Bill Wright - Belle Mead, New Jersey
May 5, 1944 – April 19, 2016 

Bill Wright, tall, dark, handsome and popular was Junior Class President at M-A during the 1960-61 school year. He was on the M-A Frosh-Soph water polo team and a standout in B Basketball. Bill and John Black were elected Co-Captain of the 1961-62 Varsity Basketball team by their teammates as members of “one of the most exciting and strongest teams in Menlo-Atherton basketball history” as declared in the 1962 M-A yearbook.

William Urquhart Wright was born in Palo Alto, California. He was raised by Miriam LaFollette Summerskill and Richard Wright in Menlo Park, along with his four siblings, Rick, Helen, Wendy and Robert.

Growing up on the edge of San Francisquito Creek, Bill spent his childhood exploring the creek, hunting for "church rocks,” butterfly collecting, building forts and literally swinging high in the trees. He loved all sports and was a true natural at anything he tried. At M-A, his basketball and water polo teams were champions. He loved poetry from an early age and was always keenly interested in music and the new genres. Most of all, Bill loved being with his family and friends and just having fun in the neighborhood.

Bill completed his undergraduate studies with a major in history at Stanford University in Palo Alto in 1968. In the same year, he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), West Africa teaching English as a foreign language. During these two years, he began studying the arts of Africa.

Upon completion of the Peace Corps, he enrolled in a masters program at Brooklyn College, and two years later a PhD program at Columbia University. Rather than complete the Columbia program, Bill began traveling to Africa to collect art. In 1976, he opened an art gallery, Wright Gallery, on West Houston Street in Manhattan, and ten years later, moved his gallery to 568 Broadway.

For forty years he traveled extensively in Africa. Several dozen trips, for both business and discovery, took him to over twenty countries throughout the continent. Bill organized more then twenty exhibitions of African art, and lectured on the subject of historic Ethiopia and African art history at the Guggenheim Museum and Rutgers University, amongst other venues. He published a number of articles in academic journals on various aspects of African art and his pieces can be found in a number of museums around the country.

In 1982, Bill married Niki Hutchinson and built a home, a converted barn, on the property of his mother’s LaFollette Vineyard in New Jersey, where they raised their two children, Ann and Alexander, who both currently reside in Brooklyn, NY.

Bill was a lover of art, culture, travel, family, politics, basketball, golf, and tennis. He traveled the country and the world with a passion for discovering new things and people. He had an infectious love of life and the people who surrounded him. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

Bequeaths from the Class of 1961 in the M-A Bear Tracks:
I, Goose Garner will and bequeath my rare ability to miss a dunk in a crucial Palo Alto game to
Bill Wright in hope that someday he will be able to jump high enough to miss one too.
I, Rich Simrin will and bequeath my ability to “woo” Peggy Biocini to Bill Wright.
I, Gene Sullivan will and bequeath my ability to play basketball to Bill Wright.

A remembrance by John Black, friend and basketball teammate.
Bill was my dearest friend for so long! We met in first grade at Fremont Elementary School in Menlo Park. Both our families shared the huge fortune of living right next to San Francisquito Creek which flowed from the hills behind the Stanford golf course down to the Bay and provided us kids with a fun and wild playground. Later we were together at Menlo-Atherton and in our senior year we were co-captains of the basketball team.

During that time we often drove one of our family’s old cars. Bill’s was a ‘40s “woody” Chrysler station wagon and mine was a '46 black Dodge sedan. Sometimes we would have little “drag” races down Bay Laurel Drive for a few hundred feet in our not-so-hot cars.

Bill was loved by everyone – that was his thing. He was truly happy and interested in and nourishing to everyone, so naturally he was loved in return. He was deeply philosophical and it always took a practical turn to the consideration of politics and how to make peoples’ lives better.

A remembrance by Bob Plate, neighborhood friend and water-polo teammate.
I grew up with Bill, bother Rick and his family from the fifth-grade through high school. We all grew up on Bay Laurel Drive, Menlo Park and the Wright family home was always open for us to come and play. We spent many a day at Stanford, exploring and sneaking into football games. We could ride our bikes downtown Menlo Park without any concerns from our parents. Menlo Park was just a small community with many acres of orchards and undeveloped fields to play in. Bill, Rick, Kenny Long, Jim Jacobson, Bill Moore, Bobby Laird and others were all part of the extended Wright family.

In our elementary years, Bill was a great athlete and showed a passion for basketball, football and golf. We spent many summers together playing basketball, swimming and golfing at the Menlo Country Club. I spent many a day and overnights with the Wrights during my elementary years and at Menlo School in the 7th and 8th grades.

Bill and I were very close during those years, but went our separate ways in high school. After high school I only saw him once at a social function. His mother, Mimi, and my father became very close friends in later life after both were divorced.