Find here a collection of emails and photos that I gathered back in 2005 that I have yet to share. I lace them together now to prove that we have not forgot our steel town hero, Bill Bergan.

WILLIAM Curtis “BILL” BERGAN, 51, a resident of Fontana, passed away March 5, 2005.

Bill was the beloved son of Curtis W. Bergan (deceased) and Dorothy J. Bergan of Fontana. Bill graduated from Fontana High School. Upon graduation from high school he attended Chaffey College. After attending college, he worked at Kaiser Steel until it closed. Bill is survived by his loving mother, Dorothy J. Bergan; uncles, Guy Huffaker of Porterville, Jim Bergan of San Diego; aunts, Joan Huffaker of Porterville, Joyce Kaplan of Orange County; cousins, Randy Richardson of Highland, Odis and Stella Terry of Reche Canyon, Loretta Bragga of Redlands, Dana Deely of Clayton and Erin Guinn of Porterville along with numerous other cousins. A private memorial service will be conducted this week with internment following at Hermosa Cemetery in Colton. Arrangements being handled by Inland Memorial Mortuary. 
Published in the San Bernardino Sun on 3/10/2005. 


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I spent many of my formative years with Bill. He helped to mold me. He brought a certain “color” into my life like no one has before or since. He helped my grandfather and Aunt Mary around the house and was a friend to my Aunt Donna too. I will dearly miss him. I had hoped our paths would cross again soon. 

To me, he was Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and he was The Rolling Stones when the Beatles were cool. He was Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Buffy Saint-Marie, Gene Pitney, Hank Williams and Tammy Wynette. He was Kaiser Steel, and The Salton Sea, and “The River” and a shiny steel guitar. 

Knowing his Mom and Dad and him, together being supportive of me in their own way, and that scene in my mind, I contrast with so many other experiences of my life, to shape what I am today. I can still see the spinning wheel as objet d’art, in their picture window on Merrill. His cousin Byron and I had an enduring friendship which I also attribute to Bill’s introducing us. 

Let us all honor his memory.
Thanks, just thought you’d like to know

Mitch Powell

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Mitch / 

I was much saddened by the loss of our friend Bill Bergan.  Growing into manhood he was much more of a Neil Cassady than I was of a Jack Kerouac, but that’s always the way I felt our relationship.  He was a complex individual with the most basic and sometimes heroic principals.  His memory will be crucial to me and my own road ahead.  What is the story of his passing?  The obituary said it was a private memorial, does that mean that we can’t go, and if we can, when is it?   

my best,
Patrick Brayer
Claremont, Ca

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(A painting Patrick Brayer made of Bill Bergan at Mr. Bakers coffeeshop in Fontana in the 70’s.)

William C. “Bill” Bergan / by Patrick Brayer

I will always remember Bill Bergan in the light of fondness.  We once drove his brand-new Audi sedan across north America together (which he purchased with his compensation check received over the time Kaiser got caught importing Chinese steel), the car brown like shiny dirt, driving all night through Texas-looking states and writing poems by flashlight.  Washing our cowboy shirts in a laundromat in Shawnee Oklahoma and trying a beer from every state like we were Jack London and Paul Newman (in the movie Hud) in a science project.  Unfortunately, we had so much fun that by the time we got back the car had to be put to scrap

In high school he was tall and handsome with a blonde haired, blue eyed Nordic stature, part surfer, part cowboy, and two parts Leif Erikson.  I remember us in my parents dim lit basement on Date Street in Fontana in the late 60’s.  It was a beautiful Spanish revivalist structure surrounded with pomegranate and walnut trees, and a few of us outsider teens would meet down there with our acoustic guitars, Bill’s Fender lap steel and White amp, and fight our way, tooth and nail, equally through both the Buck Owens as well as the Black Sabbath songbooks.  I think at that time we actually dreamt of a time when we would all probably be the age we are now.

One of the greatest things, advise-wise, that anyone has ever told me came from Bill Bergan on the sad occasion of one of my other friends father’s upcoming funeral (I was with Bill at his father Curt’s funeral and he was with me at both of my parent’s funerals, my mother Eleanore also, like Bill, passing at 51) / I was trying to back out of going to the service out of normal fear, my excuse being that I didn’t know the father all that well.  Bill looked me in the eye and said simply, “Did you ever say hello to him?”.  To which I replied, “well of course”.  Then he replied, “then go and say goodbye”.  Goodbye Bill Bergan with all my love.

Patrick Brayer Claremont, Ca 03-12-05

(photo: Rob Powel)

I called the cemetery that was mentioned in the Bergan obituary, and they said that there was a mock service last Thursday (I’m not sure what a mock service is?).  He’s buried at Hermosa cemetery in Colton, probably by his dad.  I think it is fitting that he be near the saint that was his dad and that he be buried in the same cemetery that some of the Wyatt Earp family of Wild West fame are resting.  Find attached a great photo (one which I can’t remember ever seeing) that I got from my sister Monica.  It is a shot of that same 1971 basement (garage band) phenomenon of which I spoke in my personal eulogy of Bill.  There I am flanked by the late Bill Bergan and the late Jeff Morning. Life is certainly snub-nose-short when it’s not busy being unnecessarily long and drawn out.  I hope to see you soon

Patrick of Brayer

A Note From Chris Leroy (Redlands CA)

Bill Bergan, Keith Grimes, Gary Adams and myself made up The Mondo Combo (1978-91), a rocking R&B band of which Bill was the kingpin! We started by meeting at a recording studio in Berdoo midnights and jamming til morning. We played at my club, THE BEAT (1980), for every cancelled band, which meant we played a lot. Again, Bill called the tunes! Musically I gained so much hanging around these Fonta boys, the raw sound of blues and soul. From Bill at a 3:00am doughnut joint, after a sad girlfriend breakup, I learned…”LeRoy, if you get on the wrong train, you don’t have to stay to the end of the line.” Bill was smart like that. I still miss that dude. Bill WAS a true Fontana hero!

(Bergan, Brayer, and Jeff Morning, rehearsing their band, The Shadders in a Fontana basement.)

(One of Bill’s early girlfriends, Jeri Maxem)

(pictured below: On Bergan’s wedding day L-R Brayer, Bergan. and Prof. Thomas Giannotti)

This is a letter I wrote to Dorothy Bergan (Bill’s Mom) in the spring of 2006.

Mrs. Bergan (Dorothy)              2500 W. Henderson Ave / Porterville, ca 93257                                  04-17-06

First off let me say that Fontana and the entire Inland Empire are a much paler environment in meaning without your presence, your polished stove, your always immaculately coiffed hair and open smile.  I have so many fond memories of you, and Billy, and papa curt on Merril Avenue.  Your front yard with that high step of grass.  I’m sure it just got that way when they widened the two lanes.  I remember your home’s great south facing picture window with the spinning wheel lamp, where you no doubt casually watched the trees grow in the green park’s progression of time.  My heart of course aches at the thought of Billy and his last days.  He never alluded to me of any ill health, although our later days became a sort of struggle of wills.  The last time I saw him I was in town taking photographs of Fontana, (for I could not for the life of me think of our hometown without thinking of him), and I took him out for a Mexican dinner, an event that was as usual peppered with an assortment of warmth and tad bit of verbal abuse on his part, which was sadly the cause of my staying away and removed at times.  I am a writer of sorts now and so I guess I study the psychology of man, and so it is not hard for me, though sad, to understand.  Billy was always the stronger one in our relationship, he was a pack leader, that was the only way he knew.  He could always talk to fill the spaces when I wanted to be silent, he was generous when I was poor, and then I felt we were profound together as you only can when you are young.  I will always be indebted to him for that.  But when I got my legs, so to speak, and began to lead my own way in the world, he seemed to refuse to acknowledge my tiny accomplishments, so that when we met up again any of my attributes would just be dead end conversations.  But like I said earlier of psychology, Billy was in that sphere a complicated individual, but I still admired, appreciated, and sort of worshipped what he stood for, I just rather felt invisible in the vision of his eyes, and that is what hurt.  I will try to include a recent CD of my music which includes a funeral piece that I wrote for Bill culled from the last phone message I received from him around Christmas time.  I saved it because on that phone recording was the Bill Bergan that I remembered, and of course it breaks my heart now that I didn’t get back to him in time.  But honestly, i was afraid to break the great feeling that I had if he should turn back into the other Bill who at times, I couldn’t help but feel, resented aspects of a lot of his friends.  But now that’s all in the past and I just want to celebrate Bill and thank you somehow for bringing him into all the lives of which he enriched.  I have worked every day for the past 35 years or so at the craft of writing and only hope to some day, if I’m lucky, make half as big of a contribution as you have.  You and your family, beyond my own family, have been one of the few real things of which my faith in the world is based on.  I hope the recording doesn’t make you too sad.  In composing it I wanted to work on it a lot longer than I did, but it just got too sad for me and I had to accept it as perfect the way it lays.  Let me know if you are up for a visit sometime.  My wife and I make trips once in a while.  She’s an English teacher at Chaffey high school in Ontario.  If you still have Billy’s steel guitar and would like someone to make it continue to sing for him let me know and I would be honored to buy it and cherish it.  I remember it down in my parents’ basement on Date street, Billy and I and the late Jeff Morning, when the music was more innocent and full of mystery.

Anywho, I hope this finds you in the best of the happiness you deserve.  We are quite envious of those people up in Porterville who get the precious Dorothy Bergan, but don’t we all in time have to learn the simple art of unselfishness.  Please feel free to write or call anytime you need a friend.

With much love and admiration,

Patrick Brayer

315 n.  Cambridge Ave., Claremont, Ca 91711

(An incinerator in the Bergan’s backyard: photo Patrick Brayer)