William Gantt

William “Bill” Henry Gantt died in the hospital on December 30, 2024, surrounded by his loved ones, whom he kept laughing until the very end. Bill was born October 1, 1948, in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and grew up nearby on his family’s dairy farm (with no indoor plumbing for the first nine years of his life). His parents, Janesa Horner Gantt and Frederick H. Gantt, raised him to be a hard worker, a habit he refused to break even a few months before his death, climbing up and down ladders to maintain his beloved Victorian home and spending hours tending to his flower gardens. Among his West Virginia kin, his parents and his brothers Frederick D. Gantt and Silven Gantt preceded him in death, and he is survived by his brother Michael Gantt and his sister Alisa Emmons.

He graduated from Hedgesville High School and Shepherd College with a degree in business. Bill credited joining Delta Sigma Pi with expanding his horizons beyond West Virginia, and after graduating college in 1970, he accepted the first job offer he received at Pomeroy’s Department Store and moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As luck would have it, he moved into a third-floor apartment two stories above Deborah Fickes, who had recently moved from Lancaster to attend Harrisburg Area Community College. After several years of courtship, Deb and Bill married in 1976, and a year later, they moved a few blocks away to their shared home of 47 years on Sylvan Terrace.

Bill loved and supported his wife Deb in completing her bachelor’s degree and was proud of her involvement in feminist organizations in the 1980s and her career as a social worker. In later years, he did his best to care for her after she had a serious health setback. He often told his son Julian M. Gantt that he loved him more than anything in this world, and he could barely contain his pride in his son’s accomplishments. This extended to his son’s partner, Hamza Zafer, whom he affectionately referred to as his “other son.” He cherished the unconventional family he and Deb built together over five decades with their dear friends Barbara Humes and Phillip Braxton. He is survived by all of them, who already miss his enormous presence terribly.

Bill’s identity was intertwined with Allison Hill, and he devoted much of his life to advocating for the neglected neighborhood. From the late 1970s to the late 1990s, he restored four houses on the Hill with Deb, cofounded the South Allison Hill Civic Association, led the effort to create the Allison Hill Municipal Historic District, and served as a member of Harrisburg’s Architectural Review Board. He took immense pride in planting flowers in the turn-of-the-century watering trough at the intersection of Mulberry and Derry Streets for more than 50 summers, only missing this final year of his life.

His passion for home restoration led him to study wallpaper hanging, and he taught himself the principles of classical interior design. In 1988, he opened Gantt’s Decorating as a showcase for his infinite creativity and his love of beautiful things. For more than 30 years, he designed, fabricated, and installed countless window treatments for his clients, reveled in creating dynamic Christmas show window displays, and spent hours repairing and refinishing antique sculptures, light fixtures, and furniture. His creativity far surpassed his business acumen (which was hampered by his refusal to “kiss rich people’s asses”), and sometimes the family struggled financially. Despite this, Bill bestowed on his son an abiding respect for the dignity of work even when it wasn’t monetarily rewarded, a firm conviction to stand up for justice, and an appreciation for the absurd humor of life.

Bill relished hearing and telling stories—especially if they had a bawdy punchline or a twisted pearl of wisdom. Bill lived out loud and dreaded the thought of being boring. He never wanted to be memorialized as just a loving husband and father (though he certainly was) but as someone who always had an opinion and who strove to befriend people who were very different from him. Over the last decade, he could often be found writing in his journal and drinking a beer or two with the people he met at several Allison Hill watering holes.

Though he didn’t believe in heaven or hell, Bill thought if they did exist, he preferred to be in the lukewarm section of hell, reserved for all the interesting sinners (who hadn’t done anything all that bad), where the conversations would be raucous and stimulating for all eternity—heaven sounded far too boring full of saints praising God forever. Bill will be greatly missed by the many people whose lives he touched with his creativity, humor, and passion for justice.

A memorial service celebrating his life will be held on Saturday, January 11, 2025, at noon at the John Harris-Simon Cameron Mansion, 219 South Front Street, Harrisburg.

One of his final wishes was that his much-loved watering trough continue to be planted and maintained as a source of beauty for the neighborhood. In lieu of flowers, Bill’s family requests donations to establish a fund for this purpose in his memory: https://everloved.com/life-of/william-gantt/.