Bill Wills:
CLASS OF 1961
Immaculate Heart of Mary SchoolClass of 1961
Baltimore, MD
Mount Saint Mary's CollegeClass of 1969
Emmitsburg, MD
St. Charles CollegeClass of 1967
Catonsville, MD
Loyola Blakefield Jesuit SchoolClass of 1965
Towson, MD
Bill's Story
After spending two years at St, Charles Preparatory Seminary, I graduated from Loyola High school and then Mount Saint Marys College. While at the Mount, I discovered my deep love of performing on the stage (in elementary school, I was always entertaining at class parties imitating Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc.), After meeting my wife to-be at a community theater group, we have basically spent most of our married years making a living at theater. First we operated our own theater company producing childrens theater and summer theater in Ocean City, MD for 20 years. For the past 25 years, we have been touring the country performing shows on our American Presidents and First Ladies. We have presentations on 34 Presidents and their Wives. Of course, everything and everybody in my past readied me for the future that unfolded and is still unfolding.
A recent news release:
Winter Park, Fl couple, William and Sue Wills, have now appeared on stage in over 7,500 performances! In 1978, the couple risked everything they had to open a children¿s theater in Ocean City, MD and within four months promptly lost all they had. In fact, they were left with $18.36, three children ages 5 and under, and a pile of unpaid bills. By the way, Bill, at the age of 30, was then acting General Manager for a 250 room Sheraton hotel in Ocean City, which job he left to begin the theater. The couple did not give up and 31 years later they are still performing together, now over 300 times a year.
The Wills ran their theater company in Ocean City for 20 years and eventually all three children worked with them in all types of shows ¿ children¿s musicals (31 in number which the couple wrote ), Broadway recreations, and musical revues. The...Expand for more
ir eldest daughter, Jennifer, is now a leading lady on Broadway and is the current Christine Daee in Broadway¿s ¿Phantom of the Opera.¿
In 1991, William created a course to teach for the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Elderhostel which he entitled ¿Presidents and Their First Ladies, dramatically speaking¿. Over the next six years, William researched and wrote performance pieces ranging between 30-60 minutes, which he and Sue then presented as ¿dramatically read dialogues¿ in a classroom setting. When the couple closed their theater company in Ocean City, during which time they logged at least 4,000 performances, they began touring with their presidential programs. They added costumes to make the presentations more ¿theatrical¿ but retained the simple ¿reading¿ format utilizing simply two lecterns (although many of the pieces really are memorized). This simplest of theatrical formats has been able to not only recreate history, but to move audiences to laughter and tears. Now in their 13th years, the couple have done over 3,500 of these presentations. Their ¿stages¿ range from small libraries to presidential museums, from retirement communities to legitimate theaters. Probably the highest tribute to their quality is that many venues have invited them back year after year ¿ in some cases all 13 years- and they have made 29 presentations at our nation¿s Presidential Library/Museum sites.
When the couple first met in 1970 ( a whirlwind courtship that lasted 15 days from first date to marriage proposal) Bill mentioned to Sue that he would like to be President by 1996. He did better than he promised, by that time he had become 31 Presidents with Sue by his side as his many First Ladies.
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