Swimming with the Tide

How to make your work and life flow smoother and happier

Deirdre Brand reading a poem elegy before lowering Bill’s ashes into the ocean.

I watched through misty eyes as Deirdre Brand, straddling her surfboard, lifted the flower filled basket from Bill’s surfboard and gently let go of it into the water. Bill Brand’s ashes, weighed down in the basket, sank slowly to the bottom of the ocean off Redondo Beach. The flowers remained floating on the surface, like his memory and good works in our minds. Goodbye Bill, thank you, we miss you, I whispered to the gentle breeze. Hoots of “Yay Bill! Thank you! Love you!”, erupted from the circle of surfers, swimmers and paddle boarders that surrounded Deirdre. Spray from their splashing of water upwards, and the fireboat’s water cannon misted us on the nearby boats. A fitting farewell and tribute to one who fought to keep Redondo Beach’s environment clean and open for recreation and enjoyment.

On the surface it may not seem like Bill swam with the tide. He questioned the assumption that “progress” was inevitable, that development of malls and large business building complexes to replace the antiquated powerplant waterfront acreage had to be. He endeavored to replace that eyesore with green space for his community, against well-funded, vindictive, and powerful large developers, who viciously fought and sued him and his compatriots. Bill started as a citizen activist, then a City…