The Bill Hammons Story

Bad Kreuznach, Germany

In January 1974, Major Rich Hammons, after two tours and two Bronze Stars in Vietnam, was shipped off to serve with the US 8th Infantry Division in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, his pregnant wife and young daughter in tow. As a result, his son Bill was born in Bad Kreuznach in October of that year (under exactly the same circumstances as Senator John McCain), and wouldn’t see the land of his passport until he was three (one of Bill’s earliest memories is sitting next to his father at the front of a large passenger plane and looking out the window to witness a descent over the waters of Chesapeake Bay).

Odessa, Texas

After a few years in Laurel, Maryland (Major Hammons had been transferred to Ft. Meade), and after his parents’ divorce, Bill and his sister moved with their mother to her hometown of Odessa, Texas (Bill’s maternal grandparents had first arrived in Odessa on the original Pearl Harbor Day of December 7, 1941). Bill might’ve had a bit of a slow start (as a child he was tested for a possible learning disability, and was instead diagnosed as a very bored borderline genius), but he eventually got up to speed with a 1490 SAT (730 Verbal, you do the math) and headed back East, to New York this time to pursue a writing career (when he had shared his first work of fiction at the age of ten with his mother, a “Where did you copy this from?” was delivered instead of the usual parental “Isn’t that nice, dear?”).

Manhattan, New York

Bill graduated from NYU in 1997 with B.A. in English and American Literature, not to mention a heck of a lot of student loans, and started a first regular office job three days later that would lead the following year to a position as the Rights and Permissions Manager at Newsweek Magazine. When not overseeing staff, selling reprints (as part of a promotion “Reprint Sales” was added to his title), and granting or denying permission for the portrayal of Newsweek in feature films (is this the point where he confesses that he turned down Newsweek’s portrayal in Zoolander?) Bill was training for marathons, injuring himself, discovering a love for swimming, and finally running his first marathon in his late twenties.

In September 2003, after a reading a back-page interview in Newsweek International with a prominent American general considering a run for the Presidency, Bill decided to check out a local grassroots Meetup supporting the candidate. Bill descended a set of stone steps into a cellar meeting hall, one thing would lead to another, and the Unity Party of America was born in November, 2004.

Boulder, Colorado

Bill was getting an inkling or two that he didn’t want to grow old and die in New York City, was becomingly mildly obsessed with long-distance running, and got the notion to leave New York when he found out how much the apartments in his Upper East Side co-op building were selling for in late 2004. By April of 2005, Bill had moved to Boulder, Colorado (after having bought a Ford Explorer in Houston on the way) to start his own Web business, and first met his dog Jack a few months later …

Austin, Texas

In January 2019, Bill returned to Texas and settled in Austin, where he has family. In August 2021, the day after the final of several memorial services for his father and Unity Party co-founder Rich Hammons (Major Hammons had died two years before, right before the COVID outbreak, from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam), Bill stepped aboard a plane in Seattle bound for Frankfurt, Germany (an international hub which is one hour by train from Bad Kreuznach) in order to start mastering German for professional reasons. After being left for dead by the Unity Party Treasurer following a catastrophic car accident on an East Coast journey, a trip which nonetheless resulted in the Unity Party achieving official recognition in states diverse as Florida and Massachusetts, Bill had taken up the online teaching of English for food money, and today enjoys over 100 five-star reviews (and only five-star reviews) on Preply after teaching nearly 5,000 lessons to students in or from 72 nations.