Bill Richards Day: Meredith Palen Mills says, “It’s his fault I’m a pilot.”
with photos and videos courtesy of Guven Witteveen
On 3-14-15, the day math wizards celebrate as Pi Day, there was a gathering of hundreds of people whose lives have been touched directly or indirectly by Bill Richards since the time he and his brothers moved to St. Johns after World War II.
It started with Richards’ Creamery. They produced and sold ice-cream and milk around town.
There were so many stories and personal experiences gathered in the large meeting space provided by the Agro-Liquid Company. The coordinator and communicator in the tribute was Gayle Capling, who leads the volunteer drivers at Care-a-Van for medical appointments. In working with Bill she recognized the many developments around the county that he was part of in the past and present.
The posters and banners around the room listed his many involvements with seniors, school kids, special needs families and workers, as well as many community organizations that have been part of Bill’s way of doing business; that is, to connect people of all generations with similar interests to create opportunities for them to shine.
One of his mottoes was repeated a few different times during the presentations. It comes from a book by French aviator Antoine de St. Xupery: “It is only with the heart that one can truly see.” As Bill put it, we all are the same when you get deep down inside.
His style has been to give others credit, but quietly and persistently to shepherd things along. The ability to see progress and positive solutions may make him a visionary, able to see through the obstacles that cause others to hesitate. Or it could be that Bill fits something like the definition, “the art of the possible,” that people say is a politician. That is a bad word in many people’s minds, but being able to persuade people to take action and indeed to find a possible solution to something that is not easy is part of what politicians do. So when people speak of WILL power or good WILL, then perhaps it is Bill who embodies these things.
Returning to the subject of Pi Day and mathematical thinking, the first presenter, Bill’s nephew, read a few words from Bill’s younger brother, 78 to Bill’s 88. There he described the circle of influence a person has in the lives touched, and from there to 50 other people known to that first ring of connections, and so on, and so on. Soon the ripple of influence given from the example of a person’s life, such as Bill Richards, reaches 125,000 others and from their it multiplies to the sixth circle of ripples and totals 6 million people, almost as many as the residents of the state of Michigan.
Education, aerospace and robotics, art and outdoor recreation for volunteers and people with disabilities, there are so many areas of the social fabric that Bill’s hands have touched. Everyone there expressed their gratitude and represented the many others not present on Saturday afternoon.
For more see Rhonda Dedyne’s Random Notes below.
Using the ruse of a small reunion for the 1940s-1960s “Richards Dairy Store” Bill was ushered into this meeting space at Agro-Liquid by telling him there original get-together didn’t fit the room downtown.
Caught off guard in his 88th year, this collection of people whose lives Bill has touched and continues to influence by his example came together to show their appreciation. He began his reply this way.
The coordinator of the event was Gayle Capling at the Care-a-Van small van service that is grant-funded in connection with the CRV (Community Resource Volunteers, www.crvonline.org) that Bill Richards and fellow community leaders first began in the 1980s. Here she tells something of the complications in telling the whole county without word getting back to Bill himself.