News/Commentary

Reprinted from The Noe Valley Voice, June 2010, Illustration by Royce H. Vaughn, "St. Paul's Church Before the New School Was Built," watercolor painted from Potrero Hill in 1996. Available on notecards.

The Spires Are Back!

When you've lived in San Francisco's Noe Valley forty-seven years and regularly walk the hills from 24th Street to the Mission, you sense the rhythm of the landscape, how it often changes...and sometimes never changes at all.

You notice when the leaves turn red and fall at your feet.

You look to the East Bay skyline in the distance and say, Wow! how great to live on these hills.

You wonder what it would have been like when there were only cows from the Mitchell Dairy Farm grazing on the slopes beyond 29th.

The twin spires of St. Paul's Catholic Church, newly tiled and whitewashed, are a reminder of how things used to be. And, after seven months shrouded in black netting, they're finally in full view again.

From September 2009 until April 2010, parishioners walked through two-story scaffolding to attend services.  Outside, waiting for the J Church streetcar, sidewalk superintendents watched workmen scale the heights, hoisting up planks one at a time until they reached the golden orbs and seven foot crosses.   Cab drivers took note. Out-of-town visitors craned their necks to see how the spires dominated the neighborhood.

People who live in the valley, even non-Catholics who may never actually go inside the building, have always known that. The spires can be seen from every direction -- from Potrero Hill and Bernal Heights to Diamond Heights.

Construction work, which began because a few tiles had come loose, ultimately became a production of major proportions," says Katy O'Shea, who chairs the church's capital campaign. "The slate had been there a hundred years.    We couldn't afford to take a chance more would fall."

Was the work disruptive?  Not really, she says.  Some brides were unhappy, perhaps, that they couldn't have their pictures taken on the front steps, but vows were said, services continued and the congregation worked around it.

Early History

Demographics have shifted over the years, but there's a tangible cultural dynamic in Noe Valley that defies country of origin.

After the first Native Americans came the Spanish and  Mexicans like Jose Cornelio de Bernal and Jose de Jesus Noe,  the future alcalde (mayor) of Yerba Buena.  Next there was John Horner, among the 258 Mormons who sailed around the Horn in 1846 looking for new land to settle.  But those are other tales for other times.

For St. Paul's, the story starts with the next wave of immigrants -- the Irish.

When you're out walking the hills of Noe Valley, picture an earnest young priest from County Cork, Ireland, riding through the sand and mud on horseback in the early 1880s.  One of more than a thousand missionaries sent throughout the world from All Hallows College in Dublin, Fr. Lawrence Breslin tended to 200 families in the southwestern part of the city.  And on Sundays he celebrated Mass at the corner of Noe and Valley Streets.

That building, still standing,  was a hospital built and later abandoned by the Italian Benevolent Society. Evidently they had hoped to offer recuperative care "out in the country" for people from town.  But let's face it, town was four miles away and in those days getting out to this valley was a daunting trek.  In the old days, when 28th Street was called Dale and 29th was Vale, in most directions the building was uphill, no matter how you look at it.

The First Church

To imagine the church Breslin eventually built in 1897, go to the corner of Twenty-ninth and Church and envision a modified Gothic style wooden building on the northwest corner.  Think of a gas light fixture out front with a lamplighter.  Stellings Grocery was nearby and the Fairmount Market, now Drewes Meat Market (Note the sign on the storefront).

Donovan's coal and wood yard was next with a saloon at Day and Church and Methodist church down the street . And let's have a tip of the hat, if you please, to Mrs. Kelly, "the genial Irish lady"  who lived in one of the small cottages next door.

Resilience

Resilience is a handy word for the folks here. Remember, this is a congregation whose forbears reputedly hauled down rocks from the Castro Street quarry at the top end of 29th Street to build the present church.

These are the folks who salvaged cobblestones for the current church facade from the infamous rubble of Old City Hall after the 1906 earthquake destroyed it in 46 seconds.

These were the plucky Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs) who had come out to teach from Dubuque, Iowa, and during the 1918 influenza outbreak, canceled classes to minister to the sick and dying. The church held mass funerals in the school courtyard.  Church bells tolled from six in the morning until two in the afternoon.

This is the church that invited Whoopi Goldberg and crew to film on site for a couple of months in 1991 and rearranged their schedules to accommodate, even agreeing to let the family of one prospective bride paint over the film's grafitti-filled sets so their daughter's big day could be photographed ... on the front steps, of course!

And Rebuilding

These are the people who  -- after the Loma Prieta earthquake and establishment of the Unreinforced Masonry Building Ordinance laws -- found the cost of retrofitting so prohibitive they had to come out fighting for their very life to save the parish.

It was painful, but the people of Saint Paul's accepted the challenge.  They sold the primary and high school buildings. (They're condos now).  They rebuilt the grade school from scratch.

Today, the BVM's are gone, replaced by secular teachers.  But you can often see Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity, two by two on the J streetcar and the 24 Divisadero bus, saying their beads on the way to serving the homeless downtown.

Look to the rooftop of the old grammar school convent adjoining the church.  On laundry day, their clean white robes and bedclothes flutter in the fresh air.

Loyalty and Longevity

Families who were helped by the church during the Depression remain on the rolls. Graduates from the high school turn up in enthusiastic numbers for class reunions.  Many, in fact, still live in the immediate neighborhood.

To describe the loyalty and longevity of old timers, O'Shea points out that Father Kevin Gaffey, himself baptized and brought up in St. Paul's parish, married three generations of one family.  Think of the changes he would have seen during that time.

In the early days, he would have sung the Mass in Latin facing the altar. By the Sixties, through the innovations of Vatican II, the words he and other priests said were in the vernacular -- now English and Spanish.

Ask a neighbor about the history of St. Paul's and she's quick to pay respect to the past. " We're late to the parish," she demurs. "We've only been here 20 years...."

Even in those twenty years, there have  been changes. Today, music at Sunday Mass comes from contemporary musicians playing with contemporary enthusiasm, a far cry from the Ave Marias of a century ago. After serving as extras in Whoopi's "Sister Act," this congregation has never been quite the same!  As Google buses glide silently through the streets, it's likely that even techies with laptops have found their way into St. Paul's nave.

Memories Remain

When there's a hearse parked out in front of the church, you can pretty well assume it carries the body of an old time parishioner who worshipped there for many years.

When twelve bridesmaids show up on the sidewalk outside, you might not be wrong to guess the families have deep emotional ties to the building and the neighborhood.

When your family has second and third generation ties to a church like this, when reunions include the Murphys, the Ryans and the Lyons, when your dad’s dad grew up around the corner off Castro and your great grandma used to walk your grandpa and his brother to school from 27th street… such a church has special meaning.

Last year, the James Murphy family -- preparing for the wedding of their son Daniel and future daughter-in-law Stephanie this summer -- purchased a print of Royce's painting of the church (shown above) as an engagement gift for them, a reminder of the family's ties to the parish.

That gift, the newly tiled spires and years of walking on the hills surrounding this lovely valley prompted the research on this story!

Thank you, Daniel and Stephanie!

And then the zeppelin fell as well

Unfortunately, the Navy’s grand aviation experiment was about to end.

Waves crash daily against the rocks of the jagged California coastline, but on February 12, 1935, the threat of danger wasn’t in the water. It was in the air.

Around 5 PM, Point Sur lighthouse keeper Thomas Henderson suddenly saw a silent, extraordinarily large shape blotting out the sun – the same shadow FDR would have seen the year before, the same shadow Tim Thomas from the Monterey Maritime History Museum once said would be like “the Titanic floating over your house.”

It was the USS Macon (three times the size of a 747 jumbo jet airplane), built for the Navy with four Sparrowhead fighter airplanes on board that could be launched and retrieved during flight. Its already damaged tail fins were severed by a coastal squall and shards of metal pierced the airship's rear gas cells. It spun out of control – up then down -- and within minutes sank into the water.

Eighty-three men had been on board. All but two survived.

The zeppelin was built in Ohio during the Depression to provide long range reconnaissance for the Pacific Fleet and for 16 months was berthed at Moffett Air Field in Sunnyvale, California, in a specially built hangar that was "large enough to hold a luxury cruise ship." People like then Stanford student David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Company and founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), were fascinated by it. It was the last rigid-body airship built in the United States.

Early attempts to find the wreckage were unsuccessful until 1990. But in 2006 a five day, multi-agency collaborative expedition conducted a detailed archeological survey of the crash site, using a deep-diving, remotely-operated vehicle (ROV).

They found the crash site 1,400 feet below sea level spread over 75,000 square feet of the ocean floor.

References: California Lighthouses, Point St. George to the Gulf of Santa Catalina, by Bruce Roberts and Ray Jones, Globe Pequot Press; www.Moffettfield museum.org; Carolyn Jones, San Francisco Chronicle, September 27, 2006; www.underwatertimes.com, October 18, 2006

“Point Sur Lighthouse” is one of a series of watercolors celebrating California lighthouses and the historic role lighthouse keepers have played in standing watch over the coast. It was done for Andrew Heston, shown at the top of the rugged 200 foot hill.

Prints and new cards available

Matted 8x10 prints of Royce’s cards are now available, including " Lighthouse at Point Sur,"  "Blue Angels Over San Francisco" and "Saint Paul Church Before the New School was Built“ (better known in some circles as the site of Whoopi Goldberg’s movie, “Sister Act” and in others as the site of Stephanie and Daniel’s wedding!) Check out the collection of watercolors which stretch along the California coastline -- and inland too -- from La Jolla to Sonoma.

Thank you, Porter

Sometimes there are people who come into your life, or back into your life, just when you need them. Working with UGAL.com, Porter William orchestrated the look and feel of this Web site. Gently but aggressively, he pushed this 20^th century couple into cyberspace. In the meantime, he’s built his passion for architecture and interior design into his www.worldrelics.net and his own brand of San Francisco hospitality into his newest endeavor, www.entertainingpeople.com.

How do antiques and food combine? San Francisco style, he says on his “Entertaining People” weekly TV food show on Comcast. With what he would certainly call an extra dollop of panache, he’s as likely to present food on 200-year-old reclaimed terra cotta roof tiles from Provence as he is to combine Chinese scallops with Mandarin oranges and wasabi paste. Very San Francisco….Very Porter.

Coming Attractions:

Saint Paul Spires in the Neighborhood; a "Blue Angels over San Francisco" feature from Captain Julie Richey, Deputy Director, National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; referral to excellent biographical educational films from William Greaves Productions.

Stick with us! This is an island evolving in cyberspace...

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“The rain it hath a friendly sound to one who’s six feet underground.” That’s what the youthful poet Edna St. Vincent Millay used to say.

As a gentle, much-appreciated rain is falling today, I think about 91-year-old Colonel Marie Koerner, whose funeral was yesterday. I think of her body lying in The Salvation Army plot at Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, California. And I think of the lovely phrase Salvationists use to say that a person from their ranks has died.

“Promoted to Glory!”

In other words, Salvationists not only believe in heaven, they believe it’s something to be accepted and embraced, an assignment with eternal rewards. Would there be a contingent of former colleagues on hand at the Pearly Gates waiting to welcome the gentle Marie? Of course, smiled the officers in unison.

The Salvation Army grew out of the Methodist Church, so the service brought back memories of a long time ago, hymns from out of the past, songs that once you know you can sing by heart.

Some songs, like some poems, stay with you forever.

Marie Koerner and her husband Henry served as career officers in The Salvation Army’s Western and Central territories. They were avid historians and invaluable resources to the writing of “The Bells of San Francisco, The Salvation Army with its Sleeves Rolled Up.” Proceeds from the sale of California Collectors' Series black and white photgraphic note cards from the "Lord, We Are ABLE" and "Tuxedo Series" go to The Salvation Army.

Always, always, this California Collectors Series web site starts out with the premise of creativity. We paint. We photograph. We write. And boy, do we love it when we see kids who care about learning. Recently a group of eighth graders from Mission Dolores School in San Francisco visited Grace Cathedral. What a group! They had done their homework. They were respectful, energetic and full of lively questions!

Their thank you letters took note of the commemorative AIDS “blanket” in the healing chapel, making a pilgrimage through the “really mellow” labyrinth, seeing that the church is open to all faiths, learning the role Bishop James Pike played in completing the structure and the profound sadness they sensed in the “Wounded in America” exhibit deploring gun violence. They left prayers “stored” in candles they lit throughout the church.

The mural of Saint Francis was a big hit, of course. And Saint Clare with her long beautiful hair about to be shorn. The illustration of the Portiuncola chapel in Assisi intrigued them, as well as information about the facsimile built by Angela Alioto at the corner of Columbus and Vallejo. Added to that was another piece of pertinent information

What kind of nickname would St. Francis have had? Author Donald Spoto who wrote “Reluctant Saint, The Life of Francis of Assisi,” says the early Italian nickname for Francisco or Francesco was Sco!

To our knowledge, nobody ever called him Frisco!

The California Collectors' Series has note cards featuring Mission Dolores. See "Lord, We Are ABLE" boxed sets on main menu. Proceeds for this series go to The Salvation Army.