Honoring MacGregor

WINDHAM - If ever there was an infinitesimal fact that would somehow end up being integral,  Billy MacGregor was your guy to have figured that out, already have found it and be busy putting it to right use.

MacGregor passed away on February 20, his birthday, something he might have found worthy of a smile, since he was fond of joking, and him sort of arriving and leaving in the same sunrise.

There were 96 years in-between, of course, although that didn’t seem the case, a few months ago, when he made his still spry presence felt at a Windham town board public hearing that swirled with controversy.

A former town councilman himself, Billy sat in the front row of the crowded meeting room, patiently awaiting his turn to speak. 

It is irrelevant what the issue was, but Billy had his hands folded gently atop  a book in his lap, looking for all the world as if seated in a church pew.

He was that reverent even if what he held was no heavenly Bible. It was a a much more mundane copy of Municipal Law and Practice.

When it came time to share his thoughts, he flipped to a book-marked page and began reading in his high-pitched, slightly scratchy voice that was never hesitant and proudly loud enough to be heard in every corner.

People who didn’t know him rolled their eyes at first, seeing this frailish, white-haired man painstakingly and word-for-word, recite some legal mumbo-jumbo or government particularity.

Billy could have been a schoolboy giving an oral report, he was that precise and properly intent on being certain he quoted it correctly.

People got sincerely respectful when it dawned on them the nonagenarian was making darn good points, switching to some hand-written scrawl on wrinkled paper to finish adding his two cents. 

That wasn’t the only occasion Billy MacGregor said his piece. There were many such nights in 15 years as a councilman and as a private citizen.

MacGregor made his living in the printing trade, a lithographer, earning his credentials attending night school at Hofstra University. 

He was born in Queens, loved American history and served in the Army in the early 1950’s, stationed in Germany during the Korean War.

Billy also loved skiing which took him from the Big Apple to the mountains where his Letters to the Editor in the local newspaper were clever and unwaveringly erudite.

He was -  and probably still is - nothing if not fastidious and if truth be told it could be exasperating, him honing in on the tiniest smidgeon of a detail as the clock ticked…and ticked.

Small towns like Windham are lucky to have folks like him, though, because the unequivocal actuality is Billy did it from the heart.

“Before he would make a statement on whatever it was, he would do all the research to back up what he was talking about,” Windham town supervisor Thomas Hoyt says.

And hitting a more meaningful nail on the head, Hoyt says, “Billy didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He was who we mean when we say someone is a true gentleman.”