Photos from Bill Dunn's memorial
By Ron Hayes
Bill Dunn must have had six or seven different addresses during his 25 years in the county pocket. But mostly he lived on the beach.
He slept at home, but he lived on the beach. And when he died, family and friends brought him back to the beach, to say goodbye the way people in this tiny, unincorporated, unpretentious patch of old South Florida do.
More laughter than tears. More stories than sobs.
“Please, don’t wear black,” his brother, Greg, said. “Wear shorts, wear flip-flops. Be casual, because that’s the way he was.”
At 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14, they gathered at Don Brown’s house on Streamaire Lane — in shorts and flip-flops, Hawaiian shirts and tie-dyed tees — and ambled down toward the ocean.
Some carried beers, some skateboards, some babies.
A bagpiper’s mournful rendition of Going Home ushered them down the dunes and onto the sand, but the mood was strikingly upbeat for the memorial service of someone who has died so suddenly, and so young.
On Friday evening, Nov. 6, Dunn grilled a steak at his home on Surf Road, popped a beer, carried his meal across the street to eat with friends — and choked to death. He was 48.
“He just swallowed a piece of meat that got lodged way down and there was nothing anyone could do,” his brother said. “The official cause was aspiration by food. They didn’t even do an autopsy.”
A hundred and twenty programs for A Celebration of the Life of Bill Dunn had been printed, but that wasn’t nearly enough. When the final notes of America the Beautiful faded under the rising tide, about 250 men, women and children stood in the sand before a makeshift altar.
On a table set against the dunes was Dunn’s little Laughing Buddha statue, his conch shell, and coconuts like those he planted throughout the neighborhood. And, of course, the hardwood pineapples.
For years, Dunn had jig-sawed driftwood into pineapple shapes, cross-hatched them, painted them and given them away to friends and neighbors.
A pineapple by the door is an ancient symbol of welcome, after all, and Dunn was always welcoming.
“Hi, I’m Bill Dunn,” he would say with a smile and an outstretched hand. “Surfer, diver, photographer. Damn glad to meet you!”
Sometimes he even said it to little kids.
Now, as the sun slid behind the seagrape trees, friends and family stood by the altar and talked about “Pineapple Man,” or “Tropical Man,” or “Billy Coconut.”
If you knew him, you marveled that one man could fill such a short life with so many varied interests. If you didn’t know him, you wished you had.
Generous and affable
William Charles Dunn was born on Christmas Eve 1960 in Indianapolis, Ind.
His family moved to Boca Raton when he was 13, and he attended St. Andrew’s School, where he and Gene Fortugno first met.
“He chose his lifestyle, and it wasn’t about money,” Fortugno said. “It was about taking a walk at sunset, or taking the right picture, or barbecuing with his friends. And yet he read history and literature. He liked to talk about politics. He was a simple man, but he wasn’t simple.”
After graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in fine arts, Dunn moved to the pocket in 1984, and never really left.
“He’ll always be here,” his brother told the crowd, “because when was he ever not here?”
Through the years Dunn made a living shooting society photographs for Davidoff Studios in Palm Beach, or doing construction work, but mostly he worked at making friends.
“He always showed up on our doorstep with a bottle of champagne on New Year’s Eve,” remembers Barbara Bennett, wife of Briny Breezes mayor Roger Bennett, “and at Christmas his gift was always a special calendar.”
He surfed, he kayaked, he taught children how to swim.
He planted herb gardens in neighbors’ yards, invited them by for bratwurst and opened the door with a cold Michelob in hand.
“He helped me redo my roof after Hurricane Wilma,” said Boyd Boggess, a friend of 20 years. “He was the most generous and affable man I think I’ve ever met.”
Now only the stories
Finally, as the setting sun tinged the white breakers with gold, his mother watched from a golf cart on the beach as Greg Dunn and Gene Fortugno waded into the surf. His brother carried Dunn's ashes in a soluble urn; his oldest friend, a wreath.
The piper played Amazing Grace as Greg gave the urn to the waves his brother had watched each morning for most of his life.
Then Fortugno added the wreath.
The conch shell was blown, and 250 friends and relatives stood in silence for a moment, until a large wave rolled in and suddenly someone let out a rowdy, rock concert scream — “Bill Dunn!” — and the whole crowd broke into cheers and applause.
“We all had our Bill Dunn stories,” his friend, Jeff Johnson, said, “and we’ll always have our Bill Dunn stories. But the sad thing is, we won’t have any more Bill Dunn stories.”
And so, if you want to see Bill Dunn’s monument, stroll around his neighborhood and count, if you can, all the houses with a hardwood pineapple by the door.
According to tradition, they are saying, “Welcome.”
But here in the county pocket, they say, “Damn glad to meet you!”
In addition to his mother, Gail, and brother, Greg, Mr. Dunn is survived by his nephew, Gregory Dunn Jr.; four nieces, Alisha Dunn, Kyla Moore, Chelsea Moore and Cassidy Moore; and his beloved cat, Karma.
The family asks that donations be made in his name to www.surfriderpbc.org, an organization working to protect the beaches, wildlife and ocean.
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