Bill Diehl

Family-Placed Death Notice

BILL DIEHL Bill Diehl enjoyed a decade more than the scripturally sanctioned three-score and ten. When he died the Friday after Thanksgiving, he was less than two weeks shy of his 82nd birthday. The years he was given were not just generous: they were rich and full, productive and fun, and rewarding for him, his families, friends and fans. Born in New York City Borough of Queens, December 4, 1924: William Francis Diehl, Jr. grew up with Mae West for a baby sitter, and an uncle who dressed the 10 year old in tailored suits, then took him to the Cotton Club, having slipped the doorman both some money and the likely story that Billy was a midget. One day, when he was 12, he went on a field trip with his class to see a rare sight: the airship Hindenburg, docking at Lakehurst, N.J. He saw the fiery end of the Nazis pride. Then he helped stop them altogether. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for the US Army Corps Aviation Cadet Program. He washed out of pilot school, so the Army checked his shooting skills. He was the first in gunnery class, and volunteered to go overseas. The Army put him in the ball turret of B-24 Liberators. If you want to know what that could be like, read Randall Jarrell's poem. For Bill, it meant frostbite, in spite of which he kept all his toes until the after-effects caught up with him, more than a half a century later, and he earned the nickname " 2 Toes." In the war, he earned the Air Medal with a 4 Oak Leaf Clusters, 2 Presidential Unit Citations, and was recemmended for the Purple Heart. He had flown 24 missions over Germany. And never again fired a weapon. He came home to Clearfield, PA, July 4, 1945, and was honorably discharged at the age of 20. He got a job at the newspaper. He got another job at another newspaper a few years later. A friend's father recommended him for a job at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. But they missed the memo. He arrived with no appointment, and asked to see editor Ralph McGill. The iconic newspaperman came down, took a look, asked Bill what he had done in the war, and decided a newsroom would not daunt a ball turret gunner. Bill wrote obits, then moved to the police beat. He decided the best way to get good photos to go with his stories was to shoot them himself. He was an early adopter of 35 mm when most people used Graphics or Leicas. In 1965, he left the paper for his next career. (That's 3 and counting.) He free-lanced for clients like Life Magazine and Business Week, and was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s photographer of choice. This was when Atlanta had about half a million people. Bill seemed to know most of them. In 1960 he returned to ink-stained wretchedness, cameras in hand, as managing editor/staff photographer of Atlanta Magazine, under its legendary founding editor Jim Townsend. Bill's fifth career jog took him, in the late 60's, to the Theatre Atlanta, where he was in charge of promotion and public relations. That job lasted until the group took "Red, White and Maddox" to Broadway, where it, and they, did not do much business. On Bill's 50th birthday, he had a Baskin-Robbins "cake" shaped like a typewriter. When it melted into a shapeless blob, he mused: "This is my career to date." He put down his cameras. For good. He sold all his Leicas, started his first book, and so began his sixth, and final career: novelist. "Sharky's Machine" was his auspicious, blockbuster-best-selling debut. Like so many of the great things in Bill's life, it was not without suspense, frustration, and you-could-never-make-this-up absurdity: in the middle of a phone call to make a million dollar deal for that book, the line went suddenly dead. Ma Bell was tired of waiting for him to pay his overdue phone bill. He walked to a pay phone, and did the deal. For the next two decades, Bill's fans got a Diehl fiction fix every 3 years or so: "Chameleon" slithered in in 1981, featuring a barely-disguised "Eliza" Gunn (Bill loved to use the names of friends for characters). In December of '81, Atlanta saw the biggest premiere since That Civil War Movie; Burt Reynolds directed and starred in and as Sharky. Bill had a cameo, playing a pimp with uncanny skill. It was one of the few jobs he never had. In the time before "Hooligans" burst out in 1984, Bill had moved to Saint Simons Island, fallen in love with Virginia Gunn, and married her, ending 1982 as a bachelor and beginning 1983 as a deliriously happily married man. The union lasted 23 years. "Thai Horse" in 1988 and "27" in 1990 dealt with high stakes games of drug running and World War 2 espionage. 1992 saw the first of the Martin Vail trilogy, "Primal Fear," and the start of Virginia's political career. She served two terms as a member of the Glynn County Commission, as Islands Commissioner, and Vice-Chair. She and Bill enjoyed their waterside home, and the ever-evaporating isolation of the island. "Show of Evil" in 1995 and "Reign In Hell" (1997) rounded out the Vail series. Sandwiched between them, in 1996, the film of "Primal Fear" was a solid box office success starring Richard Gere. 2001 marked the return of Virginia and Bill to the Atlanta area. Woodstock, to be specific. Bill worked on his ninth book, "Eureka," while Virginia, long a lover and defender of animals, undertook the raising of alpacas. The years between "Eureka" (2002) and Bill's death saw several bouts of ill-health, but no diminution in his planning and research and writing and rewriting and stewing and promising "it will be ready soon." "It" is "Seven Ways to Die," Bill's tenth doray into the serpentine, surprising and satisfying worlds of murder, mayhem, crime, punishment, police and procedures. He was working on its jaw-dropping twist ending the day before he died. It concerns the seven ways we murder each other, and the subtleties and luck involved in winkling out who did what and with which and to whom. Let us all hope we see it! Bill's wonderful life will be celebrated at a Memorial Service this Sunday at 3 PM, at the Woodruff Health Center Auditorium on the Emory University Campus. The address is 1440 Clifton Road. Virginia asks that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Saint Simons Library 530-A Beachview Drive St. Simons Island, GA 31522. H.M. Patterson, Spring Hill Chapel 404-876-1022.