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The author, William "Poet Bill" Childers, was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1931. The
Childers' clan, mom, dad, big (and only) brother Lewis moved to Dallas,
Texas in 1939 via a one year stop-over in Wilson, North Carolina. It was
a new life, very busy for a young country boy. Bill graduated from high
school in 1948.
Bill joined the United States Marine Corps in 1951, serving in the
Korean war as a gunner on an M-46 Marine Tank. His tank was severely
damaged by a North Korean land mine, but the crew sustained no serious
wounds. He returned to California in 1952, and completed his Marine duty
as a Staff Sergeant, prior to release to inactive duty in 1954.
Bill felt the call to the ministry in the Methodist Church, attending
SMU and their school of theology. He then returned to active duty as an
ordained Methodist Minister, and a LTjg in the United States Navy.
During his twenty-one years of service in the Navy, he spent one year in
Vietnam, 1968-69 as a Chaplain with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines. He
retired in 1982 from the Navy as a Lt Cdr, and returned home as a Staff
Member of the First United Methodist Church in Dallas. He retired from
the United Methodist Church in 1996.
Bill worked as a Hearing Officer for the City of Dallas for eleven
years where he began writing his first book, Integrity of The Spirit,
Escaping The Mind-Game!, which was completed and published in 2004.
Bill, who also serves as a precinct chaplain for the Dallas Police
Department, has never stopped writing the poetry he loves, continuing
what had begun as that fourteen year old in the shadow of WWII. Perhaps
many poetry lovers might debate much of those first efforts being tagged
as 'poetry', but they were at least 'efforts'. They were the beginning,
and he has been writing ever since.
Bill is currently working on a new book of poetry, tentatively titled
Leaves from the Acorn Tree, which he hopes to be
published this year (2007) or soon after.
Bill, His wife Tommie, along with three of their children and five
grand-children, lives in Dallas and the surrounding area. He also has a
son, an auditor for the state of Nevada who lives with his wife and two
children in Las Vegas.
Poet Bill can be contacted at
poetbill@addeigloriam.org.
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