Billy Dewey Wilson

Billy Dewey Wilson departed this life on Monday, the twenty-second of May. Mr. Wilson, born to Dewey and Ruby Wilson on April 15, 1934, in Porterdale, Georgia was the second of two boys for the couple, his brother Bobby having been born a few years prior. His parents worked at the Bibb Manufacturing facility in Porterdale where the family lived in the associated mill village.

A few years later the family relocated to Oconee County, outside of Athens, Georgia, to pursue the task of growing the cotton used by the thriving mill industry in the state at that time. The formidable challenges that accompany raising cotton soon forced Billy to drop out of middle school temporarily to help with farm work. However, he was never able to return to school although he earned his GED a few years later.

As the family struggled to make ends meet, Billy’s father took to the pursuit of many avenues of employment including driving a taxi, long haul trucking and traveling sales. Around the time Billy was a young teenager his parents divorced, and his brother Bobby joined the Army. With no desire for the two of them to be living alone out in the country, Billy’s mother Ruby sold the farm and used the funds to purchase a clapboard house on Georgia Avenue in the Normaltown area of Athens. Billy was fifteen years old and would live there for the rest of his long life.

Billy was tall and athletic and had played both football and baseball in middle school. When he turned eighteen, he was drafted into the Army and after basic training at Fort Jackson he trained as a cook and did his service as an Army Cook in occupied Tokyo, serving for almost two years in Japan until his honorable discharge.

Returning to Athens, Billy moved back into the home on Georgia Avenue, then still a dirt road, to look after his single mother and decide his next move. Shortly thereafter he found employment at the Westinghouse plant where he was a coil winder, making transformers, and a union leader, ensuring that his fellow workers were compensated fairly and assuring them of solid pensions upon retirement. He was also on the Westinghouse bowling team, a self-admitted “average” bowler. He worked there for twenty-five years.

Billy never married but instead devoted himself to caring for his mother through good times and bad, nursing her through the ravages of Alzheimer’s much later in life until she passed away in his arms, in the house on Georgia Avenue.

In the many years before all of that the two of them traveled the Appalachian and Blue Ridge trails, tent camping everywhere they went. Billy’s brother, Bobby, in the meantime, after serving as a paratrooper in the Korean conflict, returned to Athens to pursue a long career as a fireman. Shy and reticent like his brother he was a quiet hero. Married, divorced and remarried, Bobby Wilson brought two children into the world – Ricky and younger sister, Cindy.

Never married and childless, Billy’s nephew and niece were the joy of his life. The home on Georgia Avenue with its prize-winning gardens thanks to Ruby’s green thumb was not only a warm place of stability and love for Ricky and Cindy but a place where their friends also felt welcomed at any time. When the two siblings started a rock group along with several other Athens friends, Bill and Ruby (as well as Ricky and Cindy’s parents) offered complete support – Uncle Bill and Grandmother Ruby attending shows at the University of Georgia in Athens as well as the Agora Ballroom and Fox Theater in Atlanta. Many times, they could be seen at local record stores buying up copies of the group’s records as well as those of subsequent Athens acts as the town’s musical phenomenon continued to explode.

Bill was a religious man but grew exasperated with what he saw as the politicizing and manipulation for financial gain of much of organized religion. However, instead of turning away from Christ he embraced His teachings in a very personal way, devoting himself after his beloved mother passed away to writing the Word of God as he felt it to be through meditation and prayer.

Despite his lack of formal education Bill taught himself how to express his thoughts in words- he often said that his favorite two books were the Bible and the Dictionary, and he wielded a deep vocabulary. He accomplished this work by staying up until dawn nightly for years, writing with perfect cursive penmanship in blue fountain pen ink on white legal pads with seldom an error made. He completed three books which he self-published using bound photocopies that he distributed to anyone interested.

His relationship with Christianity was pure and sincere – non-judgmental and based on love and respect for his fellow man; Billy’s kindness and generosity were endearing. A negative word toward anyone never crossed his lips.

Billy was also an avid jogger and a fixture around Normaltown for many years as he ran along its many streets. He was also a dedicated vegetarian, something he said that his nephew, Ricky had instilled in him. Billy, as was everyone in his family and beyond, was devastated when Ricky passed away in 1985 at age 32.

As his health declined in later years, his niece Cindy became his sole caregiver, determined to keep him in his house on Georgia Avenue that had been his home for so many decades and for seven years she was able to do so. The two of them would take long rides out in the country, echoes of his traveling days with his mother. Or often she would bring him to her and her husband’s house for home cooked meals, a hot bath and to watch a Western on TV. Billy was crazy about “cowboy” movies and he knew them all.

Time eventually caught up with Uncle Bill and toward the end of his long life he resided in safety and comfort at the Landings in Winder, Georgia where last Monday morning he was called home.

The family will receive friends Saturday, May 27, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., at Bernstein Funeral Home. A graveside service will follow at 2:30 p.m., in the family lot at Oconee Hill Cemetery, where Billy will be laid to rest next to his mother, Ruby. Military funeral honors will be rendered at the graveside by the United States Army.

Bernstein Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.