Bill Boriolo Sr., custom home builder, dies at 60

When Bill Boriolo was growing up in Santa Rosa in the 1960s and his folks loaded up the kids for an excursion, a station wagon wouldn’t do. Transporting their 10 sons required that Jack and Ann Boriolo own a school bus.

Bill, their third oldest, was drawn powerfully early on to big-horsepower American cars, hunting, fishing and general mischief. After graduating from Santa Rosa High School in 1973, he made himself a master craftsman and started his own construction company.

Boriolo was building custom homes when he was diagnosed with a rare hormone-related cancer in 2008. Defying a prognosis that he might have two years to live, he continued for nearly four times that long to enjoy his family, his work, his motorcycle, his practical jokes and his time in the outdoors.

Boriolo died Feb. 2 at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. He was 60.

“He was the first one at the party and the last one to leave,” said Teanna Boriolo, his wife of 36 years. She smiled at memories of all the times that people close to him would review the photos on their cameras or phones and see that he’d found them and surreptitiously snapped selfies.

A man who lived life with gusto, Boriolo dived for abalone, trekked into the wilds to hunt, taught his two sons to ski and to restore muscle cars and generously shared his technical skills with others in the construction industry.

Elder son Bill Boriolo Jr. remembered that when he was big enough to shoot a shotgun but not big enough to trudge very well through wetlands, his father would lift him and carry him under his arm to a duck blind. A few years later, Bill Sr. did the same for his younger son, Brett.

To keep the boys occupied and out of trouble, Boriolo bought them both old American cars when they were in their early teens and worked with them for countless hours, rebuilding and beautifying the cars. Bill Jr.’s was a 1957 Chevy Nomad, Brett’s a ’62 Chevy Nova.

Their father was born in Sebastopol on Aug. 2, 1955, and grew up with a fielded baseball-team worth of brothers on Santa Rosa’s Spring Street. As a teenager he bought his first car, a 1960 Chevy Corvette that cost him $600 and that he’d own all his life.

“He used to complain that he paid too much for his,” Teanna Boriolo said.

She and her future husband were both 21 when they met at Santa Rosa’s former Music Box nightclub. Teanna, a graduate of Piner High School, was sharing glances with a fellow and hoping he’d ask her to dance when suddenly Bill Boriolo plopped down at her table.

“I told him to get lost,” she recalled. The other guy stopped looking her way.

She and a girlfriend moved on to the bar at the El Rancho Tropicana Hotel. They were wishing a couple of guys training with the Oakland Raiders would move on, when Boriolo reappeared.

“He just wouldn’t go away. He was persistent,” Teanna said. They married in 1980.

Bill Boriolo operated Boriolo Construction for more than 30 years. He ultimately specialized in building custom homes, but over the years was involved also in the construction of tract homes and commercial buildings.

Boriolo donated construction services to the Earle Baum Center of the Blind and to projects at Herbert Slater Middle School and Steele Lane Elementary School. He volunteered also with the nonprofit Father Son and Buddies.

The nearly eight years that Boriolo lived beyond his cancer diagnosis allowed him the joys of becoming a grandfather and of putting many more miles on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

While riding, his wife said, “I think he got a sense of freedom.”

Longtime buddy Jack Richardson said he never once heard Boriolo complain about the years that he endured cancer and the hardships of treatment.

“If I had to describe him in one word it would be ‘tough,’ as he kept the pain mostly to himself and enjoyed all the good times that he could,” Richardson said. “He was a first-round draft choice as a friend.”

In addition to his wife in Santa Rosa, his older son and grandson in Santa Rosa, his younger son in Livermore and his parents in Santa Rosa, Boriolo is survived by his brothers, John Boriolo of Moss Beach, Mark Boriolo of Santa Rosa, Dave Boriolo of Sacramento, Richard Boriolo of Sacramento, Jim Boriolo of Moss Beach, Robert Boriolo of Santa Rosa, Tom Boriolo of San Jose and Matt Boriolo of Sacramento, and one grandson. His brother Chuck Boriolo preceded him in death.

A memorial service will be at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Rose Catholic Church. A celebration of Boriolo’s life will follow at the Druids Hall.

Memorial donations are suggested to Father Son and Buddies, at fathersonandbuddies.com.

Chris Smith