Greg Knoll, a ionate advocate for impoverished San Diegans and leader of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego for nearly 50 years, has died. He was 75.
Knoll spent nearly two-thirds of his life as CEO and chief counsel of the nonprofit Legal Aid Society, an organization that provides free legal services to lower-income San Diegans. He spent just a year as a staff attorney before he was hired as its CEO in 1974.
Knoll, who had plans to retire next month, led the organization until his death Sunday. Though Knoll served on several important boards and commissions at both the local and state level, those who knew him praised him most for his advocacy for underserved of the community.
“He was committed to poor people,” said Omar ons, the former head of San Diego County’s Office of Homeless Solutions who now works on similar issues as deputy city manager in San Jose.
“He literally saved so many lives of San Diegans, you can’t even count,” said Jennifer Tuteur, the county’s assistant chief medical officer.
Knoll was born Oct. 16, 1947, in Newark, N.J. He was a talented basketball player who earned a scholarship to play at the University of Missouri. He later transferred and finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, and he earned a law degree from Rutgers University School of Law, where he studied under future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
According to a statement from the nonprofit, the Legal Aid Society of San Diego was a small group of attorneys with a $700,000 budget when Knoll took over in 1974. Now the organization has a staff of 212, including 80 attorneys, and a $25 million budget.
“Knoll revolutionized the delivery of public health care to low-income people,” the Legal Aid Society of San Diego said in its statement. “Under his leadership, LASSD founded the Consumer Center for Health Education and Advocacy in 1999 and was one of the founders of the Health Consumer Alliance, a coalition of 10 legal aid organizations throughout the state that provides health consumer advocacy services and education statewide.”
It was through his work on health care issues that Tuteur, the county doctor, met Knoll around 2011. She said that to him, health care was “one of the core pillars of equity. He believed people not only needed fair housing and work, they needed health care.”
Tuteur said Knoll mentored her own son, who volunteered for the Legal Aid Society and is now a housing advocate.
“So many people who have gone on to be advocates for the underserved started as mentees of Greg Knoll,” Tuteur said.
ons is one of those people who considered Knoll a mentor. ons, who is Black, said that Knoll, who was White, was “very involved in issues related to African American equality” early in his career in New Jersey.
“As an African American lawyer in town and a man in a leadership position, I found Greg to be a wise counsel,” said ons, who wrote about Knoll in 2020 for the Union-Tribune’s “Someone San Diego Should Know” series. “He cared in a way that was more than he needed to or had to. I really appreciated that.”
ons said that didn’t just go for him, a fellow attorney.
“He wasn’t afraid to fight the fights that needed to be fought — ever,” ons said. “If somebody needed to go to bat for people — not just people who were ignored, but those being outright harmed — he did that. He hired lawyers who did that. He trained them to think like that.”
Joanne Franciscus, the chief operating officer of Legal Aid Society of San Diego, said that when she was first hired, Knoll preached the value of “servant leadership.”
“He said our job is to make sure the staff have everything they need to do their job, to make their lives easier, not the other way around,” Franciscus said. “That leadership philosophy really resonated with me. I’ve known a lot of lawyers who were dedicated to their jobs, but I have never met anyone who poured as much of their heart and soul into their work as Greg does. His commitment to the organization, staff, and our clients is truly inspirational.”
California Senate President Toni Atkins, a San Diego Democrat who interned for the Legal Aid Society in southwest Virginia while in college, said she was drawn to Knoll because of his comion and their shared interest in providing equal access to justice for the poor.
“Greg was an authentic and comionate leader who dedicated his life and life’s work to enhancing equity and equality, and advocating for our most vulnerable of society,” Atkins said in a statement.
Atkins appointed Knoll last year to the California State Bar Board of Trustees, and previously to the California Healthcare Workforce Policy Commission.
“His dynamic commitment to those entities will long be ed,” Atkins said in her statement. “Greg will be very missed by so many of us in San Diego and beyond — I will be keeping his wife, family, and friends close to my heart.”
Knoll is survived by his wife of 27 years, Jo Anne Sawyer Knoll; his sister, Kimberly Ann Knoll-Dove; his sons, Jeffrey Scott Knoll and Jason Evans Knoll; his stepchildren, Jamaal Michal Sawyer-Dymski and Naima Luisanna Sawyer-Dymski; and his grandchildren, Jason Guzman, Katrina Guzman, Kianna Knoll and Jacob Knoll.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Legal Aid Society’s Gregory Evans Knoll Legacy Fund.
