Nuestra historia
Adiós a nuestro campeón: Bill Wright, 1931–2019
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Comenzó con un aeropuerto y clases de vuelo para adolescentes. Cuando ese proyecto se quedó sin opciones, mantuvo la misión y cambió el enfoque, y desde entonces BASIC ha estado otorgando becas.
William D. “Bill” Wright was born on 1 August 1931 and died at home on 1 October, with his family beside him, at the age of 88. The Borrego Sun called him the most beloved, admired and respected resident of Borrego Springs. BASIC has established a scholarship in his name, because BASIC exists at all largely because of him.
He was as much a feature of this town, his obituary said, as the warm climate, the dark night skies and the spring wildflowers. What follows is the short version of a long life, and then what he built here that is still running.
- 1931Born in Saginaw, Michigan, to Alfred and Macel Wright
- 1958Marries Edna “Jenny” Foster and drives west to California
- 1968First visit to Borrego Springs
- 1980Buys the RoadRunner and Springs at Borrego, and stays
- 1994Founds the Borrego Springs Airport Improvement Corporation
- 1997Founds BASIC
Michigan, Santa Barbara, and a long trailer
Bill was born in Saginaw, Michigan, to Alfred and Macel (Clapp) Wright. The family moved to Traverse City, where his father opened a drug store. He grew up with his sister Joyce and his brother Jack.
In 1958 he married Edna “Jenny” Foster of Lees Point, Michigan. In a detail the Borrego Sun could not resist, the pair “mimicked Desi and Lucy” and pulled a long trailer out to California for a grand tour of the southwest. They fell in love with Santa Barbara and stayed. Bill sold cars for Tom Williams Cadillac; Jenny went to work as a physical therapist at County General Hospital, and later headed the physical therapy department at the Santa Barbara Medical Clinic.
He joined the Optimist Club, the Santa Barbara Jaycees and the Los Fiesteros Dance Club, where by all accounts he was quite the jitterbugger. As a Jaycee he helped secure the parking lot for the Childs Estate, now the Santa Barbara Zoo, from Tom Storke. He then led the Jaycees in laying the zoo’s train tracks, and started the Zoo B Que.
The pattern is already visible. He saw a thing that did not exist, and then he built it.
Bill and Jenny liked to travel enough that they once quit their jobs and spent three months in Europe. Back in Santa Barbara, Bill started a real estate development business, finding sites across the United States alongside projects of his own.
My dad was the quintessential entrepreneur, someone who had visions of things that did not exist and then would build them.
Dan Wright, son
Coming to Borrego
Bill and Jenny both loved flying, and used their Piper Dakota to get between their businesses around the state. They first came to Borrego Springs for a visit in 1968, and did not buy the RoadRunner and the Springs at Borrego RV Park and Golf Course until 1980. Then they made it home.
For several years after the purchase, Jenny flew the company plane down from Santa Barbara to run RoadRunner operations. “We spent many an hour on the map of the RRC,” she said, working out a more consistent rate structure for rentals. She was, by her own description, the nuts and bolts of the management while Bill was off attending to other stuff.
Bill once observed that there are different styles of managing property, a popular one being partnerships that stress the business and resale side of things. The Wrights, for nearly sixty years, kept theirs “in the family, and for the long haul.”
From an airport to a scholarship fund
In 1994 Bill and others founded the Borrego Springs Airport Improvement Corporation, to promote and operate the Borrego Valley Airport and to provide flight training for local high school students. The training worked. At its peak it was teaching 28 students and 24 adults.
Eventually there were fewer new students, and raising enough money to cover the cost of running an airport proved too great a challenge. This is the moment that matters. Rather than let the purpose die with the program, Bill and his colleagues broadened the mission: in 1997 they established Basic Assistance to Students in the Community, a scholarship-granting program open to every discipline. The vehicle changed. The point never did.
By the time the Borrego Sun printed the notice of his memorial scholarship, BASIC had granted $462,000 in 372 scholarships, every one of them to a resident of the Borrego Valley. In the five years before his death the organization had added the programs that now surround the scholarships: the multi-part strategy called Cradle-to-Graduation, which targets the critical moments in a person’s learning life and gives them a push at each one. Books for children from birth to age five. A summer Learning Academy for reading, mathematics and English language proficiency. Scholarships to start college or technical training, and more scholarships to stay there.
Bill was a BASIC founder, and at his death he remained a champion of BASIC and especially of that expanded strategy.
Jeanne Bortolazzo, daughter
“He was happiest when he had all of his family together or when he was building something. Whenever he talked of either of those things, his face would light up with joy. Thankfully, he had three generations of his family with him when he passed.”
Bill Berkley, Rams Hill
“A family man, entrepreneur, smart, convivial, a civic minded giver, and a good man with a great sense of humor. Bill Wright enjoyed doing, and we all enjoy what he did for our community.”
La beca en memoria de Bill Wright
BASIC has established a new named scholarship to honor one of its founders. The Bill Wright Memorial Scholarship is awarded annually to a BASIC Scholar to help them reach a life goal. This scholar, like Bill, will be a budding entrepreneur, pursuing a career that is challenging but that they have a passion for and will enjoy.
- Award
- Beca en memoria de Bill Wright
- For
- A budding entrepreneur
- Established
- 2020
- Given with
- A start-school or stay-in-school award
It is a fitting shape for a memorial. Bill spent his life finding the thing that did not exist yet and then building it, and this award goes each year to a young Borregan setting out to do the same.
Contribute to the Bill Wright Memorial Scholarship Fund
BASIC invites others to join in honoring Bill and supporting his vision. Give online, or send a check to BASIC, PO Box 1914, Borrego Springs, CA 92004, naming the fund in the memo line. BASIC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN 33-0631683.
Give to the fundBiographical detail in this piece is drawn from “Farewell Our Champion, Bill Wright,” published in the Borrego Sun.