Dear Mrs, Jan Kline, Joanne worked with Bill for many years and considered him one of her closest friends. She spoke of him often to me and was saddened over his illness. She was very upset that due to circumstances beyond her control she was not able to attend his funeral. Joanne would just like you to know that she will miss him and would like to stay in contact with you upon her completion of therapy Joanne and Ralph DeMartino

Jan, These are just some of the memories of Bill. Reflecting on these brings such sadness. Getting to know Bill I knew Bill since 1994 when I transferred location from upstate NY to Dayton NJ. Bill was one of the many in the department. Even though I didn’t work on the same projects as Bill, I got to know him through casual conversations. I had worked in the same company before I transferred, but I was in hardware development group, and now found myself in a Services group. It was scary transferring to something I knew little about, but there was only goodness that came out of it. It was the best group of people that I worked with in my career. It’s hard to integrate into an established group, but what helped is being invited out for lunch to chat, and of course the once a week golf league. Bill was one of the usuals in the lunch time group, and also played in the weekly golf league. Dedication, Focus & Tardiness One thing about Bill, it was hard to tear him away from whatever he was working on, he was dedicated and focused on his work. We always had to give Bill a heads up on lunch time, but it never seemed to make much of differences as he stared at the computer display and would say “in a minute”. Bill was always the last person to hop in the car as we went off to lunch. Do you think that Bill would be on time for golf, after all that’s a stress reliever, or should be, but if you were in Bill’s foursome, just assume you’d be the last group off the first Tee. Golf and Competitiveness Golf is fun, right? Doesn’t it relieve stress? There’s no doubt that Golf is a challenging game, but some of us make it even more so then it should be. Besides the league play, out of five players, we’d get a foursome together between Bill, Brent Dann, Marty Burgesss, Jim Anderson, and myself. This is when I started to notice the competitiveness of Bill. He always tried for the longest ball off the tee. But like the rest of us as amateur players, hard hits often ended up in the rough (in the woods). Usually between the four us, we’d have the fairway well covered, one or more in the rough on the left side, one or more on the right side, and occasionally someone in the center. But when Bill had a solid hit, it was the farthest. And if he didn’t have a good hit, then you could hear from wherever he was as he muttered his infamous bad shot phrase. There was one time I played golf with Bill, my wife Judy, and Brent, when I was a bit surprised at Bill’s actions. It was a water hole, maybe 100 yards to the other side. After Bill hit three balls in the water and uttering his bad shot phrase, he tossed his 7-iron into the water. Bill’s only comment on the loss of the 7-iron, “it didn’t matter as I could never hit it anyway”. In retrospect, I think that the stress relief really came from the beers afterwards. Communications after the Diagnose Since most of us starting working from home offices, we started communicating with “instant messaging” (also known as IM or IM’ing). With organization changes, the department I started in dispersed and most of us ended with new assignments. IM was a way to keep up with friends. Usually at the end of a day either I would IM Bill or he would IM me to see what was new. Thus started an exchange between Bill and I, about his condition, progress, and treatments. The IMs would often end with a phone call that would go on for an hour. We always talked his about condition to start with, than we’d change subjects to IBM, politics, finances, retirement and desire to take care of Jan, his wife. As with any disease, it was a sad to listen to Bill and I offered what I could, but Bill was always unbelievable positive about his ability to beat it, his trust in the doctors and their recommendations.

I first began to work with Bill on a regular basis in late 1992 when I had taken a job transfer from IBM Poughkeepsie, NY to Dayton, NJ. After moving to Poughkeepsie from Newtown, CT, my IBM work location kept changing. From Poughkeepsie to Franklin Lakes, NJ to Montvale, NJ to Dayton, NJ and ultimately to Piscataway, NJ. I had been commuting to these work locations from Poughkeepsie but when the job moved to Dayton, the commute suddenly went from 75 minutes to almost 3 hours each way. That wasn't practical so I decided to relocate to NJ near the Dayton office. I couldn't even find Dayton on the map the first time I went to check out the facility. The IBM site there was so old, that the water tower in the back looked like a movie prop from a 60's sci-fi movie. But we all made it our work location for quite a few years. There are a lot of great memories at that facility. Bill was hired by our organization due to his software background. We needed an application programmer/developer/analyst to assist with a relatively new application that was created in-house to support our services offerings. He was the only one in our group with any discipline and that used to annoy us because he actually wanted to test the software changes before we promoted them to production. Imagine that. The software application we were responsible for evolved over the first 6-7 years until we had 8 full-time programmers supporting it. Bill was the only IBMer on the team with formal software training. The rest were contract programmers and each of them had their own style of getting the job done. Bill assumed the job of being the galley master. I thought that I was a perfectionist when it came to work-related activities. Bill's attention to detail and commitment to quality made me look like a trainee. You all know the good news/bad news jokes about the galley ships. The good news is that there will be an extra ration of wine today. The bad news? The Captain wants to go water skiing. Bill loved to go water skiing. The Dayton site had a golf league, and I was persuaded to join the group. I hadn't played golf in almost 20 years so to say I was rusty was an understatement. Bill was one of the league members I frequently played with. Golf was the game Bill loved to hate. For a while he was playing with some drivers so old that the wood heads would rattle when he connected with the ball. I accused him of stealing them from the Smithsonian. Didn't bother Bill at all. In fact, he enjoyed the notion that it bothered me. I told him that I could get hurt when one of his drivers exploded and he smiled. The league only played a 9-hole round because we were playing during the week after work. If we managed to get off on one of the early groups, Bill and I would be able to sneak in an extra 9 holes by ourselves after the league play. That usually ended up being a fast 9 holes with no one in front of us to slow us down. Even with no one around to slow us down, the conversation was usually colorful. Patience was not a virtue. After the second nine, we would get back to the parking lot and help our league members dispose of the remaining beverages & snacks before darkness set in. Even as we wrapped up our stay in Dayton before moving on to Piscataway, there were very few times I was able to beat Bill's golf score. When I would ask him how he made some of the shots he did, he would respond with one of his favorite phrases "You tell me". I told him that was a little maddening because if I knew the answer why would I ask the question. And Bill would give me one of his trademark smiles. And respond with "You tell me". One of Bill's other loves was food. In particular he had a fondness for diners. When we were in Dayton, we used to eat at a nondescript chinese restaurant near the office. A buffet luncheon for $5.00 and all you could eat. How could you pass that up? We would balance this off by visits to Pierre's restaurant on Georges Street. This place evolved from a converted home with a huge takeout business to a complex of restaurants and bakeries during the time we worked in the area. A great assortment of lunch specials and hot sandwiches. Then we moved from Dayton to Piscataway. Much nicer work facilities with a cafeteria in-house for those rainy/snowy days or when you were inundated with work. And all kinds of diners to choose from. One of Bill's favorite places in Piscataway was a diner near Front Street in Metuchen. Not sure what the real name was but Bill called it Box Car Willie's since it was next to the RR tracks. This diner was right out of the 60's with a Seeburg Select-O-Matic at each table. They didn't work but that was OK. The diner provided incredible amounts of food for a bargain-basement price. We used to eat there frequently. And at Friendly's, any chinese restaurant, thai restaurants, Applebee's, Cafe Piancone, Michael Anthony's and Buzzy's Bar just to name a few. At one point, Bill started bringing his lunch to work. My guess is that Jan got wind of our lunchtime dining habits and clamped down on him. To some degree that moderated our dining habits and we began to eat in the building cafeteria once or twice a week. Bill would join us with his lunch. Bill even got us to start walking around the building after lunch to enjoy the fresh air and to give us a little exercise. On occasion though, we would be able to convince Bill to break training and go to one of the diners that we loved so much. When we began working remotely and no longer went to Piscataway on a regular basis, one of his favorites haunts was the Americana Diner in Hightstown. The menu was so large that we usually spent the first 20-30 minutes deciding what to eat. Then another 30 minutes to eat all the food, and another 30 minutes to solve all the world's known problems. Or plan the next golf outing. Bill, you've been a great golf partner, a fantastic friend, an incredibly dedicated worker, an avid supporter and consumer of diner food, and someone with a superb sense of humor. You were taken from us far too early. We will always cherish our memories of you and the things we did together. You are forever with us in spirit. Rest in peace, my friend.

I first began to work with Bill on a regular basis in late 1992 when I had taken a job transfer from IBM Poughkeepsie, NY to Dayton, NJ. After moving to Poughkeepsie from Newtown, CT, my IBM work location kept changing. From Poughkeepsie to Franklin Lakes, NJ to Montvale, NJ to Dayton, NJ and ultimately to Piscataway, NJ. I had been commuting to these work locations from Poughkeepsie but when the job moved to Dayton, the commute suddenly went from 75 minutes to almost 3 hours each way. That wasn't practical so I decided to relocate to NJ near the Dayton office. I couldn't even find Dayton on the map the first time I went to check out the facility. The IBM site there was so old, that the water tower in the back looked like a movie prop from a 60's sci-fi movie. But we all made it our work location for quite a few years. There are a lot of great memories at that facility. Bill was hired by our organization due to his software background. We needed an application programmer/developer/analyst to assist with a relatively new application that was created in-house to support our services offerings. He was the only one in our group with any discipline and that used to annoy us because he actually wanted to test the software changes before we promoted them to production. Imagine that. The software application we were responsible for evolved over the first 6-7 years until we had 8 full-time programmers supporting it. Bill was the only IBMer on the team with formal software training. The rest were contract programmers and each of them had their own style of getting the job done. Bill assumed the job of being the galley master. I thought that I was a perfectionist when it came to work-related activities. Bill's attention to detail and commitment to quality made me look like a trainee. You all know the good news/bad news jokes about the galley ships. The good news is that there will be an extra ration of wine today. The bad news? The Captain wants to go water skiing. Bill loved to go water skiing. The Dayton site had a golf league, and I was persuaded to join the group. I hadn't played golf in almost 20 years so to say I was rusty was an understatement. Bill was one of the league members I frequently played with. Golf was the game Bill loved to hate. For a while he was playing with some drivers so old that the wood heads would rattle when he connected with the ball. I accused him of stealing them from the Smithsonian. Didn't bother Bill at all. In fact, he enjoyed the notion that it bothered me. I told him that I could get hurt when one of his drivers exploded and he smiled. The league only played a 9-hole round because we were playing during the week after work. If we managed to get off on one of the early groups, Bill and I would be able to sneak in an extra 9 holes by ourselves after the league play. That usually ended up being a fast 9 holes with no one in front of us to slow us down. Even with no one around to slow us down, the conversation was usually colorful. Patience was not a virtue. After the second nine, we would get back to the parking lot and help our league members dispose of the remaining beverages & snacks before darkness set in. Even as we wrapped up our stay in Dayton before moving on to Piscataway, there were very few times I was able to beat Bill's golf score. When I would ask him how he made some of the shots he did, he would respond with one of his favorite phrases "You tell me". I told him that was a little maddening because if I knew the answer why would I ask the question. And Bill would give me one of his trademark smiles. And respond with "You tell me". One of Bill's other loves was food. In particular he had a fondness for diners. When we were in Dayton, we used to eat at a nondescript chinese restaurant near the office. A buffet luncheon for $5.00 and all you could eat. How could you pass that up? We would balance this off by visits to Pierre's restaurant on Georges Street. This place evolved from a converted home with a huge takeout business to a complex of restaurants and bakeries during the time we worked in the area. A great assortment of lunch specials and hot sandwiches. Then we moved from Dayton to Piscataway. Much nicer work facilities with a cafeteria in-house for those rainy/snowy days or when you were inundated with work. And all kinds of diners to choose from. One of Bill's favorite places in Piscataway was a diner near Front Street in Metuchen. Not sure what the real name was but Bill called it Box Car Willie's since it was next to the RR tracks. This diner was right out of the 60's with a Seeburg Select-O-Matic at each table. They didn't work but that was OK. The diner provided incredible amounts of food for a bargain-basement price. We used to eat there frequently. And at Friendly's, any chinese restaurant, thai restaurants, Applebee's, Cafe Piancone, Michael Anthony's and Buzzy's Bar just to name a few. At one point, Bill started bringing his lunch to work. My guess is that Jan got wind of our lunchtime dining habits and clamped down on him. To some degree that moderated our dining habits and we began to eat in the building cafeteria once or twice a week. Bill would join us with his lunch. Bill even got us to start walking around the building after lunch to enjoy the fresh air and to give us a little exercise. On occasion though, we would be able to convince Bill to break training and go to one of the diners that we loved so much. When we began working remotely and no longer went to Piscataway on a regular basis, one of his favorites haunts was the Americana Diner in Hightstown. The menu was so large that we usually spent the first 20-30 minutes deciding what to eat. Then another 30 minutes to eat all the food, and another 30 minutes to solve all the world's known problems. Or plan the next golf outing. Bill, you've been a great golf partner, a fantastic friend, an incredibly dedicated worker, an avid supporter and consumer of diner food, and someone with a superb sense of humor. You were taken from us far too early. We will always cherish our memories of you and the things we did together. You are forever with us in spirit. Rest in peace, my friend.

Jan, We were so sorry to hear the sad news. You are in our thoughts and prayers at this difficult time. May all the good times you shared with Bill bring you strength and comfort. Love, Mary Theresa & Bill

Jan, I was so very sorry to hear of your loss. Please know that my thoughts and prayers are with you. Leslie Allen

Jan, I am so sorry to hear about the loss of Bill. He fought a heroic battle. As you know, he made a very positive influence on Adrienne, who has continued to pray for him throughout his struggle. His response messages to her were always humorous and proved the goodness of his heart. I know you will miss him. Julie, I and my girls will continue to pray for you and yours as you go through this trying time. If you want for anything at all that we can provide, please let us know. It would be our joy and pleasure. Kevin, Julie, Adrienne, Kaelyn and Madeline Moran

Jan, We were so sad to hear of Bill's passing. Unfortunately, we know all too well the pain family members go through when cancer enters our lives, as we just lost Cindy, my sister your cousin, to cancer just a few months prior. Please know that our love and prayers are with with you. Please keep in touch when you are able. With love, Roxanne & Ben

I have worked closely with Bill for well over 10 years. He has not only become the most knowledgeable person in the area of our business that he has helped grow. He has been liked, appreciated, and respected by all of us who have worked with him - and that audience literally spans the globe. His absense in our day-to-day endeavors will be felt for years to come. It has been an honor knowing him and it has been a prividge being a small part of his life.

Janice, My deepest sympathy and condolences to you and your family. Bill and I worked together over the past 5 years, and I must tell you that I will miss him. His positive attitude and joyful presence was a pleasant part of working with Bill. No matter what the situation, he would never let it seem to bother him, and he would focus on the problem or issue at hand. As you will read from the many notes that Leticia Powell and Brad Spinney will give you, he was very well respected in the IBM community. I know personally I will miss hearing Bill at the other end of the phone, always willing to help, and ready to do whatever it took to do things right. You and your family will be in our thoughts and prayers in this time of loss for your family.

Janice, Bill will be missed by all his IBM colleagues around the world. Per your request, IBM is making a donation to Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in lieu of flowers. Dr. John Ricketts IBM Distinguished Engineer

I would like to pass on my prayers and deepest sympathies to the Kline family. While I did not know Bill, personally, I was a former IBMer in Dayton, NJ in 1991 - 1993 and now work for Lenovo in North Carolina (formally the IBM PC Company). I also lost my brother, Ken to Melanoma on 4-18-2000 when he was only 44. I know the pain and sadness that comes with this cancer and I just wanted to reach out to tell you that you are not alone. God Bless you and may the wonderful memories of your loved one give you comfort at this difficult time. Tracey Nelson Cary, North Carolina tnelson@lenovo.com

Jan - I was deeply saddened to hear of your loss. May the peace which comes from the memories of love shared, comfort you now and in the days ahead. Please know that I am here if you need anything. Don't hesitate to reach out. My phone number at home is 732.370.5174 and my cell is 732.794.2614. My thoughts and prayers are with you. Sandra DiBello

Dear Jan it was with great saddness that I write this message to you , through the wonder of the internet I was blessed to know and share a laugh with Bill. His depth of knowledge and eagerness to share that knowledge was wonderful, I often said to him that if there wasn't a limit on the "thankyou awards" you can give I would be sending him one every day.. from a distance his kindness and generosity of spirit will be greatly missed. May you find strength in memories you shared. Kind regards Tess Lugt

Janice & Kline Family, Our hearfelt sympathy to you all. May God look over you all through this very, very, difficult time. Our prayers & thoughts are with you at this time and may you hold dear memories in your hearts. Julie & Frank Konschnik (Willy's cousin).