Former BJ movie critic and “Side Streets” columnist and features writer and current author Bill O’Connor threw a party for wife Elsbeth’s 75^th birthday on Saturday, June 16 “at the edge of a woods,” as one of Bill’s book sites says of their Bath Township home.

Bill married his Switzerland native in 2002. They both have four grown children from previous marriages. At least three of Elsbeth’s offspring were there.

So were Paula Tucker and I, of course, for another reunion with a former co-worker. Other one-time Ol’ Blue Walls people like artist Art Krummel and his wife, Charlene Nevada, a reporter, showed up, too.

And dozens of Bill and Elsbeth’s non-BJ neighbors and friends rambled their way to their residence.

Bill spent time at St. Francis College and Bowling Green University as a student and at Montana University on the faculty and also emigrated from a seminary.

He keeps writing novels nowadays – “Bums and Hersey Bars,” “The Legend of Horn Mountain,” “The Era of Long Thoughts” and “Saint Leo,” his latest.

Paula and I were at the 2012 bash for Elsbeth’s birthday, too. The magic survives.

When Bill and I talked about our days at the BJ, and being blessed with John Knight as the owner, it was reminiscent of what Bill wrote in this blog in 2005 to its late founder, Harry Liggett:

“The further I am from the time at the Beacon, the more I realize how privileged I was to work with such talented people.”

Indeed, Bill. I second that emotion.