Bill Friedman’s wife, Shoshana, asked me to post this at the CaringBridge Website set up in his honor. Alas, the piece is too long for there, because they have a 5,000-character limit. So instead, I’m posting it here and linking to it. Hope that’s OK.
REMEMBERING BILL FRIEDMAN
By Barney Lerten
November 15, 2008
As a reporter, I’ve often said, jokingly, that the worst thing I could do to some people is to quote them accurately.
I recall a certain former city manager who once told me a joke, as we talked on the phone. I was laughing – but I was typing. A few days later, Larry – I mean, that unnamed city manager – called me up. The words were in print, and he was not laughing. But he learned anew the power of those three little words – off the record – and what can happen when they’re not used.
But when it comes to Bill, the best thing I can do, to salute and reflect on his simple, quiet, but powerful role in Bend government over the past decade or so, is to quote him accurately – something I always try to do, but do better now, covering the council via TV and typing, then I ever did scribbling in the front row at City Hall. Then, now and forever, my handwriting is atrocious.
So that should be my first salute to Bill – his voice and timbre was unique, his cadence – starting with a slight stammer – like Jimmy Stewart in his prime, though no one would ever confuse the two. He spoke slowly enough that I could capture his words in my scribbles, and not so slowly that it felt like a day in fourth grade as others read their essays at a maddeningly glacial pace.
No, it was as if he wanted you to ride along with his thought process, almost hear the mental gears turning – and make clear that he wasn’t letting his mouth get ahead of his brain, as some politicians – we’re talking other places, not here – often do.
His attire was unique as well, for years – hence all the white shirts and jeans surrounding us – and as someone blessedly free of the neck-noose tie in recent years, we were a kindred spirit in that regard.
I tell people I have little if any memory, only archives – and the fates have conspired to destroy, lose or burn many of those, which accounts for the nearly fire-hazard stacks of fading newsprint in my home office. So that is where I turned, when asked – and how could I refuse the honor? – to find some ‘quotable quotes’ from Bill, for this occasion.
One of the first and funniest I found came from a March 2003 Bend Bugle, when the city was wrestling, as always, with what to charge developers and how to account for all that rapid growth.
At one point in the frustrating dialogue, Bill made a simple, three-word funding suggestion: “Magic pixie dust.”
“So far,” he said, “It’s a total disaster. The builders have to pay more … and 60 percent has to come from somewhere else. Everybody’s even – we’re all going to lose.”
Seven months later, a similar remark: “This is a lose-lose-lose proposition. We can’t get there from here, even with increased taxes.”
But perhaps, that same month six years ago, came a truly symbolic time, close to here – dedication of the Bill Healy Bridge – when Bill, a long-time supporter of the controversial project, said he’d thought about borrowing Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg – ‘Four score and seven years ago” – since it seemed to have taken that long to happen.”
So the councilor who had donned a Dr. Seuss ‘Cat in the Hat” hat and read a made-up fairy tale, ‘The Lonely Little Log Deck,” during a debate, offered thanks to both those who said yes and no to the bridge, for making it a better span – as he put it, “for taking the time to care.”
Skip ahead four years, to May of last year, and when he called a 50 percent hike in some building fees “outrageous and unconscionable,” and the state-driven budget process “unfortunate,” he still managed to put a positive spin on things, as I wrote then, “sounding hopeful that everyone would come to consensus on where to go.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” he said. “This is the way democracy works. I think we’re going to have a good result and move forward.”
Last September, as the Juniper Ridge debate roiled, Bill tried to sound a note of reason, as he urged his colleagues not to back the idea of a public vote on the project.
As he put it, “We can abdicate our responsibility in some very unfortunate ways.” But he also said, “We need to listen to the community, build ways to discuss” the issue.
He was not a man bound to tradition, as in his continued efforts to increase safety and sanity in Bend, by banning fireworks.
“I agree it’s an American tradition,” he said. “The question is, should every tradition from the past be carried into the future?”
That takes us to last spring, when councilors took a chance – brave or foolish, take your pick – and did not cut Bend Area Transit’s budget, several months before this fall’s fateful third vote on a service that many surveys have shown residents want – they just don’t want to pay more for.
“It’s an interesting gamble, but it is a gamble,” Bill said.
And as the appreciative audience of mostly senior transit riders filed out of the council chambers to a waiting Dial-A-Ride bus, many thanking councilors for their decision, and the council waited to move on to the next agenda item, Bill told Michael Funke, the stalwart labor organizer, “The ball’s in your court.”
Funke replied, “The ball’s in all of our courts.”
It’s only fitting that was one of the last times I quoted Bill. Because when it comes to loving, caring about and investing our time, energy – and yes our hard-earned money – in keeping Bend livable and successful, indeed, Bill would tell us all, were he here today, “The ball’s in your court.”
And if we approach each issue, large or small, with the grace, wisdom, and yes humor that Bill Friedman displayed in ways large and small, we should all in the end, win or lose, be able to quote Bill accurately, and tell everybody we know: “This is the way democracy works.”
Leave it to Barney 