By ANNE VALDESPINO | The Orange County Register | Published: December 15, 2020 SANTA ANA, Calif. (Tribune News Service) — He was a community leader supporting local performing arts, a renaissance man, a dapper dresser and a fun guy with a quirky sense of humor. Friends and colleagues were remembering philanthropist William J. Gillespie who died of natural causes on Thursday, Dec. 10. A Laguna Beach resident, he was 79. "He had quite a diverse background," said John Gunnin, a board member of the William Gillespie Foundation. "He was a Marine, and then of course he was a guy from theater, ballet, dance, he had all of these loves, and he was very generous to all of these different Orange County organizations. He had a wonderful sense of humor, very unexpected, and he really marched to his own drum," Gunnin said.