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Who was Bill Graham? Bill and his sister were in France as part of a student exchange program when the German army invaded. With a group of 65 children and a Red Cross worker, they fled—and trekked to Marseilles and Toulouse, across the Pyrenees to Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, then on to Casablanca, Dakar, Bermuda, Cuba and, finally, New York. Bill was one of eleven who survived the trek; his sister perished on the trek. Raised in a Jewish foster home in the Bronx, Bill changed his name to Graham and became an American citizen in 1949. He worked his way through City College of New York, with his studies interrupted by Army service in the Korean War (where he garnered a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart). He later moved to San Francisco, finally reuniting with two of his older sisters who had emigrated there from Israel. Bill pursued a promising business career for the next eight years, with
time out for a try at becoming an actor/director. In 1965, he quit an
$18,000 a year corporate job to become the manager of the San Francisco
Mime Troupe for $120 a month. To
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