Acton Observer: Remembering a treasured trio

Things happen in threes, as they say. 

Three people very important to me passed away in 2025: my best friend of 56 years, my closest sibling, and my mother. 

At 79, it is not unreasonable to experience death among your family and friends… but really? 

Terry Taylor, Billy Anderson, and Mary Anderson all passed in 2025. We shared a lot: happiness, success, setbacks, and more — much of it tied to Acton.

We were all products of Acton (Carlisle) High School. Mary graduated from Acton High School in 1943, Terry in 1961, I in 1964, and Bill in 1965. 

Mary was a standout in sports. She longed to play baseball in high school, but was not allowed to try out. Her athleticism found its release in her lifelong love of golf. (I have videos of her hitting a golf ball when she was in her 90s.) 

And we were all products of Emerson Playground — a place where Billy and I met Terry and his younger brother Hoyt playing — what else? — baseball in the mid-1950s with Coach O’Connell.

In addition to competing in interscholastic sports there, Mary injected herself into my games on two memorable occasions.

First, she dragged 7-year-old me out of a baseball game so I could go to a tennis lesson (which cured me of that game). Then she arrived to collect 11-year-old me as I was struggling at the plate in a home run-hitting contest. Getting me for dinner wasn’t enough: She took the bat from my hands, called for a pitch, and promptly hit a homer.

As co-founder of the Hubbard Street Athletic Club, she and her friends watched Terry and me play football at Emerson Playground circa 1960.

‘Best All-Around’

Terry captained both football and baseball, presided over his class junior and senior years, and was honored as “Most Athletic” and “Best All-Around.” We reconnected at a party of Concordians in 1969 and formed an instant friendship that resulted in an extended family of our families.

We had decades of friendly competition with and against each other in touch football, golf, squash, rock-paper-scissors… and country music mixes. (His mix of “Back Side of Thirty,” “Thirty-Nine and Holding,” and “Middle Age Crazy” aced anything I could put together.) 

Terry left many friends feeling his absence when he moved to Cleveland for a career with State Farm. He returned each year to play in my golf member/guest tournament, a tradition which began in the 1970s and lasted into the 2010s. 

He was a favorite of a large number of tournament participants, and his arrival always prompted discussions about the revival of our longstanding touch football games (two-on-two) against John Boynton and Mike Frantz (co-captains of the 1963 CCHS football team) — even as most of us could barely run anymore.

Renaissance man

Bill was not only class president his freshman year in high school, but also an excellent athlete, playing baseball, football, and golf. 

He gave up football in his senior year to captain the first soccer team in CCHS history. He returned to football in prep school and was a starting varsity college player as a tight end at Colby. (Coincidentally, he, Terry, and I all played NESCAC football as ends.) 

Frustrated that they threw to an outstanding wide receiver, Bill resigned his college football career and unleashed his immense creative reservoir. 

Abiding love

My favorite story about Bill’s athletic prowess stems from the day we were playing in a junior golf tournament. 

Coming off a bad score on the 16th hole, he faced the 17th tee — a par 5. He pulled out his putter and hit the ball 170 yards right down the middle of the fairway. His next shot — again with his putter — was right down the middle of the fairway and short of the brook. And, his next shot, again with the putter, came to rest a few feet over the green. 

Most golfers carry 14 clubs to get where Bill did with his putter.

He was a 13th-generation Concordian who manifested his abiding love for our town by photographing its beauty and walking its paths, roads, and streets. 

Just shy of his 30th birthday, Bill lost parts of both hands in a Acton Independent Battery accident.

After years of extensive surgeries, he regained his strength, overcame his physical limitations, and unleashed his artistic, probing, and creative mind. He traveled the world, maintained friendships, made new ones, attended Harvard Divinity School, conducted research on Timothy Leary, and left an enormous collection of photography behind in his apartment and storage lockers.

Love and history

Mary, too, was a force.

She made friends with everyone. She was a gourmet cook. She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis just short of her 68th birthday. She read. She wrote. She volunteered. She “encouraged” Bill, our father, and me — against all our wills — to play bridge. She sent us off to years of dancing school, which didn’t help as much as a 15-minute dancing session with her to “Mack the Knife.” And she learned of Terry when she herself went to dancing school at the Scout House with his parents.

A lot of love and a lot of history.

As I consider the future without Billy, Terry, and Mary, I feel the ache of their absence, although it’s lessened by the memory of the time we spent together. I consider myself one of the luckiest men on earth to have had these three people, among many others, in my life. 

Thank you, friends.