William Ryan Flanagan was born on January 16, 1924, and I'll bet a dollar it was colder than all get out. I was 18 months old then, and destined to be his instructor in lots of things growing up, such as bike riding, swimming, BB guns, slingshots and various games. This was not necessarily to his liking, since I was always encouraging him to do something he didn't want to do.

In his early years I remember Bill as being a bawl baby, with his dirty face streaked with tears, and his clothes a mess. But he apparently got all that out of his system early, because I remember him as a teenager and adult always with a big smile. You couldn't help but like him, as attested by his many friends.

Our mother always had the habit of telling us to wait a minute when we asked her to do something. Another thing she'd do was lock the door when we were in the backyard playing. Thinking about it, if I were a mother with six sons, I'm sure I'd do the same thing to get a little peace and quiet. One day -- and I still laugh when I think of it -- Billy had to go to the bathroom real bad, and of course found the door locked. Pounding on the door, he hollered, "let me in, and don't tell me to wait a minute, cuz I can't wait a minute."

Dad was in the automobile business, and drove a different car often -- sometimes 3 or 4 in one week. About the time that we knew he'd be coming home from work, Bill and I would walk down to the corner, sit on the curb, and wait to get the short ride home. Very often we got the thrill of riding in a brand new car.

One day after Dad had parked the car by the rear sidewalk, we were in the front seat, pulling on the steering wheel, making engine noises, etc., when one of us -- probably me -- pulled the gearshiift lever out of reverse. Our driveway, from the rear sidewalk to the garage, had a very slight decline. Since neither one of us could see over the dashboard, we didn't know the car was rolling 'til it hit the garage. We caught "holy hell," but I don't remember getting a spanking.

Writing about the driveway makes me think of the time I got a stopwatch for my birthday. From the front sidewalk to the garage doors was probably 120 feet, and add another 20 feet to the back of the garage when the doors were open. I would stand by this opening, and over and over, and over again, get Bill to run the entire distance. Each time I would egg him on to beat an earlier timed run, and running "wide open" he could never stop in time after passing the garage entrance to avoid slamming into the back wall.

Once during one of these sessions, I was yelling at him to "hurry, hurry," when he fell and skinned his knee. I can hear him bawling yet, "you made me fall down, I'm going to tell Mom."

Another REAL bawling event came during one of our regular trips in summer to visit our maternal grandparents in Douglas, Wyoming. Besides us 6 boys, Teddy, the airedale, would ride on the running board. Once in awhile we'd be accompanied by a young lady who took board and room at our house while attending the junior college. After a refuel and potty stop, we were many miles down the road before my parents became aware that Billy had been left behind. Returning, we could hear him crying before we were within 50 feet of the filling station.

The one year we entered the "Soap Box Derby" classic was a fun experience. The Chrysler/Plymouth dealership where Dad worked sponsored our car in the race, and we were able to go first class. Bill was to be the driver, and preparation took about a month. We got the best ball-bearing wheels, and after we built the frame, the body shop at the dealership applied sheet metal and spray finished it with a nice maroon color. The design made it look similar to the current Chrysler, and "Manbeck Motors" was professionally printed on each side of the hood.

When I found out that my friend, Dick Pascoe, who lived across the street, was building a racer too, I told him the biggest fib of my life. We were installing pedals, I told him, hidden under a secret floorboard panel which Bill could open once he got started down the hill. Using the pedals would allow Bill to markedly increase the speed of the car, and win each race.

The day of the big race came, and there were dozens of entrants. I noticed that our racer was getting closer scrutiny than any of the others, probably because my friend Dick squealed on me to the judges about my tall tale.

Bill came out only 4th or 5th in overall competition, but he did beat Dick Pascoe, and I'll bet to this day Dick believes I was telling him the truth.

Baseball, of course, was the game to play during summer vacation. Half a block away, behind the grocery store at 37th and Ingersoll, was a very large vacant lot. Together with the neighbor kids, we turned it into a baseball diamond that we used for years. As we got older, it became a problem, because too many homeruns turned into broken windows at the Dawson house, located just across the street from the ball field. There were a number of lectures from the police in such cases, and I'm sure parents had to settle up with the Dawson family.

For a few years, the Pomerantz family lived across the street from us on 37th. One day Bill got into a fight with Marvin Pomerantz, one of the 7 children, and he came out the loser. He was sitting on our front porch, cursing, crying and making disparaging remarks about Marvin's heritage. Mom overheard this and said to him, "Billy, I can't believe you said those things. Don't you know that Jesus was a Jew?" Bill replied, "criminy, I thought he was Irish."

Unless I'm confusing Bill with Jack, he had a 1932 DeSoto in his teen years, and I remember it as a beautiful machine. Recently I saw such a car pictured on an antique car website, and it immediately made me think of Bill.

We exchanged letters while we were both in service, and I always looked forward to these. I'm sorry that we didn't sit down after the war to talk about our experiences, but we were too busy with marriage, family, etc., to talk about these times. Without realizing it, I think we were trying to forget them.

A couple of years after the war, Bill was riding with a friend who took a corner too fast and sideswiped a parked car. Similar to our brother Jim's accident years before, Bill had his arm out the window, and it was cut severely. He was taken to the Veterans' hospital, where they treated and stitched up the wound.

Months later, while I was attending Drake University in Des Moines, I was eating lunch at a nearby drug store where Bill worked. For some reason -- probably Divine order -- Dr. Drew, a family friend, was having lunch there that day too. We both went to the register to pay our bill at the same time, and noticed Bill had to use the edge of the counter to pry open the fingers of his hand to make change. Neither Dr. Drew nor I had seen this disability before. The doctor did not ask, but ordered Bill to come to his office the next morning. The doctors at Veterans' hospital had missed severed nerves, and Dr. Drew told him they were shrinking at the rate of 1/16 inch per month, and soon it would be impossible to reconnect them. Bill was concerned about the expense, but Drew told him not to worry about it. It was a lengthy operation, but successful; score another one for the good guys. Thank the Lord for neuro-surgeons.

Bill had married Mary Flaherty, and as their family grew, they moved into a big house on Germania Drive. It was a 2 and 1/2 story brick and frame home with a large bedroom on the top floor. This is where the kids would sleep on our visits there, but there would always be much laughing and carrying on before they nodded off. I'm sure they all have pleasant memories of these visits.

When I went to work for Federated Insurance of Owatonna, MN, Bill was by then a Zone Manager for Ford Motor Co., and he arranged with one of his dealers to give me a new 1955 Ford V8 at cost plus a few bucks. It was my first new car, and I never did tell him that it was probably the worst car I ever had; I just couldn't look the gift horse in the mouth, and it wasn't his fault it was a lemon, anyway. I was offered a company car in less than a year, so I sold the Ford.

Like most of us in my generation, we took on such projects as painting a house as a required household chore. Bill had almost finished painting the house on Germania, and reached the point where his 24 foot ladder wouldn't get him high enough to paint the peak of siding on the south side. He had noticed that a professional had been painting the house across the street for several days, so he approached him about finishing the last 50 square feet or so for a price, of course. The man came across, took a look, and told Bill he wasn't interested.

I asked Bill how he finally completed the job, and he told me that he got on the roof, crawled out to the edge, and using a paint roller and an extension, painted it looking down from above.

Talk about a small world, this one was for the books. I was traveling southwest Iowa, and decided to stay overnight in one of the nicer motels in one of the larger cities in that area. When I checked in, the clerk told me that a Bill Flanagan had checked in just a short while before, and when I was told the address I knew it was my brother. We visited for awhile, and arranged to meet for supper. We hadn't been seated very long, when the hostess asked if we would mind sharing our table with one gentleman. It was obvious that the restaurant was crowded, so we said OK. Here's the amazing part; the man had recently bought the 623 37th Street house in Des Moines, the very house where we were raised and lived most of our lives. I still laugh when I remember Bill telling him, "whatever you do, don't sand the floor in the playroom or you'll fall through to the basement." We went on to explain that over the years it had been sanded and refinished many times, as you might expect with 6 boys, all our friends and a dog exercising wear and tear daily.

The death of our father in 1942 did not prepare me for the sadness that would sweep over our extended family 20 some years later. Bill had made a business trip to northwest Iowa, held an evening meeting in Humboldt and was returning to his hotel in Fort Dodge, about 20 miles away. He was involved in a senseless accident, losing his life and leaving a wife and 5 children; with this happening when he was only 40 years old.

A tractor-trailer operator driving north on U.S. Hwy 169 had missed his turn, and was attempting a turnaround by backing his rig across the southbound lane into a narrow farm road in the dark of night. Bill, driving south, came over a rise and around a curve just as the trailer had moved to block his lane, and also any chance he had to avoid it. The trailer was painted black and was carrying 44,000 lbs. of liquid nitrogen; the tractor's headlights were still directed north giving the distinct impression that it was in motion in the northbound lane.

I was on the road myself that day, and staying in a motel in Bethany, MO. A knock on the door about midnight wakened me, and outside stood the local sheriff with the motel manager in night clothes. Vinci had tried to call me after she was notified of the accident, but they had closed the motel switchboard about 11 PM, so she called the sheriff. A call to Vinci had us in agreement that I should come right home, and we'd leave for Des Moines later in the day.

This was before the days of I-35, so I had 2 lane roads all the way to Kansas City. As I passed through Cameron, MO and picked up speed, I could see the lights of a truck weigh station about a mile ahead. What I didn't see was a tractor-trailer attempting a turn into the station roadway at the north end, because he had missed the south entrance as he approached from that direction.

The turn was too sharp for him to make without some maneuvering back and forth, so during the process he was completely blocking the highway. By the time I could make this out, I was going much too fast to stop, so with a prayer I headed for the ditch on the wrong side of the highway. By the grace of God, the ditch was shallow and clear, and I made it through alright.

It wasn't until later that I learned the circumstances of Bill's accident, and I shuddered at the thought of what the families might have gone through if we both had been taken that night.

Earlier in this piece, I mentioned how likable a person Bill was as evidenced by his many friends. The service at the funeral home, the evening before the actual funeral, had so many in attendance that loudspeakers had to be set up in the parking lot, which allowed the overflow crowd to be included.

Bill was the first of the "Flytraps," as some called us, to leave this earth. Being #3 of the Flanagan brothers, I would never have believed that I would be writing these stories as the lone survivor for almost 20 years now. There were some great times, and emotional as it is to write about them, I'm glad I have the opportunity.

We all miss you, Bill, and love you.