San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Inventor with century of memories
“I took a lot of pictures. And no one ever knew it.” George Dondero, on climbing to the top of the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge in 1935
George Dondero, who lived through both the 1918 influenza and the 2020 coronavirus pandemics, held several skirelated patents, climbed the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge as a young man and loved the city of San Francisco fiercely until the end, has died. He was 107.
The San Francisco native made it into The Chronicle in 2021 with a pair of stories, offering his clear memories of the 1918 influenza pandemic in the city and sharing several photos he took of the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge in 1935 after shimmying up a rope and climbing to the top — calling his mother from a foreman’s shack at the highest point of the span.
“They had a guard there on the San Francisco side. But I waited for him to get out of the way, and climbed a rope and got on the catwalk,” Dondero said in a February phone interview. “... I took a lot of pictures. And no one ever knew it.”
His life was full of stories. As a child, Dondero would pull a small cart and follow horses in the streets of San Francisco to gather manure for his mother’s garden. He sold The Chronicle on San Francisco street cars in 1927, and played on the athletic fields at Galileo High School, back when it still smelled like chocolate from the Ghirardelli factory across the street.
“He really had a reverence for his time spent in the Bay Area,” his son John Dondero said last week. “He loved the Bay Area and he loved the city.”
George Dondero was born at 2286 Filbert St. on Oct. 7, 1913, when most of the Marina was sand dunes and lagoons, from below Chestnut Street to the bay.
“They filled in the lagoons, they pumped sand in, and built the whole fair — the 1915 Exposition,” Dondero said. “It went from the Palace of Fine Arts to Van Ness Avenue . ... My mother and dad used to take me in a buggy to go down there.”
One of his earliest strong memories, at 5 years old, was taking care of his parents and older brother during the Spanish flu, which came in two waves in 1918 and 1919 and killed more than 4,500 residents of the Bay Area.
“I was waiting on (his brother Harold) in the house. ‘George, will you do this, will
you do that?’ I remember that,” he said. “I also remember going out in the street. As small as I was I had to have a mask, or you would get fined.”
But he was quick to focus on the positives that came afterward, assuring those waiting for the current pandemic to end that there are good times ahead.
He became a strong swimmer and outdoorsman, snowskiing and sailing for most of his life. John Dondero said his father was a great storyteller, but humble about his own accomplishments. George Dondero and his wife, Betty, raised two children, John and Barb, in Marin County, as Dondero worked as a machinist and pattern maker. His patents included a device for a ski tow rope, an innovation that made it safer and more efficient for skiers to get uphill.
After moving to Idaho in 1975, Dondero went to work for Scott USA, making skiing and motocross products. He later helped create goggle designs that are still used by the military and firefighters.
Even after moving to an independent living facility in Seattle at age 97 to be closer to family, Dondero continued to innovate. Around age 100, he built a device to level the oyster shell surface on the facility’s bocce ball courts.
“He was always trying to make things better,” John Dondero said. “It wasn’t just for his benefit, but for the benefit of everybody.”
George Dondero was vaccinated for COVID19 in February and had been enjoying checking in with his two children, six grandchildren and 11 greatgrandchildren by video streams. But after feeling weak, doctors found internal bleeding and diagnosed him with cancer of the liver and intestines. He died on June 22, 3½ months short of his 108th birthday.
“He said, ‘That’s my last tank of gas,’ ” John Dondero said. “He said he wasn’t afraid of dying, and he realized he had a good life.”
George Dondero was clearheaded and excited to talk about San Francisco during his 45minute Chronicle interview in February, remembering names, addresses and other details from more than 100 years ago. At the same time, he seemed ready for what’s next — already talking about himself in the past tense.
“I really had a wonderful life,” he said.