Neighborhood activist Jim Wilkinson dies

By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

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Retired diplomat Jim Wilkinson, a powerhouse among Santa Rosa’s progressive neighborhood activists, died Thursday at his home near downtown.

His wife, Ellen Boneparth, said the 72-year-old co-founder of the city’s Neighborhood Alliance was lying on the floor when she arrived home from a visit to the dentist. Paramedics were unable to revive him.

His wife said she presumes he suffered a heart attack, though he had no known health problems.

“He’d had a great morning,” said Boneparth, who married the career U.S. State Department diplomat in 1993 and retired with him to Santa Rosa just more than a decade ago.

“He had just paid our taxes. He just sent off his book about Santa Rosa to the publisher,” she said. Wilkinson had titled his book, “Who Rules Santa Rosa?”

He wrote a blog by the same name and in letters to the editor of The Press Democrat criticized what he called the City Council’s “pro-developer constituency.” He supported the council’s current majority, which often promotes pro-environment, pro-labor policies.

“Jim was a force for positive change in our community —– one with great wit, a ready smile and a glib pointed pen,” Mayor Susan Gorin, a member of the majority, wrote in an e-mail that notified many Santa Rosans of Wilkinson’s death.

Councilwoman and former mayor Jane Bender, part of the current three-vote minority, said, “Jim and I agreed on some things and disagreed about others, but he was passionate about neighborhoods and passionate about the city. We need more people who are compassionate about the community.”

Close friend, ally and former councilman Steve Rabinowitsh called Wilkinson a community treasure.

“He cared so much about Santa Rosa for someone who came here not that long ago,” Rabinowitsh said.

“He chose our city of all the places he could live. It was quite a testament to our community.”

Before he came to Santa Rosa, Wilkinson was living with his wife in Hawaii and working in his final diplomatic post as advisor to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific.

The native of New York and graduate of California Institute of Technology served earlier in diplomatic positions in Thailand, Australia, Germany, Russia and the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

He told a Press Democrat reporter last August that when he retired and his wife settled in Santa Rosa, “I was looking for something different, a second career for someone who has no saleable skills, so I got interested in local politics.”

His co-founding of Neighborhood Alliance and other activism brought him the city’s Award for Community Service in 2008.

“He loved Santa Rosa,” his wife said. “He found the town endlessly interesting. He loved politics. He loved the neighhorhood movement. He was very interested in historic preservation.”

In addition to his wife, Wilkinson is survived by two daughters from an earlier marriage, a grandson and a sister.

An autopsy will be performed to confirm the cause of his death.