Jennifer Powers
Bill Ashmore (B.A. as I and my family came to call him) was remarkable, exceptional, and one of the kindest and most brilliant individuals I have known. We became acquainted when I was studying electronic music at the U of A as he was assisting with the process involved in the audio to digital conversion of music created in the electronic laboratory. He became a mentor who coached me in mathematical concepts (he was passionate about the theory and application of prime numbers), in rational thinking, in the joy of debugging an Assembler language program. He taught me to understand the binary and hexadecimal underpinnings of the language and how to 'debug' those pesky statements that a brilliant chemist had written in Assembler but bombed because they missed the mark. He taught me how a binary search works and how to program it in Assembler code. These were concepts I later taught to college students in introductory classes I taught in Computer Science courses. B.A. and I formed a close friendship that endured for 5 decades and would continue now if he was still walking this earthplane. He became a constant like e, pi, and gravity. Not just for me but also for my nuclear family. For many years, he hosted an annual 'steak-out' party for family and friends - driving to LR from Fayetteville with his 2 large grills, shopping with me for all the provisions, cooking the steaks, then driving back to Fayetteville, after the party, with his grills cleaned and returned to his truck bed. He built a 3-dimensional tic-tac-toe board for me because we used to challenge each other in that game. I rarely beat him at the game, but the times I did earned his respect. He was a confidant, a supporter, an intellectually challenging conversant, and a dear and beloved friend to me and to my family. I hope he is in a place of peace - he certainly deserves it. I'm grateful for the gift he has been in my life and my family's lives. And I hope he's out there somewhere finishing up his theories of prime numbers. If everyone had a B.A. in their life, the world would be a happier place.