[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 16340-16342]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM CRAVEN (1921-1999)

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 15, 1999

  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the memory of William A. 
``Bill'' Craven: a husband and father, a public servant, a veteran of 
the Armed Forces of the United States, and a leading citizen of San 
Diego County, California, who has passed away.
  Bill Craven was a courageous political leader who represented the 
citizens of San Diego County for more than a quarter century. Many of 
us will always remember Bill as a strong leader with a tremendous 
commitment to public service. During his storied life he served as a 
U.S. Marine, San Diego County Supervisor, California State Assemblyman, 
Oceanside Planning Commissioner, the City Manager for San Marcos and 
the Chief Assistant to a County Supervisor. However, it is his many 
accomplishments as a California State Senator that will ensure his 
legacy. The crown jewel of those accomplishments was the successful 
establishment of California State University San Marcos.
  I submit for the Record a column from the San Diego Union Tribune and 
both an article and editorial from the North County Times, which 
further highlight the life of this great man.
  To be loved by friends and admired by opponents and to serve the 
people is the goal of all great leaders; it is a goal that Bill 
admirably attained. Speaking for all the people of California's 51st 
Congressional District, my heart goes out to Bill's wife, Mimi, and his 
entire family upon their loss. I am honored to have been Bill's friend.
  Let the permanent Record of the Congress of the United States show 
that Bill Craven was a tireless advocate for his constituents, and a 
friend of America.

           [From the San Diego Union Tribune, July 13, 1999]

William A. Craven (1921-1999)--Cal State San Marcos Is a Lasting Legacy

                   (By Gerry Braun and Jeff McDonald)

       William A. ``Bill'' Craven, the courtly North County 
     legislator who was known for his candor and independence and 
     for delivering a state university to the heart of his 
     district, is dead at 78.
       Craven, a heavy smoker for much of his life, suffered from 
     congestive heart failure and complications of diabetes, a 
     family member said. He died Sunday morning at the Villas de 
     Carlsbad Health Center.
       An old-school politician equipped with charm and a long 
     memory for names and local problems, Craven represented the 
     North County for a quarter of a century, from his election to 
     the Board of Supervisors until term limits and failing health 
     forced him from the state Senate last year.
       He was an Oceanside planning commissioner, the city manager 
     of San Marcos and a county supervisor's chief assistant 
     before being elected a supervisor in his own right in 1970. 
     The lifelong Republican moved up to the state Assembly in 
     1973, and then to the state Senate in 1978, without losing a 
     race or facing serious competition.
       In the Legislature, colleagues looked to the longtime 
     Oceanside resident for his expertise in such unglamorous 
     policy arenas as local government funding and mobile-home 
     park regulation. Yet he also wielded considerable clout 
     through his longtime seat on the powerful Senate Rules 
     Committee and his ability to offset his party's minority 
     status by cultivating personal relationships with his 
     colleagues.
       In his latter years, Craven was one of a dwindling species 
     in Sacramento--a moderate Republican who prided himself on 
     his bipartisanship and his friendships with Democratic 
     leaders such as Willie Brown, Leo McCarthy, Bill Lockyer and 
     David Roberti, the latter a longtime Senate president pro 
     tempore whom Craven affectionately called ``Boss.''
       Craven crossed party lines without apology, and many times 
     delivered the final vote needed to send Democratic bills to 
     the governor.
       ``Before government became the enemy, in the perspective of 
     some, Bill was one who wanted government to work and to solve 
     problems,'' said Lockyer, who served with Craven in both 
     houses of the Legislature and is now California's attorney 
     general. ``He was a man with a devotion to public service and 
     a wonderful, wonderful, giant heart.''
       Craven's district underwent explosive growth during his 
     career--he represented nearly 1 million people in parts of 
     three counties in the late 1980s--and he battled to steer 
     state money to its water systems, parks, highways and 
     courtrooms, and to sustain the growth with tax credits 
     for first-time home buyers.


                        Pride in accomplishments

       He was proud of winning extra funding for Torrey Pines 
     State Reserve; supporting anti-pollution legislation that 
     targeted aerosol cans and vapor-recovery systems on gas 
     pumps; increasing the size of Butterfield Park in San 
     Pasqual; and raising from five to seven the number of judges 
     at the Vista courthouse.
       But the crown jewel of his legislative career was the 
     creation of Cal State San Marcos, the North County public 
     university that Craven started lobbying for even before he 
     was elected to the Assembly in 1973. The university was 
     finally christened in 1990, and the grand opening capped one 
     of the longest and most ardent drives of Craven's years in 
     Sacramento.
       In gratitude, one of the main buildings of the growing San 
     Marcos campus was named Craven Hall. A bust of the longtime 
     legislator rests in front and a nearby thoroughfare was named 
     in his honor.
       ``He had the vision for that university for as long as I've 
     known him, which goes way back, I think 30 years ago,'' said 
     banker Jim Rady, a former Escondido mayor.
       ``Throughout his career he put the well-being of North 
     County ahead of politics. He

[[Page 16341]]

     was a moderate Republican in times when it was not 
     fashionable, but people who knew him respected him,'' Rady 
     said. ``He was an honest man.''


                         A man of many talents

       In his many and varied careers, Craven worked as a 
     newspaperman, a salesman, an ad man and an actor.
       He was born on June 30, 1921, in Philadelphia and graduated 
     from Villanova, where he earned a degree in economics. Craven 
     enlisted in the Marines during World War II and returned to 
     service when his country came calling at the outbreak of the 
     Korean War.
       During his second military stint, Craven devised and wrote 
     a Marine Corps radio program that aired weekly over more than 
     130 stations. By 1951, he had turned to television and 
     produced a weekly program that ran for more than three years.
       He left the service as a major and a military buff who 
     devoured the books of historian W.E.B. Griffin. The lessons 
     of war stayed with him throughout his public service, as when 
     he opposed a nuclear-freeze proposal in 1982, bluntly 
     explaining, ``I don't trust the Russians. I never have. I 
     probably never will.''
       Between the wars, Craven turned to sales and promotion, 
     working for a Kentucky-based company that specialized in 
     leather and binding.
       After the Korean War, Craven took a sales job with Philco 
     Electronics, roaming the Eastern Seaboard for new clients. It 
     wasn't long, however, before he migrated west, with his young 
     wife, Mimi, to accept a management position at a Los Angeles 
     concessions company that sold various goods to the military.


                               Deep roots

       Much of that business took Craven south to San Diego County 
     and Camp Pendleton, where he began planting deep roots in the 
     Oceanside community.
       His interest in writing was sparked by a short stint as a 
     police reporter in his native Pennsylvania--skills that 
     helped Craven launch his own public relations business in the 
     1950s.
       He wrote advertising copy, did market research and 
     consulted on merchandising and sales tactics for a variety of 
     clients.
       His years of public service began with 12 years on the 
     Oceanside Planning Commission and working as an executive 
     assistant to the Board of Supervisors from 1962 to 1969. He 
     also served as the county's first public information officer.
       He spent four months as the San Marcos city manager before 
     winning election to the Board of Supervisors in 1970, when he 
     was named North County Man of the Year by the Northern San 
     Diego County Associated Chambers of Commerce.
       But his service on the Board of Supervisors was not without 
     its squabbles.
       Craven was criticized in 1971 for accepting guest 
     privileges to a local country club, then voting on a rezoning 
     application filed by the company when it came before the 
     Board of Supervisors. He gave up the membership soon 
     thereafter.
       In 1972, Craven was targeted for recall by a Chula Vista 
     water company owner upset with a redistricting plan pushed by 
     the supervisor. The attempt fizzled when the business owner 
     was unable to muster enough support for the recall drive.
       Like many county officials before him, Craven also tangled 
     with the San Diego mayor, at that time a rising a powerful 
     Republican named Pete Wilson. As early as 1972, Craven was 
     warning county residents that the regional planning hierarchy 
     favored the city of San Diego over the county.
       ``We shouldn't have to take a back seat to San Diego,'' he 
     once boomed at a breakfast meeting in Fallbrook, where he 
     criticized the distribution system for regional gas tax 
     revenue.


                            Sacramento bound

       The supervisor beat out eight other Republicans--and 14 
     rivals overall--in the 1973 primary election for a vacant 
     Assembly seat. Craven was the top campaign spender--reporting 
     more than $43,000 in expenses, some $2.85 for every vote he 
     received--and carried more than 65 percent of the vote.
       He served three terms in the Assembly and was one of only 
     two Republican assemblymen to head a legislative committee in 
     the Democrat-controlled lower house--the Local Government 
     Committee.
       A self-described moderate Republican with ``conservative 
     leanings--especially in fiscal areas,'' he opposed 
     Proposition 13, the landmark tax-slashing initiative approved 
     by California voters.
       After its passage, he pushed for a state constitutional 
     amendment that would have made it easier for local 
     governments to issue general obligation bonds--a key target 
     of the 1978 measure.
       Craven pointed to his seniority, and key Rules Committee 
     assignment, in 1981 when he stunned constituents by 
     announcing that he would forsake running for an open 
     congressional seat to remain in the state Senate.
       ``I've come, with some degree of experience and years, to 
     understand that service here is something that I've become 
     very accustomed to,'' he told supporters at a weekend fund-
     raiser.


                             csu san marcos

       By remaining in Sacramento, Craven was able to pull off his 
     crowning legislative achievement--the funding for CSU San 
     Marcos. It is widely considered the product of Craven's 
     finely honed legislative skills.
       Just last March, Craven donated $250,000 in leftover 
     campaign funds to the university for the establishment of an 
     academic scholarship with just one condition: That it go to 
     ``average'' students with special qualities.
       He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mimi, and three 
     children: sons William Craven Jr. and John Craven, and 
     daughter Tricia Craven Worley.
       In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to Tri-
     City Medical Center or to the William A. Craven Scholarship 
     Fund at Cal State San Marcos.
                                  ____


              [From the North County Times, July 13, 1999]

                   North County Statesman Dies at 78

                            (By Terry Wells)

       Oceanside.--Former state Sen. William A. Craven, a 
     statesman whose nonpartisan style and flair for oratory led 
     to the founding of Cal State San Marcos, died Sunday after a 
     long battle with diabetes and emphysema.
       He was 78.
       Craven, an Oceanside Republican who held the 38th District 
     state senate seat from 1978 to 1998, was fondly remembered 
     Monday as a man who put getting the job done above politics--
     sometimes to the consternation of his GOP colleagues.
       ``He worked both sides of the aisle when he wanted to get 
     something done, and the Democrats respected him as well as 
     the Republicans,'' said Vista Mayor Gloria McClellan, whose 
     long career in city politics parallels Craven's in 
     Sacramento. ``What an intelligent, thoughtful man he was. And 
     very, very effective.''
       Born June 30, 1921, in Philadelphia, Craven attended a 
     private high school and graduated from prestigious Villanova 
     University with a bachelor's degree in economics.
       He then joined the Marines during World War II and was 
     commissioned as a lieutenant. Craven soon found himself 
     landing on the beach at Iwo Jima, one of the most ferocious 
     battles in the Pacific theater.
       Craven emerged a major, remaining a Marine reserve officer 
     and attaining the rank of brigadier general after being 
     called back to active duty during the Korean War. Years 
     later, an accomplished legislator in Sacramento, Craven 
     chaired an informal social group of legislators who had 
     served in the Marine Corps, the ``Marine Legislative 
     Brigade.''


                           Craven remembered

       Craven's successor, state Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, 
     said there were a dozen or so brigade members in that group a 
     decade ago, but Morrow himself is now the Legislature's only 
     ex-Marine. It just isn't the same without him, Morrow said.
       ``Everybody here recognizes him to this day for what he 
     was, a true gentleman who was compassionate in his politics--
     and also a real fightin' Marine,'' Morrow said. ``It didn't 
     take me too long to know that you don't replace a Bill 
     Craven. You just carry on.''
       Craven and his wife, the former Marion ``Mimi'' L. Wahl, 
     married in April 1944, and made their home in Oceanside, 
     raising three children.
       While Craven had worked various jobs including one as a 
     leather salesman, he gravitated toward public life. Mimi 
     Craven shared that tendency, and was a fixture at his side 
     during decades of appearances at civic events.
       Craven learned public administration from the ground up, 
     serving as a staff aide to the San Diego County Board of 
     Supervisors in the 1960s, and briefly as the city manager of 
     San Marcos.


                           Running for office

       In early 1970, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed Robert 
     Cozens, the county's 5th District supervisor, to be the new 
     director of the state Department of Motor Vehicles, and 
     Craven decided to make his play for the empty seat.
       But the four supervisors deadlocked 2-2 on naming a 
     successor, and Reagan appointed the late Miles W. Kratka to 
     finish out Cozens' term.
       Undeterred, Craven entered the primary race and gathered 
     more than half the vote in June, avoiding a November runoff.
       Bill Dominguez, who later served as county Supervisor 
     Craven's chief of staff, said it was no surprise that Craven 
     won in the primary, despite never having held elected office.
       In 1970, as one of a small handful of aides that served all 
     the county supervisors, Craven ``lived in his car'' while 
     visiting county residents who had called to raise concerns 
     with the board of supervisors. Dominguez said.
       ``He had a great flair with people, and a great sense of 
     humor;'' Dominguez said. ``Once of his favorite mottos was, 
     `If you can leave them smiling, then you've won the war.' ''


                             The first step

       Craven's experience at the street level shaped his 
     thinking, Dominguez said, but the former Marine sought and 
     won a state Assembly seat in 1973, halfway through his first 
     term.

[[Page 16342]]

       In 1978, the year of California's property tax revolution, 
     Craven jumped to the state Senate, a seat he held for 20 
     years.
       The more collegial environmental of the Senate--where 
     partisan fights are rare by comparison to the rough-and-ready 
     Assembly--suited Craven's gentlemanly style, said Assemblyman 
     Howard Kaloogian, R-Carlsbad.
       ``Republicans will vote for a Democrat to be the Senate 
     leader, and here in the Assembly we don't understand that,'' 
     Kaloogian said. ``He epitomized the image of a state 
     senator. And today, in an era of term limits, there will 
     never again be a Bill Craven.''
       Craven specialized in legislation that concerned local 
     governments--a ``true policy wonk in the truest sense of that 
     term,'' Dominguez said. But the senator will be remembered 
     for generations for one accomplishment, according to those 
     who knew him: the founding of Cal State San Marcos in 1992.


                           University legacy

       It was the first new Cal State campus in decades--for years 
     the idea was only to build a satellite campus of San Diego 
     State University.
       ``When it happened, it went beyond their wildest dreams and 
     we got a full, four-year institution of our own in North 
     County,'' Dominguez said.


                         Advocates for seniors

       Craven won respect throughout North County as an advocate 
     for residents of mobile-home parks, many of whom are seniors 
     living on fixed incomes.
       When those efforts veered into rent control--a taboo topic 
     among most Republicans--Craven didn't flinch. He also made it 
     happen with a series of bills fought by mobile-home park 
     owners.
       ``His highly developed sense of decency and his 
     intellectual rigor made it possible for him to succeed where 
     others were shuttled aside,'' said veteran GOP political 
     consultant Jack Orr. ``I disagreed with him on a lot of 
     things, including rent control. But I respected him, and so 
     did just about everybody else.''
       Mayo Jo Kerlin, who worked for Craven for 25 years, said 
     the senator had a way of attracting and keeping loyal staff 
     members because he didn't put politics at the top of his 
     agenda.
       Kerlin noted that Craven sponsored bills that created the 
     state's network of freeway call-boxes; laid the groundwork 
     for Coaster light-rail service; and bought habitat at Torrey 
     Pines and in Poway before habitat preservation was in full 
     swing in a rapidly developing state.
       Craven also played a major role in the 1994 bailout of 
     Orange County, where risky investments created the nation's 
     largest municipal bankruptcy.
       ``He has touched more people's lives in North County than 
     anyone I know, or I'm likely to know,'' Kerlin said. ``It 
     seems like everywhere I go, I see his fingerprints.''
                                  ____


              [From the North County Times, July 14, 1999]

                      A Long Legacy of Good Works

       An ex-Marine who stormed the beaches at Iwo Jima in his 
     youth, former state Sen. Bill Craven could hold his own in 
     most any fight in the Capitol's halls and cloakrooms, but he 
     made his name in North County and Sacramento as a peacemaker 
     and statesman.
       Craven, who died Sunday morning at age 78, represented the 
     bulk of North County in the California Senate for 20 years 
     until declining health and term limits forced him to 
     relinquish his seat last year. Many legislators, once they 
     get to Sacramento, lose touch with their home districts and 
     become more focused on statewide or national issues, but 
     Craven never lost his focus on North County. He worked hard 
     to make sure his constituents got the services and goods they 
     paid for through their taxes and fought efforts to shift 
     funding from local governments to state.
       Most of his causes weren't glamorous--he pushed for tougher 
     anti-pollution regulations and greater investment in 
     highways, parks, courts and habitat protection--but his 
     greatest legacy will always be Cal State San Marcos, who 
     administration building and main road bear his name. He began 
     campaigning for a North County university campus in 1973, 
     five years before he was elected to the Senate. When it 
     finally opened in 1990, it was the first new state university 
     anywhere in the country in more than 20 years.
       In this day of term limits, we won't see a long record of 
     service like Craven's again, and in this era of bitter 
     partisanship we're unlikely to see his form of statesmanship 
     again.

     

                          ____________________