San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
St. Anthony’s founder dies
Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1994
Jan. 3: Yesterday saw a typical meal at St. Anthony Dining Room in San Francisco: People filed in, received generous portions of chicken stew, then sat at bare tables in a basement. Typical — except for the sad message brought every half-hour by Father Floyd Lotito, the dining room’s chaplain: “I’m sorry to interrupt your meal, but there is an announcement. Father Alfred Boeddeker, the man who founded St. Anthony’s, died yesterday. We’d like to observe a moment of silence.”
A San Francisco native and Franciscan friar who lived half his life in the Tenderloin, Father Boeddeker died Saturday at St. Mary’s Hospital at the age of 90. His legacy is the St. Anthony Foundation, a private organization that employs 150 people and has an $11 million annual budget that pays for the dining room, a medical clinic, job training and drug treatment programs — even a Sonoma County farm. The dining room opened in 1950. Even then, the Tenderloin was one of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods, and Father Boeddeker wanted something to offer the people who came looking for food. The first day, 350 people visited the basement hall in a converted machine shop next to St. Boniface’s Church. Now about 2,100 people dine there daily between 10 a.m. and 12:30. By all descriptions, Father Boeddeker was a man of continual light and tremendous kindness. This endured despite the vivid evidence that for more and more people in San Francisco life had grown harder and harder. “It was hard for him to see that the world was changing, more violent, with more people in need,” Father Lotito said. “Then his faith would jump in.”
— John King
1969
Jan. 1: Vincent Hallinan finished his defense of his son Terence yesterday with an address to the jury that spanned many ages and several continents. The history of oppression and injustice through the ages was recounted, and Hallinan would have continued with stories of police brutality and misconduct from across the country if Superior Judge Carl Allen had not warned him that he was getting far from the subject. The subject is whether young Terence unlawfully interfered with a policeman in the conduct of his duty during demonstrations last May at San Francisco State College. The Hallinan defense is that Terence was the victim of an unprovoked police attack. The young man said his attorney and father comes from a long line of men who have risen up against oppression. His grandfather collected a scar on his forehead from being hit by a police club during a strike on the California Street Railway. “For some reason or other,” Hallinan told the jury, “We are children of the storm. But keep us around. Because the next Hallinan to take a blow from a policeman’s club could be stopping a blow that would strike down one of your own kids.”
1944
Jan. 1: San Francisco emerged like a bright butterfly from its cocoon, out of 1943 yesterday, alert, sparkling eyed, cheery, full of bubbling zest for life. (Somebody’s a cockeyed liar around here!) Anyway, San Francisco did emerge — somehow — from the oddest New Year’s eve since Pearl Harbor. The oddity of it all was the report from Central Emergency Hospital: “It was the quietest night we’ve had in a long time.” Police, too, reported a quieter than usual year’s end eve, with only 204 arrests, ordinarily a fair Saturday night’s haul. On virtually all roads leading out of town, autos were parked off the pavement, mute evidence of the gasoline shortage. Homing celebrants hitchhiked home. Nightclubs, however, were close-packed, like dried figs. Fistfights invariably fizzled out with nary a bruise — there was just no room to take a swing. Some people wondered if all the current shortages might extend to the Hetch Hetchy water supply, so much of it was used to cut night spot drinks. And it was work as usual — or almost as usual, considering a certain amount of absenteeism — in the Bay Area’s shipyards and other war industries.
1919
Jan. 1: Hurrah for Peace and Plenty and the glad New Year! San Francisco sallied forth last night and waded ankle deep through confetti and the grave entanglements of streamers while the year of grace and amity, 1919, was ushered in with hitherto unimagined ructions. San Francisco and its guests were out for a rare old time, and never in all its days did it take the matter so thoroughly in hand. Those with boys at the front came forth to revel because peace was declared and those boys were coming back home. Those whose boys had come back were out to show them how to get glad about it. When midnight came the city and bay alike went mad, and the welkin shivered. Trumpets, horse-fiddles, whistles and bells, all vied with the sirens of factory and steamships. The bands in the cafes and restaurants struck up “Auld Lang Syne” and everybody fell on everybody’s neck without worrying about the proprieties.