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01 Sharon and Bill on their wedding day in 1972. Photo from the Reynolds family library. 02 Fred, Bill, Sharon, and Steve Reynolds at Bill’s retirement party. Photo by Jim Reynolds.
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made him a revolutionary. Yet he will be remembered not only for his discipline, but also for his kindness. Bill’s legendary compassion, warmth, and sense of humor have made him one of the most beloved mentors in YSD history. “It’s not that he loves rules,” explains Chiara Klein ’17, SOM ’17. “He loves people, and that is what motivates him. He leads with his heart.” Christina Fontana ’19 agrees: “Bill is such a wonderfully genuine person, and that is what everyone loves about him. He looks out for every single student.” Bill’s passion for theater began at Monroe High School in Rochester, New York, where he delighted in finding creative solutions for his high school theater productions in an old facility with outdated equipment. “There’s that sense of ‘we can figure this out’ that imbues everything we do in the theater, and I seemed to be pretty good at figuring it out.” He considered studying math in college, but checked the box labeled “theater major” during freshman orientation at the State University College, in Geneseo, New York. At the end of his sophomore year there, when he learned that Northern
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Michigan University offered a technical theater scholarship, Bill and his soon-to-be wife, Sharon, threw a mattress in the back of a U-Haul and headed west. Students today picture Bill in an immaculate shirt and pressed khaki pants, but back then his style was characteristic of his generation: “long hair, headband, beads, leather vest, that kind of hippie stuff,” he says. He and Sharon were married barefoot on the shore of a lake. “It seemed believable then that we could, through dint of will, create a society that was peaceful and equitable.” This was an ideal Bill had held since childhood, growing up on the grounds of a state hospital where his father was a psychiatrist. Bill’s mother employed patients with serious mental illnesses around the house and taught Bill and his siblings to treat them with respect, as they would anyone else. The theater proved to be a welcoming place that a variety of personality types could call home, but Bill became disillusioned with its disorganized state. At Northern Michigan, he was the technical department and worked nonstop without