Bill Robertson, a onetime bartender and bouncer who rose to become a major labor leader and power broker in Los Angeles and played a key role in bringing the Raiders football team and the 1984 Olympics to the city, died Friday afternoon. He was 89.
The silver-maned, gravelly voiced Robertson, who was former executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and a close ally of the late Mayor Tom Bradley, died at Los Angeles' Olympia Medical Center, where he had been admitted a week ago. The cause was complications from pneumonia. He also suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday December 11, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 60 words Type of Material: Correction
Robertson obituary -- The obituary in Saturday's California section of labor leader Bill Robertson said he was the last survivor of the seven men Mayor Tom Bradley named to convince the International Olympic Committee that Los Angeles could capably host the 1984 Games without taxpayer money. In fact, Robertson's death makes producer David Wolper the last survivor of the group.
"Bill was instrumental in helping Mayor Bradley turn a collection of local communities into one of the nation's leading international metropolises, rivaled only by New York," said Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a longtime friend of Robertson's and a fellow member of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.
Reinhardt said Robertson also helped achieve "full recognition for the rights of public employees for the first time in what had historically been an anti-labor city."
Robertson also gained political cachet with state and national leaders, including former Gov. Jerry Brown, now the mayor of Oakland.
"Bill was really a statesman for the house of labor," Brown said this week. "He was not a guy who yelled. He was always a gentleman, very careful and thoughtful."
Bradley, who served five terms, appointed Robertson to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission and the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission, and Robertson served as president of each.
The longtime labor leader was also the last survivor of the original seven-member group Bradley named to persuade the International Olympic Committee that Los Angeles could capably host the 1984 games. It was a tough sell after the city, concerned about financial losses other cities had incurred while hosting the Olympics, refused to finance the event with taxpayer money.
Robertson subsequently served on the 22-member executive board of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.
But an achievement he considered one of the proudest of his career was his role as chief negotiator in the $6.7-million deal in 1980 to bring the Raiders football team from Oakland to the Los Angeles Coliseum. He stepped in again later to persuade Raiders owner Al Davis to stay on and helped forge a public and private agreement to renovate the aging Coliseum.
