'Life Of The Party': Friends Remember Beloved Storyteller & TTS Employee Bill Buchanan

TUSCALOOSA, AL — In the early 1970s, in Fort Payne, there was a notorious Ku Klux Klan billboard along the interstate that was owned and maintained by the white supremacist hate group.

One night, though, two teenage boys caused quite a stir in the quiet northern Alabama community when they snuck out under the cover of darkness to throw black paint over the hate speech to cover it up.

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One of those young men, however, had an allergic reaction to the well-known poison oak in the greenery around the billboard. Roughly half a century later, he would tell Patch that the temporary discomfort and itching were more than worth it.

That man was Bill Buchanan — a longtime newspaperman and director of community development with Tuscaloosa Tourism and Sports — who died unexpectedly Wednesday.

He was 67.

Lisa Waldrop, who works as director of media and communication at Shelton State Community College, first met Bill and Ava Buchanan in the late 1990s through their mutual involvement in Theatre Tuscaloosa's production of "A Little Night Music."

Waldrop would go on to lovingly become "the daughter they never wanted" and, with no children of their own, the couple would serve as surrogate parents as Waldrop worked her way through graduate school and on in to her professional career.

"[Bill] had a genuine interest in other people and he was someone who truly liked to be around folks," she told Patch in a phone interview on Thursday. "He lived for a great party. He would go and get there, move about the room ... and he was just an absolute pro and the life of the party."

Indeed, Bill Buchanan was one of the most well-known and widely-loved public figures in Tuscaloosa. While Buchanan did love the theatre and served as chair of the Theatre Tuscaloosa board, one friend also remembered his love of quoting movies directed by the Coen Brothers, such as "The Big Lebowski" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

"There are people in Tuscaloosa, and in every town, who lived here all their life, then there are people like Bill Buchanan," David Fuhrman told Patch of his longtime friend. “He came to Tuscaloosa as a college student in the 1970s, lived all over the country and returned. They chose Tuscaloosa, it didn’t choose them."

Fuhrman and Buchanan were roommates at the University of Alabama and kept in touch from those early days, before Buchanan started his career in sales for Smith Newspapers out of his hometown of Fort Payne.

And it was this job that carried Buchanan across the country and up the corporate ladder of the family-owned community newspaper company, getting to the point where he eventually owned several small papers of his own. One stop, though, saw him take a management position at a small newspaper in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

Fuhrman said Buchanan would regularly drive an hour south to where the newspaper was printed in Chadron, Nebraska — the place he would meet a woman who would become his wife of 48 years and one of the most notable leading ladies in Theatre Tuscaloosa's history. During those early, more transient days, the young couple would be forced to move on short notice for Buchanan's work and would later be married in West Virginia.

"He lived in all these little towns, and finally the company he worked for, one of the owners moved to Tuscaloosa and Bill came with him," Fuhrman said. "That [supervisor] decided to move back to Fort Payne and Bill gave it up to stay in Tuscaloosa. He had lived all over, but this is the place he loved. "

Friends all acknowledge that much of the work in the first three decades of his career was done outside of Tuscaloosa. But it would be in the fall of 2014 when Buchanan took his final job as director of community development with Tuscaloosa Tourism and Sports — a position that would see him make even better use of his myriad talents and passions.

Even recently, Buchanan headed up the push to develop the Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History and Reconciliation Foundation, in addition to the founding of the Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Trail. This reporter can remember back to the pride on Buchanan's face in July when he rode a charter bus with other dignitaries to tour the Civil Rights History Trail formally for the first time.

"Going in today and walking by that office, it was difficult," TTS President and CEO Don Staley said in an interview with Patch. "Tuscaloosa has lost an incredible ambassador for all that is good in our community and TTS has lost a dear friend. Our staff and board is heartbroken with the loss and feel like Bill's personality was larger than life, he was a give-you-the-shirt-off-his-back kind of man."

A gifted writer, as this reporter will also attest to, Staley referred to Buchanan as his "word man," who had the ability to articulate things like no other.

"If I needed something in a hurry, I always knew I could go to Bill," he said. "He always had the perfect words. He was a true newspaper guy and we were very fortunate to have him."

Jim Page, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama, told Patch that Buchanan's enthusiasm for Tuscaloosa and its rich history was contagious and inspiring.

"This community has lost an incredibly positive ambassador," he said. "Everyone at the Chamber mourns the loss of our good friend. We send our heartfelt condolences to Bill’s loved ones and to our extended TTS family.”

A TRUE PEOPLE PERSON

For Waldrop, a steak dinner at Bill and Ava's home following that Theatre Tuscaloosa performance would be the start of a friendship that would last more than two decades.

"When I was in graduate school, they were very encouraging about me going back to school ... so, every time I would get my grades, as long as I got an A, I got a dollar," she said with a laugh.

The Buchanans were also welcoming to Waldrop's husband, Tuscaloosa attorney Cooper Shattuck, and could regularly be seen supporting the younger couple through their informal Christian ministry The Tavern Tuscaloosa — "It's Not Church, In A Bar."

"We think about Bill and talk about Bill as a newspaperman and we all know people in that business," Shattuck told Patch. "He wasn't really a newspaperman, though. He was a people person and didn’t have the outlet until this job [at TTS] to use that energy."

When examining his impact, though, Shattuck said it would be easy to overlook the positivity Buchanan could bring to volatile environments — namely social media.

"That’s where he touched so many people," he said. "There was always a word of encouragement. He was one of the most prolific and encouraging posters out there."

Waldrop explained that Bill's use of social media, primarily Facebook, first started when he was diagnosed with cancer several years ago. First using it as a way to update friends and acquaintances of his surgery and cancer treatments, he grew fond of using the platform as a way to not only spread the word about good things happening in Tuscaloosa, but to provide a steady stream of encouragement and friendship to the scores of people he cared about — a number that is far too high to calculate.

Barrett Elder, a former TTS employee who worked closely with Buchanan, was just one of the many to benefit from the kindness and brilliance of a coworker more than twice his age.

"Bill is one of the greatest storytellers I’ve ever met," Elder told Patch. "When I worked at TTS, you could often find me in his office listening to his stories about his college years or the newspaper business. I would tell him that I hoped I would have a collection of stories as long as his by the time I reached his age. Bill was a fantastic coworker, mentor, and friend. He will undoubtedly be missed by many, including myself."

In thinking back on the legacy of her longtime friend, Waldrop said that Buchanan built so much "in snippets" and pondered what would have been possible had he been actively engaged in Tuscaloosa for the three decades he was in the newspaper business, working in small towns all over America.

And, like so many other stories about Buchanan's life and memory, it would be one of his own tales that resonated with Waldrop upon news of his untimely death.

"He was telling me a story once years ago, about one of the supervisors at Smith Newspapers who helped him," she said, her voice full with emotion as she tried not to cry. "Bill asked this gentleman 'how can I ever repay you?' and this man said 'Give somebody a hand when they need it ... be there for somebody else down the road' and I’ve thought about that so much in the last 24 hours because he did that so beautifully time and time and time again.”

Memorial services for Bill Buchanan have not been announced at this time.

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