Hospice Volunteer | Author | William Holsinger

William H. “Will” Holsinger Biography

Born in San Francisco, William H. “Will” Holsinger grew up in Inverness, a small town in rural West Marin with a winter population of 400 and a summer population of 800. For a year he lived in Olema, which had a year-round population of 30, not counting the dairy cows. After graduating from an eighth grade class of 24 students at West Marin Elementary School, he moved to San Mateo County where he enrolled in Mills High School, with a student population of over 1,200. Will has lived in San Mateo ever since, except for his time away as an undergraduate at Sonoma State College, law school in San Francisco, and a year in Washington, D.C. as a staff assistant for the late Congressman Leo J. Ryan (Dem. 11th CD), who was killed in South America in 1978.

Will Holsinger is an attorney in private practice in the Bay Area and a direct care volunteer with Mission Hospice and Home Care in San Mateo.

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More About the Author

Will Holsinger has always enjoyed writing and began to focus more on creative writing, mostly poetry, in the early 1990s.

Some was cathartic, searching for feelings and to preserve what he “heard” as an inner voice (“I dread tomorrow with its promise of freedom”) as he dealt with life issues. Some was just for fun (“Is it a magic carpet ride when you’re afraid of heights?”). As he continued writing whenever the muse called, he participated actively in the raising of three sons, struggled, as most people do, with relationships and to secure a career, and re-discovered a love for new experiences and adventure of all kinds – opera, symphony and other performing arts, world and local travel, community service, and, ultimately, hospice volunteer service, what he now considers his heart’s work.

As he has explored his own sense of spirituality, Will readily acknowledges that he considers himself a Catholic convert, though one who has fallen away and is dismayed and alarmed by the scandals in recent years, as well as a practicing Buddhist, of a sort. For many years, Will was a participant in a sweat lodge community, sought dietary advice from a Hindu monk, and still studies, enjoys and appreciates the best that all of the world’s religions have to offer. In 1986, Pope John Paul II invited representatives of the world’s 12 major religions to submit and recite a prayer for world peace at Assisi, Italy. In 2013, when he discovered this, Will created a Universal Prayer for Peace using one line from each of the submitted poems. He will be posting it on his website soon.