Jeff Smith spent the '80s and '90s at Bigoney's firm, hired out of high school as an apprentice/journeyman. A self-taught draftsman, now with a design firm in Palm Beach Gardens, Smith recalls feeling intimidated by Bigoney at first. "But he was very encouraging, and everything I've done since grew out of the opportunity he gave me." The boss wanted to see his people working. "He hated seeing anyone standing around doing nothing," he remembers.
Even small projects seemed to inspire Bigoney. Wilkin remembers a tiny addition being made to an unremarkable house. "This is it?" Wilkin asked when he arrived at the job site. "What do you mean, 'This is it?'" thundered Bigoney. "Let's get into this thing!" Before Wilkin knew it, "you'd be caught up in the excitement he'd generate."
Colby Katz
Architect Margi Glavovic Nothard relaxes inside her "sanctuary," Bigoney's old house.
A typically well-ventilated Bigoney interior
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When Wilkin got an offer in 1988 to work for the large firm where he's now a partner, Bigoney gave him his immediate blessing. The next year, friends and co-workers were surprised when Bill and Connie Bigoney amicably divorced. They were even more so when he fell in love with a young woman who worked at the veterinarian's office where he took his dogs. The Wilkins attended the wedding of Bill and Margaret Ryan Nortcutt two years later, on December 22, 1990, and the two couples continued to borrow tools and wave hello during the '90s.
The marriage puzzled onlookers. "Nobody knew her very well," says Charles Jordan, then a member of the Sailboat Bend neighborhood association. "She was somewhat overweight, quite a bit younger, and it was just a very poor match." In fact, Margaret was 35 years younger than Bill. Asked what the two had in common, David is silent for a minute. "I have no idea," he finally sputters. "I honestly don't know. The truth is, my father wanted a significant other, and that was his choice. It wasn't my place to tell him what to do."
Though well into his 70s, Bigoney threw himself into Fort Lauderdale's future more than ever before. "A one-man organizational force," Wilkin calls him. Bouncing from roles as Boy Scout leader to Kiwanis member, Bigoney capitalized on daily breakfast meetings with Fort Lauderdale's movers and shakers, getting behind neighborhood associations, advisory boards, and community groups, getting his hands dirty with the city's downtown planning.
He never missed a Sailboat Bend neighborhood function. When residents talked about closing off some streets, Bigoney opposed the idea.
"Bill tore into us in that arrogant way of his," Jordan remembers. "He was always right, and he'd let you know that. Sometimes he could be condescending." Jordan compares Bigoney's flinty personality to that of the prickly Frank Lloyd Wright. The Sailboat Bend debates that rankled Bill so? "The truth of the matter is, he was right," Jordan admits today.
When he found flaws with something the city was proposing, Bigoney made his objections known. An example, Wilkin recalls, came when the city's plans for the 17th Street Causeway Bridge came with standard, FDOT-approved concrete railings that would have prevented any view of the ocean or Intracoastal. "Bill was like, 'That is not going to happen,' and he made it a cause of his to get the design changed." He put together his own studies, hired his own engineers, and convinced the city to adopt his vision instead.
"He was relentless when he got hold of something like that," Wilkin says. "But had he lost, he would have moved on."
By December 1996, Bill Bigoney had reached that particular point in his relationship with Margaret. That month, he had an attorney draft a divorce petition charging that "the Wife has dissipated and wasted marital assets by shopping excessively... despite the objection of the Husband." His lawyer advised Bill to wait until after the holidays to serve Margaret with the papers.
1996 changed David Bigoney's life forever. In February, Connie died after suffering through terminal cancer. Saddled with a full course load and the loss of his mother, David was overwhelmed and exhausted when the year-end break in classes came ten months later. Spending the holiday alone in Tallahassee sounded depressing, so when Bill called him home, he jumped at the chance.
"I was happy to come down," David says. "My dad was stressed. He was having problems with his wife, and it had gotten to a boiling point. He said he could really use the comfort."
Arriving in Fort Lauderdale, David walked into a volatile situation.
"Within a couple of hours," he recalls, "she was rambling and arguing and [getting] in his face about something. It was bad. She was not in control of herself, and he didn't even argue back — it was pointless."
On Christmas Eve, Bill and Margaret drove to the West Hollywood office of Dr. Joel Klass, a psychiatrist who had been seeing Margaret since September. Bill occasionally accompanied her to these Tuesday-night sessions. Klass told police she came to him with two main concerns — a crippling case of PMS and a simmering annoyance with David. Notes from October sessions show she complained that her husband's allegiance was to David, not to her, and that David was "untrustworthy." She also accused David of going through her possessions, and she wanted a lock for her bedroom door.
