Special to the Herald
Hawaii was just one stop on Marianist Brother William T. “Bill” Bolts’ long resume of teaching and pastoral work, but he made an impact wherever his ministry brought him.
Brother Bolts, who served as an educator and administrator in California, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and British Columbia over a 50-year career, died July 3 in Cupertino, California, where he lived in the Cupertino Marianist Community. He was 89 years old, with 70 years of religious profession.
Brother Bolts was born on Sept. 7, 1935, in San Francisco. He remembered first hearing the call to the religious life while in grade school; after encountering the Marianists at Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco, he narrowed his vocational focus to “the career of a religious devoted to teaching,” as he later wrote.
Upon graduating from high school, he entered the novitiate in 1953 in Santa Cruz, California, and professed first vows there on Aug. 15, 1954. He professed final vows in San Francisco on July 19, 1959, two years after earning a history degree at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Brother Bolts began his teaching career in 1957 at Junipero Serra High School in Gardena, California, staying there for 13 years before heading to Archbishop Riordan twice over the course of a dozen years. In between his teaching assignments, he earned a Ph.D. in history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and also briefly taught at a Pittsburgh high school.
In 1982, Brother Bolts was named assistant provincial and director of education for the Province of the Pacific, a role he held until 1990 — and which included a year spent as interim principal of Saint Louis School in Honolulu.
After a two-year sabbatical, he shifted to pastoral work, starting with the role of director of the Newman Center Catholic Campus Ministry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He also served at Queen of Apostles Church in San Jose, California, and in the administration of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Brother Bolts retired from active ministry and moved to the Cupertino Marianist Community in 2009.