Life in the Later Lane
Free speech and anti-war activist Sue Trupin found her niche caring for AIDS patients and supporting black grandmothers
Sue Trupin spent more than a decade living in a countercultural enclave in Canyon, a community in...
She’s a photographer and a flamenco dancer who fights to reduce maternal deaths in poor countries around the world
The difficulties that pregnant women face in impoverished parts of the world can seem overwhelming. But Stacey...
Cathedral Hill doctor became a leader in the treatment and prevention of AIDS.
As a boy, James Campbell spent after-school hours in his mother’s lab. Ruth Campbell was a doctor,...
Through one-man performances, son of Holocaust survivor shares history with high school students
It’s a shocking and head-spinning image: A Jew in a German officer’s uniform is being ministered to...
Being an ‘old soul’ isn’t just about age but an attitude – best nurtured by intergenerational contact
SF SENIORBEAT GUEST COLUMN – There’s a corner of Gen Z internet culture that has popularized the...
How a dedicated teacher of young children became a dedicated civic volunteer.
Sharon Yow’s father drove a truck and tried his hand at farming. Her mother worked a switchboard...
Famed boogie-woogie pianist embroiders her performances with her own hand-crafted art
Caroline Dahl has never forgotten the glamorous, red-haired woman in a sequined dress she saw at a...
The biggest, best walk – and bath of a lifetime.
Tina Martin SENIORBEAT GUEST COLUMN – I love San Francisco, and I love to walk. So when...
‘So hard, all the losses and pain:’ Personal and world tragedies led daughter of Holocaust survivors to life of helping others help others
Juliet Rothman was living in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1992 when her 21-year-old son Daniel attempted a double...
Rock ‘n’ roll and diamonds shaped the life of Arthur Indenbaum
WRITER'S NOTE: Arthur Indenbaum died on November 28, 2025, with his wife and daughter by his side....
A lucky phone call steered him into a 54-year career as a shipping executive.
Tony Hanley felt stuck. He’d flunked out of San Francisco City College and was working at an...
He rode the rails, he slept on the streets, Kevin Fagan spent decades reporting on the homeless for the San Francisco Chronicle
It's a Friday night at Chief Sullivan’s, an Irish-themed bar in North Beach, and The Irish Newsboys...
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An ‘open classroom’ spurred a young girl’s creativity. Now she’s offering a similar experience to older adults as head of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
When Don van Druten rumbled up to Kathy Bruin’s elementary school in his 1949 truck, she and some of the other fifth-graders piled into the truck’s bed, and off they’d go to his house on Lancaster Road in Walnut Creek. There, he would show them how to whittle wood and his wife, Gale, would teach ...
Picking up trash puts Bayview man back on the streets, but this time with a noble mission and hope for the future.
Charles Franks, who dresses neatly in pressed jeans and button-down shirts, said he gets his dress code from his late grandpa, Elmo Gerald McNeal, who “always stayed suited and booted. He’d come home from work at Southern Pacific and change into a suit for dinner.” Born in 1963 at San Francisco General Hospital, he gets ...
Ocean swimmer chronicling his beloved Dolphin Club, a home with ‘soul’ for eccentrics who like their water icy
Don’t talk to 85-year-old Sidney (Sid) Hollister about retirement. He’s not ready, not while the pages of an unfinished manuscript on the early days of his beloved Dolphin Club crowd his desk. And not while there are still many dips in the icy waters of San Francisco Bay to come. Hollister, a gig worker before ...
Violinist turns 1920 house grandpa ‘Moff’ built into center for teaching and performance
A baby grand piano resides regally in one corner of the great room of the white-washed, brick Spanish Colonial that in 1920 was the highest dwelling on Twin Peaks, the second highest hill in the city. It was built by Edward Moffitt, maternal grandfather to Lynn Oakley, its present resident. “It was like entering a ...
A Pope’s order reroutes a nun’s predictable routine: From parish schools to Third World deprivation and revolution
When she was 30, Frances Payne’s life was orderly, predictable and sheltered. She was a Catholic nun, teaching second and fourth graders in her hometown parish in Detroit. But her life took a radical and unexpected turn when she was ordered by the Church to serve in La Paz, Bolivia. Now 87, Payne smiles as ...
El Salvadoran community friendships make up for minimum-wage jobs and meager housing over immigrant’s 36 years in San Francisco
Can anyone live in San Francisco on a Social Security check of $350 a month? People do. Jose Mauricio Montes does. He barely manages by selling natural aloe vera shampoos and soaps off a card table near a friend’s bakery. “My sleep is often robbed from me, as my mind worries about paying rent,” he ...
