Attorney, environmentalist led fight to save Lake Tahoe
Bill Evers, a San Francisco attorney who cofounded the League to Save Lake Tahoe and served as head of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development under both George Moscone and Dianne Feinstein, has died.
Mr. Evers died June 28 at his home in Pacific Heights after a short illness. He was 90, and he had still been driving to work at his law office on Van Ness Avenue.
During a long and distinguished career, Mr. Evers switched between private practice and public service. He was a partner in law firms Pettit, Evers & Martin and Evers & Hendrikson, and was there at the start of the Planning and Conservation League and People for Open Space, later renamed the Greenbelt Alliance. He also served a term as chairman of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. An activist in eradicating urban blight, he chaired the Citizens Committee for Sign Improvement, which successfully fought to get free-standing billboards removed from residential neighborhoods in San Francisco, in the 1960s.
Mr. Evers was involved in the opening of the Alpine Meadows ski area, which opened in 1961, and Boreal Ridge, which opened in 1964.
“When you are super energetic and you live 90 years, you get a lot of stuff done,” said his son Elliott Evers, a San Francisco investment banker. “He was a man of incredible integrity, curiosity and love.”
Willam Dohrmann Evers was born May 6, 1927, a fourth-generation Californian. On his mother’s side, the Dohrmann family owned and operated the Emporium department store. His father, Albert John Evers, was a noted San Francisco architect with the firm Ashley and Evers. Among his designs was the long-gone Hamm’s Brewery, noted for its twinkling sign of a glass filling with golden beer.
Mr. Evers grew up in Ross and then his family moved to San Francisco, where he graduated from Lowell High School in 1945. He rowed crew for Yale, class of 1949, and graduated from Boalt Hall law school at UC Berkeley in 1952.
Mr. Evers soon took a position as a legal assistant with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington. While there in 1957, Mr. Evers hit on his legacy idea during a dinner with Jim McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee. They had both grown up spending summers on the west shore of Lake Tahoe and were concerned about development of its shoreline.
By the end of the dinner, they had shaken hands to form the Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association. Mr. Evers returned to San Francisco to build the organization, which later became the League to Save Lake Tahoe.
“In the late 1950s, Lake Tahoe was facing some of the most serious environmental threats in its history,” said league President Darcie Goodman Collins. “Bill’s leadership helped turn the tide against those threats, and set our organization on a path to continue protecting Tahoe for these past six decades.”
The league now has 6,000 members and an annual budget of $2.7 million. It is known far and wide for its “Keep Tahoe Blue” bumper sticker campaign.
While building the league, Mr. Evers also helped form the firm Pettit, Evers & Martin, specializing in government work and labor law. He was managing partner for 12 years, during which the firm grew from seven to 70 attorneys.
By the late 1970s, Mr. Evers was involved in public policy, and in 1977 he served as president of SPUR, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association. A year later, Mayor Moscone tapped him to run his Office of Economic Development, a post Mr. Evers kept under Mayor Feinstein after Moscone was assassinated in November 1978.
While at Yale, Mr. Evers had met Edwina Benington at a school mixer with Vassar. They were married while he was at Boalt and they raised four children on Jackson Street in San Francisco. After 26 years of marriage, they divorced, and in 1978 Mr. Evers married BritteMarie “Bittan” Emblad. In addition to his own four children he adopted her two.
Mr. Evers was a member of the Bohemian Club for 55 years, serving as camp captain of the Hill Billies, and also belonged to the PacificUnion Club. He ran daily for years. When he could no longer run, he rode a bike, and when he could no longer ride, he took daily walks.
In his later years, he became involved in the Gladstone Institutes, a nonprofit medical research institution in San Francisco. Mr. Evers was a founding member of the President’s Council and served as chair of the Stem Cell Science Team.
Survivors include his wife; sons Elliot of San Francisco, John of Santa Rosa and Will of San Francisco; daughter Anne Hitz of Pacifica; and stepchildren Dr. Peter Emblad of Mill Valley and Marianne Emblad of San Francisco.
A memorial service will be private. Donations in his name may be made to the League to Save Lake Tahoe, Gladstone Institutes or Roots of Peace.