Eulogy For Captain Bill
| Eulogy For Captain Bill | |
|---|---|
| |
| Author | Flemming Funch |
| Type of Article | Category:Biography |
| Website | http://scientolipedia.org/info/Bill Robertson |
- Eulogy for Bill Robertson (Captain Bill) written for Ivy Magazine, Issue 3, November 1991. [1]
There are few people who have been involved with auditing or with Scientology who never heard of Captain Bill. He was one of those real big names who always appeared at the forefront of what was going on. Over the years he has been intimately involved with many different parts of the subject in many different ways. He leaves be hind a lot of friends, and probably also a few opponents here and there.
I am happy to have been a friend of his for the last few years, I wouldn’t want to have missed that.
Bill was a very colourful character and there was always something going on where he was. Always thinking and acting in a big manner, he wasn't the person to let details get in his way.
scientology experience[edit | edit source]
Bill entered Scientology in the beginning of the ‘60s. He did the Briefing Course on Saint Hill in 1965 and became a staff member there. He went on to the Sea Organization when it was formed in ‘67 and was intimately involved with many of its operations until ‘81. He became very successful as a missionaire in many different areas. In Europe he was probably best known for the year he was the Commanding Officer on FOLO in Copenhagen. He was in very good favour with Hubbard because of his continued ability to get things done against impossible odds. Over a number of years he was captain on the flagship Apollo. LRH awarded him the rank of Captain, the only person besides Mary Sue Hubbard at the time who got that title. He had the exclusive honor of being known widely from then on as simply “Captain Bill”.
The first time I personally saw Bill was in 1980 when I was the Qual Sec in the Denmark Day org. Everybody in the org was very honored that a VIP like Captain Bill was going to visit, so the whole place had to be shiney and ready for a “white glove” inspection.
We worked all day to clean up, and my colleague from the evening shift and I had decided to overhaul the whole office. We had everything turned upside down when Bill arrived early for the tour and I was in the middle of carrying out the trash. He just grinned and shook our hands, but we were rather embarrassed.
galactic patrol[edit | edit source]
The next year, in ‘81, his SP declare arrived in my in-basket. It said that he and a bunch of other Sea Org notables were claiming to be representatives from the Galactic Patrol professing to be on a mission to save this planet. The issue was sup posed to ridicule the idea, of course.
But, I thought: “Gee! Wow! The Galactic Patrol!?! Of course, where do I join up”? It didn’t say anything in the ethics order about where to join, so I didn’t think much about it before a couple of years later.
I had in the meantime been declared myself and had sort of realized that something was fishy with the old organization. Various materials had started circulating, and some of the first materials we ran into were some many times copied “Sec tor Operations Bulletins” written by Captain Bill.
They put the big perspective into a lot of things, and also provided the kind of revitalized game that many of us had been looking for. Here was obviously a guy who was willing to do whatever it took to straighten things out.
rtc plants[edit | edit source]
In late ‘83 I got an invitation to an “International OT Committee Conference” with Bill and others in southern Spain. Without much hesitation I went there with my family and several other friends from Copenhagen. We were very impressed with Bill and with the game plan that he presented at the meeting. And in good style the meeting wasn’t without adventure either.
The church had sent in a guy under false pretense to go crazy and disturb the meeting. The poor guy had hardly started attacking and abusing one of the other speakers before Bill shouted “HCO, bring order!”
Most ex-staff members recognize this as a signal to remove a disturbing person from the area. During the course of about half a minute a bunch of the participants carried a kick ing and screaming RTC operative out and dumped him on the parking lot. After which the meeting continued as before with hardly a comma skipped.
Bill moved from Spain to Germany in 1985 and started concentrating more on tech. He felt it was needed for the independent field to have a better quality of tech delivery.
What started as a corrective action gradually developed into a large scale research project to develop and teach further advanced levels.
Bill developed a series of new advanced levels numbered from OT8 to OT16 and beyond, he wrote an impressive amount of technical issues, taped numerous technical briefings, and gave lectures of various kinds. He also trained about 50 upper level C/Ses and was instrumental in getting many new centers and delivery terminals started mostly across Europe. In all this he was unswerving in his dedication to the basics of Standard Tech and he continuously gave LRH credit for making it all possible.
how he worked[edit | edit source]
I myself have had the pleasure on several occasions to spend a few weeks with Bill doing advanced levels and C/S training courses. Bill had a certain unique style of running the show. He would zip around on his motorcycle between centers and students and would spend hours per sonally with each student going over technical issues and C/Sing matters.
I miss the many hours I've spent with Bill over a cup of coffee and a cigarette going over technical points or matters of the world. Talking with him was always a very rewarding experience and he would happily go on until everything had been put in place.
I have seen him on at least one occasion when he was with his closest friends spend two straight days talking non-stop. I have seen people get the impression from Bill’s writings that he would be hard-nosed and inflexible to deal with. No so at all. I have several times arrived with a long list of challenges and disagreements for him. To my surprise I found every time that he was willing to talk about everything and that he already had given it a lot of thought and had an answer ready. I must admit there are still important technical points I differ with him on. However, I have never had any reason to doubt his technical competence and dedication to the truth.
last years[edit | edit source]
The last few years Bill was living quietly in his secluded mountain home with his communicator and companion Maria Maloney. He occasionally travelled around to deliver seminars, but otherwise concentrated on training of C/Ses and on his music. Bill was an accomplished musical composer. He had an impressive studio in his home where he created music with his computer.
He produced a total of 19 albums. My favorite is the one with an original tune for each of the star systems in the old galactic confederation.
Maria will still be working as his communicator and will continue to distribute his works, including the Sector 9 and Teegeeack books and the many taped lectures.
Captain Bill will be sorely missed by the many people who knew him well or who benefited from his work. I hope he will continue pursuing his ideals vigorously wherever he is.
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references[edit | edit source]