William P Dougal

William Peter Dougal, who owned the Crown & Anchor hotel and entertainment complex in Provincetown for 20 years with his husband, Rick Murray, died at his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. on May 11, 2026 from the progressive neural disease ALS. He was 78.

Bill was born in Indian Orchard, a village in Springfield, on Aug. 29, 1947 to Peter and Julie Opalinski Dougal. The older of two sons, Bill was raised in an extended-family neighborhood that formed there when his grandfather, a Polish immigrant, bought a tract of land and divided it among his eight children. Bill grew up with 13 aunts and uncles and 15 cousins and was educated by Polish-speaking nuns, and he remained a proud Catholic throughout his life.

The first in his family to go to college, Bill graduated from St. Michael’s College in Vermont and earned a graduate degree in hospital management from the University of Minnesota. He worked for 25 years at Rhode Island Hospital, which is linked to Brown University, and was vice president for medical staff when he retired early in 1994 to move to Provincetown with Rick and develop the Mussel Beach gym.

Bill had already been coming to Provincetown — he liked to camp with friends at Coastal Acres — when he and Rick met in Cambridge in 1986. Bill also loved camping on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and he took Rick there that fall.

“There were six of us camping in a big tent,” Rick recalled. “Bill had already bought a piece of land there, hoping to build a house someday, but then this gay gentleman showed us a house on a mountain facing the North Shore and Bill bought it. We painted the walls ourselves, coated the roof, decorated it — it was his dream. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas we’d take his mother and brother and sister-in-law there for the holidays.”

The view was heavenly, Bill liked to say: sailboats, roaming clouds, and showers chased by rainbows.

Rick and Bill opened the Mussel Beach Health Club in what is now the pharmacy section of Stop & Shop in 1993 and moved it to its current location at 35 Bradford St. in 1996. In 2001, they purchased the Crown & Anchor, which had been rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1998, and owned it for the next 20 years.

Most of Bill’s work there was behind the scenes, and “he didn’t want to hang out with the pretty boys on the dance floor or the big crowds,” Rick said. “He was much more concerned with how the staff were doing, especially the kitchen and facilities staff, who were mostly Jamaican. He enjoyed being with them, and he’d always take the temperature down a bit and reassure them when things got stressful.”

At the same time, Bill was becoming a high-performing real estate broker. He joined Pat Shultz Real Estate in 1995, bought it with a group of partners in 1998, and retired in 2012 as the leading seller on the Outer Cape.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Bill served on Provincetown’s finance committee alongside two of his closest friends, former town nurse Alice Foley and Bob Vetrick, owner of the Ampersand Guesthouse. His proudest civic achievement, he wrote, was the town’s adoption of the 3-percent Community Preservation Act property tax surcharge in 2004, with 80 percent of the revenue dedicated to affordable housing.

“He was way ahead of his time in thinking about housing,” Rick said. “He was quiet and reserved — a kind, gentle soul.”

Bill also served as a board member of the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod in the mid-’90s and as president of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum Association in the early 2010s.

Rick and Bill bought a winter home in Fort Lauderdale in 2014, and during the pandemic Bill started staying there year-round. He was diagnosed with ALS in the fall of 2023.

“He was never in unbelievable pain, but it’s a slow progression of symptoms,” Rick said. Bill could still speak and type with his right hand, and he wrote out detailed instructions “for everything, including the songs at his memorial service — he took care of everything.”

The couple have arranged for their estate to be donated to a new scholarship fund for premedical students at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Rick said.

Bill is survived by his husband, Rick Murray of Provincetown; his brother, Bob Dougal, and sister-in-law, Kathy; lifelong friend Charlene Brouillard Denton; and many cousins, friends, and caregivers whom he treasured.

A Mass of remembrance will be celebrated at 11 a.m. on Thursday, May 28 at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Provincetown, with a reception to follow at St. Peter’s Hall.

Memorial donations may be sent to the Husman ALS Center at Nova Southeast University, 7595 SW 33rd St., Davie, FL 33314 — or, Bill wrote, “lend a helping hand or ear to someone in need.”