| Legends and Supporters |
Bill Ford
Founder of the French CSC
Bill Ford died at the young age of 53. He spent most of his life abroad and wherever he went he spread the word of Celtic. He was the inspiration behind the merging of a number of different supporters clubs in France under the banner of the French CSC.
Below is his obituary from The Scotsman but also a remembrance by a colleague in Paris.
Bill Ford, RIP.
Links
Obituary
Born: 7 September, 1953, in Kirkcaldy.
Died: 5 July, 2007, in Paris, aged 53.
(The Scotsman)
BILL Ford’s was a life of extreme contrasts. As president of the college Student Representative Council, he was notable for leading a major student occupation of Moray House in 1975-76. Within six months of the end of the occupation, he turned his back on a teaching job in Scotland (and no doubt a political career) to move to Paris. Although a regular visitor here, he was to spend the remainder of his life in France. His politics as a young man were of the revolutionary left – he was a member of International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers Party) – and that undoubtedly ensured a career in mainstream politics was stillborn.
He briefly taught English as a foreign language but quickly found work as a translator. He was to be gainfully employed and well remunerated as a translator and as a manager in the financial and banking sector in Paris for much of the rest of his life. But Bill was more than a political animal and much more than the sum of the demands of his exacting jobs. He was a dedicated social being, an avid reader and bibliophile and a man of untiring mind and zest for life.
His energy for conversation (especially if supported with a bottle or two of wine) was legendary. A walk round the streets of Edinburgh or Glasgow or Paris was always a history lesson woven from memories of contacts, events and reading. He was generous with his time and unfailingly kind to others. As one of his many friends in France said, Bill was action direct not only politically but also socially. Before the 2005 general election, he mentioned to a mutual friend in Fife his shared past as a Scottish Union of Students and NUS delegate with the then prime minister in waiting, Gordon Brown – something about a carry-out on the platform of Newcastle station on the way south for an NUS conference sometime in the 1970s.
Petitioned for his vote by the said Mr Brown on the campaign trail on Kirkcaldy High Street, the said Fife-speaking friend asked, «Div ye ken Bill Ford?» When Mr Brown seemed to answer in a broad smile of recognition, he was hit with the retort, «He says yer owin’ him a fiver!» The then Chancellor unembarrassed, beckoned an aide for cash, the grin ever broader. As well as political colleagues and adversaries, he and Mr Brown had been classmates at Kirkcaldy High School and Edinburgh University.
Bill’s interest in language was lively too. Fluent in French, he often spoke in Scots vernacular. He had knowledge of several other European languages. He loved the fun and nuance of words. I once visited Bill and Hélène in their large country home in Normandy (another contrast for a Thornton boy). He handed me a CD cover and asked if I could indentify and explain the meaning of a song title without taking clues from the artiste. It was Aninginainanaw. Possibly thrown by the context, I hadn’t a clue. Bill delighted in my confusion and played the track. It was a smart and cleverly executed Michael Mara number about a conversation in a Dundee baker’s shop. Pies and bridies. Flavours. Two customers, one orders an onion one. Think about it. Bill would have felt unalloyed joy in the puzzled look on your face. Last year, he turned up at an event in the National Library of Scotland. It was a talk given by the playwright Hector MacMillan on his book about the life of the Scottish radical Thomas Muir of Huntershill.
Over a meal afterwards, he befriended Hector and waxed knowledgeably on the radicals in post-revolution Paris in the 1790s including Scots and Irish. In a strange and ironic twist, having then devised a research proposal on this topic, Bill contacted a professor of English culture at the Sorbonne and arranged a meeting. On the appointed date, he turned up only to find the professor’s office occupied by youths, fresh from car burnings in the banlieue, literally throwing computers out of the windows. Yes, of course it’s ironic, conceded the former college occupier. But he would not tolerate slack political thinking. These kids are plebians in the Marxist sense, he said. They have no politics, no political programme and no leadership. It’s just letting off steam. He was equally scathing of loose social democratic politics all around in Britain and France.
Born the son of a merchant seaman, circumstances around his birth and his mother’s health required that he live large parts of his childhood with his paternal grandparents in the village of Thornton, then notable as a railway junction. After such a difficult start, his grandparents were his safety net. Bill inherited a love of books, ideas and politics, as well as a positive notion of himself from them – his grandfather worked on the railway at Thornton and was a National Union of Railwaymen official and a local councillor. The single major influence on his productive life though was Hélène. They met in Spring 1979 and were together to the end.
Behind the easy social exterior, underneath the engaged operator in the world of ideas, work and politics, behind his playful and serious obsession with the affairs of Celtic FC in the last decade, finding Hélène gave Bill what he had craved his entire life. He was a man of profound personal pain and hurt and she gave him the love and acceptance he desperately needed. In the face of what sometimes seemed to the outsider like impossible and eccentric demands, she was his patient and loving strength.
His pain eventually won out. In a strange and barely believable twist of fate, his symptoms became manifest immediately after a case conference he attended for his mother Mina in Glenrothes hospital. He literally collapsed and was airlifted back to Paris. The lung cancer that may have been active for some time became aggressive and he was to live only for a further five weeks.
He is survived by his mother, Mina, and by his wife, Hélène Steinberg Ford.
Bill Ford(1953-2007)
Source: http://parisbhoy.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/bill-ford-1953-2007-2/
Bill friends gave him a last farewell in Montmartre Cemetery. Now he rests near Stendhal, close to the Harp Bar, where we have remembered the good times spent together. Old friends were reunited, and we all discovered sides of Bill that were only suggested, meeting his friends from Fife and elsewhere which we felt knowing already. We had much more to learn from Bill.
Speaking in front of this deeply saddened assembly was no easy task. Words came naturally from my heart, but it was painful to hear them. Here is the text of my speech in memory of Bill. The translation is a bit poor, for my usual translator is unavailable for a while, probably working on the great Stendhal’s novels. Another founder of the French CSC had begun the homage, quoting the word from Celtic Football Club sent by John-Paul Taylor. A Scottish friend of Bill followed and was close to cry when my turn came. The author of the apt obituary published in that morning’s Scotsman said the last word, a sensible personal evocation.
I stand here to tell you a few words on behalf of this great Celtic family, which Bill Ford cherished so much. For the past week, messages of sympathy have poured from everywhere in. From the regions of France, Scotland and Ireland, of course, but also from the rest of Europe, Americas, South Korea and Australia. These messages tell the same story. We all lost a friend. Some had only met Bill once or twice, at a Celtic match or in Paris. Others had talked to him for months or years through the internet.
For us in France, Bill was a friend, a brother, like a father. Before we met him, we were all isolated Celtic fans. From us, he made a true family, which he was the heart and the soul of, which he was proud of. Looking again at the photographs from the happy times in Stuttgart, Seville, Barcelone or Scotland, I read the permanent joy on his face when we were around him. Everyone of us had a special, personal bond with him, for he paid notice to everyone, and took the time to know and understand us, as well as to share his passions.
Bill was a great ambassador of Celtic, Scotland and Ireland in this country. Always helpful and ready to assist the members of this special family, whether it was the team bus lost in Paris, or a young Scot wandering in the metro. He was also a link between the old tradition of a club which represents more than football and the new generations. Today, he joins up with those who made the great history of Celtic, whether their names are remembered in books, or have remained anonymous, like these workers from the East of Glasgow that built the first Celtic Park.
We shall not forget you, Bill. We shall not forget the souvenirs you gave us, your passion, your immense culture and knowledge, your friendship. Thank you for everything. You have given us the strength to continue your mission, to achieve the projects a cruel, sudden disease will not manage to break. You will always be with us. You’ll never walk alone, Bill, for you’ll remain in our minds and hearts forever.