Born in Manhattan to Jeanie McCormick Thomas, a Glaswegian tailor and Salvatore Charles Favata, a Sicilian American medical student, Bill grew up in Rutherglen, the only child to his single mother Jeanie and her two sisters, Madge and Bessie. He was adored and indulged by strong, quick-witted and feisty women, and by a grandfather of staunch socialist working class stock. It was his Uncle Adam who took him to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, where he saw the French art collection. These visits sowed the seeds of a life-long love of and dedication to the visual arts. But it was his grandfather, a boiler maker and journeyman on the Clyde, who inspired in Bill a fascination of the sea. On visits to see the great ships being built on the Clyde, Bill would watch the seamen, from different shipping lines, in varied uniforms - voyageurs from ‘far off burning shores.’
Bill went to sea in September 1950 as a cadet in the merchant navy aboard the SS Salween. Aged 16 and a half, he was in search of a distant star and the grandest of all adventures.
Forty-one years later he wrote in his poem The Small Town:
I am trapped in a small town
Five hundred miles from here.
I am trapped in a small town
So far and yet so near.
I travelled far to a distant star
A million miles and more
I travelled far to a distant star
To the sea and a burning shore.
But when I reached the distant star
and the far-off burning shore
It seemed as though the small town
Was nearer than before.
I made my home in a far-off place
By the edge of a deep-blue sea
I made my home in a far-off place
That seemed beautiful to me.
But I am trapped in the small town
Near where will always be
The burning shore and the distant star
And the place by the deep-blue sea.
1991-92