Otto Bos, Longtime Political Adviser to Wilson, Dies at 47

Otto Jacob Bos, trusted friend and top adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson, died Sunday of an apparent heart attack while playing soccer here, the governor’s office said. He was 47.

Bos, a former all-American soccer player at San Francisco State College, was pronounced dead at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla after collapsing about 5:30 p.m., said Wilson’s press secretary, Bill Livingstone.

Officials at the hospital and at the San Diego county medical examiner’s office were not available for comment.

Wilson and his chief of staff, Bob White, traveled from Sacramento to San Diego immediately upon hearing of Bos’ death.

“Otto Bos was like a younger brother of mine,” Wilson said in a statement. “I have lost one of the dearest friends I have ever known.”

Bos met Wilson while working as a reporter for the San Diego Union during Wilson’s tenure as the city’s mayor and joined Wilson’s mayoral staff in 1977 as press secretary. He also served on Wilson’s U.S. Senate staff, first as press secretary and then as director of public affairs.

Bos has served as a top media and community relations adviser during three successful statewide campaigns by Wilson. White and Bos have been regarded as the most influential of Wilson’s circle of advisers.

Born in Groningen in the war-torn northern Netherlands in 1943, Bos and his family came to the United States in the mid-1950s when he was 13. They lived in Upstate New York and in Michigan before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. He quickly mastered English as a second language and graduated from high school in Daly City at 16.

The 6-foot-4 Bos excelled at soccer after entering college, but because of a lack of direction and poor grades, left the school to join the Peace Corps in 1963. He fell ill before completing training and was drafted into the Army, serving in Vietnam as a combat surgery technician. Bos received an Army Commendation Medal for valor in battlefield action.

After his discharge, Bos returned to what is now San Francisco State University, where he earned a degree in journalism. During that time of student unrest, he worked on the campus newspaper and formed his interest in politics.

“I came to the conclusion that the institutions I participated in were very important,” he told The Times in an interview this year. “There were radicals calling for burning down the institutions and I thought they were wrong.”

Colleagues of Bos in San Diego remember him as so well-connected that they referred to him as “the switchboard through which City Hall operated.”

Indeed Bos’ ability to broker power also led some reporters to believe Bos was so eager to promote Wilson, that he was willing to bend the truth at times. He did not see it that way.

“The most important thing you have in this life is credibility,” he told The Times. “If your credibility is undermined, you might as well roll up your rug and go home.”

Bos leaves a wife, Florence, and three children.

Reza reported from San Diego; Lee reported from Los Angeles