Bill Bruehl

Bill Bruehl's earliest memory happened when he was a toddler on stage about 1935. He doesn't remember how the set collapsed and stopped the action. He does remember infinite blackness in front of him filled with white eyeballs and silence, a shocked audience in the dark. Now, he's not sure it is a fact. Did he make up this story? He's not sure. He does know that he has always loved to tell stories, his own or others.

Acting was one way to do that. He was born with talent and played his first role when he was fourteen in Laura, which had been a Broadway hit. He knows that happened because he didn't learn his lines and improvised to the displeasure of both cast and director, who found an actor to work with him and ensure he got his lines.

The storytelling intensified as Bill got older. That didn't help when he got in trouble as an adolescent with a shaky grasp of history. In St James' Catholic High School for Boys in Chester, Pennsylvania, Bill formed a bond with his English teacher, Father O'Connor––who became a Cardinal in New York. Sometimes Father would hand Bill the keys to his car and send him on an errand. On one occasion, Bill misjudged, scraped a brick wall, and scratched Father's fender. O'Connor simply asked, "Ok, now what's your story, Mr. Bruehl?"

Bill didn't go to Korea, deployed to Germany instead, it was one of the great lucky things that ever happened to him. Germany in 1951 was a summer camp, compared to the raging war in Korea, and provided all kinds of opportunities. He learned some German–but not the most elegant–while developing a small black-market business in cigarettes, nylons, and chocolate by the carload for people living far from the MPs. And most of that is fact.

He did go to a wine festival on fine Autumn day, made friends with some Germans, bought a lot of good Riesling, drank too much, and was picked up later walking toward the French border. He remembers none of that. Happily, the desk sergeant was a buddy from basic training who made sure Bill was safely returned to his sack before the next day. Bill swears all of that is true, and it does seem believable.

From the beginning, an artist tried to blossom in him, but he never trusted that idea, partly because he was raised during the Depression when the idea of spending your life as an artist was equivalent to wanting to be penniless. Bill's mother wanted him to become a judge or a priest. He didn't recognize how a storyteller would thrive in either of those professions and decided to become a teacher, get tenure, and have summers off to play with his family. Family became the big thing; the most important thing, a stage for storytelling.

Luckily, Margaret Gauger gave him the best offer he ever got from a woman: truth, honesty, and transparency. She was only 18 when they met 67 years ago. A kind but steely woman, she still gives him another chance every morning. She had to tame him, and he did give her some rough times, but you wouldn't want to hear those stories. They are unbelievable. Sadly, Margaret died of a heart attack on August 26, 2021 at age 85. She is missed beyond measure and that is a fact. Bill got a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania and took on the role of an English literature professor, a job that never quite fit. When universities like Delaware and Stony Brook hired him, they soon found they had a theater guy on their hands instead of a scholar. Somehow, he earned tenure, loved teaching and directing plays, and began to create stories for the stage—twenty-five of them. A few were produced in New York and around the country, and one about Giordano Bruno was given a short production in Rome, Italy. That's probably a fact.