In Memoriam of William Evan Bales

The world lost a singularly interesting, intelligent, funny, and outrageous character when Bill Bales slipped the bounds of the living on June 3, 2024 surrounded by the love of his family. His life had a Forrest Gump quality, and was the stuff of novels, but none of his loved ones have the necessary combination of discipline and talent to write one so this Memoriam will have to do for now.

William Evan Bales was born February 5, 1938 in Mt. Kisco, New York to Berton Bailey (“Pete”) and Gayle Walker Bales. His life was forever scarred when his beloved dad, serving as a naval officer in the South Pacific, was killed by machine gun fire while evacuating refugees from an atoll in the Marshall Islands on May 7, 1945. Bill vividly recalled the gold star hanging in the front window of the family home that first summer following his dad’s death. In one way or another, he grieved his father’s death for the rest of his life.

During World War II, Bill, his brother Bert, sister Bailey, and their mom settled in Lebanon, Indiana to be near his maternal grandparents. Bill graduated from Lebanon High School in 1956 at the same time as his future wife, Myrna Jane Spurr (“Jane”). The 1955 Lebanon Tiger football team with Bill playing end was undefeated until the final game. According to him, he was wide open for the winning score in the end zone but the quarterback, who dated Jane, deliberately chose to attempt a run because he was jealous of Bill. The jealous quarterback was tackled short of the goal line, and Lebanon’s perfect season came to an end. It was a lasting disappointment the entire team, especially Bill.

After high school, Bill matriculated at Butler University where his love of a good game of Contract Bridge routinely outpaced his scholarly pursuits. He pledged the Sigma Chi Fraternity and was initiated just as his dad (Michigan ‘27), and his Uncle Evan Walker (Butler ‘30). However, his increasing devotion to playing Bridge led to his premature exit from Butler at the compulsory behest of the Dean of Men. At this point, his life became peripatetic and full of adventures. The first real adventure came courtesy of the Boone County Draft Board.

Bill was an indifferent soldier at best. In spite of his indifference, he trained as an airborne infantryman and earned his silver jump wings after his five training jumps. He was then assigned to the 101st Infantry Division—the legendary Screaming Eagles—where he jumped an additional eight times with his unit. He recalled that as the stick of paratroopers stood up in the plane to get ready to jump, they went down the line with each man checking the gear of the man in front of him and yelling that it was all okay. Jokingly, we think, Bill always said it was all okay though he didn’t really ever know what he was supposed to be checking.

During these years (1958-1960), the 101st was commanded by General William Westmoreland (of later Vietnam renown). On one of his training jumps he was seated next to Westmoreland. On this particular jump, Bill landed hard. He was gathering up his parachute when Westmoreland sauntered over to correct his landing method. Bill said thank you for the tip and then got chewed out by the General’s aide de camp, a snotty little lieutenant according to Bill, for his failure to come to attention and salute the General. On another field training exercise, the rapid nature of the deployment had deprived him of an opportunity to stow sufficient cigarettes for the length of the exercise. However, Bill always landed on both feet (pun intended): early in the exercise, a helicopter pilot landed among the troops and Bill sought him out to bum a smoke. The pilot said, “come over to my bird” whereupon he gave him a case of cigarette sample packs. This made Bill the most popular man in his unit for a few days.

Bill’s two years in the U.S. Army were marked by his apathy and an almost historic lack of achievement. He went in as a “slick sleeve” E-1 and, at discharge, he still had a slick sleeve. However, he was proud that his goldbricking had somehow ended up with him being assigned his own jeep and being able to take his dirty clothes to the base laundry. Upon his begrudgingly bestowed honorable discharge, like Kerouac, he hit the road. It was during these several years, roughly from 1959 or so to 1962 that he read widely, worked a series of roughneck jobs and tried to make his way to the Marshall Islands to connect with his deceased father.

This time included short stints at Indiana and Michigan Universities, auditing classes with a buddy at Harvard, picking peas in Oregon, harvesting cherries in Washington state, combining wheat in the Dakotas and Montana, and working an assortment of odd jobs in California,Texas, Michigan, Alabama, Hawaii, and Florida. In Florida, he was arrested for vagrancy while living under a bridge in Miami. Shortly after his arrest, the love of cigarettes and his generous spirit were again on display. His mom wired him $500 to get him out of jail, and out from under the bridge. He promptly spent a part of this to buy cartons of cigarettes that he then handed out to his “roommates” under the bridge. During his time under the Dade County bridge, the army tried to recall him but general delivery to the Miami post office did not reach him so he was spared the indignity of returning to the army while still a slick sleeve. The country was likely safer as a result.

His journal has a series of entries on what he called his “bumming around days”. One of the most interesting is set forth here:

“I have lived to sleep, get up, and return again & again….

On a board under a bridge in Miami;

In a fraternity house at Butler and I.U.;

In a bunkhouse on a ranch in Oregon;

In a beach house on Martha’s Vinyard;

In a cottage on Lake Michigan;

In an abandoned car on Oahu;

In the Dade County Jail;

In an old boarding house in Denton, Texas;

On the beach in Hawaii and northern California;

In a house of ill repute in Mexico;

In a clubhouse at Harvard;

In flophouses in Houston, Birmingham, and Louisiana;

In the Y in New Orleans, New York City, and Honolulu;

In apartments in New Orleans, Honolulu, and Cambridge;

In army barracks in Kentucky and Georgia;

In the Greensleeves Coffee House in Honolulu;

In more fraternity houses at the Universities of Oklahoma, Arizona, and Texas Tech;

On the side of the road in the Arizona desert;

In a boxcar in Alabama; and

In a 1959 MG everywhere from California to New York.”

While back in Lebanon in the early 60s, he ran into Jane again and his wanderlust was tamed. They married and started a family. Jane had graduated from Ball State University and was teaching school in Lafayette. Shortly thereafter, they had a son named Evan and relocated to Sulphur Springs, Indiana. Bill ended up getting his degree in English and Philosophy from Ball State. There were then blessed with a daughter, Jennifer Bales Williams, and a son, Brooke (who pledged Sigma Chi at Purdue in 1988). Bill’s generous spirit led him to take a job as the Welfare Director in Union County, Indiana in 1970. Jane started teaching first grade at Liberty Elementary. Eventually he took a job as an administrative hearing officer with the state of Indiana. He worked out of the family home and had plenty of time to play tennis, read poetry, and listen to classical music.

Shortly after their daughter Jennifer married Jim Williams in 1988, Jane was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Bill spent the next 18 months being a devoted caregiver to Jane. After she died in March 1990, Bill was unmoored and decided to buy a new Porsche and to retire. He enjoyed a nearly unprecedented 34 years of retirement occupying his ample free time playing tennis and helping his beloved family members: being a caregiver for Brooke’s first wife Natalie who battled ALS and passed away in 2008, and looking after and loving on his grandchildren, Leah, Sam and Ruby. Bill also vicariously basked in his son Evan’s success as an amatuer bodybuilder; he often asked Veronica (Evan’s wife) if she could see that he was the source of Evan’s well muscled physique?

He was known in Liberty for riding his bike all over (after the Porsche broke down), playing tennis, and push-mowing the lawn without shoes or socks. After finishing the lawn, Bill would bike up to the local car wash to use the pre-soak feature to clean off his grass stained feet. The water tower in Liberty is located directly adjacent to the tennis courts. Once when a hard looking crew was there painting it, Bill wandered over in his tennis attire and insisted to the foreman that the water tower was supposed to be painted pink and they needed to fix it. They pretended to be amused. Though he would play tennis with anyone, he hated “dinkers”. His game was to swing as hard as he could from the baseline over and over and over. Consequently, “dinkers” would normally best him and he was infuriated by it insisting loudly that it was not real tennis.

In 2015, he moved to Colorado with Brooke, Brooke’s wife Joleen, and Ruby. There, he spent countless happy hours listening to Ruby play the trombone and letting her teach him all the things she learned at school. In spite of smoking for nearly 45 years, he enjoyed remarkably good health for most of his life. When asked how many packs he smoked a day, he replied that if he stayed up late to watch the Tonight Show, he could get in three packs. As his health failed him, he moved back to Indiana and lived in Muncie near his daughter Jennifer until his death.

Bill Bales was surely a unique individual. He was smart, funny, loving, generous, self-centered, tender, undisciplined, well read, and loved living on his own terms. Along with Jane, he reared three amazing children who are amazing adults, and he was grandfather to three remarkable grandchildren who are becoming three amazing adults. During the last several months of his life he was still quoting poetry from memory and sang the Whiffenpoof song for Jennifer. As we cleaned up his room at the nursing home, we found his compass collection. Jennifer mused at the irony of a man seeking direction all his life with an assortment of high end compasses. We will all miss him. By the way, don’t worry as he would deeply appreciate this remembrance.  

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