About the author:

Bill and I grew up in western Pennsylvania, Bill in the 1940's and me in the 1950's. It was a mentor relationship from the start. In looking back I realize it was really quite extraordinary for a twelve year older brother in high school and college to take along a kid brother who not only was surely a burden simply because of his age but was also a not so easy companion given a heavy dose of stubbornness and competitiveness almost from birth. We obviously made a grand team, though, and have remained so to the present. Spring found us along western and central Pennsylvania trout streams every weekend and often for an hour or two in the evenings. Summers were lake fishing at our Summer cabin on Tilden Lake in northern Ontario.

My twelfth birthday, coming right at Christmas time, was perfect for Bill's Christmas leave from the Army. With him came my first 22 Cal single shot Remington rifle, and, a little later, my first good fly rod, a Shakespeare Wonderod. We spent fall hunting squirrels in Potter county till after I graduated from college and moved to Virginia to take a teaching job. Fly fishing has always remained our first commitment, though. It took Bill and me to Yellowstone in the late 70's, where Mary Lu and I have since made our home for half the year every year since.

As we move into the last couple decades of our lives, it is not hard to look back and realize the impressions of our beginnings sew important seeds that help us to grow the rest of our lives. I like to think both of us have helped each other to happiness and, through it all, a love of common values has kept us whole to the end. It would not be hard at all for me to dedicate any of my successful endeavors to Brother Bill. His light has always been more than enough to show the way for me.





Bill has kept this newspaper clipping all these years and just recently scanned it and sent me a copy. The picture of me to the left was taken a couple years later up on Tilden Lake. That is a big lake trout Bill caught in the upper lake. I remember his excitement and hoping that the thirteen pounder was a brook trout. It was a splake which, but for the forked tail, looked exactly like a huge brook trout. The incident I related in the companion story happened while Bill was going to Gettysburg College in the early 1950's.