William Baldwin Obituary

Baldwin III, William Wright He did not go gently into that good night. He clung to life with passion and grit until his body abandoned him on July 19, 2019. He left on his own terms, as he always said he would, saying his goodbyes neither with regret nor resentment for things left undone to his sons William IV, John, and Adam, close friends, and especially his loving wife of 45 years, Ann Taylor Baldwin. Journalist, writer, businessman, world traveller, and nature-lover, Bill packed a lifetime of adventure into his 92 years. Following graduation from New Trier High School in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Illinois, and a two-year stint in the Navy Air Corps, he ventured west. No sooner had he graduated from the University of Colorado in 1951 than he set off for the wider world in the spirit of derring-do that epitomized his approach to life. With the money he had earned from working on salmon traps in Alaska and oil rigs in Texas, he travelled the world on motorcycle from 1952 to 1956, a period his father described as "the most extended form of procrastination in history." From Western Europe he made his way south to the Balkans and then through the Levant Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan -- to Iraq. Like a character in a Michael Ondaatje novel, he boarded a ship in Basra with hundreds of Muslim passengers and set sail for Pakistan and India and thence to the then British colony of Kenya. There he joined the British police. For the next 18 months, he helped them track and apprehend mercenaries who had joined the Mau Mau uprising against British rule. Having published a book on his experiences in Kenya, he returned to the US and to a life of journalism at the Chicago Sun Times as a reporter and eventually Assistant Financial Editor. In 1969 he joined the Chicago office of Booke and Company, a New York-based financial relations consulting firm, as the director of media relations and later as manager of that office. From 1975 until his retirement in 1991 he was a financial writer and head of press liaison for First National Bank of Chicago. Retirement was anything but sedentary for Bill. At nearly 70 years of age, he trekked to Pakistan to climb K1 in the Karakoram mountain range, which he nearly succeeded in doing. Having moved to Whittier, North Carolina in 1999, or Wombat Manor, as he called it, Bill and wife Ann travelled to more than 40 countries. They particularly enjoyed travelling to Africa, which they visited several times, to experience its natural beauty and its wildlife. Those who knew Bill will remember him as a man devoid of pretension. He was honest and direct, almost to a fault. Never overbearing, he did not shy from disagreeing with views that he believed were misguided or self-serving. Bill was a fierce critic of the poseur and of political cant, sanctimony of all kinds, and the abuse of privilege by those in high office. At the same time, he was a loyal and caring friend to those he liked and admired, and he generously dispensed support, affection, and compassion born of a gentle nature that belied his superficially brusque demeanor. His joys were many. Books of all kind, especially good yarns, spaghetti westerns as well as art films, golf, Indian food made properly with real curry, the mountains of ice cream he consumed with near orgasmic satisfaction, and the glorious creatures of the wild he found more reliable and constant than the two-footed human variety that evolved from them. But his greatest pleasure was the family he leaves behind: his three sons, each of whom he was proud, his grandchildren, and his "little flower," his wife Ann.