In Memory

William Brynjolfsson

 

William Glenn Brynjolfsson. After a long hard battle, Bill succumbed to prostate cancer on Dec. 25, 2006. Visitation and service were held at Ridgeway Funeral Home in Paris, TN, on Friday, Dec. 29, 2006, and cremation followed. He was an eye donor. In lieu of flowers, a donation to the National Prostate Foundation would be appreciated. Honoree pall bearers were Mark Wieting, Bill Lewis, Al Bolton, Wayne Wipert, Thomas Macintyre, Tony Davidson, Robert Pariseau, and Al Adams. Born on June 9, 1945, in Chicago, IL. He was the son of the late Ernest and Lillian Brynjolfsson. He was a member of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church of Lombard, IL. Bill was an administrator in two law firms in Chicago, a legal recruiter of attorneys, administrative manager in a manufacturing company, vice president of a marketing company, and owned a steak house with his brothers in Tampa. He retired to Paris, TN, in 2001 on Kentucky Lake with his significant other Marion Kaye Schulmerich, who was also his caretaker. His love and kindness touched many and he will not be forgotten. He is survived by his son Brad and daughter Brooke of Carol Stream, IL; their spouses Maria and Jeff; and grandchildren Adriana, Alex, Daniel, Payton and Jacob; fond brother Barry of Milan, TN, and brother Brian of Tampa, FL; and their spouses Leslie and Donna; nieces Lindsey and Bailey.

 

Published in Chicago Tribune on January 1, 2007

He was also the funniest person I have ever met. Photo below is from early 2006. MWW



 
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05/15/13 06:56 PM #1    

William T. Lewis

I moved to Lombard in the middle of my sophomore year from Decatur Il.  Billy was the first person to befriend me and introduce me to the best group of guys I could imagine.  Billy was a very kind man unless you really ticked him off.  He was probably the most honest guy I have ever known.  He had the most complex sense of humor, dry wit that snuck up on ya, arrows of sarcasm that always hit the mark and his more jovial I love the world stuff.  I still mistakenly pick up the phone to call him.

                                                                               


08/14/13 10:08 PM #2    

Mark Wieting


Here are a few more memories of Bill Brynjolfsson:

It took me until 6th or 7th grade to be confident that I could spell his last name, and even now I wonder if the J is hard or more like a Y. Jolfsson or Yolfsson. Bill was pretty forgiving no matter how we pronounced it.

There were some amazing similarities between Bill and me, although he was blessed with those great blue eyes. Anyway, my parents and his were married on the same day in the same year. His older brother was born one week before my older brother. Bill was born one day before me [June 9, June 10]. He lived at 930 S. Stewart, and I at 914 S. Hammerschmidt. If you don’t remember, they run parallel, one block from each other. When he first moved in, in 1951, there was open prairie between our houses.

We spent many childhood hours in that prairie, and in an undeveloped place that was south of Hammerschmidt School, which we called “the clay pits.” We played “war”:  We each had a collection of World War II surplus Army helmets, belts, canteens and holsters for guns that we probably filled with cowboy guns sold by Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rogers. The clay pits, of course, are now covered with houses, but at the time, the streets like Stewart, Lombard and Harrison didn’t run continuously and would stop and start here and there. To go to school, Bill would walk through the prairie and pick me up and then we’d walk down Hammerschmidt, which wasn’t paved in the early days—just two tire tracks between Taylor and Harrison. When Jim Lagocki moved to Grace and Taylor a couple of years later, it was the three of us.

Bill was a good athlete and loved baseball, basketball, golf and hockey. He threw right but batted lefty—I am not sure why, because he wrote righty. His cousin played for the Montreal Canadians in their heyday, and Bill sometimes inherited his broken sticks which we would tape up and take to the skating pond at Grace and North Avenue. I didn't learn until recently that his cousin, Tom Johnson, not only was an NHL player but also is in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Most of us on the golf team remember the day Bill started his match a bit later than the rest of us but was already sitting in a chair by the 18th green when we were finishing our matches. “Bill, what are you doing here?” “Uh, I had this shot where my ball was on the other side of a sapling and I hit it and the shaft of my club broke and the head of it came up and hit me on the side of my head and knocked me flat. So I had to quit.” He always gave it his all, despite the danger!

There was a time in high school when we had a job serving dinner at a wedding reception—I think Bill Phebus’s uncle was in the catering business and he was nice enough to hire the likes of us. As we were waiting to get paid, after the dinner service, a young, tough-looking guy came bursting out of the reception demanding to know who had made the “remark” about one of the women in the hall. Duh, none of us knew anything, what was he talking about? Soon, guy after guy from the reception—as the word got around inside the hall—came out to find out who should be beaten up. About five of us stood there, professing innocence. Might have been Phebus, Melto, Pederson, Brynjolfsson and me, maybe a couple others I can’t picture as I write this. It was a bad scene. Eventually, things calmed down and we left. Outside, Bob Pederson turned to Bill and said, “IT WAS YOU! As she came up the stairs you said she was really good looking.” Innocent enough, but not in the particular crowd we had served dinner to. At least we all lived to tell about it.

As I mentioned earlier, Bill was the funniest person I have ever known. Whatever he said made me laugh, even things he didn’t intend to be funny. They say that Jack Benny found George Burns to be terribly funny—whatever George said, Jack fell down laughing. It was that way for me with Bill. He just had a way of seeing the silly side of things or turning a phrase with a double meaning that cracked me up. He was smart and used his wit to poke holes in the pompous [teachers, coaches, politicians] and made us all laugh in doing so.

He was involved in many business ventures and managed a Sears store, two law firms, a construction company, and a restaurant. He worked in direct mail marketing. He also sold furniture when he was semi-retired in Tampa, Florida.

He was very close to his two brothers, Barry [mentioned earlier, four years older than we are] and Brian, a few years younger than we are. He told me that when they lived in the same area [Tampa Bay], they would often get together on Sundays and shoot the bull, mainly tossing around ideas about what business to get into or how to handle a problem one of them was facing. It just seemed to me to be a heck of a good way to relate to your siblings.

And you gotta love a guy who took care of his mother the way he did for many years. She was in ill health, on oxygen 24 hours a day, and basically homebound. He’d wake her up each day, make her lunch before he left for work and call her frequently to see that she was okay.

In his later years he retired completely to Tennessee, on Kentucky Lake, near Paris, TN. Because his significant other, Kaye, didn’t allow smoking in the house, he had a room off the garage where he would smoke, watch TV and engage in DUI. Not driving under the influence. Something else, and for anyone reading this who received his calls, you’ll know what it stands for. He had a golf cart that he enjoyed driving around the neighborhood, pointing out this or that neighbor who was from Chicago, or Cicero or Oak Lawn. Everyone greeted him warmly and he returned the good wishes. Everyone knew Bill and liked him, as we all did.

My guess is that most people at Glenbard East who knew him well loved him. No better friend, no one more likely to make you laugh, no one more memorable.

 


09/09/13 02:48 PM #3    

Mark Wieting

In March 2003, Bill welcomed me to his indoor/outdoor lair in his carport in Tennessee. I am not sure who christened it Billville....

Bill displays his list of phone numbers that he used to call friends and family while engaging in DUI--"dialing under the influence." We had some fun conversations and it was always great to hear from him. 


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