Bill Speck - always interesting, always interested

For many years I knew Bill only slightly, as a friend of a friend.  He used to come occasionally to concerts given by a choir I sang in, which Robert and Anne also belonged to.  Though Bill's musical passion was jazz, he had a fine appreciation of many kinds of music and was keen to support his friends in any way he could.

This situation changed a few years ago.  Bill and Mary were trying to find someone to translate a piece of 17^th century Latin for them as they wondered if it might have some relevance to a project they were working on.  And eventually Robert suggested that I might have a go; he knew that I sometimes undertook translation for the choir.  So Bill rang and asked if I would consider it.  He said it was a letter, so I assumed that it would be a couple of pages long.  How wrong I was.  It was 46 pages of very tiny italic 17^th century printing and looked horribly intimidating.  However, I like a challenge so I took it on.  Once I got going I found it interesting, even enjoyable.  Though it did take some months (the writing was so small that I needed a magnifying glass throughout, and when the author wandered into Greek from time to time it was so small that it defied the glass), I was delighted to complete it.

What I liked especially was the enthusiasm that Bill and Mary maintained for the work. Eventually it turned out that this enormous letter was not really relevant to what they were working on at the time, but Bill was obviously still interested to find out what the author thought and believed.  The letter was full of classical and biblical references, some of them extremely obscure and difficult to track down.  Bill was delighted by every problem solved and for the light that was thereby shed on the author's views and character.

After the translation was finished Bill continued to send me bits of Latin from time to time  -  passages from obscure manuscripts, and monumental tombstones.  I was always only too happy to get these requests and will miss the little challenges involved.  Indeed like all Bill's friends I will miss all the contacts we had and will mourn his loss for a long time.                                   Janet Davies