Welcome to Bill Bourne’s website. The following was taken from an article published in the Norristown, PA Times Herald on May 12, 2012, written by Melissa Brooks. It sheds a lot of light on Bill’s life and work….
When memories are shared, the big moments tend to overshadow the little ones, and it's not always easy to recognize the disconnected events that banded together and ultimately changed lives.
But when Bill Bourne tells the story of how he became involved with Virginia, or 'Ginny,' it's clear that he recognizes and appreciates the details that led him to their first date.
Just shy of two years of service, Bourne was discharged early from the United States Naval Air Corps in September 1945, 'at the convenience of the government,' because WWII had ended and flight training for aspiring pilots was too expensive, he said.
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Back home in the Trooper section of Lower Providence the 20-year-old Bourne decided to stop by (the former) Valley Forge Hotel on Main Street in Norristown, where he'd worked as a bellhop in high school. The manager was sure happy to see Bourne, who arrived in his Navy uniform. A bellhop had just called out sick, leaving the manager in a bind - so he asked his former employee to fill in
A quick switch of uniforms and Bourne was up for the task. After the shift ended, he caught a bus home and the next day his mother told him he had a message from a Ms. Middleton. 'I thought, 'Who in the world is that?' Bourne said. 'Ginny's older sister, Karen, was a Mid-Atlantic tennis champ. I thought, 'Maybe she's calling me for a date!''
When he returned the call and got the younger Middleton sister on the line, she asked him to accompany her to a dance at Plymouth Country Club. He knew who she was from Norristown High School, he said (Ginny is a year younger), but he didn't know her. Bourne accepted the date and asked Ginny why she thought to call him. 'She said, 'I saw you on the bus yesterday, and you're the only male still around. ''
The two still live in the 1800s era farmhouse on Skippack Pike, next to Peter Wentz Farmstead in Worcester Township, where they raised two sons and a daughter.
In the 64 years they've been married the couple has never bought a Christmas card, Bourne said proudly. 'I've always done a hand-painted Christmas card.' Even a wedding anniversary card he once gave Ginny was homemade. He put their heads on the royal bodies posed in a photo taken on Queen Elizabeth II of England's wedding day.
Bourne, who was born in Glenside and moved with his family to Trooper during the Great Depression, has always been creative.
'I always drew. I got the art award at high school commencement. It came with a $5 check,' he said with a chuckle.
Bourne enlisted in the Naval Air Corps and spent the first half of the summer of 1943 working at Jeffersonville Golf Club as he 'waited to get called up.' The end of July rolled around and he still had no orders from the Navy, so Bourne got a job as a floor walker at D.M. Yost Department Store on Main Street in Norristown.
'I started, and at noon my mother called and said my orders came. So I started and quit in the same day. And I got a party out of it,' he said, laughing.
Bourne was sent to the Pennsylvania State University for three semesters under the V-12 Navy college training program. 'I was told, 'An officer in the Navy should have a college education,'' he said. 'But the real reason was they were so backed up in flight school.' Bourne was one of about a dozen men selected from a group of 40 in the program to attend pre-flight school in Georgia, followed by primary flight training in Indiana. The war was over before he ever got to fly solo.
Bourne decided to get straight to work rather than go back to school under the G.I. Bill. After a brief stint with a tubing company in Bridgeport (the company moved to Pittsburg, leaving Bourne jobless), he joined the staff at The Norristown Times Herald, then owned by Ralph B. Strassburger.
As an assistant artist Bourne was mostly responsible for 'retouching photographs,' he said, but he also created a daily cartoon called 'Terry Hathaway' about a knockout co-ed. His brother and a friend helped with the gags.
Pointing to a frame that shows the family dog dressed in Terry's bra and underwear, Bourne said that while the cartoon is 'very tame for these days,' he realizes now that it was a tad risque for 1947.
'Terry Hathaway' is credited to Bill 'Bourn,' because, as Bourne explained, many years before his father had changed their name by dropping the 'e' so that it would sound 'less English.' Regardless, the artist has always gone by Bourne, except for the years he served in the Navy and shortly thereafter.
According to Bourne, Times Herald editors had hoped 'Terry Hathaway' would become a syndicated cartoon, but that never happened. 'I'd done some cartooning for the (military) base newspaper, but I never saw it as a steady occupation,' he said.
All of these years later Bourne's working relationship with The Times Herald has come full circle. For the past year he's been submitting cartoons - mostly political under the title 'It's Politics' - to the local newspaper that hired him at the onset of his career in art.
Bourne's pen and ink drawings of local historic sites still hang on the wall outside of The Times Herald's Art Department. He added, 'I designed the cards for Strassburger's 50 Year Birthday Club.
'WNAR had just started, and there was a lot of conflict between radio and the Herald for advertising revenue,' Bourne said, explaining that part of his job meant airbrushing certain store names out of editorial photos if those businesses had placed ads with the radio station and not the newspaper. 'And if the photographers messed up, the art department would fix up the photos.
'I was at the Herald for six months and Ginny and I wanted to get married, so I asked for time off for our honeymoon. The business manager at the time said, 'No, that's not our policy.' I hadn't been there long enough to get vacation time. '
So he and Ginny planned their wedding day around Memorial Day weekend. 'Memorial Day was always on the 30th then. It was a Sunday that year, so we got married on the 29th. We had a three-day honeymoon in the Poconos. '
Bourne worked at the paper for about a year before he left to do display work for Sears and Roebuck. In 1952 he started his own commercial art business, Bourne Graphics, which at first he operated from his cellar. 'I eventually got big enough that I moved to the cellar of Eagleville Drug Store (which was located at Ridge Pike and E. Mount Kirk Avenue).
He laughed again as he recalled spending his first month in business working on a board game that a man had hoped to sell to the TV show, 'Ramar of the Jungle.' 'He never did sell the game,' Bourne said, 'and he stuck me for three weeks of work. '
Luckily for Bourne he snagged Genaurdi's as an account when the company was opening their first supermarket in Jeffersonville, he said. He made signs and designed the logo they would use for 15 years. Then, King of Prussia-based Thriftway Foods brought him 30 stores. 'I had a few accounts,' he said. 'Gosh, I remember those days. '
In 1965 Bourne, who for years has built model airplanes (WWII era plans hang around his office, above his desk) and model lighthouses and farmhouses, took on a new hobby - watercolor painting - a stark contrast to the work he was doing as a commercial artist. His local landscapes were well received. 'Eighty percent of the work I've done are farms or are farm related,' he said. 'Because there are a lot of farms in Worcester, and I like painting old stuff. '
From Eagleville Pharmacy, Bourne Graphics moved with the family, first to a small barn on the property of their Fairview Village home, and finally, to the location where it remains today, housed within a large barn behind their 'forever home,' which sits on nearly three acres of land that Bourne still cares for himself.
Bourne said he finds joy in gardening - 'if it was a chore, I wouldn't do it. '
He's also still working, painting watercolors on commission - his latest project is an 1850s version of a Skippack church - and his son, Richard, and his wife, Wendi, run Bourne Graphics (Richard took over about 16 years ago when Bourne was battling colon cancer).
Another son, Cliff, lives in central Pennsylvania and their daughter, Cathy Cockey, lives in Baltimore. From their three children the Bournes have 14 grandchildren (11 are Cliff's kids), ranging in age from 30 to 9.
When asked his age, Bourne didn't respond with how old he is today, but instead, he said, 'I'll be 87 in October.' The jitterbug keeps him young, he joked. 'We dance a lot.' He and Ginny, who had their first date at a local dance, have belonged to a dance club for 50 years.
When the 1943 NHS graduate was inducted into the Norristown Area High School Hall of Fame in 2009 for his successful career in art, Bourne was commended for his work that has left a lasting impression in the community, from the murals he painted at Meadowood Retirement Community, Schwenksville Heritage Center, Bay Pony Inn and Mermaid Lake Entertainment Complex, to the official Montgomery County seal, which he designed in the late 1990s when county officials commissioned him to add a woman and a Dutch lily, the county flower .
Bourne joined the volunteer board of the Worcester Historical Society when it was formed in 1975, and he once served as president. He's conducted extensive research on the mills that were once supported by the Zachariahs Creek, and he more recently designed and built the museum at the historical society's headquarters, Farmer's Union Hall, where his 25-foot mural decorates the wall.
The long respected artist has also designed and built stage sets for local theater companies including the Dramateurs in Jeffersonville, Methacton Community Theater and Playcrafters of Skippack .
When Ginny - whose family owned the largest pigeon farm on the East Coast (in Jeffersonville) - popped in her husband's office to say hello, he told her he'd just shared the story of how she saw him, 'the only man left in town,' on the bus and then called him up for a date.
'Come to think of it, (a man they both knew) was home then, too, he said to her, laughing.
I have been an artist most of my life. At the age of 95, I still find joy, fulfillment, and inspiration in creating watercolors, pen and inks, and acrylic artworks. Please enjoy exploring my gallery!