William James “Bill” Etling died Nov. 5, 2026 after a near-fatal farm accident in 2021 that was followed by a six-year battle with lung cancer.
The third of four sons, Bill was born to Marion Prellwitz Etling and Benjamin Harry Etling on July 8, 1953 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The Etlings moved to Solvang in 1966 when Bill was 13. He attended College Elementary School, then Santa Ynez Valley Union High School where he met his future wife Debra Doll Mitchell.
They walked together at high school graduation in 1971, married in 1972 and were seldom apart thereafter.
Bill wrote about his wife: “She is the smartest person I have ever met, and the most beautiful. I can never fully express the love I have for her.”
After high school, Bill started college at UC San Diego; took a break to work with SYVUHS friends as a telephone line inspector in the Virgin Islands (with a lot of great surfing on the side); and ultimately earned his BA in English from UC Santa Barbara. He later completed a MBA from Cal Lutheran University.
Bill and Debra had two children, Leah, born in 1979, and William “Will,” born in 1982. Everything Bill did after 1979 had his kids at the heart of it.
Some of Leah’s and Will’s favorite memories are of the treehouses and forts their father built for them; afternoons hiking around their first home on Calzada Ridge in Santa Ynez on weekends; day trips to El Capitan and Refugio; being broken out of school early for snow on Figueroa Mountain; and traveling all over the U.S. and the world.
After UCSB, Bill joined General Telephone and Electric (GTE, today Verizon) and worked as a planning engineer until his early retirement in 1990.
His favorite part of this work was the last chapter. He had the chance to move the family temporarily to Oahu, Hawaii, where he led the under-grounding planning for telephone poles across the Hawaiian Islands, and surfed Kaiser’s most mornings before work. The adventure was just one in a lifetime of cherished family travel memories.
As a sideline, inspired by his father-in-law Renton Mitchell, Bill earned his real estate agent’s license in the early 1980s, and soon after became a broker.
He worked part time in real estate while working full time at GTE, and ultimately spent more than 45 years in residential real estate. He represented hundreds of clients both buying and selling, always advocating for minimal stress and a fair deal for both parties.
His clients, the agents he represented, and Realtors on the other side of the transactions appreciated his fair, calm and reasonable approach to every situation.
A lifelong historian, Bill reveled in the chance to explore historic ranchos and significant properties. His clients received eloquent history tours of the Santa Ynez Valley.
He would point out every adobe, explain which families had built or subdivided or farmed each parcel, and which buildings in Los Olivos, Solvang and Santa Ynez had past lives as blacksmith shops, cartwrights and stables.
His true professional calling, though, was not engineering or real estate but the written word. A truly gifted writer, Bill had the chance to become a columnist for the Santa Barbara News-Press. He wrote the stories of the Santa Ynez Valley until the paper’s implosion in 2006.
His columns were compiled into a wonderful book, “Sideways in Neverland,” which is still in print. You can find it online. It is filled with the warmth and heart of an author who loved the Valley and the Central Coast, and captured vital pieces of this place to preserve for future generations.
Over the course of his life, Bill adored traveling near and far with Debra, maintaining their beautiful self-developed property in Oak Trail Ranch with his ever-present tractor and chainsaw, reading weighty books, and watching Will’s band play live shows in Los Angeles from 2006-11.
Since 2014, he was joyous to spend time with his grandchildren Mercer and Rowan, picking them up from school and traveling together to Oregon, Alaska and Denmark.
His devotion to Mercer and “Ro-Ro” defies description: countless hours hunting for bugs and lizards; playing make-believe; reading them A.A. Milne and Bill Peet books; and marveling at their drawings and creativity.
At a very young age, Mercer declared “Grandpa is my best guy,” which Bill had printed on a t-shirt. He was proudly wearing the shirt when he passed away.
Bill is survived by his beloved wife Debra; younger brother Bert Etling (Laurie Merchant) of Talent, Oregon; daughter Leah Etling McElearney (Patrick) of Bend, Oregon; and son Will Etling (Abigail Sample) of Los Olivos; and grandchildren Mercer and Rowan Etling.
Per his wishes, no memorial will be held. He asks that you go to the beach, listen to some classic rock, or read a good book instead.
Any donations in Bill’s memory may be made to the Santa Ynez Valley Humane Society or the Solvang Library.
“Parents know the meaning of life. It is to nurture and protect and educate their children. We are here to use the knowledge of those who have gone before us, to smooth the path for those to come. No one who comforts their crying child after an injury has any doubts about their existence. A small child’s sweet reality is so vivid, it overwhelms sense and emotion, and sweeps you like big surf into the roiling cascade of life’s mad ocean currents.” — William James Etling