On April 28, 2002, an F4 tornado tore through La Plata, Maryland, killing three people, injuring 122 across the state, and causing more than $100 million in damage. Bill Eckman was nineteen years into his tenure as mayor when it hit, and he stayed in office long enough to guide the town's rebuilding. William F. "Bill" Eckman died September 16, 2026, at the age of 96, the longest serving mayor in La Plata's history.

The Southern Maryland Chronicle reported that the Town of La Plata credited his leadership directly in the storm's aftermath, saying in a statement that "the long-range vision he helped establish before the storm provided a framework for rebuilding and moving the Town forward." That vision had a paper trail. Three years before the tornado, the town council hired consultants to draft a long-range Vision Plan for La Plata, adopted it in March 2000, and followed it with an Urban Design plan for downtown La Plata in March 2001, roughly a year before the storm hit. The rebuilt La Plata Town Hall became Southern Maryland's first LEED certified public building, and Eckman later wrote his own account of the recovery, titled "After the Storm Passed By," which the Town of La Plata still posts for residents on its tornado history page.

Eckman was born February 16, 1930, and had already built one career before he ever set foot in La Plata. A Navy veteran, he worked as a fire chief in Pennsylvania before AT&T transferred him to Maryland in 1966. He joined the La Plata Volunteer Fire Department in 1969, the same year he won his first seat on the town council, and spent years afterward teaching the department the water supply and pump operations skills he had carried up from Pennsylvania.

His first decade on the council, from 1969 to 1979, included the Radio Station Road annexation and the Clarks Run development, two of the additions that began turning La Plata from a crossroads town into a growing suburb. He lost his council seat in the 1979 election, returned to it in 1981, and was elected mayor in 1983. He went on to hold the office until 2005, the longest tenure of any mayor in La Plata's history. During his first term the town moved Town Hall twice: once from Washington Avenue to a site near the county hospital, and again when the hospital later needed that land for its parking lots. Across his full mayoralty the town's population grew from under 2,000 residents to nearly 8,000, and its staff expanded from 15 to 50 employees, growth recognized in a 2003 tribute entered into the Congressional Record. He also served as president of the Maryland Municipal League and later sat on its legislative committee, regularly testifying before the Maryland General Assembly.

Alongside his political career, Eckman kept working the fire line. He served as president of the La Plata Volunteer Fire Department in 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1977 and as deputy fire chief in 1974, and for more than 30 years he taught basic fire and fire behavior courses as an instructor at the University of Maryland's Fire and Rescue Institute, according to Southern Maryland News Net. He helped design the department's Tanker 1 apparatus and was instrumental in writing the University Pumps Training Program manual used to train firefighters across Southern Maryland. Fire departments along the East Coast hired him as a water supply consultant, and Charles County brought him in for its 1995 water supply study. In the 1990s he also ran regional water supply drills for departments across Southern Maryland.

Eckman did not disappear when he left the mayor's office in 2005. He kept consulting on planning, water, sewer and stormwater projects through his own firm, Eckman Associates, and mentored the mayors who followed him. Current Mayor Jeannine James said he kept "sharing his tremendous knowledge of planning, water, sewer, stormwater, and infrastructure with Town staff for many years" after leaving office, crediting him as the one who laid "the foundation... for those who followed him." "Once a Mayor, always a Mayor," James wrote after his death. In 2019, when the town recognized him for 50 years of service, Eckman told the Maryland Independent he had "had a pretty busy life," and said of the town, "Personally, I think it's a better place than when I moved here in 1966."

When word of his death reached Town Hall, La Plata lowered its flag to half-staff, a gesture Mayor James said would hold "until his internment." What Eckman left in La Plata is not abstract. It is a town hall built to LEED standard on ground his council chose to rebuild, a fire department still training on water supply methods he helped write into its curriculum, and his own written account of the storm that nearly broke the town, kept on file in his own words for whoever comes looking. No mayor before him or after him has held the office as long, or rebuilt as much.