We’d like to thank Bob McLaughlin for this story.
My son is getting Married this weekend. He had his bachelor party last night and the story of meeting famous people came up. Well I have been lucky and have met several, but one of the most memorable was one of my first and that was Bill.
It was around 1981 or ’82. I had just come home from Boot camp in Florida and was going to Greatlakes for additional training, which also happens to be my hometown area of Deerfield. It was a late night in Northbrook, Illinois. My sister was working in a restaurant doing food prep and my parents asked me to pick her up from work. Ok, no problem.
So my buddy and me headed out to where she worked and entered an almost empty restaurant. There was only one table being used and, right away, we saw that it was Bill Murray and family. Not wanting to disturb them, we hung back at the door waiting on my sister. Well the next thing we know Bill calls over “Hey guys what you waiting for?” waving us over. We walked over to the table and I let him know that my sister was working here and we were waiting to pick her up. Bill says “Well we are going to keep her here a bit long so join us.”
Now, if you can imagine, he tells us it is his mother’s birthday and they are celebrating. Bill introduced us and we of course congratulate her. His brother Brian was there also. Bill found out quickly that we loved golf and Caddyshack, which was still pretty much a story at this time, so we talked a bit about the movie. It seemed like an hour went by at the time, but if it was more than 10 minutes I would be surprised. Shortly after, my sister came out, we are thanked him for his time, and were on our way.
I do wish we had a camera of course, but this memory is one I cherish to this day. I always tell people that Bill Murray is the same in person that you see on screen – it is amazing.