The family businessman who spent his life sailing around Gibson Island

When Bill Passano Jr.’s four kids were young, their summer camp was six weeks on a small boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Dad was head counselor.

It was a version of his own childhood summers spent on the waters near Gibson Island, except now his family lived there full time. That was the dream — a life by the shore, playing tennis and golf, boating for hours at a time. The best part was the quality time with family.

Family. His personal and professional lives revolved around it. After long days working at the family printing and publishing companies, Waverly Press and Williams & Wilkins, he’d often sit on the porch with his wife and children, sip a gin and tonic, and watch the boats go by through his binoculars.

The sea breeze and sounds of boat motors are now reminders of him. Passano died May 6 of a respiratory infection at a Towson retirement community. He was 97.

He was born in Baltimore on Feb. 8, 1929. He and a younger sister, Susie, grew up in a structured, formal household, said Passano’s son, the third of his name. One of his dad’s favorite stories from childhood was about a dinner party where he asked his father if he could back his motorcycle out of the garage. His dad said yes — only for Bill Jr. to crash the sidecar and flee with friends.

Sailing became a central part of Bill Jr.’s life after his father purchased a boat in 1941. The family spent weeks at a time floating on the Chesapeake Bay. Bill Jr. relished the time with loved ones and the gratification that came from expertly navigating the water.

“He enjoyed it, and it was something he was very good at, capable,” said his son, Will Passano III.

He attended Calvert School, then Gilman School, where he was a lineman on the football team and graduated in 1948. He then went to Hampden-Sydney College in rural Virginia, where, during his senior year, he met the former Helen “Honey” Addington through mutual friends.

She was a rising junior at nearby Sweet Briar College. As he prepared to graduate, she was getting ready to study abroad. He didn’t want her to go. He issued an ultimatum — stay and marry him, or leave and never see him again.

She chose him.

“My dad was smitten with my mother,” their son said.

They married in 1953. Bill Jr. enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after spending years in an ROTC program. They had their first child, Leslie, at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina two years later. He was later honorably discharged and moved back to Baltimore to work for the family business.

Bill Jr.’s grandfather first worked for the company as a salesman in the late 1890s. After the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 destroyed the headquarters, he borrowed money to keep the business afloat and moved it to the Waverly neighborhood.

Eventually, the company split into two operations. Williams & Wilkins published medical books and journals, while Waverly Press printed scientific literature.

Bill Jr. joined the company when his father and uncle were in charge, working various jobs until he was named president of both organizations in 1972. That year, the company went public through the investment bank Alex. Brown & Sons, a major turning point for a long-private organization.

About 16 years later, Bill Jr. decided to hire the organization’s first non-Passano president, Ted Hutton, who previously worked for a competitor. Bill Jr.’s expertise was in printing, a more customer-facing industry than growth-driven publishing, but “he knew that the future, to his credit, was in publishing, and he therefore felt that he needed somebody that came from that world,” Hutton said.

Bill Jr. mentored him as he learned the ropes. Hutton respected that Bill Jr., now chairman of the board of directors, trusted him with the family business, never micromanaging him or going around him to get his way.

“True to his word, always concerned about his fellow man — when somebody has those kinds of characteristics, it permeates down through an organization,” Hutton said. “His moral compass was always true north.”

Over the next few years, the duo made potent decisions — first, to sell the printing arm in 1993, then the publishing assets in 1998. Hutton thought Bill Jr. might resist the sale of the printing division, but he was a businessman above all else.

“Bill saw that it was the right thing to do, and I had great respect for his doing the right thing versus, maybe, in his heart of hearts, what he would have preferred to do, which was to keep the thing together,” Hutton said.

He retired in 1998, which gave him more time with his children — Leslie, Will, Kemp and Joanne — and grandchildren. He ramped up his involvement in community organizations, now with a bank account deep enough to give back to institutions he loved.

Throughout his life, he served on the boards of three schools, including Gilman, three hospitals, the First National Bank of Maryland, Planned Parenthood of Maryland and Center Stage. He owned three homes — on Gibson Island, in Bolton Hill and in the Bahamas — and donated the Baltimore house to Gilman for use as a faculty residence.

Granddaughter Caroline Passano said Bill Jr. taught his grandchildren the values of hard work and loyalty. He’d always ask, “What’s new?” instead of “How are you?” He hosted regular family gatherings to keep the cousins close.

He was “someone who loved life and really lived it well,” Caroline said. “I don’t think he died with any regrets. Even until his late 90s, he was traveling. Was it easy? No, but he wasn’t put down by a challenge, and if it meant being together with people, he was up for it as long as he could be.”

A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. on June 9 at St. Christopher by the Sea Church on Gibson Island.

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