other things, he learned the looks of a cantilever bridge. When his mother took him on the train to New York City, the route lay along the Hudson River with its several bridges. Standing up in the seat, he called in a loud voice: “Oh Mom, there is a cantilever bridge.” The other passengers gazed at this smart little boy.
Bill started school in the two-room schoolhouse at East Dorset. His early letters to his mother show a good imagination and an active mind. In a letter probably sent from East Dorset in February 1902, when he was about six years old, to Emily and Dorothy, who were in Florida, he wrote:
“Dear Mama, Please will you send me some oranges. I hope you will have a good time. How are you, Mama? Is it nice place? I would like to go too. If Papa would let me go with you.’’
On March 9, Bill wrote again: “Dear Mama, How are you and Dorothy? Papa just brought Dorothy’s picture. We think it is very nice. Grandma got the flowers you sent us last night.
The Wilson house in East Dorset, Vermont, tucked away on the western slopes of the Green Mountains.
They are lovely. Has Dorothy got any alligator? How did Dorothy like the boat? William Griffith Wilson”
In yet another letter, Bill announced that he was wearing 11-year-old pants. “I guess you will not know me when you come home,” he added. “When are you coming home? I am having school vacation until the first of April. I will be glad to see you.” This was signed, “From Willie.”
Emily and Dorothy were still away from East Dorset when Bill wrote on September 21, 1902: “Dear Mama, School has begun and we are in the second reader. I have a brand new arithmetic. We have the same teacher that was here before. I have two new under teeth. They look just like little saws. Granpa and I went to Captain Thomases show. The Cap is a slick one. When are you and Dorothy coming home? I want to see you ever so much. I try to be a good boy. Grandpa says I am. I am learning to read and do numbers very fast. From your little son Willie. P.S. Kiss sister for me,”
In 1903, the Wilson family moved to Rutland, 25 miles north, where Bill’s father took over management of the Rutland-Florence quarry. They lived at 42 Chestnut Avenue, and Bill attended the Church Street School.
Compared to East Dorset, Rutland was a metropolis, and Bill found his new school threatening: “I well recall how overcome I was by the large number of children around me and how I began to develop a great shyness,” he said. “Because of my shyness and awkwardness, I began to work overtime to be a baseball player. . . . In sports, I . . . alternated between feeling extremely competitive and elated upon success, and deeply discouraged and timid in defeat.’’ A defeat was particularly painful if it took the shape of a physical trouncing by some smaller schoolmate. Bill (who would reach a height of six feet two inches) was already tall for his age, as was indicated by the “11-year-old pants” at age six. He remembered that his shyness and awkwardness prevented him from developing close friendships as a child.
Young Bill worked hard to excel at school sports in an effort to overcome his “shyness and awkwardness.’’
Bill did have one childhood friend who remained close throughout his life. Mark Whalon was nine years older than Bill and actually remembered hearing Emily’s cries on the morning Bill was born. (He later appears in Bill’s letters and recollections as “my friend the postman,” because he became the rural letter carrier in East Dorset.)
Although there were inner conflicts developing in Bill’s childish heart, he was hardly regarded as a troublesome or unfriendly youngster. On the contrary, “I never heard anyone say they didn’t like Bill,” a former classmate recalled. “He was a mighty nice fellow, very popular. He was very tall and well built, with broad shoulders — a nice-looking boy.’’
Bill showed an early interest in science, and while they were living in Rutland, he made himself a chemistry laboratory in the woodshed. He almost blew up the shed — and himself. “I remember how horrified my father was, when coming home one night, he found that I had mixed certain acids — I should imagine sulphuric and nitric — to make actual nitroglycerin in the back shed, and when he arrived, I was dipping strips of paper in the nitroglycerin and burning them. You can imagine what a sensation this made with a man accustomed, as he was in his quarry business, to the use of dynamite, which is but a pale imitation of the real stuff. I remember how very gingerly Dad lifted that dish, dug a very large hole, which he wet, and gingerly spread the evil stuff about it, and just as gingerly covered it up.’’
Another experiment Bill tried was a telegraph set. He and his friend Russ communicated by Morse code with a set Bill made.
In 1906, Emily, Bill, and Dorothy moved back to East Dorset. Some of Bill’s letters from that period have survived:
“Nov. 12, 1906: Dear Mama, It snowed today quite hard and at school there was a great deal of snowballing. Dorothy is well and so am I and I hope you are well too. We got our ‘jacks’ haloween and I called mine Punch and Dorothy called hers Judy.
“You were asking me when you make N what happens after you light the P. The fumes of phosphoric anhydride, P2O5, at once rise and fill the jar with dense white fumes which after standing the H20 absorbs the P20. As the P burns it consumes the oxygen of the jar, thus leaving the nitrogen nearly pure. Air is composed of 1/5 oxygen, 4/5 nitrogen. As the oxygen is consumed by the burning P the water rises 1/5 the height of the jar. So that is what happens.’’ . . .
“Nov. 13: On haloween night they had a haloween party at the hall. They had shadow pictures and all sorts of games. Had refreshments. The room was entirely lit by ‘jacks’ and ‘Jap’ lanterns. Had a great time. I can’t think of any more. Your loving son, Willie Wilson. P.S. I have not yet been to Rutland to see Rus.”
A note on the letter carries the comment: “He happens to know what happens, doesn’t he? Isn’t this too funny? I think he can beat his mother in the art of letter writing.’’ That may have been written by Emily or by one of Bill’s grandparents in enclosing the letter for mailing.
There is no date on the following letter, although the reference to Valentines suggests it may have been February or March 1907.
“Dear Mama, We are well and I hope you are. Have not found time to write. We have to study day and night. Can just pinch along and so can the rest.
“Today I wrote a composition on the ‘iron and steel industry.’
“The valentines you sent were all gone before breakfast the next morning. We got them at night. We could have sold 50 more if we had had them. Dorothy says she wants you to send some Easter cards.
“Do you remember Mr. Parent?, the little girls father her name was Lillie, she used to come to play with Dorothy. Well the mill shut down here. Lillie’s father went to work at West Rutland. He was going across the crossing. He had his cap pulled over his ears, so he didn’t hear the train that was coming that killed him. It was to bad.
“About that medicine. When I came from Russels house I came down Centre Street. I got Dorothy a set of doll dishes. I thought there was something more I had to buy but couldn’t think of it. I got to the depot in time to catch the train and never thought of it till I got home. I am sorry. Your loving son Will.’’
There was a reason for Emily’s prolonged absences. “All unbeknown to Dorothy and me, a rift was developing between my mother and my father,” Bill recalled. “I recollect, too, my mother was having what they said were nervous breakdowns, sometimes requiring that she go away for extended periods to the seashore, and on one occasion to the sanitarium.
“Though I did not know it, and though my father never became an alcoholic, he was at times a pretty heavy drinker. Like me, he was a person to be pretty much elated by success and, together with some of his marble quarry friends and their financial backing in New York, would have extended sprees. Though I never knew the details, I think one of these episodes had consequences that