William “Bill” Francis Coady III, of Charlestown, MA, passed away peacefully surrounded by his loved ones at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on Monday, October 27th. He was 75 years old, and in the words of all who knew him, he did it all. He is survived by his loving wife of 31 years, Lauren von Fabrice, his children Victoria, Alex, and Tyler, and his daughter-in-law, Meghan.
Born in Fall River, MA in 1950, Bill and his family moved to Needham, MA when he was 10 years old. Bill attended Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood, MA, graduating with the Class of 1968. After Xaverian, Bill attended Boston University briefly before working and traveling around the world. His thrill for adventure and love of live music, qualities that would come to define him, all started when he saw Bob Dylan “go electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He then found his way to Woodstock in 1969 by arriving in a VW van but returned home on a motorcycle after the van got stuck in the mud. From there, Bill ventured to Northern California, Switzerland, and South Africa among many other places in between, finding ways to make money along the way.
Returning to Boston in the mid-1970s, Bill began his professional life by jumping from rooftop to rooftop installing cable and telephone wires. Over the next several years, this type of work took him all over the country, including New York City, where he lived for a couple of months in a hotel across the street from Studio 54, but as an avid rock & roll fan, never dared to go inside the famed disco club.
In 1981, Bill’s career took off. While living in Washington, D.C., he attended a trade show in Chicago and met the Lee Brothers from Taiwan. Over the next two decades, his entrepreneurial spirit was rewarded as that relationship with the Lee Brothers grew into an electronics component manufacturing business that Bill owned with offices and factories in Taiwan and Indonesia. Through this work, he traveled extensively across Asia, including several trips to China during Deng Xiaoping’s era of “Great Reform.”
As the business grew, Bill welcomed his daughter, Victoria, in 1983. Shortly thereafter he returned to Boston, which he would call home for the majority of the remainder of his life. In 1991, he moved to the North End and met Lauren von Fabrice at Caffé Roma on Hanover Street. In 1996, the couple welcomed their first son Tyler, and Bill and Lauren married in 2002 at the Boston jazz club Les Zygomates.
In 2004, the family moved to Santa Barbara, California, where Bill embraced the laidback Central Coast lifestyle. There, the family welcomed their second son, Alex, in 2005. While living in California, Bill loved driving his pickup truck around with his kids, riding his BMW motorcycle with Lauren, and attending shows at the Santa Barbara Bowl.
Bill, Lauren, Tyler, and Alex moved back to Boston in 2010 and settled in the Charlestown Navy Yard where Lauren continues to reside. In his later years, Bill remained very active by virtue of his extensive bicycling around the city, daily readership of three newspapers, walking the family dog, and his best buddy, Gaucho, maintaining and operating his commercial real estate business, and travelling with family to destinations such as Australia, Hong Kong, England, France, Scotland, and the Netherlands.
Bill will be remembered for his fierce love of live music, his countless acts of kindness that he bestowed upon others without expecting anything in return, his easygoing demeanor, and unwavering dedication to his wife, three kids, extended family, friends, and business partners.
In addition to his wife and three children, Bill is also survived by his sister Nancy Carroll and her husband Bob, sister Jane Helmer and her husband John, brother James Coady and his wife Mary, his sister Maryanne Heman and her husband Kevin, brothers-in-law Stephen Ranere and Bob Cuneo, and first wife Kathleen Coady as well as numerous nieces and nephews and their children. He is joining his late sisters Kathrine Ranere and Karen Cuneo in heaven along with his loving parents William Francis Coady Jr. and Katherine Felicita Coady, both of whom are buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Fall River where Bill will lay with them for eternity.
If you knew Bill and would like to offer your condolences and share stories with his family, a gathering will be held in his memory on Sunday, November 16th at Boston City Winery (80 Beverly Street) from 11:30 AM – 3:30 PM.
In the event you knew Bill and are unable to attend the gathering or would like to make an offering in Bill’s memory, the Family requests that donations be made to the Charlestown Youth Hockey Association (https://www.cyha.com/donate).
God Bless.