Hundreds attend memorial for Billy Rae

In one metal folding chair sat the master of Billy Rae’s Cub Scout troop, who was one of the first on scene after Rae was hit by a car one icy day in January 1968.

In another sat Rae’s seventh-grade language arts teacher, who, in order to get access to Holy Family Hospital’s intensive care unit to visit his student, became Rae’s “Uncle Don.”

There was a Rogers High School alumna who reminisced about the Spokane Coliseum crowd that gave Rae a standing ovation as he received his diploma in 1975.

There was the Taco Time manager who served Rae two tacos every Wednesday for a quarter century.

There were teachers – lots of teachers – who got to know Rae and his bright smile while he worked as a teacher’s aide over the last 30 years.

And a few hundred others were there, too, at a memorial service Saturday at Sacajawea Middle School, saying goodbye to Billy Rae on what would have been his 52nd birthday.

Rae died June 16 from injuries he suffered from a fall in his home four days earlier.

It has been almost 40 years since the day he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking to Shaw Middle School. The driver was never caught. Rae was in a coma for two months. Doctors said he wouldn’t live. Then doctors said he would never talk, never walk. He would forever be in a nursing home, they said.

There were continuous updates in Spokane’s newspapers.

“Young Hit-Run Victim’s Condition Still Critical.”

“Hit-and-Run Victim Improving Slightly.”

“Billy Rae Improves, May Leave Hospital.”

“Boy Beats Odds.”

Doctors were wrong on all counts.

Rae was partially paralyzed on his left side and lost the use of one arm, but, with the help of a brace, he soon walked. He became an avid swimmer.

He had memory loss and his speech was slow, but Rae could still crack jokes, grade math assignments and brighten anybody’s day, his friends remembered.

“He was a very likable guy,” said Brady Houbrick, 15, who was a student in the class where Rae worked as a teacher’s aide. “He would come up to you and see how your day was, and he always made your day better.”

Vince Martin, whose class Rae worked in for almost 10 years, remembered Rae’s calming effect on students, his extreme politeness and his voracious appetite.

Rita Conner, Sacajawea’s office manager, baked cookies on Thursdays.

“He always had a good reason to walk by the office on Thursdays,” Conner said. “It was just a complete delight when Bill walked into the office.”

His former next-door neighbor, Jim Parry, got Rae his first job in his classroom at Garry Middle School. When Parry transferred to Sacajawea, Rea transferred too.

Every year Rae would tell Parry’s class about the hit-and-run.

“Mr. Rae has a damaged brain, but he uses it to his full potential,” Parry told his classes, according to a 1998 Spokesman-Review article. “You have a healthy brain. Use it.”

“What an inspiration he was to the kids,” Parry said Saturday.

Rae got paid for one hour a day, but he worked from the first to last bells, except on Wednesdays. That’s the day his seventh-grade liberal arts teacher – before and after he was hit by the car – Don Hughes, would take him for lunch at Taco Time. Hughes, 86, was an honorary member of the family: “Uncle Don.”

“I was proud to be related with him,” Hughes said after the service. “He made me probably a better person, too.”

Joyce Rae lived with her son in the home where he was raised. Addressing the memorial service, she told about helping him get ready for his bus ride to work every morning. She would blow him a kiss when he left for the bus stop and wait for him to blow her a kiss as the bus drove by soon after.

“I know now that he did everything in these 40 years that he was supposed to do.”