As we prepare for Bill’s celebration of life, Graham’s family has been going through lots of keepsakes and photos. It’s a treasure trove, you guys. Diplomas, Christmas cards, newspaper clippings – it’s been incredible to look through all of it. Bill lived a big, beautiful life. And collected and kept everything, including old slides. Graham found a hard drive full of them, going all the way back to the 1940s.
Lucy looks so much like her dad, so I’m not surprised that she also looks like his dad.
Here’s baby Bill:
And here’s Lucy:
Both at Easter, 1944 and 2026.
And she didn’t just inherit his features. Look at this:
I mean, I know I never taught her how to do that, and yet…
The past and the present aren’t the same, but they sure are similar, aren’t they? Smiles all around.
I’m so grateful we have so many memories of Bill to share with Lucy when she’s older. I won’t ever let her forget her Papa Bill, and how wonderful he was, and how much he loved her.
I’m forty today. It’s my birthday, and I’m sure I’ll write about it at some point. It doesn’t feel right, in this moment. Right now, I really just want to continue to focus my father-in-law, Bill. His life, how he loved us, and the amazing legacy he leaves behind for all of us.
We’re feeling his absence pretty acutely right now. We miss him. And Graham wrote a beautiful remembrance that he shared with friends and family. I’m posting it here, too, because it’s good, and it’s heartfelt, and it’s how Bill ought to be remembered.
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So many people and organizations have written wonderful tributes to my dad, Bill Campbell, who passed away a little over a week ago on August 1. The Virginia Beach Art Center (Artists’ Gallery), the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, numerous friends, Katie, and the obituary T and my mom put together below.
I’m so thankful. I’ve been blown away by the posts, the comments, and the direct reach outs to me, to my mom, and to T. And I think it’s time to add some brief remembrances of my own.
I’m glad so much of what has been written about my dad talks about the art he created, and his work to support art and the artist community in Virginia Beach. This was a true love of his, and I’m so happy to see him remembered that way.
The broad outlines of his life, mentioned in the obituary, are also impressive – an improbable journey from a childhood in Yazoo City to Philips Exeter (applied on a whim!) to UNC, where he met my mom, on to Chicago where he received his graduate degree and started his career in advertising, and to Virginia Beach, where he would eventually co-found an agency and grow it into one of the most prestigious in the region. And, of course, his retirement in his 50s, which gave him time for a veritable second career as an artist. His family, friends, and community remember him as kind, curious, optimistic, cheerful, and a friend to all – as do I.
Against that, I suppose what I can add is a bit of extra color to a life well-lived and well-remembered. Some of my earliest memories of my dad are as the family videographer, capturing trips, reunions, performances, and our 1991 home renovation (which he playfully branded “Reach for the Sky”). It’s a role he kept with, and we now have hours upon hours of family memories captured, all with him as the behind-the-camera narrator. T and I used to laugh about this, and as kids we each went through phases of loving and hating the attention. Now I’m simply glad to have it all.
His intellectual curiosity was broad, but I think I can directly credit his love of gadgets with the career I’m in now. I remember him teaching me BASIC on the family Commodore 64 – my first experience in programming. We were a Mac family before it was cool. And, at the end of the day, he always wanted to keep up with the next new thing. He wasn’t satisfied to sit still and fall behind.
He had a love of older technology, too, which I fear I inherited. I still think back fondly on setting up his childhood train set every Christmas, even after it had begun to spark and derail and generally smell like an electrical fire. His record player still sits in the living room, and has inspired me to acquire a couple of my own.
I’m not certain which one of my parents first decided to encourage me in music, but I know it was my dad who first set up the Miracle keyboard which sparked my interest in the piano, and it was my dad who drove me to school early once every week for lessons when my interests shifted to violin (and later viola). I remember those trips fondly, listening to tapes of lives and music of the great composers. We would go to concerts of the Virginia Symphony together. He loved classical music, and wanted to share this with me. He also loved the blues, and while my enjoyment of the genre never crossed into full-blown passion, I will always remember fondly the concerts we went to together, the albums we listened to together.
And he loved adventure. Not only did Dad love to travel, he loved to explore while traveling, and made a point of seeking out the local flavor of wherever we were. He introduced me to skiing, went kayaking with me, biked with me down the boardwalk and back in First Landing State Park, and even co-led my trip to Philmont Scout Ranch – a serious backcountry trek including a climb up 12,441 foot Mt. Baldy.
After my dad’s retirement, he and my mom started traveling extensively with friends – to Napa Valley, to Europe, and beyond. It made me so happy that my parents were staying active, and staying adventurous, well after many people of their age would have settled down.
The last few years have brought the arrival of my daughter, Lucy. I have been blown away by the degree to which he immersed himself in her world – getting down on her level, finding a way into the games and projects her imagination created. He loved her, and filled her world with fun every time they were together. He was one of her favorite people. I only wish they had a few years more.
There’s of course so much more – his humor, his refusal to complain – or slow down – even in the face of health challenges, the many works of his art I have hanging in my house, the many, many more he produced. So many great conversations, so many wonderful stories. I realize that so much of what I like best about myself comes from him. I will always miss him, and will always be grateful.
I’ve had enough of grief, so today I’ll focus on love. I won’t give time to that moment when you lose someone, when you feel your chest collapse, you go concave and hollow and you know that you’re alone. Because I know love never turns to loved. Gone isn’t lost. That place in your heart isn’t empty. It couldn’t be. It’s just gone fallow, and only for now. Soon, again, it will grow. It will grow new and alive and long, like bright yellow flowers turned royal blue. We become legacies forever and forever and forever and that love will always go on.
Graham’s sweet dad, Bill, my wonderful father-in-law and Lucy’s most beloved Papa, passed away on Saturday at 6:04 p.m., surrounded by his wife of 58 years and his two sons. It happened quickly, though he’d been dealing with some health challenged for a long time. Meg, Graham, and T sat with him until the end, and I’m glad of it. He loved them, he loved all of us, and he would have done the same. He carried kindness, joy, curiosity, creativity, warmth, and a friendly smile everywhere he went. He painted, and puzzled, and loved wine and travel, and swam in the ocean, and never stopped doing the things that mattered to him
He lived. And in his memory, we will, too. Every day. I’ll miss him. I’m grateful that I got to know him, and I’m grateful that Lucy will carry his beautiful legacy.
I think this might have been the first poem I ever posted on the blog. I didn’t have a lot of followers then, and I don’t know that it’s gotten a lot of attention. I’m happy to have an opportunity to share it again, thanks to Annie at Tales of a Family, who posted a writing prompt for this week “inviting us to remember the men who shaped our lives – not always through grand speeches or big moments, but through the quiet lessons they lived every day.”
I’ve talked about my grandfather, James, in the collaboration Annie and I have been working on, about how his death prompted me to start my creative journey. But his life inspired me, too. He worked hard, he fought in World War II and lost friends doing it, he loved and supported his family (his wife, my beautiful grandmother and his six children), and he enjoyed the small, quiet moments you can carve out in a busy, not always easy life. He loved fishing, sitting on the porch swing, making music. He taught me to love those moments, too.
So here’s a poem for him, a memory and an elegy, that I’m grateful to revisit, called “My Grandfather’s Guitar.”
My grandfather’s guitar sits in a corner of my study untouched, gathering dust. When I was young and he was already old, it could pull notes straight from the air through his fingers and into my ears. I can hear them, though he is gone and his instrument’s gone quiet. When I was young, not even ten, he’d pick it up and start to play and then I’d go still, stuck to one spot until he was done. My grandfather’s guitar in his hands made magic, but I was too young to understand that music is magic made real for a moment. A fret and a twang and he’d made something that didn’t exist before and wouldn’t again. I sometimes imagine myself back there, wearing muddy tennis shoes with tangled hair, just listening. I can hear it, but no song ever sounds the same twice.
I love seeing Lucy play music with her GrandDonnie.
With everything going on, moments like this, they’re just so sweet and wonderful to share. And I think it’s safe to say, this kid will definitely be a musician. It’s going to be so fun helping her find her instrument and watching her learn. 😊
This picture popped up on my Facebook memories earlier this week.
I’ll admit it’s not a great photo. But I remember this day well, because I’m fairly certain it was the last time I had my grandmother’s chicken and dumplings.
I was visiting my parents in southwest Virginia, and my grandmother made a batch just for me. I insisted she didn’t need to do that, that I just wanted to see her and not to trouble herself over me, but stubbornness does run in the family, and she’d already made up her mind.
Looking back on it now, I’m glad I took the picture, and glad she did trouble herself. And very glad indeed that I ate almost the whole batch.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 