Oak Park native Bill Bramberg, 65, a developer in Chicago and Florida who served in education and real estate advisory capacities under three U.S. presidents, died of colon cancer Saturday, Jan. 20, in Largo, Fla. Mr. Bramberg was appointed by President Gerald Ford to an advisory council on vocational education and later to a council on building sciences by Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. He was the third generation in his family to enter the real estate field. Although active in it and considered skillful at identifying beaten-down properties and rebuilding them for later sale, he was somewhat indifferent about the business, said his wife, Mary Anna. She said he preferred writing. He was editor of his high school paper and penned 15 volumes of suggestions for his college alma mater, Duke University. He won his future wife’s affection writing letters to her in enough volume to fill boxes. “That’s how we courted,” she said. “He would write me every day, and he just intrigued me.” Rudolph William Bramberg Jr. (his full name) was born in Oak Park and graduated from Oak Park High School in 1953. In 1957, he graduated from Duke,where he majored in psychology. After a short time employed in his father’s homebuilding business and then with a firm doing real estate research, he joined the Draper & Kramer real estate firm in Chicago. He was a member of numerous Chicago-area real estate groups in the early 1960s. He moved to Florida in 1965, intending to spend nine months there to take over management of a retirement community. Instead, he and his wife stayed for 35 years. He joined the group that would become U.S. Homes Corp. in 1967 but left as a vice president in 1976 to start his own business, Bramberg Management Organization Inc., which specialized in turning around distressed apartment projects. He was an active runner and won numerous, if offbeat, trophies for medium distance. One Florida race named its trophy for the slowest runner after him: the Bill Bramberg Turtle Award. Another race has an award for the most fashionable runner that also is named after Mr. Bramberg, who always ran in a Duke jogging suit. In addition to his wife, Mr. Bramberg is survived by a daughter, Kate Roach; two sons, R. William III and Robert M.; and a sister, Jane. A memorial service was held.
