Bill Wright: Borrego's Champion

 From the Borrego Sun Archives

A dreamer, a builder and a friend to the whole village.

In February 2006, Bill Wright sat down to lunch at La Casa del Zorro with his friend and fellow Marine, County Supervisor Bill Horn. Horn was talking about all the new libraries the county was building. Bill wondered out loud whether Borrego could ever get one. He doubted it. The town was too small to raise that kind of money.

“I’ve got the money, so why not?” Horn said.

Bill didn’t miss a beat. “Tell you what, if you’re serious, Jenny and I will donate the land and build the sewer line from Christmas Circle.”

They shook on it. Twelve years later, Borrego Springs had a brand-new county library.

From Michigan to the desert

William “Bill” Wright was born on August 1, 1931, in Saginaw, Michigan, and grew up in Traverse City, where his father ran a drug store. In 1958 he married Edna “Jenny” Foster. Like Desi and Lucy, they pulled a long trailer and headed west for a grand tour of the Southwest. They fell in love with Santa Barbara and stayed.

Bill sold Cadillacs. Jenny worked as a physical therapist. Bill joined the Jaycees, where he helped get a parking lot for the Santa Barbara Zoo, led the crew that built the zoo’s train tracks, and started its Zoo B Que. He was also a dancer. He was “quite the jitter-bugger.”

Then the couple quit their jobs and spent three months traveling Europe. When they came home, Bill started his own real estate development business.

The RoadRunner Club and The Springs

Bill and Jenny first visited Borrego in 1968. In 1980 they bought the RoadRunner Club and made Borrego their home. Later they built The Springs at Borrego RV Resort and Golf Course.

For years, Jenny flew the company plane down from Santa Barbara to run the RoadRunner. “We spent many an hour on the map of the RRC,” she said. She handled the nuts and bolts while Bill was off attending to other “stuff.”

“My dad was the quintessential entrepreneur, someone who had visions of things that did not exist and then would build them,” said their son, Dan Wright. The Springs went on to be named one of the highest-rated RV resorts in North America.

The Wrights ran their properties “in the family, and for the long haul,” Bill said. Some of their workers stayed for decades. Rosario “Rosie” Gonzalez went to work for Bill at 18. “The best of the best!” Bill said of his crew. “Where do we find people like this!”

He never lost the common touch. He liked to introduce himself to campers as the gardener, and friends said he was never above getting down on his knees to clean a rental unit himself.

Up in the air

Bill and Jenny loved to fly. They used their Piper Dakota to get to their businesses around the state, and Jenny was a member of the Ninety-Nines, the women pilots' group.

In the early 1990s, Bill and others founded the Borrego Springs Airport Improvement Corporation to run the Borrego Valley Airport and teach local high school kids to fly. At its busiest, the flight program had 28 students and 24 adults. Viki Cole, who went on to manage the airport for 30 years, got her start there working for Bill.

In time, fewer new students signed up, and running the airport cost more than the group could raise. So Bill and his friends made the mission bigger. They started BASIC, Basic Assistance for Students in the Community, to give scholarships for every kind of study, not just flying. By 2020 BASIC had given $462,000 in 372 scholarships, all to people from the Borrego Valley.

Bill, a Marine, also brought World War II history to town. He organized a stop of the Collings Foundation's Wings of History tour, which brought a B-17 and a B-24 bomber to the Borrego Valley Airport. Veterans came along to tell their stories and visit the schools. "We should never forget that the freedom we sometimes take for granted came at a tremendous price," Bill said, "and we must learn this lesson of history."

“Do you have 5 minutes?”

Bill gave his own money, and he was very good at asking others to give theirs.

“I learned quickly that when Bill asked, ‘Do you have 5 minutes?’, I always said, ‘Yes’!” remembered Martha Deichler. The last time he asked, at a Rotary auction, the school district came away with $65,000 toward a new school bus.

He had help from the start. Bill and Jenny and their friends Phyllis and Dan Slade started the Circle of Art on Christmas Circle in 1989 to raise money for local students.

The list kept growing. Bill organized fundraising barbecues at the RoadRunner Club to raise money for the College of Borrego. The Wrights donated 30 native fan palms for Palm Canyon Drive, and Bill designed, paid for and built The Springs Dog Park. In 2012 they opened the Dreamweaver Amphitheater at The Springs, a stage with room for 1,000 people. “This new venue is a gift from our family to you,” Dan said at the opening.

When the Community Concert Association was about to fold in 2015, Bill called his business friends and raised enough to save it. “We will do more than our share to keep the great music series going,” he wrote to the board.

The library

The handshake at La Casa del Zorro took more than a decade to become a building. The Wrights donated the land, and Bill paid out of his own pocket for the sewer line up Summit Drive. At a 2018 fundraiser for a kitchen at the new library, he surprised everyone with a $15,000 donation. In 2017, as the library got under way, Bill and Jenny sponsored pages in the Borrego Sun with quotes from Andrew Carnegie, who paid for thousands of public libraries. One read: "Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community."

In October 2017, Bill and Jenny were there in straw hats with golden shovels for the groundbreaking. On December 8, 2018, they helped cut the ribbon on the new library, park and sheriff’s station.

“Bill and Jenny were the force behind the new library,” said Betsy Knaak of the Friends of the Library.

“I was County Supervisor for 24 years, and for the last 18 to 20 years I worked with Bill Wright,” Horn said. “One of Bill’s goals was to produce a library, and after all the years of work, we finally got it done.”

Standing up for the village

Bill called Borrego Springs his “village,” and he fought for it.

In 2010 he organized Borregans for Quiet Skies, a group that asked for aerobatic practice flights to move away from town. The group still welcomed the pilots to the airport. "They could fly over Salton City or Ocotillo Wells when they are practicing and still use our airport as a home base," he said.

In 2018, when Borregans fought a big housing development they felt the valley could not support, Bill paid for a charter bus to take Borregans to the county hearing in San Diego, plus lunch and matching white caps so the commissioners could see the town standing together. The county turned the project down. “I’m very pleased with our village,” Bill said.

“Gratitude, 37 years’ worth”

In late 2017, the Wrights sold the RoadRunner Club and The Springs. “In love with the RoadRunner Club, in love with Borrego, but it was time to cut the cord,” Bill said.

To say thank you, they brought the Harry James Orchestra to Borrego for three free concerts.

“We wanted to give back,” Jenny said.

“Gratitude, 37 years’ worth,” Bill added with a smile.

Borrego’s champion

Bill Wright died in October 2019 at 88. He asked that his ashes be spread at his Borrego home, which he called the “Fun Farm.”

The tributes poured in. “With tact and finesse, Bill Wright, the master communicator, consummate salesman, businessman, dreamer, builder, leader, absorbed you into his mission,” wrote Linda Haddock. “Mission after mission after mission, where sometimes the real mission was to help you be a better you.”

“He left Borrego better than he found it,” wrote Joe Gury.

“He was happiest when he had all of his family together or when he was building something,” said his daughter, Jeanne Bortolazzo. “Whenever he talked of either of those things, his face would light up with joy.”

His work goes on. BASIC awards a Bill Wright Memorial Scholarship every year to students headed into business. In 2023 Dan Wright was named Borrego’s Honorary Mayor. In all, the Wright family has given 26 acres for the good of the community, land that now holds the library. In January 2026, county supervisors unanimously accepted more Wright family land for a new fire station. The rest is planned for a clinic and affordable homes for seniors and workers, a dream Bill and Jenny started with a study for a senior center in 2019. Bill and Jenny also started the push for better health care in Borrego, an effort the Borrego Valley Endowment Fund took on.

In their own words

Video by Path 88 Productions (Alicia Wszelaki and Matthew Nothelfer), Borrego Springs. path88productions.com

Borrego filmmakers Alicia Wszelaki and Matthew Nothelfer of Path 88 Productions made a tribute video about Bill. In it, the people who knew him remember a man who never slowed down.

“I thought I was retiring when I came here. He put me to work,” Bruce Kelley said. “If he took a cause on, it became his cause.”

Bill was voted least likely to succeed in high school. “I do believe that that kind of stuck in his craw,” Dan Wright says. “He was a big idea man. He was a creator. He was an entrepreneur.”

More Quotes From The Video

• “He had a passion for Borrego, not just for its beauty and splendor, but for its people.”

• “Every vision that he had, he brought it to fruition.”

• “He was a champion of just about every project here in Borrego. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for Bill Wright.”

• “You walk around, you see all the places that Bill had an impact. I think he’s up in heaven rallying the troops to make heaven a better place.”

• Bill liked to see the results of his work. “I like to see my tracks,” he used to say. “I like to see what I’ve accomplished.”

• The video ends with his son, Dan. “How grateful I am to work with him, be with him, and be his son that he loved and was proud of.”

This story comes from the Borrego Sun Archives. There are many more stories of Bill and Jenny’s generosity, vision and hard work that aren’t told here. Feel free to share them with us!

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