Biography
Herb Willsmore was a University of California student in the Cowell Hospital residence program and one of the first students to move from Cowell into the community. He was president of the Rolling Quads in the late sixties, participated in the establishment of the Physically Disabled Students' Program in 1970 and the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in 1972, and managed the Business Enterprise division of CIL from 1975 to 1977.
In some ways Herb Willsmore typifies the early students with disabilities at Cowell. He sustained a spinal cord injury in a car accident at age nineteen in 1966 and lived at home with his parents until he learned of the Cowell program at the university. He completed two degrees there, a B.A. and an M.A. in City and Regional Planning. He left Berkeley in 1977 and has been a commercial real estate broker in Santa Rosa, California, for many years.
From the guide to the Herbert Willsmore Papers, 1968-1993, (The Bancroft Library)
