massing, and desperate bayonet charges, with the dying rays of the winter sun reflecting off . . . well, nothing that would have anything to do with what I was writing.
Lately, I've been asked a lot about what Bill was like. Bill lived and wrote in his own peculiar, florid world. It was a world I enjoyed visiting from time to time, but I don't know anybody who wanted to live there, or even to tarry very long after
dinner. If any staffer at the Daily News was a really close friend of Bill, I never knew it - and that isn't me just scurrying to distance myself and the paper from an icon in disgrace. Even those of us who enjoyed Bill preferred to do so in small, controlled doses.
I'm writing about Bill in the past tense, even though he is still alive. Only his career and his reputation are dead, along with the joy I used to take in reading those dramatic journeys from the 1-yard line to World War II, or wherever.
Of course, my pain over losing a part of the Daily News and the sports universe I cherished is trivial, in the face of what the seven identified alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse say they suffered at Bill Conlin's hands. But I have never met any of those people. If I could do anything to help them, I would do it. Still, I can't do anything about the fact that when I think of this mess, I think first of Bill, my traveling companion to three Winter Olympics, in Albertville, France; Lillehammer, Norway; and Nagano, Japan. (Actually, I was his traveling companion. With Bill, there was seldom any doubt about that. He was the one choosing the restaurant, telling the stories, thumping you on the shoulder with the back of a bearlike paw, for emphasis. I'm not sure he ever asked me any questions about my life or family, and I'm very sure he didn't much care.)
