William Elkins Jr. dies at 90; advisor and confidant of Mayor Tom Bradley

William Elkins Jr., a childhood friend of Tom Bradley who was one of the mayor’s most influential advisors, has died. He was 90.

Elkins died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at a convalescent hospital in Santa Monica, said his wife, Eleanor.

When Bradley became the first African American mayor of Los Angeles in 1973, Elkins was one of the first people he asked to join his administration, the Los Angeles Sentinel reported in 2006.

Elkins promised him two years but stayed for 20, Bradley’s entire time in office.

As special assistant to the mayor, Elkins was “the dean’ of the staff,” Anton Calleia, who was Bradley’s chief executive assistant, told The Times in an e-mail. “He was the mayor’s ‘eyes and ears’ and principal representative in the African American community, but he was also involved in many major citywide programs.”

Since Bradley had inherited an overwhelmingly white city government, one of Elkins’ main tasks was monitoring affirmative action. When Bradley’s final term ended in 1993, he left behind “one of the world’s most diverse workforces,” The Times said when Bradley died in 1998.

Part of Elkins’ “value to Tom was that when a program was made available to the city of Los Angeles, Bill made sure it really got to the citizens of Los Angeles,” said Maury Weiner, who was Bradley’s chief of staff.

Many programs Bradley initiated required working with Washington, and Elkins played “a key role as the primary follow-through person,” Weiner said.

As director of a newly established human resources unit, Elkins oversaw what became the Department of Aging, the Mayor’s Office of the Disabled and a youth development program.

Elkins spelled out his role more succinctly in the 2006 Sentinel article: “I was Mayor Bradley’s go-to guy.”

The son of a tailor who was also an undertaker, Elkins was born Jan. 20, 1920, in Forrest City, Ark., to William and Virginia Elkins.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1933 with his parents and sister, Elkins became friends with Bradley at Lafayette Junior High School.

They went to different high schools — Elkins to Jefferson and Bradley to Polytechnic — but met up again at UCLA, where Bradley helped persuade Elkins to join Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

World War II interrupted his education, and Elkins spent four years in the Army in Italy.

He returned to UCLA to finish his bachelor’s degree in political science. While working as a Los Angeles County probation officer, he earned a degree from Southwestern University School of Law.

In 1967, Elkins was named director of Teen Post, a county program that targeted poverty-ridden neighborhoods. It had been criticized for providing recreation instead of education and enrichment, but Elkins was soon praised for trying to remedy that. He stayed until he went to work for Bradley.

After Bradley left office, Elkins was on the board of the Thomas Spiegel Family Foundation and was the philanthropy’s vice president when he retired a few years ago.

Since 1973, he had lived in Leimert Park.

Known for his discipline, Elkins possessed another trait that was crucial to his success at City Hall, Weiner said. “He never gossiped.”

In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1945, Elkins is survived by two sons, Bill and Larry, and two grandchildren.

Services will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at Second Baptist Church, 2412 Griffith Ave., Los Angeles.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com