Bill Maher was always doing something.
I met Bill’s sister Kelly in a Starbucks. She was anxious to talk about her brother. She described him was adventurous. “He always loved to travel, hike, ski, big time snowboarder, fisherman. He couldn’t sit still my brother.”
After graduating from high school, Bill went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York. He loved to cook. He worked at several restaurants as an assistant chef. After a few years, Bill wasn’t sure it was for him.
Kelly said serving in the military was part of their family. “My grandfather on my Mom’s side served in World War II. My dad served. My other brother was in the Navy, and he (Bill) felt like at that time it was his calling.”
Bill was thirty years old when he enlisted in 1997 and was deployed to Panama.
Bill’s next stop was Germany. Kelly said he loved it. “My brother loved to cook. He would cook for families over in Europe. He was also a big time snowboarder. When I would talk to him or he would write that he was going to Austria for the weekend like we would go to New Jersey.”
After 9/11, Bill was deployed to Iraq. He told his family not to worry he didn’t think he would be on the front lines. He left for Iraq on Mothers’ Day 2003. Kelly said, “We would pack packages like soap, wet wipes, and tasty cakes because they loved tasty cakes.” Bill told her everyone was so welcoming. “We’re handing out candy, we’re handing out pencils to the kids, the women. I can’t believe it.”
A few weeks later, Bill told Kelly soldiers now had to pat down women because they were afraid the women were strapping bombs to themselves. Two days before Bill was killed one of his buddies was killed.
“One of his buddies was crushed by a Humvee. It was an accident. He called my parents in the middle of the night. It was the night before my brother was killed. He was very upset.”
The next day July 28th, everything changed. “That day my mother was home. She was supposed to go to work but called out sick. She had a bad cold. I remember on the news at noon they showed Humvees and they showed soldiers securing the area and saying that we lost a US soldier. But I didn’t put two and two together.”
Kelly’s mother got the knock on the door latter that afternoon. “Two soldiers came to the door like you could see in the movies. They rang the doorbell. She could look out and saw them. She gradually open the door and said, you have the wrong house and shut it. She didn’t want to hear it.”
Kelly was at work in Yardley in meetings all day. Her phone was in her purse. She had a voicemail from her father. “You need to call us something happened to Billy. Billy, what happened to Billy? And I remember calling him and he just said we lost Billy. You need to come over here. I literally passed out. I dropped the phone. I was on the floor of my office and people were picking me up. I went to my parents and my Mom was in bad shape. I had to walk out of the house. It changed everything. She was never the same.”
Kelly was thirty years old at the time and just pregnant. She was made executor of her brother’s will. She remembers returning to her townhouse the night the family got the news. It was late when she pulled up and there were news vans parked all along the street. “It was like the world was exploding.” She wasn’t prepared to talk.
The family was told Bill’s body would be flown to Germany for an autopsy and it would be three or four weeks before his body was returned to the United States. Kelly said that wait was too long for her parents. She reached out to Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick for help, and Kelly did several media interviews all of which sped up the return of Bill’s body.
Bill’s body was returned in the middle of the night at 2am. “They flew him into Philadelphia. It was US Air at the time. A soldier flew home with him and we were able to meet the plane.” The funeral home was there with cars for the family and Army Reserves were also there to greet the body.”
Kelly heard from many of Bill’s fellow soldiers after he died. A soldier who served with Bill sent Kelly a photo that she said she loves. The soldier wrote, “It was one of the hardest days in Iraq. We were being ambushed. We were in this warehouse. We had crap everywhere. We finally made it out alive. We were all silent and your brother just wanted to make us laugh. He stuck his tongue out at all of us and we all just chuckled.” It was Bill’s way of relieving the tension.
As happens in the uncertainty of war, Bill was not scheduled to drive the captain in the Humvee the day of the attack. The original driver was pulled, and Bill replaced him. “At the time, it was early on in the war. They didn’t have armored Humvees and they actually labeled the captain’s Humvee. So that was a target right there. When they went to the market it (IED) was remotely detonated.” Bill was the only soldier killed. The three others on board survived.
I asked Kelly what she thought Bill’s life would have been like. “I wish he was here especially for my son, Daniel. I knew he would have been close to my kids.” Daniel was born exactly nine months after Bill was killed. Kelly also has a teenage daughter.
Kelly has stayed in contact with many of Bill’s army buddies over the last twenty-two years. “His captain named his son after my brother. It’s like a family. I will tell you they’ve included me, so on the day of his death they all reach out through Facebook and at a certain time they drink to my brother.”
War changes what would have been. Kelly, her family and Bill’s fellow soldiers are left to cherish the memory of a brother gone too soon.
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