Bill Lamar bio

William "Bill" Lamar, 25, was born to Quentin and Allie Lamar in Oxford, Mississippi.

The son of an influential Oxford family, Quentin and his wife founded Lamar Cosmetics, which flourished and began refilling the depleted family coffers.

However, their growing wealth did little to ease Quentin's episodes of paranoia and drinking. Oxford residents chalked it up to yet another idiosyncrasy of the town's old families, while Allie fought to keep Quentin's difficulties from hurting the burgeoning business.

When Bill was born, many hoped he would be a settling influence on Quentin. Instead, the baby's crying seemed to torture him, and he started locking himself in the attic and wearing earplugs.

Quentin told people Bill was an emissary of the devil, while they sadly shook their heads and clucked in pity. When Quentin took his life at the family deer camp, no one around town was surprised, though it was a tragedy for the family.

Bill was left with no memories of his tormented father, and Allie was determined that he not be exposed to that difficult side of the family history.

A good-natured, intelligent young boy, Bill was well-liked in school, and while not quite a straight-A student, he was still near the top of his class. As he progressed through school, his love of foreign cultures turned into a great aptitude for linguistics. He took both French and Spanish and was a National Merit Scholar in both disciplines.

Instead of participating in extracurricular activities after school, Bill went to work at Lamar Cosmetics. He showed a tremendous innate ability for business, and everyone said he was a natural to take over the family company.

His main distraction from languages and Lamar Cosmetics was a beautiful young woman named Barbara Dubois, who he met through the company's pageant sponsorships.

Bill and Barbara immediately had an intense attraction and found they shared an intense dislike of the pageant and cosmetics scene. Soon, they were spending all their time together.

Even though Bill loved Oxford and was proud of his family's cosmetics company, he felt drawn to Europe. He and Barbara often talked of running off to Paris or London and just disappearing.

Despite their dreams, the young couple separated when Barbara moved to Atlanta. Shortly thereafter, Bill joined a program where he could finish his schooling while traveling around Europe.

After Barbara's departure and before Bill left for Europe, his friends said he became moody and brooding. They thought he was just trying to recreate himself as an existentialist artist for his trip to Europe and predicted he would be wearing a black turtleneck and smoking clove cigarettes at a café overlooking the Champs-Élysées before the year was out.

Some, though, weren't convinced that Bill's darkness was a young man's phase. They saw the typically laid-back young man become secretive and quick to anger. These concerned friends hoped the overseas school would be just the respite he needed.

Bill stayed in Europe and traveled throughout the continent, living primarily in Paris, London, or Frankfurt for a few months at a time. He finished college in Europe, eventually earning an MBA from the prestigious CMSD in Valais, Switzerland.

After receiving his MBA, he took over the failing, Paris-based Perfume and Fragrances division of Lamar Cosmetics. Within a year, he turned the division from corporate deadwood to highly profitable.

Business associates characterized Bill as a straight-shooter with sad eyes. They said his leadership seemed to spring naturally from his good nature and willingness to take risks and go against corporate directives when it made sense.

His French colleagues said, as far as they knew, he had no close friends and had only a few superficial relationships with women.