A life fulfilled.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

An unexpected moment of clarity struck Bill Sheppard while he was rafting on the middle fork of the Salmon River a few years ago.

He'd just finished fly fishing. The raft went over a riffle. The movement pitched him overboard. A head-first crack on a sharp rock. When he stood, he could see blood spurting in an arc 4 inches above his head. He'd gashed his scalp and severed his temporal artery, which supplies blood to the brain. He was within 15 minutes of bleeding out.

A surgeon with a field kit was in the rafting party. A trauma doctor floated up from behind. They had clamps and sutures, but neither one of them could find the ends of the severed artery so they could make the repair. The slippery ends had retracted under his scalp. His life was swish-swish-swishing away.

For 25 minutes the doctors sweated and swore and bantered. Watching the spurts, the trauma doctor said Sheppard must be in fantastic shape because his heart rate was so low.

Sheppard's mind drifted over his life, and he had a revelation:

He found he was intensely satisfied. His love for his wife burned as brightly as it ever had. He'd lived in the most beautiful place on Earth. He worked a job with profound meaning.

He saw that with clarity.

He'd lived nearly 60 years; he'd read up on the world's religions. He'd studied Buddhism. He'd meditated. But he didn't find the meaning in a book.

"None of that was as profound as getting whacked on the side of the head," he said. "Maybe that's what I needed."

After running Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon for 30 years, Sheppard will slowly hand over the reigns through the end of the year and retire. As he looks back, he says: "I've been the luckiest person in the world."

Sheppard was one of those Kennedy-inspired people who came of age in the 1960s asking what he could do for his country.

To him, the sayings "make a difference" and "change the world" are not words drained of meaning by overuse. To him, "it was real," he said.

Sheppard got a doctorate degree in psychology, and headed down the academic track for a while. The University of Oregon brought him to Eugene to teach. But Sheppard didn't get tenure in the glut of young professors then and found he had a passion for hands-on world changing.

In 1977, he answered a newspaper advertisement seeking an executive director for the 10-employee Planned Parenthood.

The agency coffers were empty. The governing board was chipping in to supply employees with toilet paper. Sheppard upped the ante: He'd accept the post but only if each board member made the agency a personal loan of $1,000.

Helping the poor

Sheppard went after his work at Planned Parenthood as if it mattered and quickly got the agency on a sound financial footing. At six months, he repaid the board member loans.

He wanted to extend services to all women, and particularly the working poor - those with too much money for Medicaid but not in a job with a good medical plan. What to do?

Sheppard studied federal law. He saw how a federal program could be expanded to cover birth control for women whose incomes hovered just above the poverty line. He eventually enlisted the support of then-Gov. John Kitzhaber.

The result, Oregon's family planning expansion project, has for the past eight years provided birth control and gynecological exams for an additional 100,000 women throughout the state each year.

Learning the ropes

The Planned Parenthood workforce in Eugene - and across the country - is dominated by women, so Sheppard lived a life of and by women.

When he came to the job at age 35, that required an adjustment, he said.

"I had to learn to listen. I had to learn to appreciate the value of processing issues with much more time and depth," he said. "With almost every issue there was both the substance and the process that needed to be attended to."

Two years ago, in an independent survey, employees at the Eugene-based Planned Parenthood voted it the best affiliate in the nation to work for. "We all have stock in the organization - emotional stock, heart stock, and he's inspired that," senior vice president Diane Duke said.

Sheppard is so well recognized for his management acumen, he travels the nation to train and troubleshoot at other Planned Parenthood affiliates. He's had a hand in creating or guiding at least a half-dozen local agencies, including Looking Glass, Northwest Youth Corps, The McKenzie Trust and Birth to Three. At night, Sheppard goes home to his wife, Patricia, a woman he's known since 1960 when they met on the campus of Kellogg Community College at Battle Creek, Mich.

He finds peace in his vegetable garden. He says he loves to watch things grow, especially tomatoes this year, and a bed of ever-bearing strawberries.

"He's really kind of a quiet kind of guy," Patricia said. "When he gets home in the evenings, that's when he regroups. That's how he regenerates himself."

Not afraid of dying

Does he sound kind of boring - this quiet, patient, measured guy in flower print shirts who's worked the same job for 30 years?

Look a little deeper: Sheppard has lived a parallel life, one of intense, even extreme adventure. It began in the 1970s with the birth of the UO Outdoor Program.

He became a whitewater enthusiast and spent every day he could on the water.

When his sons came along he took them, too, and they grew to love the outdoors so much it became their vocation. One's a river guide in Colorado and the other leads heli-ski trips in Alaska.

Sheppard traveled the world over, visiting Russia, China, Japan, France, Chile, Argentina, Brazil - and New Zealand six times. He bicycled across the Himalayas from Lhasa, Tibet, to Kathmandu, Nepal, climbing six mountain passes over 16,000 feet along the way.

But it was the 100 miles through wilderness on the rapids of the Salmon River middle fork that Sheppard lived - and nearly died - for. He made the eight-day trip every year for 37 years. He considers the river his spiritual home.

And the accident that split his head and severed his artery was a teacher.

The surgeon and trauma doctor that day had to place 30 stitches internally and 40 stitches externally before they could get Sheppard stabilized.

They put him in a raft and floated him to the nearest airstrip, where an air ambulance picked him up and whisked him to Boise.

He remembers his thoughts were clear and revealing: One, "I was at peace and very satisfied with how I led my life," and two, "I found out I wasn't afraid of dying. That was a gift."

Now, Sheppard is like a teenager savoring the possibilities of his life ahead. He's thinking solo rafting and hiking trips. He's thinking travel and adventure. "I'm looking forward to feeling that surge of adrenaline again," he said.