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WILLIAM PORDY Obituary
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Memories and Condolences
for WILLIAM PORDY
3 Entries
Margery Dean (nee Koch)
January 9, 2021
Dear Robert,
I would like to express my sympathies for the passing of your brother Bill. I usually send him a New Year’s greetings around this time of year, and saw his obituary in the Times. Of course, I was not surprised, and in fact had been waiting for this to happen. It has been a couple of years since we last spoke, but I know how determined he was to keep going and keep up his interests in the many things he loved despite his illness, and was delighted that he was able to see it through until September.
Bill and I go back many years - he is in fact one of my oldest friends that I maintained some sort of contact with. We met in 1969 when we were both 15 at a summer program, and continued to meet up occasionally to share our interests in the treasures at the Metropolitan museum, films and life’s problems as seen through teenage eyes. I even accompanied Bill to your bar mitzvah, which he reminded me of a few years ago when he sent me a scan of a picture from this event and I could admire myself in my best 1970s dress. We lost close contact after I relocated to the Netherlands, and then to Israel, and then to the UK, but Bill continued to find me wherever I was and renew the friendship. One of my last memories of him was when he visited me in Manchester. Despite it being mid-summer it rained continuously and was cold enough to need the heating on, but we talked non-stop as I showed him around my city and introduced him to my family.
Looking back over the many years of emails from him I still have in my files I am amazed at all his ventures and the energy he had for bringing them to life. I can see Dairy Delicious rise and fall, the WonderBoard and WB for Kids take shape and be marketed, OwnCone samples being developed and tried for size, as well as smaller ventures such as Get Ducky, Perfect salt shaker (Bill wrote that he had plans for modifying dozens of other of kitchen equipment), and the Write Shirt. He had such pleasure in these things, and often involved a group of his friends in decisions regarding colors and design or wording. He was always able to look at something with fresh eyes and see ways to take it further.
I hope that he was able to maintain some degree of independence in his final years, and to keep doing what he loved best. I know that he dropped developing businesses once he had his diagnosis and concentrated on the cultural things he loved, such as architecture and painting. He sent me an invitation to the architecture lectures at the Metropolitan. He sent me a picture of himself sitting on a bench he donated in Central Park. He invited me to join him at the opera in London (unfortunately at such short notice that I had to decline). Such lovely activities, and done with such pride.
Bill was a very special person, a unique and brilliant man who perhaps never found himself in the family and home life he craved but who excelled in touching people with his energy and ideas. I am lucky to have had him as a friend, although I am honest enough to say that I was not as good a friend to him as he was to me. I hope he had good, close friends around him during his last years.
In memory of our good times together when we were young, and his love of architecture I am donating to the Metropolitan Museum in his name.
I wish you, your family, and your sister Melissa and her family a long and healthy future. Warm regards,
Margery Dean (nee Koch)
Simone Taylor
September 16, 2020
Please except my deepest sympathies to you and your family at this time of grieving. May the love of friends and family carry you through your grief.
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