Shirley Anne Neitzel (Lefferts) (1964)

Shirley Anne Neitzel (Lefferts) (1964)

Inducted into the Bensalem Hall of Fame for Football in 1972

William Schreiber (1961)

Had the honor of playing three years (58-60) of BHS football with Bill. Early evidence of just how good he was emerged in the annual 58 Thanksgiving day game with NHS in Langhorne. Going in at 1 and 8 BHS held a 9 and 0 Shue/Stricker Neshaminy team to just 6 points with Mr Drueding making tackle after tackle at linebacker along with another "Bill" sophomore linebacker (Heller). And then, quite nicely, he parlayed football into an education at the University of Delaware! 

George Stockman (1961)

The news of Bill’s passing hit me hard. We had been talking about the upcoming Class of Sixty One’s 60^th reunion and Bill seemed to be looking forward to it. He had some medical issues he would take care of first. My regrets to his family and friends.

Son Tom reminded me that Bill had lived a good life – perhaps until the last few years when back pain kept him from getting around. We were from the Trevose -- Trevose Heights crowd that had grown up together through 12 years of school. Bill’s football accomplishments are well-documented. His athletic ability was broad and he could have been varsity in basketball and track but he needed to work to make some money. When Bill prepped at Bordentown, he commuted and also worked. At Bordentown he not only played with Jack Stricker from Neshaminy, but also Floyd Little and he told me there was a big difference. Little became an All-American at Syracuse and a Hall of Famer in the NFL: he just died this past January. I sometimes teased Bill about defending Megatron (Calvin Johnson) or Randy Moss and he would say – “too big, too big”. [Son Tom will tell you that he is not athletic like his father. Seems like a math genius to me: has a PhD in engineering, worked in finance, then as a CIO of a large company, was science adviser to Elizabeth Warren and had a lot to do with getting out the heavy SE PA vote for Joe Biden. Most important, Tom took good care of Bill these last few years.]

After BHS, Bill and I went our long separate ways but reconnected in Colorado when I was out there racing canoes. We rafted the Arkansas River in about 2000 when both of us had bad knees. About 2004 he came down to Salida, CO and joined our “canoe B&B” party. Afterward I stayed over at his place in Aspen – my first time in a hot tub at 60! I played a little baseball with Bill’s younger son. Bill told me about his life. After Delaware he was a salesman for Portland Cement. When he tired of that he decided to take off about 18 months to travel and find a new home and career. He drove all the way to Alaska. He ended up on the police force in Aspen, CO, where he had some opportunities to rub shoulders with some rich and famous and infamous. Ted Bundy was arrested there and escaped. He told me he saw OJ sniff cocaine off the floor of a night club. He twice accompanied a local wheat grower as bodyguard on business trips to Cuba. Bill lived in a condo near the base of the ski slope and above the Slaughterhouse Rapids of the Roaring Fork of the Colorado River. Driving over the Independence Pass, down by the beaver dams on the Roaring Fork and through the aspen trees glittering in the sun and wind, one can understand why a handsome tough kid and dreamer from Trevose Heights might want to settle there. RIP Bill.

David Clee (1964)