Bill Knapp: 'Live every day like it's your last'

Posted by Pat Kinney on Monday, December 1, 2025

VAN METER — Bill Knapp, the legendary Des Moines real estate developer and philanthropist, died Saturday, Nov. 15, at age 99.

The character that drove his long career was forged in the fires of war on a Pacific island 80 years ago.

In December 2019, I and my colleague Bob Neymeyer, a state-renowned historian for Waterloo’s Grout Museum District, interviewed Bill at his rural Van Meter home about his World War II experience for the Grout’s Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum, as part of the museum’s “Voices of Iowa” oral history project. 

A five-minute clip of excerpts from that interview are availanle here.

Bill piloted a U.S. Navy landing craft at the Battle of Okinawa, one of the final and most devastating battles of World War II, fought from April 1 to June 21, 1945. It resulted in a total of nearly 300,000 killed or wounded on both sides including Okinawan civilians.

“You don’t know how devastating war is unless you’re there,” he said. “It was either kill or be dead.”

It was an experience which shaped the rest of Bill’s life as entrepreneur, builder and philanthropist.

We were afforded the opportunity to interview Bill through a seemingly unlikely connection: Jeff Lamberti, the former Iowa Senate president and former chairman of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, more recently president and owner of the Iowa Barnstormers arena football team.

Lamberti is a Republican. Knapp was a Democrat, a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates and a friend and confidante of Iowa Gov. and U.S. Sen. Harold Hughes, a Democrat and one of the towering figures in Iowa government and politics.

However, Lamberti and Knapp saw eye to eye on many things when it came to projects of lasting benefit to Des Moines and the state. One of those things was preserving the history of the service and sacrifice of Iowans in our nation’s armed forces in the cause of liberty.

Lamberti was instrumental in raising funds to preserve our state’s namesake battleship, the USS Iowa BB-61, as a museum ship, helping secure a state appropriation of $3.5 million for that purpose. It is docked at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, Calif. and is one of the most popular tourism attractions in the Los Angeles area. Because of the state’s support of the ship’s renovation, Iowans can tour it for free by showing an Iowa driver’s license or state identification.

When the Grout Museum District added a permanent USS Iowa exhibit to the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum, Lamberti put Grout staff in touch with staff at the Battleship Iowa Museum in San Pedro to provide advice and assistance. 

And he took the additional step of helping make connections for an interview with Bill Knapp — a valued addition to our collection of 2,300 oral histories of Iowa veterans and others. More information on the Voices of Iowa oral history project may be obtained at the link here.

Bill and his wife Susan were gracious hosts during our visit. Bill showed us his weight room on the lower level of his home. In it was a large photo of another legend — country singer-songwriter Willie Nelson.

“Oh, you like Willie, Bill?” I asked. 

“Yeah, he was here for my birthday,” Knapp said.

Indeed, it did happen — in 2001, a shared birthday party with former Des Moines Register chief executive officer David Kruidenier.,

So when my adult daughter and son took me to see Willie, now also in his 90s, at Des Moines Water Works Park’s Lauridsen Amphitheater on Memorial Day weekend 2024 as an early Father’s Day/birthday present, I wondered if Willie kept coming back to Iowa at least partly because of Bill Knapp. I’d like to think so. 

I also thought of Bill when my daughter and I attended an appearance by Kai Ryssdal, host of the syndicated public radio show “Marketplace,” at Drake University’s Knapp Center, as we did former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, both part of Drake’s Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture Series. Both events were in the “House that Bill Built,”

I also recalled that, many years earlier, the Knapp Center was one of the venues where surviving Korean War veterans received medals of appreciation from the South Korean government, an event organized by the late Sid Morris of Cedar Falls, the head of an Iowa Korean War veterans chapter who passed away in 2021.

That would fit with another of Bill’s passions: to honor veterans.



Bill said his war experience was “a real eye opener about what life was like, what it could be — how bad it could be — and the price that’s paid for our freedom.

“You can never give them enough thanks,” Bill said of veterans.

It’s why he donated land for what is now the Iowa Veterans Cemetery, a beautiful vista overlooking Interstate 80 near Adel and Van Meter.

It’s where my uncle, like Bill a veteran of World War II in the Pacific, was laid rest last year.

And it’s where Bill will be laid to rest, on Friday (Nov. 21).

Bill said his war experience shaped his life and career because it taught him how precious life is, and that “you better live every day like it’s your last.”

Bill Knapp’s last day has passed. But his legacy will live on. Because he lived his life exactly that way — for today, but with an eye on the future, He gave his community, his state and his country his last full measure of devotion — including and especially his brothers and sisters in arms. 

He’ll be laid to rest with a whole lot of them, including my uncle.

And I know that I, as a fellow Iowan but also now a very personal level, can’t thank him enough.