Former PUD Manager Dies in Crash
William Bickford Layton, 60, a former manager of the Tahoe City Public Utility District and active community member for 20 years, died Saturday in a small plane crash at Dollar Point.
Layton served on the TCPUD staff as manager from 1962 until 1975. He and his wife Betty moved to Tahoe City in 1962 after retiring from business in San Rafael Calif. Manufacturing custom industrial plastic parts for aircraft and missiles of the U.S. Air Force and Navy.
Layton was "doing what he enjoyed most, taking pictures from a small plane over Lake Tahoe" when he died, his wife Betty said Monday. He was best known for his candid camera shots, she added.
He was an avid skier and boater and enjoyed tennis & golf. For the past seven years Layton has worked in the real estate business and was in partnership with Ned Long and Venice McCollum in the Tahoe North Shore Realtors.
As past president of the Tahoe City Rotary Club, Layton was active in relighting the "big tree" in Tahoe City with Christmas lights and worked on all the fund-raising drives including the Christmas party for the children of Tahoe City.
He worked for four or five years as finance chairman of the North Lake Tahoe Truckee Boy Scouts, chamber of commerce, North Lake Tahoe Historical Society, the Princeton Northern California Schools and Scholarship Alumni work and served as Easter Seals Chairman.
When Layton served as TCPUD manager, the district was only one mile square in 1964 and grew to 21 square miles while the assessed valuation grew from $3 million to $72 million to the time he left in 1975.
The budget of the utility district also increased two fold and included an extensive recreation department which installed the first bike trails.
Layton was born in Portland, Ore., attended high school there and prep school in Seattle, Wash. He graduated from Princeton University in Chemical Engineering and served two years in the U.S. Navy.
He worked for Lockheed for two years until he went into business in 1948 and founded Dumont Corporation. He was a member of the Society of Plastics Industries and a member of the California Association of Engineers.