not b. traven

The Contrary Perspective Blog was founded by William (Bill) Blau a number of years ago. He was known for his willingness to buck conventional wisdom. He occasionally contributed to the blog under the pseudonym, b. traven (he insisted it needed to be all lower-case). That was his nod to the “real” B. Traven, which in turn was a pseudonym for a person whose identity is still disputed. B. Traven wrote The Treasure of Sierra Madre and, among other books, The Death Ship, a rumination on the purposelessness of life. That was one of the last things that Bill re-read before he lost his vision to macular degeneration a few years ago.

This post tells the story of Bill’s life as briefly as it is possible to condense 100 active years into a few thousand words. It is told by one of his sons, but it is a story shared by everyone who had contact with Bill over his long and eventful life. If one of my siblings – George, Barbara, Rebecca, or Billy – told this story, they would share different anecdotes, but I think the thrust of the story would be unchanged.

I’m painfully aware that Bill would rue the missed opportunity to influence what I write below. As any of you who knew him could attest, he liked to have control over his life, and over the lives of others as well. ;) He certainly wanted to control how he is remembered. I apologize in advance for any mistakes or omissions and I recommend that you read his book to get the full story on Bill, straight from the horse’s mouth!

A Rough Start

Almost 100 years ago, an Eastern European immigrant couple welcomed a little boy into their newly-established Midwestern lives. Two more boys, Michael (Micky) and Richard (Dick), followed over the next few years. They lived what in retrospect was a secure, aspiring life. It was a time when young boys had freedom to explore and learn, before the financial shocks of late 1929 upended the lives of most people, including this little boy, Bill Blau.

The events of the next few years are somewhat lost to the fog of time, but life was harsh. Morris, Bill’s father, had a grocery store in Gary, Indiana, but eventually he could not make ends meet. He may have fallen in with some less-than-savory characters. What is known, however, is that he took his own life in 1937 when Bill was 12, changing Bill’s life dramatically.

According to Bill, Morris was a “disciplinarian,” who demanded obedience from the boys. Short of that, out came the belt – something that I was threatened with many times in my childhood by Bill; but I never remember him actually using it. Bill would often ponder the photo below, trying to tease out his father’s character traits from subtle details in the picture, such as the way he held a cigarette.

Morris’ death left Bill’s mother, Rose, in a very precarious situation with three young boys and no income. Eventually the boys were sent to the Bellefaire Orphanage on the outskirts of Cleveland. Bill felt very strongly that, despite his age, he had to step up to take responsibility for the family. Bill, consulting with Rose, helped to arrange for the two younger boys to be sent back, Richard to Rose, Micky to Rose’s brother, Martin. Bill, however, stayed on at the Orphanage until he graduated from high school several years later.

Later in life, Bill was adamant that he did not want to be put into any kind of old-age facility. “I’ve spent my time already in institutions,” by which he meant the orphanage and the military. The idea of going back filled him with dread.

In some ways, however, Bill thrived at Bellefaire. He made friends and was educated at the local high school in relatively-well-to-do Cleveland Heights. But most importantly, Bill learned to look after himself. He developed an instinct for self-preservation that would see him outlive his younger siblings and most of his friends.

Though he developed a life-long thirst for knowledge through reading, Bill realized later in life that during his cloistered existence at Bellefaire he had missed out on learning about life itself, about social interactions, about girls, about just about everything that children with a more normal upbringing would take for granted.

He was about to get a fast-track course in life, however.

Billy Got His Gun, Sort Of

After aging out of the orphanage – Bill insisted on staying to the very end to reduce the burden on Rose – Bill enrolled in the University of Ohio in the fall of 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but before he was called up to service; he had just turned 18, draft age.

Having devoured Dalton Trumbo’s WWI anti-war classic, Johnny Got His Gun, Bill was terrified of becoming an infantryman. His high test scores enabled him to apply to join the Army Air Corps, the predecessor of today’s US Air Force, as a pilot. He was accepted in principle, but before the Air Corps called him up he received an Army draft notice: he was required to report for induction within 3 days. The Air Corps would have to wait.

As Bill recounted, he and his mother lacked the experience to deal with this situation. So he reported as required, but brought with him his Air Corps acceptance letter. The induction officer told him that there was he could do little about it, but he put the Air Corps letter into Bill’s file. Bill was now back inside an institution, an enormous one.

Training took him to multiple camps in Florida and and the Midwest. His nickname was, “boozer,” not because he was a big drinker… but the opposite: a little bit went a long way for him. There was a lot of hard training in hot conditions, but there was also a strong camaraderie and exposure to a life from which he had been so sheltered in the orphanage.

Eventually, his paperwork – and his continued entreaties – got him transferred into the Air Corps cadet program. He was slated for transport by train to Colby College in Maine to begin flight training. Sitting in an army truck on the way to the train, however, he was struck by acute appendicitis. It was a turning point in his life. While convalescing, his file was lost. He was never reunited with his squad nor, more importantly, sent overseas to battle.

He was eventually sent to Clemson College in South Carolina for pre-flight training, then back to Miami Beach to be classified for specific responsibilities, i.e. pilot, navigator, bombardier. During the time his records had been lost, however, the army had tightened the criteria to become a flyer. A slight defect in his vision resulted in him being “washed out” as a potential pilot. He was assigned instead to the fast-developing field of air radar and shipped to Wisconsin for initial training, then back to Boca Raton for operational training.

In Boca, Bill was temporarily assigned to the personnel section under a young woman sergeant responsible for deployment processing. Nancy and Bill were a bit of an item for a while, spending time together, going out and dancing. As his deployment dates kept slipping, it was clear that against his wishes, Nancy would not process his deployment. Eventually, they settled the issue by getting engaged. He was eventually transferred, and they stayed in contact by mail for a while, but he never saw her again.

I think it’s fair to say that Bill had mixed feelings about not having gone to war. He was proud – and ever more so as he aged – of having “served the country in a war we had to fight,” as opposed to the wars of opportunity since then, particularly Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan. But he also felt guilty that he survived when so many of his age group did not. It is something that weighed on him more heavily with time, until, literally, his last day.

Marketing Man

As the War ended, Bill was at a camp in Arizona, training others to use and service radar equipment. Once demobilized, he hitch-hiked back to the Midwest to his mother. Thanks to the GI Bill, he restarted his education, first at Ohio State, then a sojourn in Mexico, eventually ending up at the University of Chicago.

Looking back at that time, Bill felt that his mother put him in some very dangerous situations. In her desperation, she had turned to petty crime, mostly fencing stolen goods. She had him handle contraband, which could have ended badly for him. This experience made him even more determined to rely only on himself.

Bill studied psychology at Chicago, securing a job at the Orthogenic School run at the time by Bruno Bettelheim. Although Bettleheim was at that time much feted, Bill railed against him as brutal and a fake (accusations that were subsequently validated). Bill remained skeptical of mainstream psychology for the rest of his life. This experience also further deepened his general distrust of authority.

Bill did not entirely reject psychology, however. He used his education to help establish himself in the emerging discipline of product marketing. He was skilled and smart enough to be hired by Harley Earl, the mastermind behind GM’s planned obsolescence, which helped sell new car designs each year. Harley Earl Associates in Detroit was one of the early product design and marketing companies that influenced a generation of new products in the post-WWII boom. Bill played an active role there, and after he spun off his own company a few years later in Chicago, he was named “Marketing Man of the Year.”

Family, Love, Business

While still in Gary, before working in business marketing, Bill applied his psychology training to running a nursery school, Little People’s Nursery School. In the video below Bill tells a story about the Nursery School, focusing on George, around the time he became involved with George’s mother, Marjorie.

When Bill married Marjorie, she already had two children, George and Barbara. Unusually for the era, Bill not only welcomed them, but adopted them as his own. Soon my sister, Rebecca, then I joined the family. When he got the Harley Earl job, Bill took his young family from Gary to live in a leafy suburb of Detroit and then later in Evanston, just north of Chicago.

As someone with such a fractured childhood, Bill craved having a family around him. He stayed in contact with his brothers and got together as often as possible, including Micky’s large brood of Laura, Spencer, Ruth, and Fritz, and Richard’s Susie and Jeff. Although Bill was not a man who played or rough-housed with the kids, he loved having everyone around. It gave him an opportunity to interrogate them about their lives – and to offer them “guidance.”

Bill was canny in business. On the one hand he was very careful and conservative, having experienced extreme deprivation in the depression, but he had a knack for spotting trends before others, was resourceful, and capable of communicating a design vision that convinced clients he had the touch they needed. Blau, Bishop, and Associates, had a desirable address on Michigan Avenue with a spectacular view of Lake Michigan. Eventually, he could see his yacht, Tahu, moored below.

After Bill’s marriage to Marjorie ended, he was once again an eligible bachelor, but with four growing children. At an industry event around 1970, a younger woman – a food writer involved in organizing the event – caught his attention. To his chagrin, however, she rejected his advances, shying away after he mentioned his four children.

A year later Bill spotted the same woman at another event. This time, he pulled out all the stops, inviting her out to experience a sailboat race on Lake Michigan. It was intriguing enough to convince her to take a chance. After the race he offered to make her dinner at his apartment overlooking the harbor. That was too much to resist for a self-confessed foodie. As Meredith herself put it herself in her book, a homemade dinner of chicken paprikas (“PAH-pree-kash” – traditional Hungarian dish) was “kismet” – fate.

Around the same time, Bill was active in Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace. He was very proud of bringing to Chicago three military academy graduates for a round of interviews and activities, and the impact this could have on people’s attitudes to the War. The writer and Chicago personality, Studs Terkel, devoted a couple of shows to interviewing them. They are still available online in Part 1 and Part 2.

Bill’s family continued to grow. William, Jr., aka Billy Blau, was born in the early 1970s. As Bill and Meredith’s only child, Billy got more attention than the rest of us from Bill – something that may accurately be called a “mixed blessing.” Bill not only was very careful with his own life, but he felt impelled to “organize” others as well.

That is how Bill often expressed his involvement with others – telling them how to do whatever it was they were already doing. It was because he cared. In recent years, when I told him about a project such as fixing the roof, he wanted to know all the details, including what tools I used. Then he would tell me how to do it better. His advice may not have always been welcome, but it was offered because Bill had himself navigated through so many challenges that he felt impelled to offer his guidance, no matter the topic.

Although filled with curiosity about the world, Bill did not travel outside the US and Canada for many years. He only applied for a passport after the State Department changed the passport application, removing questions left over from the McCarthy period, specifically “Are you, or have you ever been…?” Bill had, in fact, briefly flirted with the Communist Party immediately after the War, drawn to their progressive and anti-racist agenda. Because he thought for himself, however, he was purged from the Party after only six months. Nevertheless, as Hunter Biden recently learned, lying on a government document can be a serious offense. Bill was too cautious to risk that, so refused to apply for a passport.

Once he was free to travel, Bill and Meredith went on multiple expeditions to exotic locations in the South Seas, Chile, the Caribbean, and back to his father’s birthplace in Sighisoara, Romania. For the first time he met his father Morris’ brothers, Ferdinand (“Nandor”) and Heinrich, and sisters, Charlotte (“Madie”), and Adele. Previously, the only sibling Bill had known was Oscar, whom Morris had helped bring to Gary and who had a drug store there during my childhood. Going to Sighisoara in the 1970s was a trip back in time. Here are my impressions when I visited Sighisoara a few years after Bill:

Bill sponsored bringing Heinrich and Adele over to the US to visit. Eventually, Heinrich’s daughter, Rose, immigrated to the US. Back in Sighisoara, life was still hard. Bill funded putting in an indoor bathroom in the family house at 94 Illarie Chendi – previously, baths were in a tub in the kitchen with water heated on the gas stove, and the toilet was an outhouse.

Because Bill was smart and careful, and could sense a trend well before it was obvious to others, he was successful in business and in his limited property investments. Although he never liked to own property, he had a knack for investing at the right time and in the right place. A condo in Aspen, a vineyard in Sonoma, and the apartment in San Francisco were all purchased well before those locations became desirable and proved with time to be excellent investments.

Retirement, and more Family…

With retirement, Bill and Meredith settled into life on the Sonoma vineyard, “the Blau Vineyard,” referred to by Bill as simply “the ranch.” They didn’t make wine, but were wine-grape growers, alternatively wooing or being wooed by various wineries. Drawing on their background in marketing, they worked to endow the Blau Vineyard name with a cachet capable of earning the grapes a premium price. But Bill mostly liked to wander out into the vineyard and prune the vines. It was his meditation, and he was glad to share his pruning thoughts and strategies with anyone who asked.

One fine day on the ranch not that many years ago, Meredith received a letter from someone who claimed that Meredith might be her grandmother. Meredith knew instantly that it was true. Years before she had shared with Bill the difficult story of a college-era date-rape that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. As recounted in her book, Meredith handed the newborn over to adoptive parents, never to be heard from again… until that letter arrived more than 50 years later.

Although a bolt out of the blue, Bill took it in stride – the family was even bigger than he thought! As he had welcomed George and Barbara into his embrace, he saw no reason not to accept Meredith’s daughter Anne and her two children, Bea and Kate, as part of the larger Blau enterprise.

Although he loved pruning and tying vines in the fields, in recent years spending time out in the vineyard became a trial. Being in the direct sun for more than a few minutes sapped his precious energy. The vineyard itself started to become more of a burden, what with wildfires, drought and management headaches. After holding out for as long as possible, Bill and Meredith sold up and retreated to their Nob Hill pad in San Francisco. They both felt they had had a good run at the ranch, but when it was time to go it was without regrets.

As Bill’s memories of his war years became more important to him, a funny thing happened: the Biden government decided that all WWII veterans, even those who had not seen combat such as Bill, deserved full support from the Veterans Administration. Previously, he had had only limited access to the VA. For the last year of his life, however, he was afforded full access, something that he lapped up, both because it reinforced his feeling of the outsized importance of those years in his life, and because he received a kind of care that is simply unavailable in the commercial healthcare systems.

Contrary Politics

I would be doing Bill’s memory no favors if I did not mention his politics. Although a businessman at heart, he had a deep, humanist moral compass. That said, he was not a knee-jerk anything. He generally railed against authority, particularly its abuse. He supported the civil rights movement and was strongly against the war in Vietnam.

When I was old enough, we both read Issak Deutcher’s three volume biography of Trotsky, instilling in me a life-long fascination with Russia. To his very last days, Bill and I would discuss developments in Russia. He followed the sad fate of Alexei Navalny carefully through the articles I read to him in the papers.

Reading to him over the phone after he lost his sight became a lifeline for him. He had been a voracious reader, so losing the ability to read threatened his entire equilibrium. He tried listening to recorded books, but he struggled to follow, and often falling asleep and losing his place entirely. He enjoyed some podcasts, particularly the full-on rants of Michael Cohen, aka “Trump’s former fixer,” in his podcast Mea Culpa. He preferred having me read to him because I would check to make sure he was awake and then tease him about dozing off, and start back from wherever he could last remember.

In recent years, he loved to go out wearing one of his WWII Veteran or Army Air Corps hats. He would wait until someone nodded to him and say, “Thank you for your service.” Then he would pounce: “We did it because we had to,” he would intone, “not because we wanted to.” And, if the person had not managed to skitter away, he would go on to explain that the more recent wars have been “wars of choice” that did nothing for Americans. He knew that many/most would struggle to understand his perspective, but he figured it was worth it if he could occasionally make an impression.

It was with great dismay that he listened to the stories I read about Israel’s extermination war on Gaza. “I’ve quit being a Jew,” he would insist in disgust, while reminding me that he had made careful plans to have his ashes stored up in the belfry of Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal Church on Nob Hill a stone’s throw from their apartment. He was delighted that he would be there next to his beloved Meredith for eternity. And, of course, it’s a fitting final snub to convention for a man who spent his life carving his own path through a world that had cut him loose at such an early age.

The Penultimate Day

Although well read, Bill occasionally got on the wrong side of the English language. Like many people, he thought the word “penultimate” indicated something even better than the last. Once informed of the mistake – it means the one before the end – he embraced the joke. That resulted in the celebration of his 90th birthday on a sailboat in San Francisco Bay being branded as, “Bill’s Penultimate Sail.”

Before Bill set out on his own “penultimate” journey, and despite the challenges presented by his age – losing his sight, an unstable gait, the profound lack of energy – Bill was as satisfied with his life as he had ever been. Meredith was his anchor. He reveled in the treats that she regularly cooked up for him and basked in her unconditional love. That was something he had never felt before from anyone. It allowed him to relax and meet his fate calmly.

On Thursday, 6 June 2024 he had another highly anticipated event on the Bay. He was scheduled to sail on FDR’s restored boat, The Potomac, as part of the D-Day commemoration. His role was to drop a wreath overboard in memory of the war dead. In spite of recent weakness, he was determined to participate. He even bought new clothes so that he would look his best.

We’d talked for weeks about this event. He knew that this was a good opportunity for what he liked best: to provoke people to think about topics they would prefer to ignore. He wanted to talk about FDR and how important the New Deal was to him and the nation, particularly in the current era when government involvement in securing a better life for people is under attack. And, of course, he wanted to refer to WWII vs. the wars of opportunity that have been fought since. I wondered if he’d have the strength to speak up, but I encouraged him to speak his mind, as I knew just the thought of ruffling some feathers invigorated him.

Shortly after boarding the boat, however, he collapsed, and was whisked to the emergency room. He and Meredith knew that he had an aortic aneurysm that was a time-bomb in his chest. It just decided to give way at that point. He was given pain relief and had some periods of wakefulness. He took the opportunity to share some final guidance with Parker and Zoe, Billy’s daughters, imploring them to use their skills wisely in life. His grandson Aaron, an ER doctor himself, helped navigate the final hours. When a doctor explained to Bill that it appeared that his aneurysm was giving way, he met the news with typical candor: “so, doctor, I’m a goner, eh?”

Bill was 99 years old and had lived every day with an intensity that few can match. He was profoundly tired at the end, however. He had fought for his survival from an early age, but on his own, non-conformist terms, bucking convention and the arbitrariness of authority until the very end. He died peacefully the day after D-Day.