The first time he met Whitney Houston, Bill Kohler walked into a glass door. It was some time in the mid 1990s. Kohler, a Dover High School graduate who’d found his niche in security work, had just gotten his big break as a member of the pop superstar’s bodyguard entourage. And he was nervous as he could be.
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“I want everything to be cool,” he said, caught in a memory that had suddenly resurfaced.
He’d heard Houston was a perfectionist, and he feared falling short of expectations.
Told so many years later, Kohl’s stories paint Houston as less of a by-the-book perfectionist and more of a playful workaholic who shunned air conditioning but on a whim could jump on a jet ski in Europe or Rollerblade through hotel hallways.
During most of his four years as Houston’s bodyguard, Kohler said he worried less about disappointing the singer and more about getting enough sleep to keep up with the famous family.
Judging by the stories he told Friday at his East York home, Kohler is at least as much of a perfectionist as Houston was.
There was the time, for example, that he told Secret Service agents Vice President Al Gore would have to wait his turn to meet Houston. Or the time he cautiously cut open a shady-looking package to find one of the singer’s many admirers had crossed into stalker territory. Or the many times Kohler preemptively detected weaknesses in the security systems at hotels and venues where Houston would later appear.
But, on that first day, nerves got the best of Bill Kohler – whose serious demeanor later inspired Houston to call him Stone Face.
Houston had arrived to the airport by car, and it was Kohl’s job to open the door for her. Not long after Kohler noticed Houston’s long legs, a crowd gathered and followed the singer inside.
“I’m trying to watch and stay ahead of her,” Kohler recalled. Suddenly, he heard a loud crack – a gunshot, perhaps? Kohler started walking faster. And that’s how – within moments of meeting Whitney Houston – Kohler walked directly into a glass door.
“I got beet red,” he said. That day marked the beginning of a job that, for most, would be the career highlight of a lifetime.
For Kohler, it prepared him for more important work. Around 2000, Kohler joined the Army National Guard hoping to obtain medical training that he could use to boost his security resume. He hadn’t planned on it, but war dictated the next few years of Kohler’s life.
Kohler, 43, spent part of 2005 and 2006 in Iraq as a combat medic. He was injured in an IED blast that left him with a menu of ailments. Today, he is studying to be a nurse.
The news that Whitney Houston had died hit Kohler hard last week. Memories, preserved in the all-access backstage passes and pictures from all over the world that he saved, came flooding back.
“When you’re that close to somebody, there’s a connection. You have to have a connection,” he said. “She was just like everybody else.”
