Former Sonoma County auditor Bill Fulwider dies at 93

Bill Fulwider was a good-natured numbers guy who beat the odds and earned a passel of distinguished medals as a World War II bomber pilot, and a few years later had the good fortune to hear of a challenging budget-and-accounting job in Sonoma County.

The young combat veteran and graduate of Santa Rosa Junior College and Stanford University submitted his name for consideration as successor to retiring county Auditor Olney Pedigo. He was 26 when county supervisors appointed him to the post in 1948.

Fulwider, who was re-elected seven times as auditor and controller, died Jan. 18 in Santa Rosa. A genial man passionate about horseshoe tossing, barbershop singing and the charitable works of the Salvation Army, he was 93.

Right up until shortly before his death at a retirement residence, Fulwider was driving his car and attending luncheons of a dwindling corps of WWII aviators.

“He made it to 93 the way we’d all like to make it to 93,” said son Ron Fulwider of Fair Oaks.

When WWII ended, the highly decorated ex-Navy airman enrolled at Stanford, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and went on to the Graduate School of Business. It was a year and a half later that he learned of Sonoma County’s search for someone to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Pedigo.

Fulwider’s selection by the Board of Supervisors made him the youngest county auditor in the state. He already had responsibility for an array of duties related to budgeting and the computing of county tax rates when, in 1952, supervisors, acting on a recommendation of the grand jury, also made him the county controller.

He served in the dual post until his retirement in 1979, an occasion that prompted him to calculate that, since 1948, about $6 billion in public funds had passed through his hands.

William Edgar Fulwider was born in Ukiah in 1921. He grew up in Santa Rosa, graduating in Santa Rosa High School’s Class of 1939. He went on to SRJC, preparing for military duty by enrolling in ROTC.

Son Ron Fulwider said a fascination with flight led his father to take flying lessons in Santa Rosa. Bill Fulwider enlisted in the Navy in 1941 and was sent to Texas as a flight instructor.

When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Oahu drew the U.S. into the war, Fulwider requested to be sent into combat. He was assigned to a B-24 Liberator bomber and allowed to hand-pick a crew.

They left San Diego bound for the Philippines, with a stop at Hawaii. Recalling one of his dad’s stories, Ron Fulwider said the B-24 was well over the open Pacific when all four engines quit.

The boost pumps to the auxiliary fuel tanks hadn’t been switched on. The switch was near the co-pilot, who was sound asleep.

As the bomber descended toward the sea, Ron Fulwider said, his father “was slamming his fist into his co-pilot’s chest” and screaming at him to turn on the pumps.

“He wakes up and says, ‘If you quit hitting me, I’ll turn ‘em on.”

Based in the Philippines, Fulwider and his crew flew more than 60 bombing and strafing missions against Japanese forces operating along the coast of China. Fulwider never lost a man, but he came close.

Ron Fulwider said that one day as the crew prepared for a mission, a couple of Army supply sergeants who’d never witnessed combat asked to come along for a ride. Lt. Fulwider waved them aboard.

The B-24 came upon a Japanese freighter and flew straight at it with the 50-caliber machine gun in the nose turret ablaze. The nose gunner saw flashes on the freighter and thought it was damage from the strafing.

The truth became clear when crewmen aboard the bomber were struck by shrapnel, and a fuel leak aboard the Liberator filled the plane with noxious fumes. The freighter was an armed decoy and was firing a storm of slugs at the bomber.

“The fumes got so thick that my dad was flying with his head out the window,” Ron Fulwider said.

Pilot Fulwider and a couple other crew members took shrapnel wounds, but they managed to make it back to the Philippines. “When they landed that airplane, there were more than 500 holes in it,” the younger Fulwider said.

He said the two Army passengers, terrified but unscathed, “got out, kissed the ground and said they’d never get on a plane again.”

At war’s end, Bill Fulwider returned to San Diego with every one of the men he’d chosen for his crew. He was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, Distinguished Flying Cross, Navy Air Medal and Purple Heart.

Throughout his subsequent career as Sonoma County auditor/controller, Fulwider donated his economic experience to the Salvation Army. He was a life member of the organization’s Santa Rosa Corps Advisory Board, having served since 1949.

He was active also in the local fraternity of former combat airmen as well as Sons in Retirement, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Military Order of the Purple Heart. He was a favorite of local horseshoe pitchers and crooners with the Redwood Chordsmen men’s chorus.

“He loved to sing,” his son said.

Bill Fulwider is survived also by his wife, Lynn, of Santa Rosa, daughter Diana Grant of Vancouver, B.C.; six grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is at 2 p.m. Saturday at Eggen and Lance Chapel.

Fulwider’s family suggests memorial donations to the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Chapter 78, 2140 Bock St., Santa Rosa 95403.