Former disc jockey dies at 56
By ROBERT WILSON, rlwilson2594@msn.com
May 18, 2007


Though Bill Purdue never got to see this world, he tried to experience it in every way he could.
Through it all, his wife said, "he didn't hold back."





"He always said being blind could be an ability or a disability. He made his an ability," Sandra Purdue said.

William Ray "Bill" Purdue died Monday at age 56, a victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Mr. Purdue was blind almost from birth, said Sandra Purdue. He was born prematurely in East St. Louis, Ill., and weighed 2 1/2 pounds. He spent four months in an incubator where, she said, an overabundance of oxygen in his system cost him his eyesight.

He was educated at the Illinois School for the Blind in Jacksonville and the Missouri School for the Blind in St Louis and was one of the first vision-impaired students in the public school system there.

His father, a Baptist pastor, accepted a job at a church in East Tennessee, and Mr. Purdue wound up getting a degree from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City.

"He would rather have been an auto mechanic," Sandra Purdue said.

She told how his college friend, John Abbott, would place a piece of cardboard on his bike so that it made a sound as the spokes hit it and that Mr. Purdue would follow the sound around campus riding on his own bike.

Mr. Purdue got his degree in sociology and was for a time a social worker. But his prime vocation was in radio. He worked as a disc jockey at stations in Morristown, Alabama, West Tennessee and other places. His wife said he had an ear for classic country and rock music.

"He always called his show the 'Wild Bill Extravaganza,' " Sandra Purdue said, adding he also worked in gospel radio.

Mr. Purdue got his chance to try driving with the help of some of his buddies in a church parking lot once, according to longtime family friend Mary Mitchell.

And Sandra Purdue said that Mr. Purdue also got the chance to drive a boat and pull his friend Abbott as he skied behind.

"I would tell him which way to steer," she said.

"My husband was nothing but a gentleman."