Tree

$24.95 hard cover, $14.95 soft cover

Tree by William F. Rountree, Jr.

The moving memoir of an inspiring man and his struggles with cancer, his business successes and the loves of his life. Told with simple honesty, Tree’s story takes the reader from his Norfolk upbringing, through the suicide of his father, to the tragic loss of his eye to cancer.

Read the foundational truths that have guided him all his life and gave him the courage and skill to found Monarch Bank.

Take a walk of faith with Tree as he recounts his journey to meet his God and how that shaped his life.
From good old boy hunter and fisherman to Captain Pinot, come meet the man who is Tree.

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“When I spend time with my friend Tree, I always leave deeply inspired by his courage, unflagging spirit, and great passion for life. Tree’s remarkable life journey is well captured in these pages which are filled with uncommon wisdom on leadership, courage, love, friendship and faith. It is a meaningful, rich blessing to read and one that you will want to share with family and friends.”
Scott Rigell
Member of Congress

“TREE is the quintessential story about what happens when you embrace life.  Embracing the foibles as well as the sublime is the work of our lives, and Tree explains how this works by laying out the obstacle course he ran with chutzpah and bravado, with grace and humility, with compassion and love. He answers the question of ‘What’s the meaning of life?’ by showing you how to live!  Need wisdom?  You will find all the wisdom you need in TREE.  You will live better after reading each chapter.  Your vision will be surprisingly sharper after seeing what life looks like through the lens of faith.”
Michael Simone
Senior Pastor, Spring Branch Community Church

“This is a wonderful book about Tree’s passionate pursuit of hunting, banking, wine, fishing, archeology, community service, and fun. Most of all, it is the story of Tree’s great love for his family, his friends and his God.”
Frank Batten, Jr.
CEO, Landmark Media Enterprises

“TREE is the account of an extraordinary journey of passions: Love, Adventure, Service, Friendship, Faith, and ultimately, Life itself. Tree lets us into some secret and often hard places of the human condition and leaves us stronger for the effort. Thanks for letting me be part of the ride.”
Tim Robertson
Founding President and CEO,
The Family Channel
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Story Excerpts:

INTRODUCTION
by Bill Rountree

My purpose in writing this book was to preserve, for my family and friends, some of the stories and experiences that have shaped my life. Some are goofy, crazy adventures, and some are more profound and serious – like my relationship with the Lord. And my decades-long battle with cancer.

I do not want this to be considered a “cancer book,” though there is a section dedicated to the topic, which I hope will be helpful to anyone who finds it relevant.  But my illness has influenced this project in some ways, much as it has “influenced” just about everything else in my life! Primarily, the fact that the cancer moved into my brain “created more immediate deadlines,” so to speak. So I fast-tracked this project from the original post-retirement timeframe of about four years hence.

And here we are. I hope you enjoy this memoir, and from the bottom of my heart I thank all of you who contributed to it, either directly – by sharing your thoughts in these pages and on the website – or “between the lines” by being part of my life. God bless you all.

CHAPTER TWO
WILD MAN

The calm face of a future wild man

All my life, I’ve grabbed at life with both hands – and had a ball doing it. And I’m not one to wallow in regret. That being said, however, I would do some things differently, given the chance. I think the main thing I’d advise my boys not to learn the hard way – as I did – is: “Practice moderation in alcohol.” Until recently I was aggressive and excessive, and I occasionally did some stupid and dangerous things, none of which I’d want my children to do. They say a smart man learns from his mistakes; a truly wise man learns from the mistakes of others. So I guess that’s my preface to this next section about my foolish exploits:  “Do as I say, not as I did!”

The Maury basketball team was a fun group. Our senior year it looked like we had a good team and started winning a lot of games. I developed this concept called the “The Policy,” which basically dictated that after we won multiple games we had to drink the number of beers commensurate with the games we won in a row. I always had the beers ready in a big cooler in my car.

The “Beanpole” going up for a basket

As we started to play and win we would whisper to each other to “remember the policy.” I almost got nailed one night when the coach asked me to put all the equipment in my convertible to take to the game. I had to tell a little fib and say my Dad’s golf clubs were in there – of course, my dad never played golf!

Wayne was a wild guy in my neighborhood. He was what was known as a BI (Bad Influence). My mom had a 1958 yellow Thunderbird, and one night in 1959 when I was about 15 and my parents were out at the Norfolk Forum, he talked me into taking it for a joy ride. I’d never had any training driving the narrow streets, so I side-swiped my first/second grade teacher’s car.  As luck would have it, the policeman who investigated the accident was the father of a boy I played baseball with. So we made him some promises, foremost being that we would immediately apologize and make reparations to the teacher. It was a humiliating experience to sit down with her and her husband. I was so embarrassed. As additional punishment, I had to wait a whole year to get my driver’s license.

I was on a roll – and I can’t even blame Wayne, because later that night, after he’d gone home, I did something else just as boneheaded!  This time I was “under the influence” of a good-looking girl who’d just moved into our neighborhood. Her name was Vicky.

She saw me at the bus stop, and her opening gambit was: “Are you the Bill Rountree with the sailboat on the beach? I want you to take me sailing. When are you taking me sailing?”

I was game for an adventure. “When do you want to go?”

“I want to go tonight at 11:00 p.m.”

This was a school night. “My house is all locked up and I don’t know how I can get out.”

She said, “You’ll figure a way.” And she was right.

I jumped from the second story where my room was. A holly bush to broke the fall and I jammed two vertebrae together. I was carted to the hospital. My feet ended up in traction, and I had to wear a metal brace the whole time I played basketball that year. There was a mixed outcome, though – the accident deflected a little heat from the joyriding debacle (which was discovered that same eventful evening). As far as Vicky goes, I never even got the first kiss! She went home.

I did drink an awful lot of beer. My crazy friend Jack Parker and I figured out at probably 14 or 15 where to buy beer when you were underage. There was a Chinese restaurant that would sell it to us; “Hong Kong Charlie’s” we called it. We’d jump into the car, buy a couple of six packs and head down to the oceanfront community center – the Bill Deal and Fat Ammons bands were in their infancy. Kids from Norview, Granby, Virginia Beach and Princess Anne High were there and they did all these fun line dances – each school had a different style. So that was my social life about every Saturday night.
I had never been much of a ladies man as a kid.

The ladies man, with shades of Austin Powers

When I returned home from grad school, all of a sudden women were attracted to me. I was okay looking. At first I wore these thick brown glasses. At one point I got some “cooler” wire frames. Then all of a sudden I started partying and having a big time. I would date some really nice girls, but I couldn’t find one special one. (I was kind of going through the girl mill, which I think is a guy thing.) Once I graduated from William & Mary, had a stint in graduate school and started getting good jobs, things definitely picked up in the ‘girl department.’

Some of my best friends from high school went to Vietnam. Several were killed. I later lost some of my college buddies. I’m guessing I lost seven friends as a result of that war.  I decided to avoid it if I possibly could. I had a number of options to choose from. The first was to go into a Coast Guard program for six months. I got accepted into that and I thought it was a good way to serve the country, especially since I was raised on the water and enjoyed boats. I have always been patriotic. I was never really against the war until I saw that we couldn’t win it. At that point I thought we needed to get the heck out of there.

Ultimately I didn’t have to serve because I was classified as a 1-Y draft status due to a seizure I experienced at William & Mary during summer school. When exams were over, after two days of no sleep, we had this huge party (grain alcohol-laced watermelons!) and the next day  I had a seizure. The doctors speculated that I had a tiny scar on my brain since infancy, and that the lack of sleep, combined with the alcohol, triggered the episode.

One of the few consequences was that I wasn’t allowed to drive for a while. Oh! And the other thing the doctors stipulated was “no alcohol.” Between my fraternity and debutante party obligations, I told my medical team that that ‘prescription’ was “almost like cutting my pecker off.”

So they allowed me one drink per party!