Bill Bighaus
Don’t miss this fine tribute to sportswriter Bill Bighaus, now retired, written by Gazette sports editor Jeff Welsch.
Then there was the altogether fitting decision to devote this week’s 5 on 5 feature to reflections on Bill’s career and legacy. His colleagues took the opportunity to lob some witticisms his way, which was only fair.
In person, on your your feet, it was difficult to match wits with Bill. His colleagues earned the right, after all these years, to have a little fun at his expense when he was not available to respond.
Bill started at the Gazette maybe a year and a half or two years after I started there. I was a night editor then and remained one until 1996, which meant I knew him better in those early years than I did later, after I made my escape to the dayside as a reporter.
In those early years, the nightshift could be a terrible grind (and still can be, I imagine), but at least we peons could enjoy having the newsroom to ourselves between about 6 p.m. and midnight. Things could get loud and a bit raucous, frequently profane. Anybody who could lighten the load by making you laugh was highly prized, and Bill might have been the best there was.
And at this point I would love to regale you with a few examples of his wit and humor. David Crisp probably could because his memory is so much better than mine, but the style of Bill’s humor also makes it difficult to re-create. He wasn’t the comedian type, loud and playing for everyone in the room.
He was more given to sidling up to one or two people and speaking over his shoulder, as if taking you into his confidence, and usually what he had to say elicted great howls of laughter. His humor was never crude and rarely mean-spirited. It was just perfectly composed, and I don’t doubt that he sometimes sat there at his editing desk, polishing some mot with a portion of his mind until it was ready for delivery.
Bill had his peculiarities, as his colleagues mentioned, the main one being his apparently complete reliance on fast food. One time he came back from the Denny’s across 27th Street from the Gazette and casually mentioned that another patron had gone up to the cash register and placed a severed portion of his finger on the counter. Bill didn’t act particularly disturbed by the incident, and I don’t think it prevented him from finishing his meal.
Bill also had zero interest in music of any kind. If it weren’t for pep bands he might never have heard any. He claimed that in his whole life he had never owned a record, an eight-track tape, a cassette tape or a CD. I once told him that if he weren’t working for the Gazette I’d do a story on him—the man who never owned a piece of music.
Bill retired Saturday. I guess I can finally do that story. Bill?
