William Lane:  

Most of my friends will remember me as not to serious when I was in high school. I was involved in a number of things including DJing at the school radio station, WPHS; performing in various spoofs during assemblies for the football, basketball & baseball teams; performing in several plays that the Drama Department put on in the old school gym, & of course being the class clown. I also ran for the student counsel, gave an improvised speech the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered, before marching downtown & back to Park, and was very political. My story began in Asheville, North Carolina, at 11 AM at the Biltmore Memorial Hospital. I spent the first 7 years of my life there. My family moved to Wisconsin in 1957 to Monroe. We moved to Racine in the Summer of 1961 after my dad completed studies at UW in Madison completing Masters' Degree studies in English, History, & Education. He was recruited by Elizabeth Williams, who was head of the English Department for the Racine Unified School District, and was the major reason my dad chose Racine over Phoenix, Arizona. My friends who lived near me in West Racine could find me playing basketball in the alley across from our house on Blaine Boulevard behind Bill Rassmusen's house with Jeff Goff, Dave Douglas, Bill Rassmusen, John Bardeen, Butch Arzikovic, and the other kids who lived in our neighborhood. We used the boulevard islands for football games and building snow forts for snowball battles. I also helped my mom & dad, Jim & Jo Lane, work on stuff for my dad's classes at the Central Office of the Unified School District on Northwestern Avenue across from the golf course during Summers when school was not in session. I attended Starbuck Junior High School on Ohio and many of those students lived close to us in West Racine. I was calling a number of girls and hanging out with them and their friends. I was a member involved in BEEYOP. I was a counselor at a Summer Camp near Plymouth, Wisconsin. I went to YMCA camp on Lake Cormorant, in Minnesota, close to our family Summer cottage on Lake Sally ten miles from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Most of my friends would have considered me a happy go lucky and always pulling some prank to get attention. One included raiding Horlick before the homecoming football game where I got the school flag from there gym and all the uniforms for the team, and making paper players put in Case High's lunch room in back of their Eagle and positioned strategically on Joan Of Arc near Park's library. I had to return the flag and uniforms to Horlick without getting caught before the school had us arrested and when I did with the other parties involved and as we were returning the stuff just as the football team in their sweats were hitting the practice field in the rain. As the team chased around the muddy field we tossed the uniforms out of a Volkswagen van as the players chased us we tossed the uniforms and flag out on to the muddy field as we made our getaway down the slope in to the road that led to Douglas Avenue and back to Park. The whole incident had started as a prank under the guise of the West Racine Cleaners bi annual flag cleaning. For those who don't remember the flag was a Confederate Army flag. It represented every thing I worked against during the Civil Rights Movement. While in the school to take the 40' by 20' flag we went through the locker room where we had found stickers reading: Park spelled backwards is Krap, the player's helmuts. So it was on and the helmut & uniforms were added to the confiscated items. Our homeroom teacher became aware of our law breaking actions and in order to save us from being expelled and put in jail gave us passes to give us time to return the gear and the flag. Needless to say if we had been caught there would have been serious consequences to answer to. That night at the game you could not read the numbers on the Horlick players uniform because of the mud on them. We won the game 26 to 0. Nothing like a little psychological warfare to overwhelm your opponent. Luckily no else found out that I was involved until my mom spilled the beans in 1978 at Thanksgiving dinner. Of course it was too late for anyone to do anything about it then so I really lucked out. Once I left Racine I went to UCLA before entering active duty in the USMC. I trained in Quantico & Langley during OCS then was stationed overseas in Quang Tri Province. After returning home I was last stationed in Jacksonville at the Naval Air Station as a Cross Country Chaser (Provost Marshall Service). I ended my military service at the rank of Captain before completing my required active duty. I had spent 4 years in USMC ROTC before entering active duty so I had no military service requirements upon my release from active duty. I spent most of my time hanging out with Duane Allman who was jammin' with, The Second Coming, Dickie Betts' band & the guys from the One Percent who later became Lynyrd Skynyrd. I joined a band from Tampa and went to LA to record their first album. We toured as a support act for the Allman Brothers & The James Gang until the Fall of 1971 when I left the band I was in (Blues Image) and joined the Carolina Band which featured Ed King & Artimus Pyle who later joined Lynyrd Skynyrd. Carolina stayed together replacing Ed King and continuing to tour as a support act for Skynyrd as a side deal for letting Ed leave the band to join Skynyrd. The band stayed together until Artimus left the band for Skynyrd in 1975. During this period I was involved both as an audio engineer and producer for a number of groups coming out of the South East & from England. I worked in Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, Macon, Jacksonville, Tampa, Mia...Expand for more