Billy Mays' Family History

     Ten years ago, we lost a legend. Someone we all knew and we all are thinking about. It has been ten years since the world lost one of its greatest icons: Billy Mays. Here’s some cool information you might not know about him.

     Not many people know this, but Billy Mays, the famous OxiClean salesperson, had three half-brothers, also named William, who also tried to make it in the spokesperson industry. The four brothers shared a mother, who had four sons with four separate men. She called dibs on naming the babies if they were male. They all were, and she named each of them William. She didn’t realize that she could change her choice of name after the first one. She was an only child and not very observant of the rest of the world. 

     To distinguish the four of them, she gave each of them a nickname: Bill, Willy, Billy, and Jeremiah. She didn’t call the fourth one ‘Will’ because she was worried about copyright infringement laws regarding her friend who went by ‘Will.’ Because the four boys shared a mother but not a father, they each had different last names. Here’s what’s incredible about this story: the four names were homophones: Maze, Maize, Mays, and Meighs. 

     Fast forward several years and the siblings all ended up in the sales industry. With their high energy and excellent work ethic, the world was their oyster; so many products to sell — so many choices! So what would they sell? The possibilities were endless: they could sell those extra big marshmallows that start to get gooey on the outside before they have a chance to heat up on the inside, they could sell those colorful marshmallows that definitely use artificial coloring, they could sell mini marshmallows that are mostly used by humans for hot chocolate and for roasting primarily by rodents, and they could even sell things that weren’t related to marshmallows in any way. The possibilities were endless. 

     To narrow it down, the four half-brothers decided to draw inspiration from their respective surnames. Each brother thought about a product that they could dedicate to selling related to their last name. The oldest son, Bill Maze, decided to sell those wooden marvel puzzles that parents get their ‘gifted’ children when they want them to do something besides watch TV and play video games. This was the late 80s, so parents didn’t know much about video games yet, so they bought their kids lots of wooden marble puzzles. 

     Willy Maize, who was white, decided to sell many varieties of corn. To do so, he dressed up in what he thought was traditional Native American attire. It was distasteful and undoubtedly racist. Thankfully, he had virtually no success selling any corn. Billy Mays started selling the fifth page of calendars, but only the fifth pages, which really wasn’t useful to anyone. No one needs only the month of May. He found very little success. 

     The youngest brother, Jeremiah Meighs, had a hard time figuring out what to sell. He eventually came to the realization that his last name was probably someone’s poor attempt to spell a different last name in a convoluted way just as a joke. Upon this realization, he decided to sell verified unique baby names to white people. Some of his best works were “Paizleigh,” “Alyzzabeth,” and “Tiphaniee.” He found moderate success. 

     The nineties were a slow decade for the brothers. Eventually, with the turn of the millennium, Billy Mays found his way to OxiClean. The rest is literally history, as documented in the 2009 special episode of PitchMen, titled “Pitchman: A Tribute to Billy Mays”, hosted by Anthony Sullivan. The other three brothers made a deal with Google upon their brother’s passing in 2009 that they would be unsearchable on their search engine — ghosts of the modern age. That is why you won’t be able to find any record of them. That’s the reason why.