William E. “Bill” Wells died peacefully on September 21, 2026 at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers after a long fight with cancer, with his family around him. He was 85.
He was born in Peabody on March 4, 1941, the son of the late Everard and Antoinette (Dutille) Wells. He served in the infantry during the Vietnam War, stationed in Hawaii and Japan, and often volunteered to clear and destroy enemy tunnel complexes, a “tunnel rat,” as he put it. Home again, he spent more than 40 years with the United States Postal Service, most of it as a familiar presence on his route in Marblehead, where neighbors knew him as reliable and kind and the dogs knew him for the Milk-Bones. He gave steadily to veterans’ causes and children’s cancer research. He watched candlepin bowling on Saturday mornings and bowled in leagues for years, read library murder mysteries, golfed with friends across the United States and southern Canada, listened to music from the 1940s through the 1970s and played Keno at his corner store every morning.
He leaves his daughter, Linda Conway, and her husband William J. Conway Sr. of Gloucester; his grandchildren, Karlene Conway of Lynn, Krysten Conway of Manchester, N.H., and William J. Conway Jr. and his partner Victoria Zuchero of Salem; and his great-granddogs, Poppy and Brutus. The family thanks the staff at Kaplan House.
Arrangements are by the Goodrich Funeral Home, Lynn. The family suggests donations to the Joslin Diabetes Center.
Compiled from information published by Goodrich Funeral Home. Photograph courtesy of the family via Goodrich Funeral Home. This is our own summary, not the family’s obituary; read the full obituary and leave a condolence at the funeral home’s page on Legacy.com. Corrections: we will fix any error promptly.
