and overheard the confession, and so were able to overtake Georgene. She was arrested and Rita was then finally able to put the ordeal behind her. (Wanting no further connection to the Grangers, Rita donated the inheritance left to her by Cyrus to Cedars for construction of their proposed new pediatric wing.) Around the same time, a strange man started appearing around Springfield, following various members of the Bauer family around. A short while later, it was revealed that he was the father of Hillary Kincaid, a student nurse who'd recently moved to Springfield to do her internship at Cedars. However, Hillary became mystified when her father refused to meet any of her friends or colleagues from Cedars (particularly Ed and Rita). Shortly after this, Mike was honored as Man of the Year by the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. Rita attended the ceremony, but decided to watch from backstage so as not to run into Ed (from whom she was still estranged), and from where she was standing, she saw this same man, tearful, watching Mike receive his honor. Remembering having seen him around town, Rita followed him out and demanded to know who he was and what he was doing in Springfield. The man, "Bill Morrey", confessed to Rita that he was, in fact, Bill Bauer, Ed and Mike's presumed-dead father. He explained that during his last few years with Bert, he had also been having an affair with another woman, Simone Kincaid, in Vancouver. Although the plane he was to have been on eight years earlier had indeed crashed, Bill had actually missed the flight. In a drunken stupor, and tortured over his double life, he did not contact Bert to tell her he was alive; eventually he made his way to Simone, who got him sober, and he had remained with her ever since. Eventually he did reveal himself, first to Mike and then to Ed and then to Bert. Although he did not remain in Springfield, he was able to make peace with the Bauers. Ed and Mike also accepted Hillary as their half-sister. Bert, though, had to pay back the expenses on the life insurance payout that had happened back in 1969 when Bill had been thought of as dying in the plane crash. Roger Thorpe had been on the show and in a self-destructive relationship with Holly since 1971, but only when the Dobsons