Bill Sauer
Bill Sauer
Business Owner and World Traveller
The same advice I tried to instill in my two girls is one word called, "Responsibility." Be responsible for your life. Life is a matter of choices; you make good ones and you make bad ones. And boy, I made bad ones. But, be responsible. If something goes wrong don't blame somebody else. I was probably your lack of responsibility that caused it to happen.
Bill Sauer
Business Owner and World Traveller
My name is Bill Sauer. The school that I went to was built on our farm. It was not a one-room-school, but a two-room-school. There were eight in our class.
Graduating from the eighth grade, I went on to high school in a town called Spooner, Wisconsin. I got involved in sports a little bit. I also was really good in math and physics; I really enjoyed that.
I wanted to be my own boss and own my own business, so I made a deal with the owner and borrowed some money from an aunt, and I was in the service station business.
I went to school during the day to learn how to run a station and at night to learn how to fix cars. I married a girl I knew from high school two years later. We have two girls and we just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary.
I’ve owned several businesses and now I work two days a week—I’m semi-retired. In all of those years of working, I have had a lot fun too. But starting out when my two girls were your age, I got the travel bug.
By the time they graduated from high school, they had been in 42 or 43 different states. Then my wife and I (Duffy is my wife) got excited about doing some dog sledding. I came across a fellow by the name of Paul Schurke, a North Pole explorer. We became good friends and now I have been in the Arctic seven times.
About eight years ago, I got involved in woodworking, and it's not building furniture but rather building craft type stuff. The other thing I do is fly airplanes and I have done it for forty years.
I've Traveled the Whole Wide World Around
Honoring Bill Sauer
I’ve Traveled The Whole Wide World Around
(Honoring Bill Sauer)
(Chorus)
I’ve traveled the whole wide world
The whole wide world around
And I’m honored to be here
With each of you now
I grew up on a farm
That my grandfather had
I would walk, run or ski
To school in the morning
School was on Grandpa’s land
Wooden stove is what we had
With toilets out back
Living in the country
(Chorus)
We’d go and pick milkweed
For the Army
To make life jackets
For World War II
Plus hunt for scrap medal
To collect for scrap dealers
To melt down until
The war was over
(Chorus)
Studied to be an Engineer
Got a job with Honeywell
At the start of the space race
Back in ‘57
Sputnik meant the race was on
We went up, up, up and gone
To hold our flag
High up into the heavens
(Chorus)
But I had a dream
Of finding work outside
Quit my job at Honeywell
To buy a gas station
On Central & 29th
In Columbia Heights
Got married to my wife
A beautiful situation
(Chorus)
Got itchy pumping gas
Built myself an auto track
Then I sold auto test equipment
Started a school Auto Tech
Then with the time left
My wife & I got excited
To start dog sledding
(Chorus)
With Paul Sherky we did ride
To the Arctic in the wintertime
Started in Siberia
With nomadic people
Who follow the reindeer
In the wild year after year
Chukchis is their name
Warm and friendly people
(Chorus)
In their Yuranga we did stay
On reindeer hide night and day
We stepped back hundreds years
Possibly thousands
In weather forty below
To Greenland with Eskimo
Hunting seal and polar bear
Losing land to global warming
(Chorus)
All the way through Moscow
Lots of snow on the ground
To Kamchatka
With three hundred volcanoes
Walked into a crater
Spitting, spouting all over
Called my wife the phone went dead
Should have got more life insurance
(Chorus)
Next year, 2009
Paul Sherky, my wife and I
Making plans to celebrate
Perry’s big adventure
Way up to the North Pole
We, plan to go
With the Polar Inuit
To Fort Conger
(Chorus)
Why do I do this
How could I resist
To set sail
and touch a whale
Through life
and her splendor
With family and friends
Protection from the wind
Wick the sweat and to give
Warmth to everybody
(Chorus)
Words & music by Larry Long with Andrea Wyatt’s 3rd Grade Class of Wilshire Park Elementary School.
© Larry Long 2008 / BMI