Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 31, 1947, his early years were spent moving from place to place with his family. Starting in Minnesota, then Kansas, then Colorado, then Connecticut and finally to Marblehead, Massachusetts Where as he puts it, "Who I am was really born in Marblehead." Of course, he still lives there.

Bill attended public schools in Marblehead, grades five to eleven, but then his family went on the move again, taking him away from all of his friends in his senior year of high school.

After high school, he attended the University of Connecticut, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served for 14 months in combat with the River Patrol Force (PBRs) in The Republic of Vietnam.

After the service, he returned to college, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Maryland in 1972. For the next three years he attended graduate school in political science at Indiana University's Russian and East European Institute. His studies and research were in the liberalization of tyrannical regimes, and tyranny's effects on creativity. He taught at IU for a few years.

After academics, he returned to Marblehead to for a six year stint as a sailmaker with Hood Sailmakers including tiem afloat as a ocean sailboat racer. The he began his career in advertising, first selling advertising space for a local paper he was ultimately promoted to assistant to the publisher for the chain of ten newspapers in Massachusetts and then he went on to work for The New York Times.

An entrepreneur at heart, after a few years, he left The New York Times and started his own company in 1979.

Today, Legend, Inc. has gross actualized billings of over $3.5 million annually and is considered a high-quality, creative, award-winning agency and communications company with a prestigious client roster.

As Bill puts it, "Today, Legendinc.com is a communications company specializing in marketing, creative writing, ghost writing, and in assisting our clients with message development and implementation. We use every medium possible to accomplish that task."

As President & Creative Director, he oversees all client relations, new business, and the agency's creative and copy product and all of its extensive internet operations.

Currently, in addition to advertising, publishing, and creative photography, Legend, Inc. also maintains several extremely popular internet sites, legendinc.com, which is currently attracting over 25 million hits per year (see current counter). Bill insists, "Our only real business is marketing creativity; everything online that we do for ourselves is for training and experimentation. It's fun, and what we've done in publishing and in internet marketing has made us a better creative agency."

Legend, Inc. has originated and maintains many client Internet sites and has developed extensive and intricate Internet graphics for many of its clients.

Bill is married to Joy Hooper Purdin a public school fourth grade educator and they have a daughter, Blythe, who is also a teacher, in kindergarten.

He is an avid outdoorsman with many hobbies including USA Master swimming, year-round ocean kayaking, scuba diving, golfing, sailing, skiing, long distance in-line skating, digital photography, skydiving, fly-fishing and year-round camping. He is also active in civic affairs in Marblehead, including nine years service on the Finance Committee and nine years on the Board of Selectmen. Bill has written 26 books of poetry and two novels, in addition to numerous short stories and essays. Some of his work has been featured in national newspapers and magazines.

Photos (clockwise from the top): sailing off Bakers Island, Massachusetts, after a skydive, swimming a 200 butterfly at the New England Championships, skydiving over Skydive Pepperell and Jumptown in Massachusetts, doing a tandem with an Iraq-bound soldier, flying the American flag in at a Virginia site, and kayaking at 5:00 AM in Marblehead Harbor when USS Constitution visited Marblehead, and camping in the Roadtrek..

And, Bill's beloved RoadTrek offers gives him a hi-tech office on wheels
for many events and meetings.