William Hughes Grady

Bill Grady, journalist, rare book dealer and teller of peppery stories, died at his home on South Hennessey Street in Mid City on the evening of April 3, 2020. He was in the company of his lifelong friend Russ Popara, his two dogs and a young African grey parrot named Yikes.

The cause of death was an aggressive brain cancer that was diagnosed in early October. Bill was 68.

When weather permitted, he spent his last months visiting with friends on his second-floor screened porch, offering wine, bourbon and packages of curious cookies special ordered from Japan. Conversation often included talk of Bill’s post diagnosis shopping spree: a sinfully priced French watch (it was slow), a Civil War pistol (he paid too much) and AIBO, a Sony robot puppy (too complicated). Among the pageant of listeners were Philip Melancon, Harold Erath, Joe Massony, Walt Philbin and Brewster Stalter. Bill’s nephews Matt, Andrew and Christian Grady were there, as was their mother, Colleen, who took care of Bill and kept his household going.

A take-me-or-leave-me sort of guy, Bill went his own way in life, starting with an early fascination with magic tricks that inspired furtive bus trips from his home in Gentilly Woods to Canal Street in search of props. His one-boy magic shows sometimes starred his pet guinea pig.

Eventually he made his way to Jesuit High School where he struggled with Latin, excelled at football and expanded his world with summer jobs — first loading bags of ice onto trucks at the Pelican Ice and Cold Storage on St. Louis Street and later slinging coffee at the Morning Call on Decatur Street. “Billy learned to gamble at Pelican Ice and learned to drink at the Morning Call,” his mother, who was from Maine, liked to say. Somewhere in between, he was fired at the Court of Two Sisters for general ineptitude.

Next came LSU, where he learned to write and landed a reporting job at a weekly newspaper in Clinton, Louisiana, followed by 20-some years at The Times-Picayune, where he worked as a staff writer for Dixie Magazine, followed by a stretch covering nighttime cops and Criminal District Court. He wrote a sometimes controversial weekly column called Slice of Life, mostly about everyday New Orleanians but sometimes well-knowns such as Lee Dorsey, Johnny Adams, Zachary Richard and Champion Jack Dupree. Among his best pieces were his account of the Olympia Brass Band on tour in the snowy North and a day with Mississippi football phenom Marcus Dupree.

When he left the T-P, he infused his rare book business, Hughes Books, with the same level of intensity as he did his newspaper work and became a nationally recognized authority on Civil War books and documents. He was forever grateful to Nita Elfert, the French Quarter antiques dealer who schooled him in the business of Louisiana antiques and the art of making a sale. There was a photograph of Nita on Bill’s desk, like the smart approving mother that she was to him. There was never a harsh word for her.

Through it all, there was Bill the adventurer. All of Europe. All of the Balkans. All of Mexico. A trip to eastern Turkey and the medieval Armenian ruins of Ani, guarded by an imposing Anatolian shepherd and a slew of armed soldiers, was a memory branded into the brains of Bill and his former wife, journalist Ginny Hardy. “It was the best trip. I have dreams about it, in color. I’m flying over it,” he said a few weeks ago on his screened porch.

Then there was Greece, Bill’s one true paradise. And in Greece there was his adored friend Dimitris Salantis, a retired police captain living in Kalamata, commuting to his family’s ancient village, Akritochori, on a hillside above the Mediterranean Sea. Bill was always welcome there. He loved the roasted roadside goat and the pastries, the baby artichokes, the markets, the ouzo, the sea, the ferries to Crete and Zakynthos and the wine and olive oil from Dimitris’ village. He wanted to speak Greek and to look Greek and to be Greek. Often when traveling through the country he was mistaken for a Greek. He took pride in that. He was a man of many lives and, forever the magician, he juggled them all.

Bill was the uncle of Matthew James Grady, Andrew Robert Grady, Christian Alfred Grady, stepfather of Zeph Hardy, brother of the late James Dignam Grady and son of Alfred Grady and Alice Dignam Grady, now deceased. There will be a graveside memorial service at Metairie Cemetery after COVID-19 is defeated. If you wish to make a donation in Bill’s name, please consider the Good Shepherd School, 1839 Agriculture St., New Orleans LA 70119, thegoodshepherdschool.org.