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Susan Leonard Hall uploaded photo(s)
Saturday, February 17, 2024
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I met Bill at Morning Pointe where I was a caregiver for a gentleman who sat at his table in the dining room. I looked forward to my daily hugs and "I love you" and "have a blessed day" greetings from one of the kindest and sweetest gentlemen I have ever known. He was always willing to share his smile with the world. I gave him a wolf statue for his birthday last year and he was just so grateful that I would remember his love of his "Wolf Pack"! Test well, my dear friend, with your sweet wife and I'll look forward to seeing you again some day.
My sincere condolences to Bill's family and friends who loved him and many thanks for sharing him with us.
Susan Leonard Hall
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Joe Summers and Family posted a condolence
Saturday, February 17, 2024
My family moved to Olde Mill Lane in Hixson in 1992. We met and become friends with Bill and Saralyn a couple of years later during community meetings and activities. The community organized Halloween parties, luminaries along the curbs on Christmas Eve, Easter egg hunts, sign maintenance, cleanup details, etc. Bill was not bashful and he was very personable. Some of Bill’s characteristics were that he was very participatory in the meetings and always very energetic and first to volunteer in any and all community activities as was I. Bill’s closing line on ALL of our conversations was, “call me if I can help you” and he would be upset if I didn’t. We worked together a lot on garage doors, sharing power de-thatcher’s, cutting a lot of big trees behind my house, plumbing, car maintenance, etc. I could always count on Bill to help me.
Bill and I were car buffs, Bill much more than I, especially BMWs. We both keep our vehicles clean, again Bill much more than I. We would attend the annual BMW open house at our dealership. BMW would bring in a crew and around 6 new cars with paddle shifters and all, outline a route on public roads to include the interstate and a two lane road along the airport for us to drive our selected cars on. Then hand us the keys and turn us loose without any supervision! We would bring the cars back and sign out another one. We drove those cars hard. Later that day Bill pointed out some guys in the BMW car club with sheepish grins on their faces. We knew they had driven those cars like we had. Bill would stop in front of my house to chat every time he went by and I was out. His vehicle would be immaculate and I would always kid him and say, “when are you going wash that filthy car” or “I wish I had a BMW.” I would look at his immaculate engine and say, “you waxed that engine didn’t you?” We would laugh. He demonstrated on my vehicle how he washed his car, then clay barred it and then the 3 step waxing and polishing process that he used on his vehicles and his uncle’s always new vehicles in the past. I just shock my head. In our latter years our cars were not as clean which was an incite to “how we were doing.” He told about how he had just clay barred his black car and took it over to the BMW dealership for warranty work. When he went to pick it up they had run it through their automatic car wash and put swirl marks down the side of it. He erupted, they said, they would make it right and Bill replied, that he would never bring one of his cars back there. Back then Bill would never take one of his cars to an automatic car wash.
Bill and I went down to Road Atlanta to the Annual 10 hour Petit (French little) Le Mans sport car endurance race one of the premier sporting events in the southeast one year. We had a blast. Many exotic expensive cars, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc. were racing and on display. Pirelli Tires, etc. and other high end car accessories were on display with their corporate promo girls. On our way home we decided to stop at a couple of the large BMW dealerships and look at the cars. One dealership had a black BMW M5. It was a thing of beauty. Bill said, “if a man had that he wouldn’t need anything else.” Ha!
One evening my wife and I came home and I saw an ambulance in front of Bill’s house. I went up the street as they were just placing Saralyn in an ambulance. My heart sunk and my Buddy was very emotionally distraught as we all were. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening to his dear Saralyn. Who was the center of his life. Two neighbors who are both pastors and myself tried to calm him enough so he could get insurance cards and his belongings together to go to the hospital. We three agreed that pastor Craig Paul should take him to the hospital and comfort him. We were all so devastated and in disbelief of Saralyn’s passing that night.
Around this time Bill would drive and get his daily meal and afterwards, around 1:00, he would stop by my house and we would chat for 2 or 3 hours in the sun on my front porch. This routine would occur 7 days a week unless it was raining or he had family visiting. Bill was lost without his Saralyn. This was the time of Covid and due to my medical history and Bill’s age we decided that we shouldn’t be around people. We sat 6 feet apart. It was easy for Bill and I to talk. We were very open and candid with each other about our lives. I would discuss my life growing up with my father fully consuming all of his free time starting a fire department in our community, improving the fire service in our county and state at the cost of his health and our family. I was right there all the time building fire stations and when eligible training and fighting fire which consumed all of my free time from school and work until my fulltime job was the fire service as well as my part time job until age 68.
Bill would reminisce about his past experiences. Some highlights of which follows:
I have YouTube on a big screen TV with stereo. Bill was fascinated with this. We would watch YouTube for hours. We viewed cars, car factories, boats, sporting events, his favorite singers past and present, etc. if you’re interested in something you can find it on YouTube.
Bill was somewhat of a daredevil and mischievous from an early age. He would climb a tree in front of his house with a battery and horn. When a car would come by he would blow the horn and watch the people slam on the brakes. Bill enjoyed making model airplanes. At that time you couldn’t buy a plastic kit. The kits were basically a block of wood and that you carved the fuselage and put wings on it. He had them hanging all over the ceiling of his back porch. He would watch the waves of planes being ferried over to Europe during WWII. He developed a interest and love of airplanes. He got a chemistry kit. One of the first things he learned how to make was gunpowder, which was probably not a good idea. He started making “fire works” and blowing up things up. Of course the fire works got bigger and bigger. He would hide the fire works in the trunk of his mother’s car so he would always have them available. One of his favorite activities was diving off of bridges and jumping off of things, i.e. from a tree to a utility pole in front of his house, etc. He said, that one of the first things he did when they bought the house in Hixson was he climbed to the roof and jumped off it. I said, “Bill you wonder why your knees are bad.” He was fascinated with skydiving. He said, “its so quiet up there.” One day without telling anyone, he stopped by a local airport and inquired about going skydiving. The man showed him how to wear and open the parachute and how to land. Then he took Bill up and for his first time he jumped out of perfectly good airplane! When he came home Saralyn asked him, “how was it?” One of his major mysteries of his life was, “how did she know, I didn’t tell anyone!” She never told him. He said, “When I see her again I’m going ask her!” Yes, he jumped and road a freight train. He loved to ride motorcycles. He had several dirt and street bikes. One of his favorite activities was riding with his good friend Waymond Vickery until Waymond couldn’t ride any longer due to health reasons.
Bill loved music whether it was singing or playing the trumpet. He was in several singing groups. He was fascinated with the trumpet. He would try to get to school earlier and go to the band room and practice. Later that day he would attend band practice. He placed high in the state and won several awards. He was a member of a small band that played at estate sales, auctions and other venues to earn money. He told me that he did well in school but probably the main reason he stayed in school was to play the trumpet.
Bill worked his entire youth. He delivered some 400 morning news papers every day before going to school. He worked for the lady that had the newspaper route. She drove an old car with a rumble seat. Bill would take the papers from the rumble seat, fold them and throw them up to the front door of the houses. He said he got pretty good. He could throw the papers and knock over the milk bottles sitting out for the milkman from a 100 ft. Bill also worked for the telegraph company. He would come home from school, sweep up the office, deliver the telegrams and bank up the coal fire ready for the next morning.
At that time the wealthy people in the area had beautiful expensive “five gated” show horses which they kept in a high end stable and paid men to train and exercise the horses. Bill and his buddies, one of whom was the stable owners son, talked the trainers into allowing them to exercise the horses. They were careful to exercise them correctly. Although, when the trainers left the area the boys would play cowboys and indians on the horses. On one such day everyone had gone into the stable and Bill was outside in the ring by himself. He looked up over the stable and they was a propane tank shaped cylindrical object (in those days they called them cigar shaped) silently hovering motionless over the stable. Bill said, “Joe it was an UFO I saw it.” He said that he didn’t have a camera and before anyone came outside, it in a second silently with no sonic boom moved out of sight. In the 50’s and 60’s I had talked to several sane friends of mine who stated, “yeah, I saw a cigar shaped UFO above that hill over there and it wasn’t a blimp.” It was relatively common knowledge in those days that people calmly talked about. It wasn’t till later that a stigma for “some reason” was attached to UFO’s. Bill and I discussed this openly. We weren’t conspiracy freaks. But we believed that extraterrestrials have been around for thousand of years. They have traveled many light years to get here and are thousand of years more advanced than us. If they wanted to harm us they would of already have easily done it. We believed many sightings are natural occurring and explainable. But many of the other sightings are not alien but of human creations. How? Why? These are the ones that worry us.
Bill and I loved our dogs. Both of us would have had a much harder time growing up without our best friends, our dogs. Bill and I spoke of ours frequently. Bill loved his first dog who would go with him all the time. He spoke of his dalmatian and the huskies a lot. As much as he loved the huskies they gave him a lot of trouble initially. They would run off and bring back peoples doormats and their clothes off of their clothes lines (before dryers). Then Bill would have to go door to door in the neighborhood and ask people if these items belonged to them. Well, that didn’t go well and Bill put up a fence.
Bill hated Texas. Bill attended basic air force training in Texas. He said it was the only place he knew of where you could stand ankle deep in mud and it be 100 degrees. He was in a group, which was made up of all college graduates. The drill instructors (DIs) hated those college boys. They had no sympathy for those college boys who were slow in learning to march. When the DIs somehow found out that Bill had drill team and marching experience they put him in charge of teaching the boys to march on their 100+ degree drill field. If they were slow or made mistakes they would be disciplined as well as Bill their instructor. He swears it was the tremendous heat while there that caused him to lose his hair. He hated Texas. He finally finished basic training and went home. When he reported to work, the first day back at the mill, they told him he would have to travel to Texas. Oh, the irony Ha! Ha!
Bill was always working when not in school. One of his summer jobs was working in a saw mill. He ran the cut off saw and would cut off the raw blanks and put strips between them as he stacked them in preparation for placing them in the drying kiln. The planks keep coming even if Bill was falling behind. (Images of Lucille Ball and Ethel in the candy factory skit) A man owned the mill and his husky sons worked there. They delighted in making it difficult for the skinny college boy. One day he had to take a load of lumber on a truck for delivery. He unloaded the back of the truck first which immediately caused the front of truck to jump up in the air. He regrettably had to call the brothers for help. I had a similar type summer experience working with 4 other college guys for the local power company on construction. 2 or 3 of us were respected 1 or 2 of them weren’t. The following summer only 2 of us were invited back.
Bill and I both had boats. Bill, stated that typically the only time all three of the kids agreed on something was whether to take the boat to the lake. Bill said, they all had such a great time riding and water skiing. It was the best total family experience they had together. It just didn’t last long enough. I had a cuddie cabin boat which I kept in a marina and sold it and later bought a pretty expensive and heavy Ranger Bass Boat on a trailer. I brought it home and prepared to place it on a concrete pad beside my garage. I had constructed this pad and made it “S” shaped to blend into the topography of the site. I backed in as far as I could but they was not enough room to maneuver my truck and the boat trailer all the way back on the pad. I had made the pad somewhat high in the middle so from half way back it would drain forward and half way back it would drain back into the yard and over the steep bank behind it. I disconnected the trailer in hopes of pushing the trailer back on it’s jack wheel. Well, I couldn’t push it back up that grade. So I called my buddy Bill for help. It was hard but Bill and I were able to push it up the grade. When we reached the top of the grade it momentary pushed easy, much to our relief. But then it started down the rear grade increasing in speed and we couldn’t stop it. It ran off the pad and started down the steep grassy bank out of control. We were shouting and straining with all that we were worth. We were able to rapidly turn the trailer parallel to the bank and stop it just a couple seconds before totally losing it. Then stopping it from rolling sideways before hitting my next door neighbor’s house! We were just seconds from totally losing control of it all over the bank. We just sat down exhausted and laughed. Then we slowly pulled the boat and trailer up the hill with a very strong rope and my truck. We would recall this incident, which scared us to death, many times and laugh.
Bill was raised by his mother with heavy influence by his uncle both of which he loved dearly. His mother was the town’s librarian. During this time the polio epidemic broke out. Polio is a highly infection disease that mainly affected young children. There was a strict curfew in place in his town. You were prohibited from being on the streets unless you had a good reason. Bill would hear the ambulances screaming up the streets to the designated polio hospital, which contained the iron lungs. He would sneak down the back streets to the library where his mother worked and would hide under her desk and read books. He was very knowledgeable of the invention of the polio vaccine and Doctor Salk who invented it. Bill was definitely a pro vaccine person. His mother was the head of the Red Cross in their town during WWII. She was one of the coordinators between the service personnel and home. She would contact service personal if there was a need for them to return home. After the war she went back to school and trained as a social worker. She then became one of the social workers in the area. She helped people in need. The families that had broken up, children in need, those family members suffering from abuse and neglect, those dealing with drug and alcohol abuse, those that couldn’t care for themselves, etc. These people would come by Bill’s house for help or to thank his mother for her help. Bill would ride with his mother when she would drive out to see these people. These are conditions that most people don’t encounter unless they are emergency responders. Most people live in safe neighborhoods or gated communities. They are oblivious to this. Bill witnessed this first hand. He developed knowledge and empathy for others. Something some of our government officials are lacking.
Bill loved his Saralyn and spoke often of how grateful he was to her for raising their children while he was out on the road so much. Bill expressed many times to me how he loved his children and grand children and how proud he was of all of them but like most parents he regretted not seeing them more frequently.
Bill was not just a good friend to my family and me but a very special friend. I’m honored to have known him. I pray that he is with his Saralyn and his family now.
I apologize for the random order of this and I hope it is somewhat factual. But you can’t expect much from to old feebleminded men sitting in rockers on a sunny porch.
Respectfully submitted by Joe Summers
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The Brooks Family purchased flowers
Friday, February 16, 2024
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The Brooks Family
purchased the Red Florist's Choice for the family of William "Bill" Hawkins III.
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In loving memory of our dear friend.With Love,Billie,Betsy , Becky and Blane
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Anonymous purchased flowers
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
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With love from the Stafford family
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Maura Bradshaw uploaded photo(s)
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
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Bill was a wonderful and kind man. He sat with my father in the dining room and made him feel welcome. Here are a few of their celebratory meals together.
I'm sorry for your loss.
Bill greeted everyone coming and going. He would say
"Be careful out there."
"Have a good day."
Sincerely
Maura Donnellan Bradshaw
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BRUCE WHELTON posted a condolence
Friday, February 9, 2024
Mr. Hawkins was like a second dad to me after we moved here in 1976. I will never forget the basketball games in the driveway that sometimes got pretty physical. My favorite memory of Mr. Hawkins was him getting a room at the Holiday Inn in Dalton so we could watch the North Carolina/NCState basketball game. RIP Mr. Hawkins.
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Jean lit a candle
Thursday, February 8, 2024
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So very sorry for your loss. Sending love and prayers. Jean Y. Prickett
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Madison McElhaney posted a condolence
Thursday, February 8, 2024
Madison McElhaney
I worked at Choo Choo BBQ along with Kelcie White and Mr. Bill made the biggest impact on us. He would always come in with a smile and always wondered how we were doing. I remember countless times he would tell me to go grab a fork and help eat the dessert Vicki had made for him. His stories from working in the textile industry and about his kids always made me happy. He was the happiest man and knew how to make someone smile. I'll always remember you and love you Mr. Bill. Your life has impacted and always will. I love you!
K
Kelcie White posted a condolence
Thursday, February 8, 2024
The man loved him a good ole pork sandwich and corn nuggets from ChooChoo BBQ. Occasionally with a side of pintos! always had a slice of coconut cake to end the meal. Mr. Bill was the sweetest man I’ve ever met. He came to ChooChoo BBQ in Hixson almost everyday while I was employed there & on the days he didn’t, we were racking our brains wondering where he was because sometimes he would get a little confused. Countless times we sat with him while he ate when we should have been working. But honestly his presence was more important to us! Hearing him tell us stories about his life made us want nothing more than to make him feel at home. We love you Mr. Bill!
A Memorial Tree was planted for William "Bill" Hawkins III
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
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We are deeply sorry for your loss ~ the staff at Legacy Funeral Home and Cremation Center Join in honoring their life - plant a memorial tree
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The family of William "Bill" H. Hawkins III uploaded a photo
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
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(423) 843-2525
Legacy Funeral Home
And Cremation Center
8911 Dallas Hollow Road
Soddy Daisy, TN 37379
(423) 821-7551
Wann Funeral And Cremation Center
3918 Tennessee Avenue 104
Chattanooga, TN 37409
