Submitted by Mary Anne Buckles – June 26, 2017 –

 If you have been to the Del Norte Farmers Market any time in the last at least 8 years, you will remember seeing William Jeffrey Macali (63) and his wife Sherry building and selling driftwood tables, planters and garden art.

Willie was a fixture in Crescent City, collecting ocean driftwood and constructing a wide variety of art in good years and bad alike. The rains and the piles of driftwood accumulating on the beaches were his major concern.

In one of Roots and Shoots early years Willie demonstrated to our group how he selected driftwood for his projects and how he put it all together.

I chuckle now as I remember my once 7 or 8 year-old grandson with a drill in hand trying to make the same thing that Willie had demonstrated the day of the Roots and Shoots meeting. Willie had handed him the drill.

I didn’t know Willie very well but we had had a few conversations about the twists and turns his life had taken and his efforts to accept his past. I respected that he had taken the cards he was dealt or the cards he had not played well and attempted to straighten out the deck albeit in an off-the-beaten-path sort of way.

Rest in peace my friend Willy. Crescent City will miss the color you brought to our town and remember the life lessons you gave us