Remembering Photographer Bill Madden

I will not say I knew Bill Madden well, though we worked together for years at the Daily Freeman. He would show up, occasionally grumbling of overwork, and take the pictures for some of the stories I was assigned to cover – or he’d show up smiling, after a nice drive in the country, to shoot the photos for a feature I’d figured out for myself a little off the beaten path.

I think I was on vacation, in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme in North Carolina when I got the call that he’d died. He was young, mid to late 40s I suppose, 50? really not much older than I am now, I don’t think, though I believe he’d been raising kids when I was just newly married.

Over the years we both worked for the Daily Freeman, I can recall stumbling across Bill, or Billy as…