Perspectives

An aspect of life is about sorrow. There really is no getting around it. We should all be born with a hankie in one hand because there’ll be tears soon enough. A buddy of mine died last week. Longtime Winter Park resident Wil Wistler died of congestive heart failure at the hospital he once administered and so deeply cared for, Winter Park Memorial Hospital. It was a sorrowful passing.

What is amazing is that Wil and I became buddies. In 1986, I sent Wil my resume. It was a blind cattle call of a letter. I was new to Orlando and was looking for work. I sent a personalized letter to every hospital president in Orlando. Wil walked my letter down the hospital hall to Louis Hughes, vice president of development. Hughes hired me and the rest, as they say, is history. Several years later, I left the hospital and I thought that was that. What’s the expression? Well, there was “water under the bridge.” Let it go. I did. I did not anticipate ever hearing from Wil Wistler again.

Years pass. Nearly 18 years to be exact. And one day, I get a call from Wil suggesting lunch sometime. Well, pick me off the floor. And lunch it was. I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out that Wil was my kind of guy — an unapologetic liberal. And, I, evidently, his kind of guy at some level. Wil thought war was for fools and that life in a “good” society was about balancing individual freedom with the greater public good. He’d been reading the Observer for some time and thought it time to reconnect.

And that is exactly what we did. Wil, Louis Hughes and I began having regular lunches. It is civilizing to lunch with friends, to discuss the issues of the world over food. And laugh. Over the foibles of man. Or woman. And at ourselves.

Wil seemed much more at ease with life than when I first knew him as hospital president. Predictably so. He didn’t have to wear the suit, be the face of a prominent institution. He was more willing to let his hair down. He was a different man. He had changed.

And then one day, Wil fell off his home roof and suffered an incredible head injury. I went to the hospital and left convinced he wouldn’t make it another day, so damaging was the trauma to the brain. But unbelievably, recover he did. Due in large part to the love and commitment of his wife, Carol. If hosannas are sung in heaven for heroic stints of duty, Carol will be at the head of the line.

And, in time, Wil recovered and it was back to lunching. And over a meeting on Dec. 17, 2009, I asked Wil to what did he attribute his will to live? I had asked earlier that when he appeared unconscious (for so long), where he thought he was? Wil said he thought he was “here” and regarding his will to live, well, he said, “I had a hell of a lot of life left to live.” He wanted it! Life. Regardless the hiccup in his giddy-up.

Wil coming back into my life was a gift. He will be missed.