Cheshire Cat smiles

A man who mentored me while I attended Carroll College in Helena, MT by the name of Bill Robertson said that the people that you meet who make you smile when you think of them are "Cheshire Cats," because even though they are not here with you, they are present in your smile.  So I would like to thank all the men I have encountered in the past  two men's gatherings, as when I think of you at the 2008 and 2009 gatherings, I smile a lot!  I smile when I think of him too.

Bill was someone who was there for me when I had been away from my biological family for a year and I worked for him on the grounds crew of the college after deciding not to go home for the summer.  I was estranged from my family even before I left for Helena, so Bill and my other friends on the grounds crew seemed like my first deep spiritual connections that I had made at that point.  I felt that I hardly knew my family of origin and had chosen to attend Carroll College because no one else from my home town of Chinook was attending there!

Our crew would hang out at a local coffee shop at the mall to discuss philosophy and theology and enjoy each other's company.   Sometimes we would continue the discussion at Bill's house or at Canyon Ferry Lake until the wee hours of the morning.  He was a self professed atheist but was more "Christian" than many that went to church.  He was the perfect mentor for me while I was questioning the existence of God and the validity of the Catholic teachings.   That summer was a magical and miraculous time of connection and discovery.  He gave me the gift of acceptance while I questioned dogma and explored other ways of looking at the world that I could not have done with help from my parents or the church.

A year later, I transfered to the University of Montana after a car accident which took me a while to recover from.  I would visit Bill periodically, but it wasn't the same as when I lived in Helena.

Bill died in a car accident six years later in 1990 just before Desert Storm.  He was a captain in the Green Berets in Vietnam, and had re-enlisted to help train the young men at Fort Harrison "before the next big war."  He saw the conflict coming before anyone else did.  One evening he told his wife he was going to sit at the VA hospital at Fort Harrison until the doctors adjusted his medication, as he had epilepsy from head injuries he received while serving in Vietnam.  He had a seizure while driving there and plowed his sports car into the right brick wall at the entrance into the VA hospital.  My friends and I from the grounds crew during the summer of '84 where there to pay our last respects to the man who was there for us in so many different ways: surrogate father, running coach, head grounds keeper, rappelling teacher, friend and brother.

It's been many years since the funeral.  Once in a while I will go pay my respects at the Veteran Cemetery and climb Mount Helena and think of him and thank him for his presence in my life.  And when I think of him, I smile a lot.