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The Villages
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Longtime Villager helped found elite club for ex-military paratroopers

Even though Bill Young kept getting fired from some of the jobs he held, he still says, “I had a great time.”

Getting fired was, as he saw it, part of the process of getting a better job.

He started off right out of high school in Providence, R.I. in the Airborne. It was all because of his seventh-grade teacher, Thomas F. Lavery, a former paratrooper.

Bill Young poses with his Yorkshire Terrier, Frenchie. A former paratrooper and Green Beret, Bill rose to top management with Speidel, the manufacturer of the Twist-O-Flex watchband.

Newly graduated from the University of Rhode Island and on his first teaching assignment, Lavery was assigned to Bill’s class.

“When I got home that night, my mother’s boyfriend, Joe Healey, said ‘How did it go today, Billy? Who’s your new teacher?’ Mr. Lavery, I said.”

“His name is Tippy Lavery,” Joe Healey laughed. The two had grown up together in Providence’s Smith Hill area. The next morning Bill walked past Mr. Lavery at the classroom door and said, “Good morning, Tippy.”

“Who told you that?” Mr. Lavery demanded.

“Tuffy Healey,” Bill replied with a smile.

“Mr. Lavery was my hero all through high school,” Bill says. “I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent and he helped get me straightened out.”

During his time as a paratrooper and a stint as a Green Beret, Bill met Lucille – Lucy – who also was to have a great impact on his life. He went with friends to a party in Edgewood, R.I.

“It’s a summer house on the beach and here’s this beautiful blonde woman. We talked and she gave me her phone number and address,” Bill says. “I didn’t write anything down, just remembered it. But I remembered her house number as 73. So, for months her neighbor walked my letters across the street to Lucy’s house.”

They met again when Bill was stationed in Fort Drum.

“I had a little Nash Rambler and met her at a party,” Bill says. “Then I followed her home – she was driving her brother’s souped-up ’47 Mercury. And I’m trying to keep up in my Rambler!”

Bill did manage to keep up and they were married on Oct. 8, 1960. Lucy was 20 and Bill was 22. By this time, he’d upgraded his ride to a Triumph TR3 and “We went on a honeymoon.”

Within a few months, Bill was working three jobs, including being an orderly at the Rhode Island Hospital.

“Loved it and wanted to become a nurse,” he says.

Bill also was a deliveryman and order taker for an industrial supply company. He started going to night school on the GI Bill and ended up with a degree in business.

Then, he got a job as a night dispatcher at a trucking company. But that ended when a truck he was driving slid into a car in the parking lot on a snowy night – Bill wasn’t supposed to be driving the trucks. He then painted buildings, spent six months putting new windows into a factory, was a manager at various Woolworth’s stores and was fired from that job.

As a paratrooper and Army Green Beret, Villager Bill Young made more than 30 jumps and served in the United States and Latin America.

He ended applying for a job at Speidel Watchband as an assistant traffic manager. The interviewer asked Bill what job he’d like to have.

“Yours,” Bill replied. He spent the next 35 years with the company, becoming part of the global management team.

Speidel had the U.S. rights to the expandable wrist bands for watches – the most famous was the “Twist-O-Flex” – which held a virtual international monopoly on the technology for decades. The company was one of the first in the United States to “own” radio, and later, TV programs, which helped launch it to success.

For Bill and Lucy, it was the start of 35 years of world travel (Bill’s favorite country was Japan), product launches and fun. Amidst it all they raised two children, William and Candace.

Then the company was purchased by multi-national giant Textron. The company’s jewelry division launched a new men’s toiletry line called British Sterling.

“English Leather was a big seller in those days, but British Sterling was the third best-selling line in the country within 12 months,” Bill says.

Then Textron sold Speidel to a German company in 1997. It was not a good move for Bill.

“I got into an argument with one of the top people about how product should be manufactured for clients. Then I was fired!” Bill says.

The next day, he had a serious discussion with his boss.

“We have a nice departure package for you,” his boss said at the end of the conversation. “It was pretty decent, and I was ready to get out of there,” Bill says.

Getting to The Villages was easy for Bill and Lucy. For many years they had visited Florida for several weeks in the winter.

“We stopped in The Villages and I fell in love with it,” he admits.

They put down $3,000 for a plot of land. “It was a watermelon patch then” Bill says.

Three years later, they built a house and moved in in 2003. Bill now lives in the Village of Belle Aire.

The crest of World Wide Airborne, a Villages-area club for paratroopers from several nations. Bill Young was one of the founding members in 2007.

Then one day Bill met a man at a Publix.

“Something he had on told me that he had been a paratrooper. I said “Airborne” and he said, “All the way. Turned out the man was career Army and had been in three wars – World War II, Korea and Vietnam.”

Along with 32 other former paratroopers from The Villages area, they formed World Wide Airborne on April 24, 2007.

“We had members from all over the world – England, Canada, Israel, Italy,” Bill says. “We had a great time. Luncheons and dinners and a dance. We had about 60 members at one point.”

Eventually the members started dying and the regular meetings petered out. The last luncheon was three years ago.

On April 12, 2016, Lucy died of cancer. Bill’s constant companion now is Frenchie, a friendly Yorkshire Terrier who has free run of the house, drinks from the bathroom sink and is obviously indulged.

Bill has one more Airborne story.

“We launched another toiletry (line), but because of many difficulties, it took longer than expected and we needed to ship thousands of pounds of product out by air to make the Christmas market,” he says.

Bill negotiated with a struggling delivery company to handle the task. The carrier, which later became part of DHL, was known as Airborne Express.

Bill also is into military challenge coins.

“You’re at a bar and you lay down your challenge coin,” he says. “If the guy next to you can’t challenge you with his challenge coin, he has to pay for the beer.”

John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. For more information visit www.GoMyStory.com.

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