I let a good friend down. It was unintentional, but still one of those things deep down you wish you could have changed.

The year after I started working on Stories of the Shoe, I was walking the perimeter of Ohio Stadium before one home game when I spotted a distinguished looking older gentleman, all decked out in his Buckeye Finest. He looked like he might have been a former player, or someone important, so I walked up and said hello. We had a nice chat and he told me he came from Maryland to go to every game. I told him that would make a good story, gave him my card and asked him to get in touch with me. He never did. It was just a fleeting encounter.

Fast forward about three months to Jan 8, 2007, and this time I was again working the perimeter of University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, the afternoon of the National Championship game. I walked up to another gentleman and give him the pitch. As we were talking, I learned his name was Bill. I also mentioned he looked familiar. "Well I live in Maryland, but I go to every game," he said. It was then I realized he was the same man I had met months earlier at Ohio Stadium. Twice I had walked up to him cold turkey, out of more than a hundred-thousand people. I would soon find out why we were destined to meet. This time I got Bill's number and said I would be the one calling him. "You do that," he said as I walked away, "you know Woody Hayes was my best friend!"

That's all it took for me to burn up the phone lines after we got back. William Lewis and I ended up spending several hours on the phone with my tape recorder running. I learned that Bill indeed was a friend of Woody and had helped Woody recruit a running back from Columbus Eastmoor by the name of Archie Griffin. It got better. Bill had sold newspapers outside the stadium as a kid, and his sister had run with a crowd of college friends that included a guy who was playing at Ohio State at that time, a guy by the name of Bill Willis. Bill Lewis was a veritable Ohio State history book, and our paths crossed all because I walked up and shook the hand of someone wearing Buckeye gear.

The story could have ended there but it didn't. I would call Bill three or four times a year, sometimes to pick his brain, other times just to visit and talk Buckeye football. Sometimes though, it was just to hear that ringtone, when I called his cell phone and it said, "Please enjoy the music while you wait" followed by the OSU marching band playing Across The Field! A smart man. A wise man. An honest man. That was the Bill Lewis I came to know and thus value his counsel and friendship. When Jenny and I went to DC in the summer of 2008, we ended up spending a whole afternoon with Bill, sitting on a deck overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, eating those scrumptious Maryland crab cakes.

Bill was so excited about the book - one obvious reason being because he was in it - that every time we would talk he would ask, "When's it going to be ready? I can't wait to read this book."

About six weeks ago, Bill's daughter emailed me that he went into the hospital. As I understood it, he was dehydrated and expected to be in a while to get his strength back. Last Monday, I was thinking of Bill and wondering how he was doing. Hoping he might be home by now, I picked up my phone and punched in his number, but got interrupted and never completed the call. An hour later, I was at the computer, typing away on Myles Traveled when an email opened up, and it was Bill's daughter telling me that Bill Lewis had passed away.

When I told Jenny the news, she said, "It's really a shame you didn't get the book done in time for Bill to read it." She was right. Everyone needs someone to believe in him, and he was the biggest fan of what I am doing. But I do have recorded Bill's voice, and his stories, and his Buckeye memories will still live in the books, not only in Stories of the Shoe, but first in Myles Traveled. And some place up there, right about now, I suspect that Bill Lewis, and one Wayne Woodrow Hayes are sitting there reminiscing about the time Bill cold called Woody Hayes, a man whom he had never before met, and told him he had seen a pretty good running back playing on his nephews football team over at Columbus Eastmoor. That call ended up in a lifelong friendship between Bill and Woody, and a running back that gained a yard or two for the Buckeyes!

Rest in peace my Buckeye Friend. You done good.