William Victor Higgs, my only sibling, died yesterday, just two days past his 79th birthday. Bill was a remarkable man in many ways and, along with my mother and father, one of the three most important people in making me the person I became. He was the first person in our extended family to attend college, and I merely followed in his footsteps. Bill possessed keen intelligence, great self-discipline, abundant levelheadedness, and ample common sense. He was unfailingly dedicated to his family above everything else. After graduating from Fresno State with a degree in industrial engineering (later supplemented by an MBA degree from Sacramento State), he rose from an entry-level management job to a position as controller in one of the nation’s largest corporations (PT&T, now PacBell), retiring after more than thirty years with that firm. Although he loved his job, he also loved working with his hands. Off the job, he was constantly occupied with home maintenance and improvement and other projects, and among his friends the quality of his craftsmanship was legendary. He inherited all of our father’s great mechanical aptitude. To say that I loved him like a brother hardly begins to suggest how much I revered him. Despite his being eight years older than I, he was a wonderful brother even when I was a little kid whom he had every reason to consider a nuisance. I always looked up to him, recognizing in him the embodiment of character traits I sorely lacked. Yet, notwithstanding my own follies and foul-ups, not once in my entire life did he let me down. He was unfailingly supportive and concerned about me. When no one else called to see how I was doing, he did. With his passing, I have become the sole surviving member of the happy little family in which I grew up, shielded from the world’s evils and showered with unceasing love. Nothing can fill the gap his death creates. Like our father, Bill was a rock-solid atheist. I like to think, however, that when his spirit departed his cancer-ravaged body, he was immediately surprised to find himself in Paradise.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:57:46 +0000
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