In Memoriam: Bill Vincent: 1934-2011

America lost a good friend last week. Bill Vincent, a logger from Libby, Montana. Apart from being the father of Bruce Vincent - in my mind a national treasure - Bill was one of the nicest guys I've ever met.

When the Vincent family announced Bill's unexpected death - he suffered a fatal heart attack while shooting trap with a grand-daughter's husband - they noted his mastery of"the art" of heavy-equipment operation.

Bill was an artist for sure, especially where eying the slope and grade of logging roads was concerned. He took great pride in his work and was easily Montana's finest road builder. But Bill was also a big time artist in the big time world of being a dad, a husband, a grandfather, an uncle and a friend to all who knew him.

I don't recall when or where I first met Bill but it may have been at the Silver Fire Roundup in Grants Pass, Oregon in August of 1988. Several Vincent's, Bruce included, made the 1,000-mile trek to southern Oregon to participate in what we later learned was the largest peacetime truck convoy in U.S. history. Some 1,500 logging trucks from five states, including a Vincent truck, rallied at the Josephine County Fairgrounds to hear Bruce give an impromptu speech he titled, "It's okay to be a logger." By the time he had finished, 10,000 people were on their feet screaming, many of them in tears. It remains the greatest speech I've ever heard.

Some time after that, Oregon's log truckers returned the favor, traveling to a rally Bruce arranged at the Missoula County Fairgrounds in Missoula, Montana. I remember standing across the racetrack with Bill. With Bruce at the podium, he turned to me and said, "Isn't that kid about the greatest talker you've ever heard." The smile on his face was a mile wide. And he was right. Bruce is America's most electrifying public speaker. No one else is even in the same league.

Bruce spoke at his father's memorial service last Friday. I had hoped to go but last minute business kept me away. I deeply regret missing what I suspect was a lovely remarkable goodbye to a great and gentle man. Knowing Bruce as I do, I know that those who gathered laughed and cried together. Bill Vincent was a funny guy and it would have been a shame not to remember his gentle and always very polite sense of humor.

Before the federal timber sale program collapsed in the early 1990s, Vincent Logging Company employed 65 Libby-area families - big stuff in such a small town. Bill and his first wife, Julie, the mother of Bill's four sons, started the company in the late 1960s. When federal collapse forced the company to close, it nearly broke Bill's heart. And when Julie died, his heart did break. But Bill later remarried a lovely woman named Loretta. She, too, preceded Bill in death.

Like most loggers I've know, Bill was a jack-of-all-trades: a horseman who bred and raced thoroughbred and quarter horses, a licensed pilot, a hunter, fisherman, trap shooter and a pretty respectable pool player. But for all of his varied interests, Bill was first, last and always a father, husband and family man. That is how I will remember him.

Click here to read Bruce Vincent's eulogy to his father.

Jim Petersen