Bill Ferree

Bill grew up in farm country Pennsylvania but was fascinated by machines, not cows and cornfields. His path led to engineering school, followed by Navy service during the war in Vietnam, and then an airline pilot career.

While in Navy Officer’s uniform, Bill started hearing and seeing evidence that gave credence to a counter narrative to the official one from the US Government about purpose and success. Then Richard Nixon’s disgrace was the final wedge away, especially from the political party of Eisenhower, a separation that after fifty years plus seems to only grow wider.

Not long after Watergate, and our country quitting Vietnam, there was a new revelation. Power politics and oil pumped (or not) in the Middle East can cause serious problems. Jet fuel price spikes and shortages stress airline finances and can curtail a pilot’s career progression…or put an end to it.

The Arab Oil Embargo ended with a deal. Saudi Arabia and others would get more money. Pilots kept their jobs and airlines stayed in business.

But it (the oil thing) happened again when the clerics seized power in Iran. This time it was just as Bill took office as a local school board member. Shortage and price runup again! The district was forced to choose textbooks or diesel fuel to run the buses…not both, and the cost for heating went up radically, wrecking the budget. Bill’s mechanical engineering training was pulled to the crisis task of improving energy efficiency to save money. It started an enduring habit of following energy tech (and tinkering with it) as it develops, and trying to follow the money. History became interesting, too, maybe because so much of the story is the money trail story.

Seniors have a survival advantage; they’ve seen more crazy stuff, like 9-11 and our twenty-year war response to it. News of the moment shock is less likely to be fatal to them. Memory also permits the comforting thought that political chaos in this moment will pass. There’s hope for the country’s survival, and maybe recovery before climate protection measures fall hopelessly behind schedule. The really good news is that superior technology will soon push climate-disaster-fossil-fuel into the past, too. Oil can’t win.

Bill believes children are entitled—not so, their predecessors. The “impartial spectator” obligates adults to pass on knowledge. Third Act stage of life—when there’s time for a garden, a walk in the woods, and to read words of wise-ones past, and to try to sort it out, this human story puzzle—is also the time to fulfill the obligation, to pass on the story. It is a time for writing down the notes to pass on.