Bill Petrich was an English major in the 1970s who shared his writing talents broadly, including the Spires yearbook, where he detailed “the Gonzaga experience” in eloquent prose. His education and his life were cut short by leukemia, but his impact was lasting. In 2015, Gonzaga’s Development office received a check and a lovely letter from Mary Ann Laubacher (’74), who reflected on this special young man. We printed her letter in the fall 2015 issue of Gonzaga Magazine, a here, we share Bill’s original 1972 Spires letter.
[From Gonzaga’s Signum newspaper, 1974]
William Thomas Petrich, 21, a Gonzaga student who had been majoring in English, died January 14 (1973) in Tacoma, Wash., his home town. Bill had become strangely ill in his sophomore year last April. It was necessary for him to leave Gonzaga and return to his home. Every technique known to medical science in the treatment of leukemia was used in the battle to save his life. None was successful. Death came just six days after he had reached his 21st birthday.
Signum reprinted Bill’s beloved description of the Gonzaga experience following his death, but it should be noted that Bill penned the piece before he was aware of his illness.
I Am Turning Like a Leaf in Autumn
By William (Bill) Petrich, 1972
I’ve put some distance between myself and Gonzaga. Now it is late March and I am sitting in a kitchen in Los Angeles with the wind blowing cold from the ocean and I am thinking of Gonzaga, of Spokane.
In a way I am afraid to think, for some of my memories are deep and sharp and others burn like hot coals set in my soul. Perhaps I am still too close to Gonzaga to write about it, perhaps I shall never be far enough away, but I doubt it, and I have been asked by a friend of mine and promised him I would.
It is hard for me to put a handle on the year, for that is what I have been asked to do, find a handle. When I was asked, I was gripped with fear, because I realized this and I am afraid even now, with two months to think, to observe, to reflect. All that I can see me able to do, is to somewhat localize what is important in this time here, not just put a finger on it, but just to localize it. Just to define where the handle might fit.
I don’t think it is in academics. Academics are merely the excuse for a university, the classes and books being only the tip of the iceberg. Whatever significant goes on in this school is not academic not even rational and structured, but irrational and for the most part unconscious and thus is not formally tied to the institutional university. Actually, it seems to me that Gonzaga is not primarily an institution, but rather a human community, and the significance of the community is most found in the impact it has on its members. This impact of living in community for four years outweighs the impact of the classrooms, basically because the living situation of the community embraces much more of the person, and affects, consequently, much more of the person’s development, than does the classroom. It is not in the classroom one gets drunk, it is not in the classroom one laughs and cries, or even learns how to, and yet, of all the “education” we receive at Gonzaga, this is the most important precisely because it is the most human, because it is the one that touches the person most closely.
We deal with human beings, and to deal on that level is to cut an ironic perspective under all rational and systematic approaches to education. Our primary education at Gonzaga is an education in our own humanity, actualized by our living with people, our grappling with identity with people, our discovering likes and dislikes with people, our reacting with people. A friend of mine who left the school for a semester and returned, said to me: “When I came back to visit in December, I found out I really missed this place, and I wanted to come back. And what I really missed was the people here.”
It is the people that draw you in and get you involved with the place that it becomes so important to you. The buildings are just buildings. I could leave buildings and the classes and the town real easy, but not the people. The people make it worthwhile.
We deal with human beings: We deal with beings in time. That is the final delineation I can make about the handle’s locale. I am not content to deal just with people as a static entity, because I see that what profoundly takes place on this campus is change, personal human growth. It is our friends, our peers who marry now. It is our friends, our peers who die. A few years ago this wasn’t so, such events happened only to “adults.”
Something has formed us in time: We are beings in time, making a transition from childhood to I-don’t-know-what. And from where I stand, with what I can see, this is the most significant thing about this place, and this is time. We are becoming. Trite as is sounds, it is still a valid statement, and an ever-renewing statement. And this is all we have to say.
I saw a movie recently, just before I came back to Gonzaga in March. The name of it was “The Last Picture Show.” It was the story of a boy’s turning to manhood, and of the endings and sorrows that it meant. At the end he is sitting in a chair, very tired and very alone, almost broken and the soundtrack is playing a song from the early 50s:
Why don’t you love me like you used to do?
Why don’t you love me like you used to do?
Why don’t you love me like you used to do?
Why don’t you love me like you used to do?
I don’t feel tired yet, but I’m beginning to. I am talking of evenings, and of fire and song, of spring with blankets and clocks under the stars, and the river, and I am talking about now not only of people, not only of friends, for I see that the school is not only the people, not only friends, but time.
Time rises, time falls, time into time, day into day, season into season. Time turns like a leaf in autumn and I watch the old man pass below my window and I talk of spring: “I went here, too,” he said, “forty years ago; there was this building and DeSmet and an old stadium that they tore down, it must be 30 years ago. But you know, the campus hasn’t changed much. I still like to walk around and watch the sun and the students.”
And I think of my parents who have turned, and I see that they have friends who have turned: and as I sit here and watch the evening blue thicken on the trees and lawns, I know that I am not come back, but that I am turning, like a leaf in autumn, and I speak of spring.