LEWISTON, Maine — William Brackett, 48, who went by Billy, didn’t let being deaf interfere with anything he wanted to do, including playing multiple sports, said his father, also named William Brackett.
Basketball, soccer, baseball, softball, he loved them all. As a teenager, he served as a batboy for a high school baseball team and would stand in the dugout teaching the players sign language. As an adult, he taught children how to play basketball in a summer recreation program.
Billy raised his daughter Sandra with his wife Kristina. According to Brackett’s father, Billy would take his daughter on fishing trips, and the two formed a close connection through the activity.
“The attention span of a 2½-year-old isn’t great, and if she got a fish, she didn’t want to touch it. But he was teaching her, and she was paying attention,” his father said.
“That’s the way he was,” he said. “If it was your kid, he’d be doing the same thing.”
On Brackett’s Facebook page he described himself as, “The Silent Giant.”
“He was just a gentle person. He was big and rugged and I guess maybe that’s why all the little kids loved him,” his father said. “They swarmed to a bigger person. Maybe they thought, ‘He’ll be our protector.’”
Brackett was a member of the deaf community in Lewiston.
At Sunday's vigil, Kevin Bohlin, a Deaf community leader, signed Brackett's name along with the three other deaf Mainers who were killed. Bohlin demonstrated the ASL sign for “I love you” and asked mourners to repeat it to each other.
Visiting hours and a funeral were held at Brackett Funeral Home on Saturday, Nov. 4, for friends and family, with a graveside service at Pine Grove Cemetery in Brunswick that followed.
A celebration of life was scheduled to be held at 11 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 5, at the West Bath Fire House.