A Lawyer for All Seasons

Editor's Note: This tribute to Bill Reynard, NASA Director of the ASRS from 1980-1996, is deeply indebted to the following individuals, who also made major contributions to the ASRS throughout this period: Edgar Cheaney, the Battelle ASRS Program Manager from 1977-1987; Rex Hardy, CALLBACK's Editor Emeritus; and Dr. Charles Billings, Chief Scientist (retired) of NASA Ames.

On April 10, 1996, in one of the poignant ironies that life sometimes offers, William (Bill) Douglas Reynard, the NASA Director of the ASRS since 1980, died from long-term complications related to an earlier heart transplant. Less than a week shy of ASRS's 20th anniversary, the man who was most responsible for guiding the ASRS to its present status as a worldwide model for aviation incident reporting systems--and who we hoped would be here to celebrate his and the program's achievements--was taken from the helm.

Those who shared Bill's sense of humor would agree: It was no way to treat a lawyer. For Bill was a paradox of our contemporary culture--a respected practitioner of a much-maligned profession, who earned the reputation within a tough industry of being a lawyer that solved problems, rather than making them.

"The Only Lawyer They Really Trusted"

Bill had received his Juris Doctorate degree in 1969 from The Ohio State University College of Law. In 1976, he joined the NASA Ames staff following an illustrious career as the Vice President of Operations for the National Aviation Trades Association, and as Director of Special Courses for the AOPA Air Safety Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Bill's first assignment at NASA was as Legal Counsel to the ASRS. In these early, crucial years, he helped create the legal framework for the program's operation, and dealt successfullywhich is to say satisfactorily to all parties involved--with every one of the many legal issues that arose. It was a complicated, difficult job that he performed with great success. In 1980 he was appointed NASA's Director of the ASRS, a position that required him to set policy for and oversee all of ASRS's operations.A Celebration of Life ceremony, attended by his family and many friends, was held for Bill Reynard on April 16, 1996 at Stanford University Hospital, in Palo Alto, California.

Several of Bill's activities as an attorney, outside his work at the ASRS, honed the professional set of ethical standards that he was to adhere to, strictly, throughout his career. One of these was his volunteer work as a legal arbitrator to help settle disputes outside the costly court system. Bill became the most animated when he could describe how he had helped relieve people's distress by creating decent settlements of their disputes with others. He strongly believed that this was the essence of what lawyers are for. Skillful and shrewd, but also considerate and meticulously fair, he was increasingly in demand for his arbitration feats. The added coincidences of his appearance and name--Bill was a red-haired Reynard--cemented his reputation as a genial "fox," and lifted his lawyerly skills into the realm of fable.

Bill also had a brilliant, if brief, career in actual courtroom litigation. An aficionado of RX-7 sports cars, he was once ticketed for speeding, pled not guilty, and successfully represented himself in traffic court--the only time in his life as a lawyer that he appeared in the role of barrister. He was inordinately proud of this 100 percent success record, which eclipses such underachieving defenders as Horace Rumpole, Perry Mason, and Clarence Darrow.

Let Dipsticks Beware

Bill was a commercial pilot who had earned instrument and multiengine ratings before he arrived at NASA. His solid operational background and abiding interest in everything that flew were no doubt at the root of his polite intolerance of "dipsticks"--those who took an overly academic view of aviation issues, or a joyless approach to life and work. No one ever beat Bill in spotting where the fun lay in any situation. A characteristic incident occurred in 1981, when Bill and the founding Editor of CALLBACK, Rex Hardy, were invited to fly to Acapulco to receive an award made to the publication by the Flight Safety Foundation. Rex, a decorated Naval aviator and corporate test pilot, tells the rest of the story: "On our first morning in Acapulco, I walked out onto the beach in front of our hotel and was astonished to see Bill strapping on a parachute. The chute was attached by a long rope to a jeep stationed several hundred feet down the beach. Before I could express my views on this behavior, the jeep was barreling along the hard sand and Bill was high aloft over the water's edge. After a run of some distance, the jeep came to a gradual halt and Bill slowly descended to the sand, exhilarated. I declined to undergo the same experience." From his very first days at the ASRS, Bill recounted a lengthy string of uproarious lawyer jokes. But his wit and humor were far more than entertainment for others. Constantly present, they powered the zest and optimism with which he lived his life and did his work; they sharpened the points he made in argument; they relieved tensions in the people around him; they leavened his wisdom; and they made him memorable.

Crisis Equals Opportunity

When Bill called a meeting and opened it with the announcement, "We have another golden opportunity," his colleagues knew that they faced a program crisis, that Bill would figure out a way to solve it, and in solving it, convert it to an asset. In the best and worst of times, Bill's constructive rationale for action was the same: "This gives us a great opportunity..."

Although he collected many prestigious aviation industry and NASA performance awards during his career, Bill Reynard will be most remembered for the singular contributions he made to aviation safety over 25 years of unselfish, dedicated service to AOPA, NASA, and especially to the ASRS--for which we and the nation owe him a considerable debt.

At the crossroads of a new era, the ASRS has (to use Bill's words) another "golden opportunity." We hope that we've absorbed the gift of Bill's time with us, and the lessons he imparted through his friendship and humor: of how to be smart, dedicated, empathetic, and positive--and most important--of how to keep on having fun.

ASRS Recently Issued Alerts On...

Autopilot rate gyroscope failure in a B747-100
Ambiguous taxiway signage at a Louisiana airport
Extraneous GPWS warnings near a California airport
Inconsistent Tower/ASOS indications at a Missouri airport
Loss of separation for two carriers in Venezuelan airspace

March 1996 Report Intake

Air Carrier Pilots--1815
General Aviation Pilots--637
Controllers--83
Cabin/Mechanics/Military/Other--33
TOTAL--2568