COMMUNITY PROFILE Through Facebook, he made a good friend in Italy, named Giovani, and they exchanged Bettie Page drawings. The USPS lost the drawing Bill sent to Giovani, and a year later, it was returned to Bill after having been around the world — a virtual world trip. He cringed a little at a commissioned work he got from a woman in Canada who paid in advance and sent him naked pictures of herself. She wanted him to draw her in a particular pinup with a fighter plane. Bill loved his long-time doctor at the VA and respected healthcare workers. In his last days of life, he drew caricatures of nurses who cared for him. He enjoyed blasting the Star Spangled Banner, Hendrix-style, from his electric guitar on his urban balcony every 4th of July, and Auld Lang Syne at midnight on New Year’s Eve. He cherished his beloved niece Teresa and her four kids, as they did him. Bill Policy died at Denver Health with his friend Sarah Newall by his bedside, on February 17, 2025. He was memorialized by his family at Fort Logan with full military honors on March 21, while an honor bell, cast from canteens of fallen soldiers, was rung in his honor. Editor’s Note: The Denver VOICE would not exist without Shirley Whiteside. It was Whiteside who founded the Denver VOICE organization in 1996 with two men who were unhoused at the time. While Whiteside has not been involved with the Denver VOICE since 2005, she remains a steadfast champion of the Denver VOICE and all of the people the organization has served since its inception nearly 30 years ago. BILL POLICY POSES WITH ONE OF HIS DRAWING OF BETTIE PAGE. | PHOTO COURTESY OF SHIRLEY WHITESIDE. “ ODE TO BILL POLICY STORY BY SHIRLEY WHITESIDE I FIRST MET BILL POLICY in 2000. As Bill recalled frequently, he walked into the Denver VOICE office on the 3rd floor of Colfax Avenue and Gilpin Street, right after the January 2000 issue was published, to claim his “gazillion dollar prize” for submitting the Millennial Monster cover art. At the time he was sleeping just south of an unnamed bridge near the end of the #15 bus line. The person stationed in the office at the time told bill his artwork was lost in the computer. But Bill continued to draw for the VOICE on demand and later published three books of art: Homeless Man (out of publication), Bettie Page: Queen of Pinups, and “Pinups by Policy: An Irreverent Look at the Art of the Pinup” with pinups and themes of wordplay. His “girls” kept him from being lonely during the pandemic years, which he took very seriously because of his compromised lungs. The collection grew in part because he wanted to have a gallery show and needed at least 75 drawings, but he just couldn’t stop drawing. Bill was sent to the Middle East during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, interrupting his dreams and his art studies at CU Boulder and Drake University in Iowa, which he chose because an artist he admired taught there. Art was his safe place. After he returned from the war, he never returned to school. He first became homeless in 1998, and eventually, he got lucky and accessed the Housing First Colorado Coalition for the Homeless program in its early days. People come off the streets into housing for the first time in years, or for some, for the first time ever. They still have colleagues without access to a place to rest and clean up. It’s often a tough transition, and Bill blew through two apartments before the third time was the charm, along with a compassionate building manager with a sense of tough love. Once Bill was able to detox he never looked back. As a sober guy, he was impeccably honest, transparent, and caring. He religiously followed the news via multiple news sources. He feared attacks on the democracy he had committed to defending as a soldier. He liked Frank Zappa, cult shows like Mystery Science Theater and Kill Bill, and the Denver Art Museum when there were no school groups there. Meiningers (art supplies) was his favorite excursion. The apartment he lived in until his death contained at least 500 pieces of art, 400 poster-sized pinups carefully mounted on foam core board and wrapped in plastic. May 2025 DENVER VOICE 5 IT’S OFTEN A TOUGH TRANSITION, AND BILL BLEW THROUGH TWO APARTMENTS BEFORE THE THIRD TIME WAS THE CHARM, ALONG WITH A COMPASSIONATE BUILDING MANAGER WITH A SENSE OF TOUGH LOVE. ONCE BILL WAS ABLE TO DETOX HE NEVER LOOKED BACK.”
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