William "Linus" Eddy, 1985-2025
My family, and the world, lost Will Eddy on December 30. I’ve been keeping the news fairly private since then, but now I want to tell you a few things about him that you might not know. Here are some thoughts I expressed at his memorial service Sunday.
He was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, while I was in the Army.
Pretty sure we only decided to put “William” on his birth certificate at the last minute. Martina and I were both 24 at the time, and — at least the way I remember it — we were talked out of “officially” naming him Linus by parents who thought were weren’t taking the responsibility seriously enough. Of course, once he was born, we wound up calling him Linus anyway. That name came from the Peanuts cartoon character, who was always dealing out philosophical wisdom. His middle name Sebastian came from the martyred young 3rd Century saint — the one who gets arrows shot at him in R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” video. And the name William came from my dad, who had died suddenly in his early 40s, when I was 13.
As a baby, Linus often wore a shirt with purple cows on it. He was very cuddly!
When he was four, we told him he was going to have a baby sister. His reaction was “That’s just a story! I’m the baby!” But when Cordelia was born, it was one of his happiest days ever. When you look at pictures of the two of them together, and two years later with Sherman, you can’t miss noticing how much he cherished them.
When he was about five, I helped him call up a radio station and he asked them to play his favorite song, the theme from Ghostbusters. His second favorite song was Philip Glass’s score from Koyanisqaatsi. He would sit in front of the TV and watch that movie all the way through. He said if he had a band when he got older, he would play the kind of music you’d hear in Super Mario Brothers or The Legend of Zelda.
When he was 11, he and his friends Chris Okula, Steven Girard and Jonathan Mullen loved Magic Cards, Star Wars, something called QBasic that I guess is a computer language, and Weird Al Yankovic, who I took them all to see at Hershey Park, and meet backstage. They’d probably outgrown Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at that point. One day Linus and Jonathan rode their bikes up to a record store called the Wall at Andorra Mall in Manayunk, Philly, and they each spent $5 on the same two Alanis Morissette cassette singles because there weren’t any Green Day cassette singles available. Linus got dizzy after the bike ride, maybe because the exercise set off his asthma or because he lied when he said he’d made himself a cheese sandwich before he left home. So I had to go pick them up.
When he was a teenager, his hair kept growing longer and longer. At first it was extremely straight, but later it got super curly. For a while it was dyed orange, or bleached. Sometimes he wore a Purina Cat Chow T-shirt. He was the first person I knew who downloaded music, the first person I knew who used social media — a network called Xanga, which started in 1999, four years before MySpace — eventually the first person I knew who used a Kindle or understood what virtual reality or A.I. were. He was an early adopter, the exact opposite of me.
In 2005 or so, I had a Halloween party in New York and he dressed up like Where’s Waldo. I forget what year he started selling Vitamixers, but I can say for sure that he turned peddling blenders into an art. He was so entertaining, had so much stage presence. He was a joy to watch. He bonded with customers in minutes. He was a great salesman because people felt his warmth, which was genuine.
In 2016 or thereabouts, he bought me the best present anyone ever bought for me in my entire life. My gas lawnmower had stopped working after too many rocks hidden in our Austin backyard blew holes through its crankcase, so we had to trash that one and hire neighborhood kids to mow our lawn. Which was fine because mowing was kind of a pain. But one day I opened up the front door and there was a really big box. Inside was an electric, battery-run lawnmower that I’ve not only used ever since — I actually enjoy using it because it’s so quiet and painless to start and easy to push and doesn’t puff fumes everywhere. Ever since I got it, mowing the lawn has been almost therapeutic for me. And somehow Linus just knew. It’s my favorite example of how generous and thoughtful he could be. I’m glad I got to help him paint the walls of his first house in North Carolina. It was the least I could do.
He took in all of life, tossed everything in the blender together and didn’t mind which food collided with which because he loved all of it. He was a big fan of Good Eats host Alton Brown and an advocate for “super foods” and green smoothies who didn’t mind sneaking the occasional slice of lunchmeat to his sister’s vegan dachshund Moose. He often worried he wasn’t a good dad, because he’d lost his temper or whatever. I reassured him that all parents get frustrated at their kids, and I only hope I was as good a dad to him as he seemed to be to Everett and Juniper. He’d text me, “Hey Dad. Good time to catch up?” Or “You got time to chat? Nothing urgent.” I’d either pick up right away, or call him back in a few. Last summer he called me up after staying up all night working on putting together an A.I. app called Genrebender, centered around funny descriptions of imaginary styles of music like: “Houseplant Harmony: Gentle melodies designed to help your succulents thrive.“ “Motivational Mumble Rap: Barely intelligible lyrics about achieving your dreams and maximizing potential.” “Hardcore for Software Engineers.” “Garage Rock for People With Two-Car Garages.” It was hilarious, and so was the program he sent me later about creating the perfect pickle. We joked that if you used a different vegetable like say zucchinis, the cucumbers would be scandalized.
A couple months ago, he was excited because he’d just applied for a new job where he could finally use the horticulture skills he’d learned way back at Temple University and the permaculture skills he’d picked up in San Marcos, when he lived near us in Austin in 2014. They should have hired him; they don’t know what they’re missing. I know I’m going to miss him forever.
William’s obituary and funeral home page
A GoFundMe link, to help out William’s two children
Google photo page: The Life of Will Eddy (I posed photos under the name “Cheddar”)
Video and slide show: A Glimpse of Will Eddy’s Earthly Life
I'm so sorry for your loss. That was a beautiful reminiscence.
I'm very sorry about this awful news.