Darn it, now that he‘s melted away... you know, I think I kinda liked that Willard. I can’t say that I knew much about him — no thanks to his very limited on-camera edits and sound bites (but I guess he never did nor said much) — but his last few captured utterances were that self-deprecatingly honest and insightful to garner some small tap of respect. He seemed to me, at least, a jumble of hazy contradictions that would’ve required an extended narrative to understand and possibly to empathize with. For example, he had a massive, muscular chest (especially for an old dude) but seemed incapable of mounting any physical drama; he is described as a lawyer yet seemed barren of the gift of gab; as the eldest member of Koror one could imagine him shouldering the tribe emotionally while imparting some sort of exalted, distilled wisdom — instead we were shown an elusive, shadowy, almost forlorn old gray man.

By David. W. Taylor
Reality Reel Media
03.19.05

Sometimes people of few words say just the right things and Willard certainly accomplished this before his sudden, though hardly shocking, departure. Knowing he was about to be walked off the plank at the unceremoniously commanded (undeservedly, by producers) very first Koror Tribal Council, he approached Coby as he strolled along an idyllic Palau beach, and waved him a soft salute. Willard began his stoic farewell to maybe his only friend by asking Coby to take his tattered pants after he’d gone and Coby responds by nicely wishing that Katie be dispatched in his stead. Willard shrugs it off with a matter-of-fact huff, “Well, it’s a game. I had fun.” Ah, none of the acrimonious sniping or plaintive, maniacal last-minute alliance shopping for Willard — a more bone direct, honest and unassuming collection of words I have rarely heard on Survivor. And in what Willard must have thought would surely be his last surviving epitaph on Survivor Palau, he made no amends for his hermetic ways in a bluntly revealing, “It’s a game of personalities and I almost have no ability to shmooze.” He, later, acknowledged his tendency for being “crabby.” Notwithstanding, then, scratching my scalp raw wondering why he ever applied for Survivor casting, I gotta love a guy who knows himself this well and is willing to share it so deeply.

And as Willard accepted his doom, his torch going black and smokey... he turned to his former tribe — the shining city of Koror — and spoke with such brusque eloquence and conviction, and love perhaps, that they still ring... still echo: “Stay strong. Stick to the plan. Finish them off.” That was Willard all over. No shmooze, blunt words, all sizzle. Willard fades amorphously to a hard granite gray.