RIP, Bill

This past fall, I got to attend an open house event at the Valentine for educators. The museum’s staff and collections are always excellent. I’ve taken my students there for field trips, and I have used the collections extensively for my cemetery research. That evening’s open house event was lively and inspiring, and I got to see the newest exhibit Generations: Stories of Asian Americans in Richmond, what I take to be the first exploration on that topic in the region.

But that evening took an especially wonderful turn for me when I bumped into director William “Bill” Martin in the hallway outside the elevators. He looked delighted to see me there (a quality that he showered on everyone I ever saw him interact with), and he asked if I had seen the newly remodeled and rearranged collection storage spaces, the result of a long and costly campaign on behalf of the museum’s holdings. I had not seen them. Bill’s face lit up: “Let me show you!”

So I found myself following him upstairs for a one-on-one tour in which we wandered together among the library shelving, the rows of rare paintings hung in storage, the cabinets for the fragile costume collection, and generally the coolest assortment of freshly-boxed Richmond objects I’d ever seen. An old sign for a historic site caught my eye. “I don’t even know if they are aware it is here,” Bill told me with a joking grin. We hopped from room to room, from space to space, through corridors he had seen a million times already, but it was as if I was his first visitor. We circled back to the start, I expressed my awed admiration for the collection and the work behind it, and then Bill was off to make others’ evenings in a similar way.

I treasure that memory now after the shocking news of Bill’s untimely death on December 28. He was struck by a car while walking just a few blocks away from the museum he cherished and nurtured.

Bill made it more than a museum, as reflected in the institution’s title: The Valentine. Bill himself offered numerous walking tours, built partnerships and support for likeminded area nonprofits, staged community conversations on key issues, hosted “meet the director” meals, and generally provided an inclusive, forward-looking vision rooted in the city’s history that is irreplaceable. There is lots of talk in the recent, heartfelt tributes to him about his role in saving the institution from financial ruin. Reflections on his passing can be found at Richmond Magazine, Style Weekly, VPM, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Richmond Free Press, and many more. Last year, he was named “Richmonder of the Year” by Style Weekly. It is some comfort to know he must have felt the love then, before his passing. What I will remember most is his unmatched ability to make a museum far bigger in scope and reach beyond its walls. Plus his ability to navigate Southern history while drawing everyone on board. Plus the generous, buoyant spirit that he brought to every encounter. It is an agonizing loss for us all.