Bill Walton's Impact on San Diego One Year After His Passing
May 28, 2025
You’ve probably heard our reports this week about the online auction going on for San Diego native Bill Walton’s memorabilia. The news was announced one year to the day that this man, raised in La Mesa, died after a battle with colon cancer.
A story in this week by the San Diego Union Tribune was filled with the things Bill Walton did, said and fought for through a life that stands tall among people in San Diego who are well known.
As the U-T writer suggested, “Bill Walton is still here. Given the oversized impact Walton made in the worlds of sports, music, education and philanthropy.”
Walton of course is most known as the great basketball player he was. But here in San Diego, this 6-foot-11 man stood even taller for what he did for the community and for others.
He fought for causes as hard as he fought on a basketball court, battling for ways to end homelessness even if it meant stepping on political toes…which he did.
And now a year after he left us, some of his words about life are worth remembering.
As Bill Walton put it once, “There’s a moral obligation that we all have to carry on and to enable and empower the next generation coming up because we are the result of other people’s sacrifices, their discipline and their lives of honor.”
Especially important words during these times in which we live.
(Photo Getty Images)