The sorrow in fandom following the death of Walt Willis last October was somewhat
muted, as he had been ill from the effects of a stroke for about a year with no real
hope of recovery. With Walt's passing and the death of James White (also in 1999),
the era of Irish Fandom is now over; all we have left are memories. There probably
will be many fanzine articles written in the next year about various IF members,
such as John Berry's remembrance of Walt that opened this issue. Here's
another.

I had planned to attend Skycon -- the
British Eastercon -- in 1978. During my attempt to buy a membership I developed a
long running correspondence with Dave Langford, who was on Skycon's committee. I
had no idea how to purchase an 'international money order' and neither did my post
office, so I sent some money off to Washington, D.C., and in return I received an
odd receipt with original saying how much money had been deposited. I sent the
original to England and kept the receipt, but I don't think anyone at Skycon ever
figured out how to turn it into cash, and I've long since lost the receipt. But the
end result was a flurry of letters between Skycon and me -- and my friendships with
Dave Langford and Martin Hoare.

After managing not to go to Skycon, I
was committed to the idea of attending Seacon, the 1979 Worldcon. And I was
entranced by the idea of driving down to Brighton with Harry Bell (Seacon GoH
and my host for the previous week) and then staying with Dave and Hazel Langford the
week following the Worldcon. I enjoyed spending time with Harry in Newcastle, but I
recall that I spent most of my time at pubs or in poorly lit apartments with loud
music. I also found the drive down to Brighton as odd compared to driving around
the US; I still find the British roundabout (versus the traditional US methods to
limit access to freeways) strange and disconcerting. However, after we arrived at
the convention, I seldom saw Harry -- he was much too busy being honored -- a great
deal of the honoring consisting of drinking with friends and going to parties. Dave
Langford permitted me to follow him around, though. I met Hazel (his wife) early in
the convention and then she disappeared into the film room with several balls of
knitting wool and only briefly surfaced for meals and the Hugo Awards ceremony.
Dave, though, hauled me off to the fan room immediately. I was treated to beer
and bitter and ale and introduced to Britfen like Joseph Nicholas, Greg Pickersgill
and Leroy Kettle.

Dave and I didn't spend much time at
programming. We briefly visited the opening ceremonies -- until a small group of
bagpipers started marching through the room and Dave jumped up cradling his head and
dashed away. He whimpered to me in the fan room (where I managed to catch up with
him) over a pint of bitter that bagpipers made his hearing aids squeal. I just
shrugged and ordered another round.

I was part of another exodus
later in the weekend, this one from the fan lounge. At the time, I wasn't sure what
it was for, but if the people I was talking with were going somewhere I'd join them.
We ended up in the main program hall, and it was fairly full -- there were more
people in it than for Opening Ceremonies, and most of the people appeared to be
British fans. I certainly did not expect the program item to be a soft-spoken
gentleman with an Irish lilt. It was Bob Shaw, and his "Serious Scientific Talk"
merged science fiction and humor and fandom all in a delightful way. Following his
presentation, I was introduced to him in the fan room and he bought me a pint of
bitter as well. After that I became a convert, joining the large enthusiastic group
of people who would willingly leave the bar, anywhere and any time, to listen to
him.

I didn't see any more of Bob --
except at a distance -- during the convention. When there weren't parties going on
I was busy spending my time as part of the British/Australian cricket team -- where
I bowled badly at Kevin Smith. The next place I saw Bob Shaw was at Aussiecon Two
in 1985, but we pretty much passed each other during the days and missed each other
at night. I had stayed with Marc Ortlieb for a few days prior to the convention;
Bob stayed with Marc the week following. The next year, Bob was Toastmaster at
ConFederation in Atlanta, and it seemed to me an appropriate time to have him visit
Minneapolis as well. I chaired the Fallcon (the local MinnStf relaxacon) that year,
so I wrote Bob suggesting that he plan a side trip to Minneapolis following the
Worldcon. He answered that he already had a side trip - to Birmingham, Alabama, for
another small convention two weeks following ConFederation -- but he'd be happy to
come to Minneapolis between them.

I had bought my own condo a couple
years earlier (it's still unfinished) and I had a lot of room, but only one double
bed. So I gave Bob and his wife Sarah my bedroom and shifted enough clothes into
the library to keep me well dressed, and I slept on the single bed there. Bob had
caught a case of the 'convention crud' during ConFederation and he didn't really
want to do much. So rather than take three days vacation from work I only took
one. I showed Sarah the washing machine and explained the television to them,
introduced them to the cats, and left them on their own. Bob asked about the
handmade oatmeal soap -- I buy in the local farmer's market -- and wondered if he
could get a recipe for it. On my one day of vacation, I loaded all our luggage into
my car, and gave them a ten cent tour of the Twin Cites -- we went around Lake
Harriet and down Minnehaha Parkway to the falls and the Mississippi River. We
crossed over to St. Paul and drove down the elegance of Summit Avenue to St. Paul
Cathedral, and I barely avoided a blue car that aimed to bash Bob's door into his
flesh. Eventually we arrived at the Sunwood Inn (a small hotel built into a
historical train depot) just as one of my friends from work arrived with the beer
kegs for the convention. The hotel wasn't filled with fans -- there were only a
hundred or so at the convention -- but the hot tub and jacuzzi area held that year's
DUFF winners -- Nick Stathopoulos, Marilyn Pride and Louis Morley -- and the con
suite had Nate Bucklin's filking.

Denny Lien had provided a wide
selection of bottled beers for the next day, -- Bob, Mark Digre, Erik Biever, and
Denny conducted a 'tasting' to see if they could label them correctly. I've
recently found the sheets they filled out and mostly they have short comments --
very dark and heavy, too light and frothy.

Bob also did a short reprise of his
latest Serious Scientific Talk for a small crowd of locals, but mostly we just sat
around and talked. Before he left on Monday after the convention, back to
Birmingham and then on to England and home, Bob presented me with a small stained
glass panel called the Lonely Spaceman. (He later sent a note asking if I'd found
Sarah's hairdryer, which I eventually located under the bed.)

The next year, 1987, was Conspiracy,
another British Worldcon in Brighton. Dave Langford was Special Fan Guest so I saw
very little of him at the convention. I was busy part of the time, too -- I
co-hosted (with Joan Marie Verba) a Minneapolis in `73 party, where all the Brits
came by until our beer had (rapidly) disappeared. Instead of attending the Hugo
Awards Ceremony, which I'd decided would be too crowded, I walked into the Metropole
Hotel thinking I'd look for people to talk with. I met an elderly gentleman in the
lobby and we sat down to tea. It was Walt Willis. And I hadn't even realized he
was attending the convention.

Walt had been spending much of his
time at Conspiracy with old friends, people like Eric Bentcliffe and Ethel Lindsay
who had been attending conventions since the 1950s. As I talked with him, I felt as
if I'd entered a different British fan culture. Many of the younger fans -- D West
for instance -- apparently considered some of the older 'Wheels of IF' fanzines to
be too placid for their taste. The younger fans' writings were terse and sharp, and
they wanted fanzines to be cohesive and literary. The jokes and general pleasant
ambiance of the 1950s fandom was deemed too lightweight. However, I found myself
enjoying the discussion of the St. Fantony celebration and other older British fan
traditions with Walt over tea and crumpets. A couple hours later, we walked out to
the cold pebble beach and saw the fireworks which had followed the Awards, but when
we attempted to return to the hotel for the evening's parties, the manager had
decided the hotel was too full of people and was only letting hotel guests inside,
and even then only as someone else left. The crowd was full of gossip -- supposedly
Iain Banks had climbed the balconies because he wanted to get to his party. There
didn't appear to be any point for Walt to stand around outside on a cold evening, so
we said good-bye -- Walt went off along the beach to the place he was staying and I
waited until there was finally room to enter the hotel. As a postscript to the
convention and our meeting, Walt sent me a copy of his newly published
Hyphen 37 that autumn.

Fast forward to autumn 1995. Sarah
Shaw had become ill and died a few years earlier, and Bob Shaw had become a much
quieter, withdrawn person. But in 1995, Nancy Tucker, a long-time Detroit-area fan,
had met Bob at that year's Novacon and they'd fallen head over heels in love. From
that point they were inseparable. Late in the autumn of 1995 I received a wedding
invitation from them. I was unable to attend, so shortly after the wedding I sent
them some hand made oatmeal soap and two sets of towels -- one set had dinosaurs on
them and the other was very ornate. I wondered if Nancy or Bob would claim to be a
dinosaur. I did hear a little about the wedding via the fannish grapevine,
though. I heard how Mike Glicksohn had stood up as Bob's best man. I heard how the
hotel where the invited guests stayed had been a continuing party of conversation,
and joy from the arrival of the first fans. I also heard how Bob had become more
ill as the weekend continued.

A couple of weeks after the wedding,
Nancy and Bob were planning to leave for England, but the day of their scheduled
departure Bob's heart briefly stopped and he was immediately hospitalized. There
was some kind of problem with his liver, and the doctors wanted to keep Bob in the
hospital. Bob refused. The stresses on Nancy caused her health to deteriorate as
well, and she had problems walking due to back pain. A couple weeks after Bob left
the hospital (in early 1996) they finally left Detroit for England. Both of them
were in wheelchairs, with a mound of luggage. Misti Anslin, Nancy's daughter-in-law,
made the leave-taking sound much like a small exciting (though painful) parade. But
a day later there was bad news -- after landing in London, they had stopped to talk
with one of Bob's children, and then driven to stay with his son. Bob could not be
awaken the next morning. He had died during the night.

When I think about Bob I recall his
soft-spoken kindness. He and Sarah had invited me to visit them in the South of
England, but they apologized for it not being as scenic as their home in the Lake
Country, saying I should have come to see them earlier and more often. Bob was a
good writer; I enjoyed reading his short stories, but I had never considered that he
might be an artist as well. The small stained glass panel hangs in my bedroom and
greets the sun each morning. And when I think of Walt, I recall sitting with him
laughing at silly stories -- like we laughed about St. Fantony and the drafty robes
they wore and the candlelight which made walking dangerous around the flame.

When I spent time in their company,
their soft voices made a different style of fandom live. I was a visitor to a
smaller group who didn't rush frantically from computer to television. I belonged
to a fandom which felt closer to each other. I miss their presence and the fanzines
and writing. I loved resting in their company and listening to their soft voices
and laughing thoughts. It was as if I was a welcome visitor to their lives and a
slower paced country and fandom. I'll miss them in my life and the words and
fanzines they've left us -- while still available -- are not the
essence.

All illustrations by Charlie Williams
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