Bill McDonald, former longtime The State columnist and author, dies at 85

For decades, writer and columnist Bill McDonald informed and entertained readers in Columbia and across South Carolina, seemingly never meeting a stranger along the way.

On Sunday, his story came to a close, though his words will live on in the hearts and minds of many for years to come.

William Davis “Bill” McDonald, who worked as a reporter and columnist at The State newspaper for more than 30 years and later authored two books, died on Sunday, April 23, after a brief illness. He was 85.

McDonald, a Winnsboro native, was employed at The State from February 1968 to April 2000, according to company records. He worked as a staff writer and reported on scores of topics across the decades, but it was his work as a columnist for which he was most noted. Those pieces often took on a folksy, slice-of-life tone, a fact that was noted when McDonald was presented The State’s Ambrose Gonzales Award in 1985.

“Mainstays of his columns are the little people, those whose names seldom appear in the newspaper,” then-publisher Ben Morris wrote in a certificate given to McDonald for that award. “He has introduced us to a Lake Murray truck driver who grew a 100-pound watermelon, a Shandon resident who shared tomatoes with his neighbors, a policeman whose beat is Main Street.”

McDonald had a number of roles in life before finding his calling as a newspaperman. The University of South Carolina graduate was a bookkeeper at a nursing home, the supervisor of men’s gloves at Bloomingdale’s department store in New York City and a teacher and basketball coach at a high school in Charleston, among other gigs.

But it was in the pages of The State where McDonald found his niche and made lasting connections with residents in Columbia and other spots in Palmetto State.

Harry Logan was an assistant managing editor and deputy managing editor at The State for a number of years and long worked with McDonald. He said McDonald was the consummate people person..

“I think Bill’s strength was his ability to relate to people in South Carolina from all walks of life,” Logan told The State on Monday. “He reported just about every job there was, but his strength was as a columnist when he wrote about people. He had an ability to find odd people and businesses in South Carolina. There probably wasn’t a town or community in South Carolina that he didn’t write about at one point or another.

“He had the ability to relate to all kinds of people, from governors and U.S. senators to somebody on a garbage truck.”

Bobby Hitt, who is a former longtime managing editor of The State and also served as South Carolina’s secretary of commerce, said he knew and worked alongside McDonald for years and initially met him in the early 1970s. Hitt, who lovingly referred to McDonald as “Billy,” said the late columnist wrote about the city with humor and grace.

“He knew everybody,” Hitt said. “To use the old English expression, he was a hail fellow well met. Everybody knew Billy. Very friendly, very outgoing kind of guy. He was easy going. Never any tension, never any stress or anything like that. ... He was an old-style newspaperman. He could walk in any club and everybody knew him and would want to tell him something they heard.”

Clif LeBlanc, who is now retired after covering Columbia for The State for decades, was a colleague of McDonald’s. He said McDonald was known for his kindness and his unassuming air.

“He was easy to get along with as a colleague,” LeBlanc said. “Always pleasant, always complimentary of other people’s work. He was a bit of a local celebrity, but he never acted like one. He was just a down-to-earth kind of guy. I always liked Bill a lot.”

John Monk, who has worked for The State for 27 years and currently covers the court system and the State House for the paper, said he often marveled at how McDonald was able to use his column to capture small, silly moments in life — such as when he witnessed a veteran defense attorney get his jacket caught in a downtown newspaper rack one morning — and the more sweeping, serious issues of the day.

“He loved to collect and report on offbeat stories about the human comedy, the funny, weird and heartwarming,” Monk said of McDonald. “He had a gift for language, but he wrote simply and was a favorite for many readers. In person, he had a way of looking you in the eye and making you feel at home when you talked with him, which was not only how he was, but it was no doubt a gift that made people tell him all kinds of things.”

Aside from his work at The State, McDonald authored a pair of books: “Columbia, Cornerstone of the Carolinas” in 1992 and “Old Geezer Romancing in Cyberspace” (about his adventures in online dating) in 2018.

McDonald’s cousin Betty Cloutier said the former columnist and author “lived a long and good life.” She said he was, simply put, a special person.

“He had tremendous personal charm,” Cloutier said. “He never met a stranger. He always had a smile and was a positive person. He did lots and lots of things in his life before he found himself at The State newspaper, where he made a career for 32 years.”

Shives Funeral Home in Columbia is assisting McDonald’s family.