Bill Rivers and I were playing gin rummy at a nickel a point. His wife, Sarah, had set up a card table in his bedroom so that we could play while his blood flowed into and out of a kidney dialysis machine that was laboring to keep him alive.
Bill lost more nickels than he won during those card games in 1968, but they permitted him to claim, with a grin, that I was the only person he
When kidney disease struck Bill in the late 1960s, he was heading a doctoral program in public affairs communications at Stanford. In 1965, at just 40, he had written the prize-winning book The Opinionmakers , an analysis of the relationship between journalists and government officials in Washington. It established him as an insightful commentator on the press, and as someone who wrote in an elegant and entertaining style.
If not for the kidney donated to Bill by his sister Margaret, he probably would not have survived the '60s. That he did survive, until last May, is truly a medical miracle. That kidney, and his will to live, permitted him to become one of the great media critics and journalism educators of his time, and to inspire hundreds of Stanford journalism students and scholars. Despite all the anti-rejection drugs and blood thinners required by his medical condition, and the strokes he suffered, Bill never admitted to being anything less than "fine," his standard answer to the health question.
For those of us who played poker and golf with Bill nearly every week throughout our graduate student years in the late '60s and early '70s, he really did seem in remarkably good health, given his transplant status. Bill liked to boast that he was an "action man." He would bet against your pair of aces in five-card stud just to keep the pot growing -- no matter what he was holding. On the golf course, we were lucky to break 100, but he livened up the competition with "bingo, bango, bongo," betting on who would be first on the green, closest to the hole and first to hole out.
It was not poker or golf, however, that kept Bill upbeat in the face of his precarious health. He made writing the focus of his life. It was his pleasure, his refuge, his narcotic. He produced 29 books, but also wrote thousands of unpublished pages of fiction, autobiography and media criticism. Even at the end of his life, he was working on a new introductory media textbook.
He routinely arrived at his office in late morning. His small refrigerator was stocked with diet cola, which he sipped throughout the day. When not seeing students or grading papers, he wrote steadily until dinner time, when he drove to Kirk's for a hamburger. Then it was back to his office for more writing, usually until 11 or 12 at night. He did this day after day, weekends and holidays. I never knew him to take a real vacation.
Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation, and Bill -- regardless of his affability -- was the most private person I have ever known. In all the time we spent together, I was never able to get him to talk about himself. He could deflect a personal question as deftly as Ali ducking Foreman. He would discuss what he was writing. But no more than that. The rest of the conversation was directed by questions from Bill.
Despite this reticence, Bill was a generous man. When, in 1970, he was approached by the publisher Prentice-Hall to write an introductory media text, he told them he was too busy. But then he lobbied fiercely for three of his graduate students as alternates. Only his arm-twisting on our behalf convinced the editor to give us brash 25-year-olds a chance. The resulting book was the single most important event that helped us establish our own careers, and we owed it to Bill.
He was also generous in his criticism of our writing. It was not unusual for a 500-word news story to come back with a 1,000-word critique, more polished than anything we might hope to write.
When we fell short of his expectations, he would say that what we had produced was "not quite a piece." He was invariably correct. I suspect he would say the same about this remembrance, and then suggest just the right transition or extra paragraph to make it better.
So I admit it, Bill. This isn't quite a piece. But I hope it's close.
Rubin, PhD '72, is dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
