Remembering Bill!

It’s not difficult for me to remember the first time I met Bill Medley. It was the Spring of 1981 and I had just been elected to the USD 465 Board of Education. Jim Reed called and said I was to participate in interviewing candidates for Superintendent. At the district office and later at a local restaurant I met and had my first conversation with Bill and Maxine Medley. We had several good candidates and the decision came down to as Joan Kaufman put it, “When you have a close decision you go with the known quantity.” What a great nine years I had working with Bill, first as colleagues, the he became a mentor, and finally a valued friend.
The next paragraph is an excerpt from one of my earlier columns:
Bill Medley was a high school principal and superintendent in USD 465 for nearly 30 years. Bill became USD 465’s Superintendent the same day I became a new board member in 1981. Several lessons were learned during his tenure, but I will focus on two that I clearly recall. Bill’s goal was to always find them “doing something good.” He included students, teachers, staff, administration, and any other employee. The other lesson was his ability to start the seed of an idea, throw it out to an audience, and watch it come back in developed form. Bill was an example of Emerson’s old quote, “there is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.” Bill was a master at giving credit and conversely, taking the blame.
It is also not difficult to remember my last two conversations with Bill. I was working in my yard last Fall and he stopped and we visited. He told me how his son Forrest made copies of one of my writings about him and handed them out to employees. We made a plan for me to have coffee with him the next week. At out meeting we reminisced about some of the accomplishments of our time together. Each idea that worked he recalled how I had developed it with him at a board meeting or a trip to Topeka. My recollection was that mostly they were Bill’s ideas that the board and administrators helped develop. That was Bill.
At his celebration service Brilla Scott mentioned his many of his accomplishments and ended saying she thought his proudest was returning to the community he loved as superintendent. I would agree with that and further say that being on the board that brought him back is also one of my proudest moments also. Our thoughts and prayers are with Maxine, Forrest, Jennifer, and the rest of the family. He will be missed!