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
By the time he was 12, Arthur Indenbaum had been playing the piano for four years and...
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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Former Black Panthers’ volunteer proud of its community work: feeding, educating, protecting and lifting up African Americans
Despite winning a hard-fought scholarship to study commercial art at the University of Miami, Katherine Campbell stayed less than a year. It was 1969 and the school had only integrated a few years earlier. A handful of unsettling encounters left her feeling unwelcome and somewhat traumatized, so she returned to San Francisco and enrolled in ...
Land-use activist fighting SF ‘renovictions’ developed empathy for less fortunate in revolutionary Iran
When the penny Ozzie Rohm dropped into a pond started a ripple, she didn’t know whether she was going to get her wish or not. But she knew she was going to try. As a young woman studying at university in the years around the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she dreamed of a life without conflict. ...
Coping with Covid-19: Retired administrator now more productive at home but less worried about getting things done
Senior Beat writers are reaching out to all of the people we’ve interviewed over the past couple of years to see how they’re adjusting to this new, shelter-in-place lifestyle. We asked: How they feel overall about the situation; How their routines have been affected; If they know of anyone who has the virus; If people ...
‘Shopping for the apocalypse’: grocery worker offers a peek behind the scenes at beloved Rainbow Coop
Sarah Kennedy does it all as a longtime member of the team that runs the Rainbow Coop, one of the city’s oldest worker-owned groceries. Kennedy, 52, has seen plenty of changes over the years, but nothing compared to the effects of the Covid-19 virus. The one thing she never expected entering the food industry was ...
‘I’ll show them:’ After a career challenging sexism, pioneer and icon of underground comix for ‘wimmin’ fends off ageism
Reading comic books leads straight to delinquency. That’s what many parents believed in the 1940s when Trina Robbins, now 81, was growing up. Fortunately, Robbins’ family was not among them. Robbins, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., recalls taking her weekly, 10-cent allowance to the neighborhood candy store and after studying the week’s selection, buying ...
Those who saw something of value in him helped African-American chemist reach career heights
Charles George had charisma, smarts and a purposeful nature. They propelled him through life despite the constraints of poverty and racism. He was shepherded along the way by people who valued his worth. When George was born in 1923 in Wilmington, N.C., life was hardscrabble for most African Americans. “My father took jobs where he ...
