Hello, and welcome to our website created in loving memory of Dr. William Joseph Bondurant (August 22, 1958 – January 24, 2005)
The simple purpose of this website is to share photos, memories, and videos about Bill (aka Billy Joe, B.J., and Baby Joe as my grandmother Cox would call him) that will allow visitors to remember him and celebrate his life.
This website will continue to change and grow. If you wish to send us additional letters (memories), photos etc. to include then please feel free to do so, and we will add them.
Bill’s Name: Just to clarify a few points on Bill’s name. He was named William Joseph Bondurant. William was derived from both of his grandfathers, and Joseph was from my dad’s name. My parents called him Billy Joe from birth. Around 1963, my family lived next door to my Aunt Faye and she started calling him BJ for short. My mom and dad took up that name and continued to call him BJ for the rest of his life. However, most other family members and friends from childhood continued to call him Billy Joe with the exception of my grandmother Cox (Mimi) who thought my brother hung the moon. Mimi always called him Baby Joe. Around 1980 (at age 22), Billy Joe decided that he wanted to be called Bill to sound a bit more professional since he was planning to go to medical school. So, most of his friends in college, medical school, and in Birmingham, where he was a doctor, have always known him as Bill. Thus, you have Bill, Billy Joe, and BJ!
PHOTOS OF BILL: The photo section is broken out into several pages covering different periods in Bill’s life. Each page contains a slide show of about 20 photographs. You can simply watch the slide show of the photos, or if you prefer, you can scroll through the photos on your own by clicking on the small thumbnail photos and using the arrow buttons on the right and left of the line of photos. We have included captions for each photo to help identify the setting and often the dates as closely as we can. The photos are in chronological order within each page. If you have an interesting photo you would like to contribute of Bill then please feel free to send it, and we will be happy to include it.
LETTERS: Since Bill’s passing, friends and family have been kind enough to share some of the memories they have of Bill. We have simply put up the original letters exactly as they were received. Several of the people who contributed memories have passed away since sending them, and we are grateful to have captured their memories of Bill. To view any of the letters you simply click on the name of the person shown, and the letter will open in a separate page which can be increased in size etc. There are about 36 memories, and you may need to scroll down to see all the names of the contributors. We have included a brief “key” (Who Are These People) in the upper right corner to help identify the people who contributed memories of Bill-
VIDEO OF BILL: We found a few video clips of Bill that we wanted to include. Some are quite old from the late 1950s and 1960s when he was just a kid. I doubt many of you have seen some these because we thought a few of these had been lost in the tornado of 1974, but life sometimes holds happy surprises such as finding some of these clips. Unfortunately, because some of the tapes are quite old, the quality of the video is poor, and there is no sound with most of them. Still, they capture a few moments of time that, to me, are priceless. There are also a couple of him in the later years as well. These are short clips – most just a couple of minutes or less.
SONGS PLAYING: The first song you hear playing in the background is the beautiful song that our cousin JimBo wrote and recorded in memory of Bill. The song celebrates Bill as a person and his works and actions as a doctor volunteering in Honduras. You can see a related note from JimBo and Mary Nita in the “Letters” section of the website.
The second song is “We’ll Meet Again” which was a popular song during World War II, and also one that our father enjoyed playing on the piano at home. The first time I heard the lyrics to this song, I knew they were exactly what Bill would want to say to us when we think of him:
“We'll meet again,
Don't know where, don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.
Keep smiling, through, just like you all ways do…
So, won’t you please say hello to the folks that I know,
Tell them I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go,
I was singing this song…
We'll meet again,
Don't know where, don't know when.
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.”