It took an act of Congress for Bill Wilson to get his embassy. The year was 1984, and Wilson had served for three years as Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to the Vatican. Reagan wanted to solidify the posting as an ambassadorship, but a law enacted in 1867 during the Italian civil war -- to keep papal influence out of U.S. affairs -- prohibited formal diplomatic relations. Reagan convinced Congress to repeal the law, and the envoy became an ambassador.
Launching the embassy was an "extremely challenging job that broke new ground for the United States," Wilson says.
A convert to Catholicism since 1943, he broached sensitive issues ranging from nuclear weapons to birth control. He recalls with particular pride his efforts -- ultimately successful -- to promote diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel and to encourage Reagan to lift economic sanctions against Poland.
Wilson stepped down in 1986. He returned to Los Angeles, where he owned a manufacturing company and had built a successful career in real estate. He had lived and worked in Southern California since college, and it was there that he and his wife, Betty (Johnson), '38, who died in 1996, had befriended the Reagans in the 1950s.
The Wilsons were among Ronald Reagan's earliest backers. "We were friends going back to [my] helping induce him to enter politics," Wilson says. He served on Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" throughout the presidency and played golf regularly with him until the former president's health problems interfered. He even helped the Reagans find Rancho del Cielo, the Santa Barbara ranch they bought in the 1970s. "Bill and Betty have been dear friends of ours, and we treasure that friendship," Nancy Reagan told Stanford.
Today, still living in West L.A., the former ambassador and presidential adviser serves on the boards of several international enterprises, keeps tabs on a cattle ranch he bought in Mexico and enjoys ham radio broadcasting -- a hobby he nurtured at the Delta Tau Delta house as an engineering student on the Farm.
Though his old golf partner is all but lost to Alzheimer's disease, Wilson fondly recalls Reagan's playfulness in a tale from the gubernatorial days. "One weekend, for Nancy's birthday, Betty and I invited the Reagans down to our ranch in Temecula. A squad of California guards accompanied them. On the picnic, Ronald said to me, 'Let's shoot some tin cans.' So I went inside and brought out two .22s. When the guards saw us walk into the bushes with rifles, they leaped. They didn't know what we were up to, and they raced after us."
Good ol' boys will be boys.
-- Bud Lesser, '36
