Ask Bill Hawkins where he was born and he won’t say San Benito County – he says he was born in a San Francisco hospital and started his life in North County when he was two weeks old. But he has spent most of his 90 years dedicated to his family ranch and public service.
Hawkins will celebrate his 90th birthday on Saturday with family and friends – it is a dual celebration as his daughter Debbie Rossmann shares his birthday.
It was only five years ago that Hawkins stepped away from full-time management of the cattle ranch. The family leases some of the land on their property to neighbors for cattle-ranching while Hawkins keeps busy with other activities such as his monthly Sons in Retirement luncheons.
“It seems like I’m busy all the time trying to keep my affairs going,” he said, of retirement.
Through the years, Hawkins has been active in the community. He served on the North County School Board for 27 years and said he served on the Saddle Horse Association board for a similar number of years. He was involved in the Farm Bureau as a director and with the 33rd Agricultural District Board.
During his tenure on the school board, he saw a lot of changes to the district he attended as an elementary school student. As a boy, he went to Auysamas School and then to Hollister High School. When he joined the North County School District in the 1960s, the district oversaw four rural schools including Auysamas, Fairhaven, Fairview and Pacheco.
“There are probably more changes since then,” he said, of the end of his tenure. “But the first big thing was we built a new kindergarten. Eventually we got a single campus at Spring Grove.”
The Hawkins’ family has a long history in the county as one of the founders of Hollister. T. S. Hawkins founded Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital in 1907. The family first settled in North County when they acquired a Spanish land grant that included property up to Pacheco Peak. The family relocated a ranch house from the Pacheco Pass Y on flat wagons in the 1880s to the ranch headquarters near Los Viboras Road. The family also acquired another ranch near Fort Klamath in Oregon in 1912. They would keep the cattle in Oregon in the summer and ship them back to California in the winter. Hawkins’ brother Tommy primarily managed the Oregon ranch while Hawkins managed the San Benito ranch.
Rossmann noted that the family put in one of the first in-ground pools in San Benito County, with her father adding that the pool was built in the early 1930s. For much of his childhood the family was focused on survival during the depression era. He said the family ranch and home were almost sold to Will Rogers at one point. Rogers was a cowboy and actor who was well-known in the 1920s and ’30s.
The story goes that Rogers visited the ranch with Marion Hollins, a woman golfer who helped develop the Pasatiempo Golf Course in Santa Cruz.
“She brought him over to look at it and he was all set to buy it, but his wife put the kibosh on it,” Hawkins said.
The original land grant has been divided within the extended family and some portions have been sold off. The family holds about 252 acres of the original 20,000 acres. The house Hawkins grew up in is still on the property though his daughter Rossman lives there now. Hawkins has five grandchildren, including Stefani Tilley, Chase Rogers, Sarah Lomanto, Ashley Rogers and Sheryl Lomanto, three of whom live in Hollister.
After graduating from Hollister High School, Hawkins enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley for a degree in business administration and economics. While at Berkley, he joined the U.S. Navy and was stationed in San Diego for a few months in 1943. From there, he went to Harvard for a semester to complete his degree through the Navy program, though his diploma is from Berkeley.
In the Navy, he went back and forth across the Atlantic on convoys to Italy, England and Wales.
“I really didn’t know what I wanted to do so I ended up going to law school for one semester,” Hawkins said, of his time after the Navy. “At the end of the semester, I wasn’t too excited to go back…I thought I’d enjoy it more out here on horseback in the hills rather than in four walls.”
Hawkins was introduced to Marion Nash in 1955 and the couple dated for a year before they married in 1956. Their daughter Karen Rogers was born in 1959 and Debbie Rossman came 14 months later in 1960 on her father’s birthday. They were married for 45 years when Marion died at age 78 in 2001.
As they prepare for Hawkins’ 90th birthday celebration this weekend, Hawkins and Rossmann recalled that Marion liked to have parties. They both remember one Halloween where she borrowed a casket from a local funeral home to add to the ambiance of the party.
“She liked costume parties,” Hawkins said.
