William Jerald Brauer

Teacher, lawyer and altruist Bill Brauer died in Oakland, CA, on July 29, 2026. He was 81.

Bill was also an avid, funny and irreverent writer. "For me," he said, "writing has been one of the most valuable activities I could engage in as a human being-up there with parenting (#1) and helping the less fortunate (#2)-and comfortably ahead of making stupid jokes, at which it's well-known that I'm also gifted."

Bill graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University in 1966, and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1969. While at Yale, he spent the summer of 1968 in the New Orleans office of nationally-known civil rights lawyer Ben Smith working on voter registration.

After graduation in 1969, Bill worked two years as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Law Fellow at Rosebud Sioux Legal Services, Rosebud, South Dakota, fighting for Native American representation on juries. After taking a break to teach English for four years in Europe, he came home and practiced civil law in San Francisco for 20 years, starting his career as a contract attorney at Morrison Foerster, one of the world's largest law firms, while earning an MA in English at San Francisco State University. There he met and married Susan Bertin, with whom he had two daughters, Sarah and Anna.

After going into private practice for many years, Bill took two years off to focus on his writing. He then worked in contract law, first for the State Bar of California and then for United Healthcare and University of California, Berkeley, and married Nora Silver, founder, faculty director and professor at the UC Berkeley Haas Center for Social Sector Leadership. Together they welcomed each other's children and a growing family of grandchildren into their lives.

Bill was born in 1944 to Donald Ralph Brauer and Irene Wolff Brauer in San Francisco where he graduated from Francis Scott Key elementary school, AP Giannini Junior High and George Washington High School. He was bar mitzvahed in 1957 at Congregation Ner Tamid in the Outer Sunset, and spent some of his happiest days fishing with his dad at Camp Mather near Yosemite.

His mother Irene was born in 1920 in the small town of Wawern, Germany. In 1937, she and her parents were among the last Jews to escape Germany before Kristallnacht, with her father exclaiming "Wach auf! Wach auf! Wir sind in Gan Eden!" ("Wake up! Wake up! We're in paradise!") as they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn.

After retiring from the practice of law in 2013, Bill volunteered at the Crisis and Support Services of Alameda County, first as a crisis line volunteer, then as a board member and finally as board chair. On July 29 he passed away secondary to a bad fall and lung cancer. He was irreverent to the end and left a book of his writings to prove it.

Bill wanted to be remembered for one thing: He loved. He is survived by his wife Nora Silver Brauer; sister Judy Stein; two daughters, Anna Casale and Sarah Brauer; two stepchildren, Jed and Mara Silver, and five grandchildren, Teo, Ona, Liv and Willa Silver and Sam Casale.