighted 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:20.760 in the sun, his long golden hair draping over his shoulders. 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:26.680 I remember it as being this moment of a heightened reality, 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.680 kind of a movie moment in a way that just 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:35.520 wasn't the kind of experience that I usually had in 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:41.720 my life. He was about to jump, and that in 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:45.800 and of itself, this idea of this potential act that 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:51.320 was about to take place, was so antithetical to my 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:55.640 own experience as a boy in the world, which was 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.840 illustrated by me at the back door in the air 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:04.320 conditioning with my tie on, looking at an almost naked 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:10.000 man about to jump off the roof. And he did that. 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.920 He dove off the roof into the pool and lived. 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.840 It wasn't clear to me whether that was going to 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:21.200 be how this all turned out, but he did it. 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.720 He got out of the pool, climbed the house again, 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:29.000 which was no easy feet, walked across the hot tar 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:34.400 to my parent bedroom and jumped off again. 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.160 And your parents, they had removed a diving board from 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.880 the pool, right right. This was a pool that was 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.920 not meant to be dived into in any way, much 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.319 less from twenty five feet above in the roof exactly. 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.600 And that was another aspect of my life which was choreographed. 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.880 My mother lived in a very cautious kind of fear 0:08:57.280 --> 0:08:59.920 that something terrible was going to happen to her trol 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:05.600 and so she choreographed, tried to choreograph our life so 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:10.600 that chances for harm were diminished. And one of the 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:15.360 ways that she did that was by removing the diving board, 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:20.520 which again was just maybe two feet above the water. 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:22.959 But before we could even get in the pool, she 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:28.040 had that removed. So this was the life that I 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.320 understood is being safe and sane. And then here comes 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.720 William jumping off the roof ten and a half times 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:38.080 higher than I was allowed to go. 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:42.959 Well, this is the first time Daniel is really seeing 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.680 William up close, spotlet by the sun. He's not a 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:51.000 total stranger. Daniel knows him sort of. He knows of 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.480 him as a ghostly presence who's dating his older sister Holly. 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.720 Daniel has seen them leave together, come back together, but 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.520 that's been about it until now. On this day, in 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.520 this movie moment, he is captivated, spellbound in a way 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:08.920 that will continue for many years to come. 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.440 After that, I saw him more and more. He was 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:15.840 would be in the kitchen when I got home from 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.679 school with Holly and a couple of their friends, or 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.520 I would see him drive up on his motorcycle. He 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:26.800 had a look that is hard to pull off, and 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.160 it was at once kind of poetic and tough. I 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.760 compare him to this a commingling or confluence of all 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:41.400 these different ideas of maleness which abounded back then and 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.600 I guess still do in a lot of ways. But 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:48.160 there was this Shacob varas James Dean Himmingway kind of 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:54.040 feeling to him that was attractive in part because he 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:59.079 wasn't asking you to pay attention to him. He wasn't 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:01.040 the kind of person who was trying to get attention, 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:04.960 as hard as that maybe to believe by how I'm 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:08.320 describing him. He was very quiet and was not the 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:12.200 first person to walk in a room, maybe the last. 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.679 Because when he did say something, it was smart, it 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:21.320 was important, it was usually always right, and he didn't 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.839 need to be loud, and that, to me, not being 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:31.120 allowed person myself, was phenomenally attractive. That you could have 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.200 this presence without turning up the volume. So he would 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:39.560 come over and eventually, the way that kind of a 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.319 sidekick does, I'd hang around with them until they told 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:47.520 me that that was enough, and later as they were 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.640 getting more and more serious. It was really important for 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:56.200 Holly to have William accepted by my father, who, as 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.920 any father would in what is this now eighteen seventy three, 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:03.559 when his daughter brings home a long hair hippy on 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:07.760 her motorcycle, it's not your first choice for a mate. 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.280 So she would have him do tasks around the house 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:14.720 that none of us could do. He would build things 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.000 for us, he would fix things for us. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.880 If something needs fixing in Daniel's family, they either hire 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:25.080 somebody to do it or it doesn't get done at all. 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.720 So the fact that William is handy and resourceful adds 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:32.559 to his particular brand of magic and allure. Daniel has 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:34.880 carved out his own special place in the basement of 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:39.000 his family's home that he thinks of as his secret room. 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.320 It's not a secret in the sense that people don't 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.480 know it exists. They do, but it is secret in 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:46.520 the sense that it becomes a place for Daniel to 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.679 call his own, his space, to keep secrets and to 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.840 live his adolescent life. At one point, he decides he 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.880 wants a water bit in his secret room. I mean, 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.600 who wouldn't. His mom actually says okay and gets him one. 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.240 But of course, what a better tricky and perhaps cooler 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.560 in theory than practice. The bed slashes all around and 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.040 is uncomfortable. But one day William comes to pay Daniel 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.120 a visit in a secret room, and William notices the 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:19.240 waterbed has no frame, a crucial detail missing. So he 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.080 steps in and saves the day. 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:27.320 And that is perfect illustration of who he was, contrasting 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.240 with who I was. I am the kind of person 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.240 who says I'm going to get a waterbed. They're cool, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:35.640 and I'll get a big plastic bag and fill it 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:39.040 full of water without reading the other side. Of the directions, 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:42.280 which is you need a frame otherwise you're going to 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.839 feel like you're in the middle of the Atlantic and 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:49.120 a typhoon. So William knows these things. He knows what's 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:54.080 necessary to make things work. I think probably that is 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.160 if there was one way to sum him up that 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:01.000 with him, he knew how things work and he knew 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.839 how to make them work. So he measured, got the wood, 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:07.720 brought it back. He brought all the hammers, the tools 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.320 that saws, everything that he needed. I watched as he 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:16.000 assembled it and handed him nails, whatever he needed. But 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:20.080 again I was passive in the background while he was 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:26.240 building this beautiful frame for my waterbed. William and Holly 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.320 Day had taken me to see my first rock and 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:32.880 roll concert I was thirteen. Up until that point in 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.600 my life was the Apex. The Apergy did not get 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.200 much better than that. To be with these two incredibly 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:46.160 cool people that made me feel completely bulletproof. There was 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.320 nobody in the world who was cooler, and therefore I 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:54.200 was cool too, when the fact is I was really 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.960 just running their fumes. But the concert itself was wild. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:03.360 It was else Cooper who decapitated baby heads on stage 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.720 and hung himself on stage and walked around on stage 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.800 with this bowl constrictor on his shoulders around his neck. 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.240 It makes sense in that respect that later I would 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:19.720 want a Boa Constrictor of my own. I wonder how 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:23.360 many Boa Constrictors Alice Cooper actually sold, But you know, 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:25.800 I mean he kids that bowl constrictor's because of Alice Cooper. 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:28.440 But I was one of them. And I asked my 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:30.680 mother if I could have a Boa constrictor, and she said, 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:34.600 of course not. Snakes were one pass that she would 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:38.160 not go down. But I had my secret room, so 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.000 I had a place to keep my secret snake. And 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:45.440 Holly and William and I went shopping. They were in 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.680 on it. I got a bowl Constrictor. I brought it 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:54.120 home in this little aerated box, and William built this 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:58.760 beautiful terrarium for I'm shocked Off, as I named him, 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.400 because I was reading Slaughterhouse live by for Bonnigut and 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:06.720 schlucked Off didn't work out in the and for whatever reason, 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:09.680 my snake would not eat the mice that I gave him, 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.160 So eventually, of course I got tired of the snake 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:17.040 and gave him to William. I wouldn't be surprised if 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.920 that was his goal all along, because he knew me, 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:25.040 he knew the wallaces, our family, and we didn't have 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:31.120 a ton of staying power. So after he built the 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:36.280 frame for the waterbed, and after he built the terrarium 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:41.280 for the bowl constrictor, I was a co worker with 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:43.920 a friend of mine in high school who had a 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:48.400 family business selling pot. His cousins had done it, and 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.040 every generation of cousins had sort of passed it on 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:55.160 to the next, and it was his turn. He would 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.440 bring the pot over to my room, my secret room, 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.480 where it was safe for us to clean it, get 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.960 the stems and seeds out, bag it up into ounces 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:07.159 or lids, as we called them then. I don't know 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:10.359 if anybody calls them that now, but he would leave 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.919 the stems and seeds in a hefty bag under my 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:19.200 bed because there was always something left behind. There was 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.639 always something left on those stems that you could in dire, 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.800 dry times, you could sort of salvage enough to throw 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:31.879 a joint. And William would sometimes be in those dire 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:34.760 situations himself, and so he came down to my secret 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:38.320 room occasionally and he would say, what what's in the bag, 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.560 And I knew even then that he would not be 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.639 there chatting with me were it not for this hefty 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.760 bag I had underneath my bed of stems and seeds. 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.560 It didn't bother me. I think I knew enough to 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.080 realize that I was not going to be as buddy 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.639 the way that people his age for his buddy. So 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.320 whatever I could do to get him into my life, 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.520 it was fine. I was you know, I would definitely 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.840 bribe somebody if it meant getting him to spend more 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.080 time with me. So while I had a nice bag 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.679 of stems and seats, he would visit. He made me 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:21.119 a pipe. It's beautiful, beautiful, precious pipe out of a 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:25.199 jina tile where he had Again, this is just a 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:30.639 way that a lovely minor illustration of his ability to 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.280 create eight things out of the world, which is, he 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:35.800 drilled a hole in the side of a jina tile, 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.240 carved out a bowl in the top, and got a 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.639 little top of a coat can, the pop top of 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:46.680 a metal can for the carburetor on top, so in 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:49.719 you know, tacit trade. One day he gave me this 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:54.000 pipe and I still have it, and that's fifty years. 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:56.440 I guess where do you keep it? 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:01.440 I have it up in my office and the top 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:03.840 drawer to the left, I've got it up there with 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.160 my glass eyes, which I also collect. I guess that's 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.320 another story. But I've got, you know, little valuables in 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:16.120 this drawer, and that's right there when I'm working. We 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:21.159 went to see Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns they were called, 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:25.120 and one was just fulve dollars for a few dollars 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:30.840 more and the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:36.480 we were in the theater by ourselves, nobody else was there. 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.840 Of course, he was wearing his sunglasses he always wore sunglasses, 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:45.040 even inside, and his leather jacket which had all these 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:51.119 lovely pockets and them suitable for bringing beer into the theater. 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.000 First beer I had was watching Clint Easwood in the 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:58.280 Green Springs for Theater in Birmingham, Alabama, when I was 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.400 fourteen or so. With William I love the movies, and 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:06.720 the character of Clint Eastwood in those movies, those early 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.639 movies that he made were eerily like who I later 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:17.359 saw William as this really strong but detached force of 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:23.359 not necessarily good but not definitely not evil, somebody who 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.000 was so quiet sometimes as Clint Eastwood was in these 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.040 movies that his character was called the Man with No Name. 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:33.080 Tell me a bit about Holly, you know, there's so 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.879 much about Holly and William. But Holly as she was 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:41.240 as your much older sister. Was she cool on her own? 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:45.280 Were they like cool squared together or did his magic 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:47.480 fairy dust sort of wrap off on her or did 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:48.320 they each have that? 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.360 Oh no, they each had it, one without the other. 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.520 It's hard to imagine. Actually, he was perfect for her 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.680 in many ways, but she was more perfect for him. 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:05.480 She was the person who could enter a room and 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:11.360 every head return. She was beautiful, She was sharp and 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:15.879 funny and fearless, and she would say anything, and she 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.320 would answer any question you asked her. The more intimate, 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.600 the better. There's nothing that was off limits. And William, 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.320 he would fade back behind her. His nature was not 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:30.800 to be a front person anyway. So she did that. 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.320 She was able to go into a room and by 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:36.199 the time he got into the room behind her, she 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:39.080 would have already made friends and something he didn't have 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:42.320 to do. The vital never known any more body more 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:48.000 vital or open to take a chance in life. So yeah, 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:49.840 she definitely brought her own bag of tricks. 0:21:55.160 --> 0:22:07.520 We'll be right back. When Holly is twenty one, a 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:11.920 terrifying thing happens to her physically. Daniel is only fourteen 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:16.040 at the time. After a series of tests, Holly receives 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.040 diagnosis that will change the course of her whole life 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:20.520 and William's two. 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.479 It wasn't clear what was going on at first, because 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:28.639 she actually woke up one morning and couldn't move. She 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.879 was like ossified. She had been at school, but she 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:33.520 was at home at the time and was in my 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:37.120 room and could not be moved from the room. And 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:42.119 we finally discovered what it was, a rumator arthritis, which 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.000 at the time there was nothing you could do for it. 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:50.240 You could ameliorate it with these gold shots and other treatments. 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:55.159 It was just totally pernicious and a disease which beats 0:22:55.160 --> 0:22:58.200 you up, or it used to do that every joint 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:03.879 in her body. So William around the same time, a 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:07.720 little bit before this actually, but in the same era, 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:12.960 had become a kayaker. He was always an outdoorsman. He 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:17.480 loved camping, he loved being in nature, mountain climbing, fishing. 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:20.960 He was an eagle scout, of course, and so he 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:26.080 knew everything about knots. He knew plant jugit eat, and 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:32.119 he loved this solo adventure that kayaking, wise and canoeing, 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:36.439 and the two of them would go kayaking together. She 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:38.600 was out on the river as much as he was, 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:43.760 but this disease of course, made that impossible. She couldn't 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:48.679 do that anymore. Her life in every way was changed. 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:53.560 She had to make other plans. William, also being who 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.800 he was, he had an idea about what his life 0:23:56.880 --> 0:23:59.800 was going to look like, which was one of being 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:05.120 outside of doing boy things with his girl. And there 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:10.160 was this moment where we were all sure that he 0:24:10.240 --> 0:24:14.480 was going to leave because she was not what he 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:17.440 had in mind for his life. And they were still young. 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:19.239 If she was twenty one he was twenty two. He 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:22.720 could have easily gone off to school and just let 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:26.280 things sort of cool off. But he doubled down and 0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:31.120 started taking care of her, started allowing her to have 0:24:31.400 --> 0:24:34.960 the kind of life that appeared to be lost. 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:38.920 After the magical high school years of being Holly and 0:24:38.960 --> 0:24:42.600 William's sidekick, Daniel goes off to study at Emory, where 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:45.960 he spends his first two years of college. When he's there, 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:48.720 William and Holly moved to Chapel Hill in North Carolina. 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:51.919 Daniel ends up moving to Chapel Hill as well and 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:54.600 finishes his final two years of college at UNC. 0:24:56.240 --> 0:24:59.760 They moved to Chapel Hill so that Holly could go 0:24:59.800 --> 0:25:04.040 to graduate school in political science, and for the first 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:06.760 two years I lived in a cinder block house where 0:25:06.800 --> 0:25:10.560 graduate students lived. But then, through the large ass of 0:25:10.600 --> 0:25:15.920 my father, who was really devastated by what had happened 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:22.320 to Holly and this ongoing deterioration of her body and 0:25:22.440 --> 0:25:25.960 the way that her life was being made smaller and smaller, 0:25:26.320 --> 0:25:30.000 paid for a house to be built by William So. 0:25:30.119 --> 0:25:35.080 William designed and built a house on twenty acres of 0:25:35.160 --> 0:25:39.600 land out in the country, down the trees, removed all 0:25:39.600 --> 0:25:43.560 the copperheads. My hand didn't kill any of them. He 0:25:44.000 --> 0:25:46.400 designed it so that it would be the perfect place 0:25:46.520 --> 0:25:49.119 to what they call now aging in place. It's the 0:25:49.160 --> 0:25:54.879 perfect place for somebody whose body was basically going to 0:25:54.920 --> 0:25:59.480 betray them to live. Everything is on one story, totally 0:25:59.560 --> 0:26:03.880 accessible well if there was a pool, hot tub. Once 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:08.040 you got in, it was this joyous, art filled, weird 0:26:08.720 --> 0:26:13.320 different world. They lived in their art. They both made things. 0:26:13.560 --> 0:26:16.399 Holly was be a wonderful arts herself. By this time, though, 0:26:16.440 --> 0:26:21.719 William had actually discovered what his path in life was 0:26:21.840 --> 0:26:26.840 going to be, which was as an artist on the river. 0:26:27.840 --> 0:26:31.959 He's always drawn. He was always a cartoonist, a playful cartoonist, 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:37.879 all through high school and into his truncated college years, 0:26:38.960 --> 0:26:42.960 but he had never been able to harness that into 0:26:43.600 --> 0:26:46.440 any way to make a living. And what he discovered 0:26:46.520 --> 0:26:51.240 is that he could kiak these rivers and understand them 0:26:51.440 --> 0:26:56.000 in this holistic way and draw them so that you 0:26:56.680 --> 0:27:00.320 could know what to do when you got to a 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:03.080 bend in the river. You knew how to good around 0:27:03.119 --> 0:27:06.640 a rock, you knew where the dangerous rapids were, where 0:27:07.040 --> 0:27:11.200 the takeouts were. And along with the maps, there were 0:27:11.359 --> 0:27:14.520 this little narrative of characters that he would draw, so 0:27:14.560 --> 0:27:18.800 they were instructive and funny at the same time. He 0:27:18.840 --> 0:27:22.560 was drawing these maps and traveling and taking Holly with 0:27:22.640 --> 0:27:26.600 him to every river in North Carolina and Tennessee and 0:27:27.160 --> 0:27:28.880 drawing every single one of them. 0:27:29.480 --> 0:27:33.000 And he becomes over a pretty short period of time, 0:27:33.040 --> 0:27:36.359 once he discovers exactly what it is that he is 0:27:36.400 --> 0:27:38.960 meant to do and how to harness it. He's found 0:27:38.960 --> 0:27:43.040