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< Nov/Dec 2001
	Paddle People
William Nealy 1953–2001 Whitewater’s Poet Laureate Frederick Reimers

The whitewater community lost its Poet Laureate and one of its best teachers on July 19 when William Nealy died by his own hand in Chapel Hill, N.C. Nealy was arguably the best-known ambassador of his sport, entertaining and instructing hundreds of thousands of paddlers through his illustrated books, including the classics: Whitewater Home Companion Volume I and II, Whitewater Tales of Terror, Kayaks to Hell and his best-known work, Kayak.

"William brought as many people to the sport as anyone because he softened it," says Tom Schlinkert, a long-time industry insider and close friend of Nealy’s. "He made himself the buffoon and showed that it was okay to fail, and even more importantly, critical to learn from those failures." Kayak sold over 250,000 copies and was translated into five languages.

Yet Nealy simultaneously captured the counterculture of the whitewater community. "William kind of personified the rebel present in every paddler," says Bob Sellinger, owner of Menasha Ridge Press, publisher of Nealy’s books. "Paddlers revel in being different, and so did William." His books abound with renegade characters, swinging through mainstream culture on paddling trips full of authentic mayhem. And his humor could often be dark. Seldom is the illustration in which some paddler isn’t being pummeled by the river, or the rift between kayakers and rafts or paddlers and locals exacerbated.

When, as a novice paddler in Jackson, Wyoming, in the summer of 1991, I was given Kayak as a gift, I quickly realized that I had stumbled upon a kindred community if this wacky but astoundingly educational book was the sport’s seminal instruction manual. That first quixotic summer I literally read the book every evening after paddling and was able to apply the lessons I learned the next day on the water. Over the course of dozens of readings, I grew to feel I knew the author personally, as every reader did, if not from the un-self-conscious scrawl that constituted the book’s text, then from the off-beat but dead-on humor that surged through each chapter and illustration.

In fact, the success of Kayak as an instruction manual hinged squarely on that ability of Nealy’s to convey himself personally to the reader. It is all too obvious that each of the mishaps that befall the illustrated characters populating each of his books happened, in reality, to Nealy himself. That self-effacement, while hilarious, also embodied empathy for the reader and for the mishaps that were sure to befall him as he bounced his or her way down the steep learning curve of the sport. In short, each reader of Kayak, as well as Inline (an inline skating manual) and Mountain Bike, grew to trust Nealy as a teacher because he felt he knew William as a friend.

As an instructor, Nealy’s strength lay in his ability to convey in simple terms the often counter-intuitive techniques of adventure sports. His ultimate triumph of illustration came when he illustrated Jim Snyder's Squirt Boating and Beyond. In order to draw the sequences of squirt moves like splatting, blasting and the baffling mystery move, Nealy had to first understand the moves himself. "Jim (Snyder) can do things most humans can’t," says Holland Wallace, Nealy’s widow and companion of over 40 years. "Jim came to our swimming pool and demonstrated the moves and it still took William six drawings for every one you see in the book."

Nealy will above-all be remembered by his readers for his ability to build a positive learning environment with his pupils through empathy and humility. "He did that on a personal level, too," says Schlinkert. "He always made you feel comfortable. He made you feel important."

Those who knew him best invariably described Nealy as a kind and loving person. "He was the best of people," says Sellinger.

Ironically, it was his empathic nature that may have kept Nealy from reaching out to his friends and family when his moods became dark. "By nature he was a guy who didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable," says Schlinkert. "He concealed a lot of his own demons in order to make you feel comfortable."