William Charles “Bill” Byers was born in North Carolina in 1925, the third of six children of Hood and Vivian Byers. The family moved to Washington, D.C. while Bill was still in junior high school.  He attended Francis Jr. High and graduated from Dunbar High School.  Bill was drafted into the United States Navy in 1943 and served three years as a pharmacist mate, including duty in the South Pacific, before receiving an honorable discharge.

Once back in Washington, Bill decided to escape the pervasive racism there by relocating to another country.  He had always loved art, so he applied to an art school in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  Bill found México to be free of racism and prejudice and followed famous Mexican artists David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera.  He remained at the San Miguel art colony for 18 months before moving to México City to enroll at the Universitario de las Americas, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree.  Bill spent five years in México, during which time he met a young woman visiting from Detroit named Marilyn McCombs.

After graduating, he returned to Washington, became reacquainted with Marilyn and shortly thereafter she became his bride.  They moved to Detroit, and had two children, daughter Adrienne and son Will Kane.  Bill attended Wayne State University and earned a Master of Arts degree.  He became an art teacher at Jefferson Jr. High in Detroit, where he and other African-American Detroit artists formed a club named “Arts Extended” and held exhibits regularly.  Bill routinely sold his artwork, and during the early 1960s, he created a visceral, compelling collection of 16 paintings chronicling in real time the Civil Rights Movement, depicting the brutality inflicted upon the people involved in changing America.  He held a one-man show of this work at Oakland University in Detroit. 

Bill was the quintessential “jazz man” and loved and collected jazz recordings.  In Detroit, a jazz lover’s paradise, Bill got to personally know many of the professional musicians and was invited to attend their rehearsals and “jam sessions”, equipped with one of his alto, tenor or soprano saxophones.  After 12 years of cold Detroit weather, Bill longed for a warmer climate like México, so he relocated his family to Los Angeles, where he was hired as an art teacher at the newly built Locke High School in South Central L.A.  After four years in Los Angeles, Bill’s wife Marilyn unexpectedly passed away. Despite this difficult loss, Bill remained resolute that his two children would succeed in life.

After Will and Adrienne graduated from high school and embarked on their successful respective entertainment and law careers, Bill started to travel the world during his summers off from teaching, and visited China, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, Thailand, and jazz cruises in the Caribbean, just to name a few.  He was a well-known “V.I.P.” ticket holder at the world-renown Monterey and Playboy (now known as the Hollywood Bowl) jazz festivals in California for many years and enjoyed “preferred patron” status.  In 1988, Bill met Stephanie Hines.  As both shared a love of adventure, they began traveling together to meet Bill’s friends across the country and began the start of a wonderful second phase of Bill’s life.  In 1992, Bill retired from a decades-long teaching career at Locke High.  He continued to travel and paint, and in 1994, married Stephanie, and they built a beautiful home in Maryland.  Bill and Stephanie enjoyed the flavors of the east coast, continuing to travel, take jazz cruises and attend jazz festivals. 

Bill passed away peacefully in 2013 at age 88.  He was a spiritual, caring, intelligent and talented man who believed that all mankind had worth and should be treated with dignity and respect.  He also believed that everyone should strive to leave the earth a better place than when he or she found it.  William C. “Bill” Byers indeed left this world a better place, with his artworks celebrating the rich, cultured legacy of the art and music he so enjoyed.