Later he traveled out west to the Seattle area, where he studied Economics and Russian Studies at the University of Washington from 1950-1953. He was a member of the Seattle Mountaineers. He loved to join in on their adventures on the magnificent and glaciated 14,000-footer Mount Rainier.
In 1960 Bill met Peggy at the CIA during the height of the Cold War with Russia, where they both were employed after their respective graduate studies. Their first date was the snowy evening of John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Both Bill and Peggy grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where they were born eight years apart in the same hospital. Their grandmothers shared a back fence.
After their marriage in 1960, Bill continued his career at the CIA as a senior analyst and expert in Russian energy and transportation resources. Bill and Peggy focused a lot of their attention on their children Peter and Molly, who were born in 1962 and 1965. Bill's passion for outdoor adventures found a new focus—whitewater kayaking and canoeing, a little-known sport in the mid-1950s. Bill was a founding member of CCA in 1956, which supported the beginnings of many World Champion racers and Olympians in the 1970s to 1990s. The club offered instruction, river trips, and training sites for racing and sponsored downriver and slalom whitewater races. Bill was perhaps the club's most devoted instructor in the 1970s and 1980s, teaching whitewater technique to hundreds of people.
Bill and Peggy often took the family on outdoor adventures (hiking, skiing, kayaking) in the U.S., England, and Europe. Later in life, Bill and Peggy traveled to more than 30 countries; they loved Eastern European countries with their unique histories and complex multi-culturalism, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Georgia and the Middle East, including Turkey (multiple trips) and pre-civil war Syria (2011). They traveled "off tour" with small backpacks, wearing friendliness, often walking from town to town or taking a local bus. They made many long-lasting friendships on these trips, and they made many other friends through their other activities, including their shared love of opera. Peggy and Bill loved spending time with family and cherished their four grandchildren, Kat, Antonia, Elena and Andre.
—Molly Carr