From Billy to Bill – Remembering one of the founders of L’Arche in North America
Bill, hanging from the rafters, with the original group of Daybreak members. In 1969, when L’Arche Daybreak started, leading the parade was Billy Van Buren. He came to us October 16, 1969, a very young 16 year old in frail health and a new green suit. (He loved that suit!) Billy had been born into dysfunction and instability and, at age 10, he was taken into guardianship and institutionalized. At age 16, his wardship ended and he came to Daybreak – a rather lost boy, vulnerable, and lonely. Billy was easy to live with because he was so dependent and his only expression of self or of personal desire was the odd mention of a niggling awareness that somewhere he had a family.
After Bill died in 2009, he was eulogised as a man of great sensitivity, as a man of relationships, and as a man of humour. “How do you get Holy Water? You boil the hell out of it!” Bill got a lot of mileage out of that joke!
Bill was an engaging and dedicated member of the Craft Studio team.
Thanks to the love and support he received from so many during his life at Daybreak, he grew beyond all expectations. His was not an easy life and he had much to be angry about but, in his journey to wholeness, he became truly human – a gift to others – and some how his label just slipped away.
At L’Arche our vision can be expressed in two words: “Vivre Avec” (for it came with us from France) or “Live with”. Not “to work for” because sharing life is the work of L’Arche! When you have been born into a world that rejects you, when you have been shuffled to the fringe of society and you see yourself as less than whole and someone says to you “I would like to share life with you”, together you create an environment of acceptance and affirmation. That is the most life giving therapy that can happen – and it has been happening at Daybreak for over 40 years!
~ Steve Newroth – founder of L’Arche Daybreak along with his wife Anne, and Bill the first core member at Daybreak.
