`CABLE CAR LADY' REMEMBERED FOR TENACITY.Byline: Erin McCormick Erin McCormick was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune during the seventies. She commonly talked about the strife of Northern Ireland Nationalists and the Chicago Bears. She graduated from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The San Francisco Examiner The San Francisco Examiner is a U.S. daily newspaper. It has been published continuously in San Francisco, California, since the late 19th Century. History 19th century The beginning of the Examiner is a topic of some controversy. It was a time of drive-in movies, car-hops and shiny new Packards - a time when San Francisco's cable car system was seen by some as a rickety rick·et·y adj. rick·et·i·er, rick·et·i·est 1. Likely to break or fall apart; shaky. 2. Feeble with age; infirm. 3. Of, having, or resembling rickets. old contraption, standing in the way of urban progress. But in 1947, when then-Mayor Roger Lapham Roger Dearborn Lapham (6 December 1883 – 16 April 1966) was a shipowner and businessman who was elected Republican mayor of San Francisco from 1944 to 1948. He was born in New York City, educated at Harvard, a member of the Pacific Union Club and president of the announced he would junk the entire system, a woman named Friedel Klussmann Mrs. Friedel Klussmann (1896 – 1986) was a prominent member of San Francisco society. She is credited with leading the campaign that saved the San Francisco cable car system in the 1940s and 50s, and the foundation of the San Francisco Beautiful organization in 1947. stepped in to lead an all-out crusade. Last Tuesday, 50 years later, hundreds of San Franciscans gathered at the city's Cable Car Museum to honor Klussmann - ``the cable car lady'' - who died 11 years ago, and to commemorate her successful battle to save the historic vehicles. Organizers of the event, the Committee to Celebrate the Cable Cars, proudly noted that not only are the old cars still operating, they have become gems of San Francisco's tourism industry. ``What this is all about is a legacy established by a remarkable woman, Friedel Klussmann, 50 years ago,'' said Virgil Caselli, an organizer of the celebration, which featured the unveiling of a mural for the museum, decorated cable cars sporting an old-time band, and even cable car-shaped loaves of bread. Lapham ``wanted to rip out to rap out, to utter hastily and violently; as, to rip out an oath. See also: Rip the entire system,'' Caselli said. ``But the citizens took over, literally, and told the politicians, `You're not going to get rid of our cable car system.''' By 1947, many of the cable car systems once scattered around the nation had been replaced by fleets of diesel buses touted as the modern transit solution by the oil and motor industries, among others. ``They kept chipping away at the cable car lines, little by little,'' said Alanna Alanna may refer to:
According to ``San Francisco's Cable Cars,'' a book by event organizer Joyce Jansen, Lapham's motives were mostly financial. ``They're outmoded, dangerous and lose too much money,'' the book quoted Lapham saying at the time. ``One derailment derailment /de·rail·ment/ (de-ral´ment) disordered thought or speech characteristic of schizophrenia and marked by constant jumping from one topic to another before the first is fully realized. could bankrupt the Municipal Railway overnight.'' Klussmann was outraged at the idea. She found the seeds of a political uprising in what, at the time, was an unusual place for revolt: a women-dominated joint meeting of the California Spring Blossom and Wildflowers Association and the San Francisco Federation of the Arts. With this base, Klussmann organized the Citizens Committee to Save the Cable Cars, a ferocious team of political activists who become known to politicians and newspapers as ``the ladies.'' The group collected 50,000 signatures to put a Charter amendment guaranteeing survival of the cable cars on the November ballot. City supervisors, seeing the handwriting on the wall handwriting on the wall Daniel interprets supernatural sign as Belshazzar’s doom. [O.T.: Daniel 5:25–28] See : Omen , placed the amendment on the ballot. Adopting the motto ``Get the Facts,'' the group ``scoured car barns, examined records and asked countless questions'' to refute the mayor's arguments, Jansen said. That November the measure won with 77 percent of the vote. But that wasn't the end of Klussmann's battle. The committee had to reorganize to fight new threats in 1950, 1951, 1954 and 1971, as cost-cutting measures repeatedly targeted the historic cars. When Klussmann died in 1986, workers draped drape v. draped, drap·ing, drapes v.tr. 1. To cover, dress, or hang with or as if with cloth in loose folds: draped the coffin with a flag; a robe that draped her figure. the city's cable cars in black. Today almost 10 million passengers a year ride the cars, and fans credit Klussmann for the world's only surviving cable car system. ``Back then, no one realized that the cable car system would become a major tourist attraction,'' said Dr. Albert Shumate, a longtime cable car supporter and friend of Klussmann. ``She had the foresight that no one else had.'' |
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