The Colorman

Dear Readers,

I’d like to dedicate this issue to a friend of mine named Bill Shorey.

As some of you may know, Bill (a.k.a. “The Colorman”) passed away a week prior to this year’s World of Concrete show. He worked as a Product Specialist for Spec-West, a construction supply store in Sacramento, Calif. Bill was a wonderful friend and support to me in the days when I was starting Concrete Decor. In fact, our friendship started one year earlier, a point in time when I was publishing some of the first articles on decorative concrete in a sister publication called PaintPRO.

Bill once told me, “Bent, the pages of this magazine,” namely PaintPRO, “show incredible passion for the trade.” At the time, I didn’t really understand his comment. But as time passed and our friendship grew, I began to see what he was talking about. Not my passion, but rather, his. From his standpoint, Bill loved everything about concrete. More than that, he loved helping others. Similarly, I too was infatuated with a trade I had spent years learning to master and was now anxious to share with others. Somehow, the passion for our respective trades seemed to interweave, and the result ultimately produced Concrete Decor.

Bill and I shared countless stories of people, products and projects. In fact, I recall making a two-hour drive to Sacramento one night to help Bill stain a concrete floor inside a new Spec-West location. No money changed hands — only an array of discussions on products and methods we both utilized as we explored the limits of some of decorative concrete’s most commonly used products today.

It would seem that we were both destined to follow a similar path at that time, but fate proved otherwise. Mine was a passion to carry on a family tradition in publishing and Bill’s was an unquenchable desire to provide for his family and contractors, labels that were sometimes interchangeable. This is an attribute of Bill’s that he will surely be remembered for.

When Bill called me some time ago to share of his battle with cancer, our friendship and the good times we enjoyed together were everything that mattered. As I know Bill would agree, our relationship was not strengthened by our expectations of one another, but rather, the means by which we choose to impact the lives of those around us in a positive way. At the end of each day, isn’t that what it’s all about anyway?

To Bill Shorey, his family and friends, and those who share a similar passion for decorative concrete, I trust that this issue will fill your mind with a positive outlook on the future. Enjoy!

Sincerely,
Bent Mikkelsen, Publisher