Editorial: A Good Guy Is Gone

Anger. That's what I felt when I heard Billy was dead. William R. Eshelman was a good guy who lived by his principles. I talked with his wife, librarian Pat Rom, another good guy, and we agreed that Billy was a pretty angry man. I think he was the angriest pacifist I've known. He didn't hesitate to speak out against the evils he saw.

A conscientious objector during World War II, Billy was deeply marked by his conscription into the Civilian Public Service at Camp 56 in Oregon. Working six days a week, he planted trees and found ways to write, print, publish, and perform during that hard labor. After that he always acted and spoke to convince others to emulate his antiwar commitment.

Billy thought the American Library Association (ALA) should come out against unjust wars, as it did over Vietnam. His belief in intellectual freedom was undiluted by the political and administrative expediency and compromise that so often weakens our professional resolve. Critics said he was too angry or too noisy about it. I disagreed.

You'll find details of Billy's life elsewhere, including News, p. 19. I remember his proud decades as editor of California Librarian and Wilson Library Bulletin (WLB). During his New York decade at WLB, I came to know him well. Hanging out with the like-minded bunch who gathered around Eric Moon, my predecessor at LJ, Billy would often talk about his formative years. I loved his stories of librarianship's greats, such as that illustrious librarian and bookman Lawrence Clark Powell, who, with the distinguished librarian Everett Moore, convinced Billy to become a librarian. He and I had a special bond regarding Powell. Moon convinced Powell to write his first autobiography (Fortune & Friendship, Bowker, 1968). It was early in my career as Moon's assistant at LJ and as an editor in the Bowker book department; my reward for the schizophrenic post was to be allowed to edit Powell.

Years later, Moon convinced Powell to finish his story (Life Goes On: Twenty More Years of Fortune and Friendship, Scarecrow, 1986). Billy, who succeeded Moon as head of Scarecrow, edited him that time.

A talented and fair editor, Billy called me years ago to complain that we at LJ often put argumentative editor's notes after letters to the editor. "If you always get the last word," he said, "who will be willing to write in to argue with you?" He was right. We dropped those notes after that.

Billy's friends included hundreds of librarians and bookpeople, like printer/publisher Ward Ritchie and famous California bookseller Jake Zeitlin. There were other good guys, too, like Zoia Horn, the great intellectual freedom fighter; Berkeley's Fay Blake, one of the leading library dissidents before, during, and after the Sixties; and many, many more. His friendship with Beat generation poet William Everson—who became Brother Antoninus and then later broke with the Dominican Order over his poetry—ended with a book. Billy edited the correspondence between Powell and Everson (Take Hold Upon the Future: Letters on Writers and Writing, 1938–1946, Scarecrow, 1994).

I got closest to Billy after we both became performers in what was known as Eric Moon's Circus, a group that included American Libraries editor Gerald Shields; Billy; Moon; and later Arthur Curley, the ALA president who directed the Boston Public Library; Norman Horrocks; and others who would speak as a group at conferences, library schools, and the like. Back when Billy and Art Plotnik worked together at WLB, they put out what is perhaps my favorite issue, in April 1970, which includes a very funny parody of LJ called Library Germule (p. 839-847).

While I want to celebrate his good friendship, witty and honest criticism, and his life as a fine librarian, editor, and bookperson, most important to me is that he was a person of principle. I miss Billy because both his words and actions frequently showed me the principled way when I was uncertain. It makes me angry when one of the good guys dies.

jberry@reedbusiness.com