William D. Anderson

I miss and love my husband !! And I always will !! I love you Bill !!

We moved across the street from Bill on Coronado just before our 6th grade year. We quickly became best friends as we had many things in common: our birthdays were just a few days apart – neither of us lived with our dads – we played the trumpet (and later, guitar) – we rode motorcycles and we got into our fair share of mischief.

We slept out in our backyards with our sleeping bags under the stars, shot baskets, had BB-gun shooting competitions, rode bikes, watched football and played around up on Big Hill.

Bill and I went our separate ways after high school, but I will never forget him. I regret that my wife and kids never got the opportunity to meet him. He was a great friend and I’ll truly miss him.

To Bill’s family – I’m so very sorry for your loss.

Bill, I love ya buddy – go with God.

I’m so sorry to hear of Bill’s passing.
Bill played the trumpet at Centennial High School and we played together in the concert,marching,pep and jazz bands.
I was a grade below Bill so we weren’t very close but I remember he had a great sense of humor and was always nice to me.
My condolences to his family and friends.
God bless
—Robb Rawlings

Greetings and thanks for taking the time to read this. My apologies in advance as it’s been a long day and my eyes are burning, I’m yawning, and but things are finally calm enough to write a few thoughts. Forgive any typo’s please, and feel free to edit.

I had every intention of being there for Bill’s family, friends, and my own desire to say goodbye amongst others. As life goes, things don’t always turn out as we want. If I could be there, I would, but my situation is complicated here and there are circumstances that have come up that I simply must focus what attention I still have on them.

Where do I begin? In the best memory that I have I met Bill around the 10th grade, perhaps earlier. Like me, he was awkward, a little unsure of himself (who wasn’t), quiet and reserved. But there was a dry humor, and a need to fit in, just like I had. Over time and time spent at the Krause household, as well as hanging out at the various places in Pueblo that seemed to fit us, i.e. the middle of the prairies of nowhere around town, Bill and I began to know one another.

By this point into my green life I had learned a bit of guitar, and Bill was beginning to learn too. I gave him some tips and a few chord pointers, and the next thing I knew he was playing like Jimi Hendrix, while I was sounding more like Jeff Foxworthy. Lets just simplify that. He thoroughly kicked my butt on an axe (slang for guitar) in a very quick time.

Bill and I played a lot of music for the church. We clicked a lot in that realm. With a look to each other we knew what the other was thinking and what would happen next. Whether it would be a chord change, a key change, or a break into some unrelated song that might get the ire up of someone in charge, we did it and did it together.

Secretly, or so we thought, we’d meet and play such rebel songs from fringe bands like the Eagles, America, Paul Simon, or that cultish magnet Don McClean, with that subculture song called American Pie.

Bill and I would spend hours talking about life, girls, God, our futures, girls, what guitars we’d like to own, girls, school, foreign countries, parents and how they didn’t have any idea what it was like to be our age, girls, movies, and girls.

We played for hours upon end, we did. My fondest memories are difficult to draw up right now, as there have been so many years that have passed since. The one that comes to mind right away is this: the two of us are sitting at the top of the stairs at the city building to the north of First Pres (as we called it…damn we were cool!) and playing the Outlaws, or it might have been Marshall Tucker. It was sunset on a beautiful summer evening. I do remember him hammering me to get the “back beat” right on Sweet Home Alabama, for some such reason I never could. Not even to this day. Yes, I did try last night. It ain’t there, and probably never will be. There were just some things that Bill could do so well, and making a guitar talk was one of them.

He didn’t just make a guitar talk, he made it SING! It didn’t matter if it was for the church or a crowd at a honky-tonk smoke-filled redneck bar. His emotions and voice came through those six strings and sixteen frets, the harmonics, the major and relative minor chord relations, the sixth and ninth cords that were so elusive to someone like me who played at a country western level of ” ya got four chords, you gotta song” level. Pentatonic scale? Was that something you weighed pentagons on? No, it’s a musical progression used in classical guitar that has morphed into blues and rock and roll. He didn’t know the name, neither did I until recently. But all he had to do was hear it, and the beautiful talent that Bill had translated that into the motions of his hands as they held wood and steel, the backbones of a guitar.

When Bill played, he’d get his brain and soul behind his hands. Looking back now, I realize that he was in his own beautiful world when he played. He’d look at his hands, or close his eyes while he played, but the focus was purely on the music. A fused relationship of mind, heart, tone, beat. Left and right hand functioned as a well oiled machine.

It’s nearly midnight now. Now that I’ve begun I could go on longer. But there are private moments that Bill and I shared that I simply can’t be revealed, at least in this world. Bill had his demons as we all do. Some of us are able to run faster than they can. Some of us stumble along the way. There are times when you can recover before the demons catch you, and there are times when in weakness they overtake you.

Bill was never short on smiles. He did them well too. I’ll miss my friend forever. As he has died, part of me has as well. God rest your soul old friend, you will never, ever be forgotten when I put that tool of music between my two hands and tune up. I’ll think of you when the pick comes down and hits the first chord.

Thank you for listening/reading

Ken Hutchison