Bill Horn, a combat veteran who served more than two decades on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, then, nearing retirement founded a school in Africa, died Friday. He was 83.
In announcing Horn’s passing, his former chief of staff, Dustin Steiner, said the San Diego native died surrounded by family.
“Bill Horn has left a lasting legacy of public service — as a County Supervisor, a United States Marine, a farmer, a husband of 59 years, a father, and a grandfather,” Steiner said in a statement. “He was sustained by his family and his immense faith, and will be greatly missed.
One of the members of the board during an era without term limits, Horn served for the majority of his tenure alongside a core group of Republican supervisors who held steadfastly to their seats for years: Greg Cox, Dianne Jacob, Ron Roberts and Pam Slater-Price.
Their grip on the board, which began in 1995 with the elections of Horn, Cox and Roberts, ended in 2012 with Slater-Price’s retirement. Horn, along with Roberts, left office in 2018 due to term limits that voters approved in 2010.
When he and Roberts were honored before departing the board, Horn told colleagues that he “tried to be a champion for North County.” He hoped, he said, that District 5 “voters look at it that way.”
Though he became best known publicly for his time as a supervisor, Horn began life as a San Diegan who attended Mission Bay High School, according to a San Diego Leadership Forum bio.
He loved the outdoors, as he recalled in a wide-ranging interview prior to leaving the Board of Supervisors. “When it wasn’t ski season I was surfing every chance I had at the end of Law Street in Pacific Beach,” he said.
He went on to graduate from San Diego State, then enlisted in the Marines at the height of the Vietnam War. He received several honors for his service, including a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
When he returned to civilian life, he built a career in commercial real estate. He was first elected to public office in 1989, winning a seat on the Escondido Union High School District board. Six years later, he joined the Board of Supervisors.
The county was in poor financial shape when Horn joined the board and he noted with pride that the agency ultimately gained a “a national reputation as one of the best managed and fiscally secure Counties in America.”
Jim Desmond, the current District 5 representative, said in a statement that Horn served the board with “courage and conviction” and credited him with helping to “pull this county back from the brink and build it into one of the finest in the country.”
Cox, one of his longtime board colleagues, said in an interview Monday that Horn also was “the strongest advocate he could possibly be” for veterans.
“Bill was larger than life,” said Steiner, now executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of America. “He was a principled leader, mentor and friend who fostered a family atmosphere in the office with a big heart and charming wit.”
Horn also had a run of negative publicity during his time in office.
In 2011, for instance, Voice of San Diego debunked Horn’s oft-repeated claim that he “worked for” civil rights advocate Ralph Abernathy, a close associate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and had been jailed during a San Diego civil rights protest.
“Unfortunately I said ‘jailed’ when I should have said ‘detained,’” he acknowledged to Voice.
He also over the years faced scrutiny over failing to disclose financial connections to a former chief of staff, putting his 1998 campaign manager on county payroll, giving county funding to a pro-life organization, misusing a charity he controlled, attempting to vote on a housing development from which he could have benefitted financially and letting renters live at his properties despite poor conditions.
Horn, though, was a dedicated volunteer who served as a youth soccer coach and supported Vietnamese refugee families following the war.
“Bill came across as kind of a gruff guy,” Cox said. “But he was really a marshmallow and easy to get along with. He really cared about North County.”
Horn often cited his Christian faith as the reason behind his actions, and before retiring he shifted his focus to Uganda, where he opened a Christian school, named Emmaus, after the Biblical story of Jesus being spotted on a road after his crucifixion.
After the elementary school, Horn said, the project branched off to other ventures that included a high school, wells for clean water and a corn processing plant that created jobs.
Geoff Horn, in a statement, said his father “loved being ‘Papa Bill’ to thousands of children at Emmaus.”
In the interview he gave before leaving the board, Horn called the work in Uganda “one of the greatest blessings in my life.”
He later added, “I’m living proof that Jesus uses imperfect people to do great things.”
