Claudia Payne
Former Times fashion director
"There was always this panic closing, because his pictures weren't in, and where was he? But he always delivered, and it was always a cliffhanger. He was like a horse you couldn't tame, but it's the best horse you'll ever have, and he'll win all the races."
Trip Gabriel
"I was never Bill's boss. I will disabuse you of that. Bill had no boss, other than himself."
Ken McFarlin
"There was one occasion where the Evening Hours page had closed and there was some change he wanted to make. I told him, 'Bill, it's gone, it's closed.' Lo and behold, Tom Bodkin [creative director of The Times] calls me into his office and says, 'We need to make that change.' We needed to do whatever to make Bill happy. I learned that early on."
Claudia Payne
"There was the amazing Alex Palmer [secretary in the Style department, now deceased], who was the Bill wrangler. She was the only person that could soothe Bill, and she could mediate, or find him, because he would disappear. That was vital, because he refused to be on staff. His mantra was, 'Child, don't fall into the traps of the rich.'"
Nancy Newhouse
"Bill was a freelancer, but he eventually came into the paper. One day he was in the Style department and he looked kind of down. I got him in my office and said, 'How's it going now that you're on staff?' I finally got it out of him that he hadn't gotten paid for a month. I called upstairs and of course they had the paychecks. I think he was tremendously relieved, but it was agony for him. Bill never wanted to talk about money or think about money."
Annie Flanders
"A couple of times he came down to the office and ceremoniously ripped up his check."
Stephen Drucker
"He didn't care about food, clothing or shelter. He just cared about taking the pictures he wanted to take. It's no exaggeration to say that he saw the clothes, he never saw the person."
Tiina Loite
"George Clooney and Julia Roberts were co-hosting the Met Gala one year. He didn't know who they were. He didn't go to the movies or have a TV. Bill didn't care about celebrities."
Barbara Graustark
Former editor of the Style department
"I had very early, informal discussions with Bill about whether or not we should at least mention interesting clothes worn by some of the women in Evening Hours. He said: 'Absolutely not, child! You know they don't own those clothes, everything is borrowed and I am not here to give free publicity to those designers!' He was incorruptible."
Enid Nemy
Former Times reporter
"When you worked with him at parties, there was always an amusing aside, especially about the women who would try to insinuate themselves into a photograph. He really disliked that. Once I retired, I'd see him at a lot of different things. He'd always say, 'How are you, pet? We're the last of them.' I'd always think, 'Who the heck is 'them'?'"
Dan Shaw
"In the party coverage there was a tremendous amount of thought of how he was portraying the city. When he came in with these pictures of men only wearing skirts and shirtle ss, that was pushing the envelope of The Times at the time. He was so popular that no one would tell him no. He liked his power. He didn't want to admit it, but he knew how powerful he was."
Charles Klaveness
Former Times staff editor
"Bill loved to tease his copy editors, especially when it came to his Evening Hours feature — dozens of head-and-torso shots and captions showing the rich and famous. The David Rockefellers. (Easily checked.) The John Guares. (Yep — CQ.) Even the occasional Tjokorda Gde Arsa Artha. (Wha??!) He'd confide, with a chuckle, 'I'm a lousy speller, you know.' With all those names, the column was an improvised explosive device."
Monica Drake
Times Travel editor
"I started in Metro doing news. I knew so little about Styles. I had no idea who he was. But he was such a familiar presence around the office. I remember him smiling and being a beacon of warmth. Then I realized who he was and got more shy around him.
There was one day I was wearing some skirt. He said: 'Oh, I like that skirt. I like the way you put that together. It reminds me of the way people in Paris are wearing their skirts now.' I thought, 'I can die happy now.'"
Trip Gabriel
"He had a voicemail system that I'm sure he never listened to. People were always calling me or others: 'How do I get a message to Mr. Cunningha m? I want to invite him to an event.' He was probably the most sought-after person at any of these events."
Simone Oliver
Digital director, Allure; former Styles web producer
"He let the streets talk to him. He doesn't go out with a preconceived idea. He goes out for several days and sees the story emerge. There were other variables like the weather, or if there was a parade. The seasons were important to him, things happening in the city were important to him, like the farmers' market or festival time in Harlem or the Mermaid Parade. He really loved the city."
Trip Gabriel
"He was the hardest-working man in journalism. Between On the Street, which he worked on all day, and Evening Hours, which kept him up late, his days were endless. You couldn't get him to take a vacation."
John Kurdewan
"He brought honesty. He'd say, 'Do you think people are getting bored with my pages?' I was with him when he was sick and in the hospital and he was still talking about his pages. He'd go, '26, 29, 31.' The doctors said, 'What is he saying?' I said, 'He's telling me to take a photo and move it over here.' To the very end, he was still working on his pages."
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