For more than 50 years, shards of colorful glass, preserved in 25 carefully labeled envelopes, had been stored in an old Italian shoe box under Fred McDonald’s bed. The broken bits, taken from bombed and bullet-riddled churches throughout Europe during World War II, represented more than just shattered dreams and lives. To McDonald, a Seattle native who died in San Francisco in 2002, they were tangible links that fused history to the present, as well as the future.

Now that glass is the showpiece of an exhibit at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. “Remembered Light” includes the works of 13 artists who used those fragments, along with McDonald’s memories, to fashion new stained glass windows, sculptures and 3D pieces.

At the end of its run — the exhibit will be open Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 20 — the works are destined for a more permanent installation in the Presidio Chapel.

Armelle Le Roux, a celebrated stained glass artist who has worked with teams restoring stained glass at San Francisco City Hall and managed prominent projects for Grace Cathedral and for New York City’s St. Thomas Church, learned of the hidden gems through an acquaintance and was the first artist to realize the potential of McDonald’s treasure trove.

She met with McDonald to discuss ways to bring the glass back into the light.

“At the time,” Le Roux says, “we talked about creating some sort of memorial piece. But because the glass had been saved as separate pieces, each with a name and history, everything had meaning, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

Le Roux began creating two stained glass pieces that incorporated two sets of shards, working them into designs based on their provenance and McDonald’s recollections. Eventually, she brought in other artists to create additional pieces.

Ariana Makau, an Oakland-based glass artist and conservator and founder of Nzilani Glass, says she was immediately struck by the project.

“It intrigued me on multiple levels,” Makau says. “It was like traveling through space and time, the way each piece of glass had been documented. That he had the foresight to do that appealed to me as a conservator.”

McDonald, an Episcopal minister, traveled to Germany in the early 1930s and witnessed the rise of Adolph Hitler, a man he first admired but came to despise. When was broke out, McDonald enlisted as a chaplain in the US Army, assigned first to San Francisco’s Fort Mason and later to the 12th Army, under the command of the legendary Gen. Omar Bradley. He soon found himself following the advancing troops through England, France, Belgium and, finally, Germany.

McDonald was tasked, says his great-nephew, San Francisco restaurateur Bruce McDonald, with finding suitable churches to hold services for all the non-Catholic soldiers. His travels included several places he’d visited during peace time, where he began picking up the broken remnants of stained glass windows.

“He was quite a packrat throughout his life,” Bruce says. “He collected menus from restaurants around the world. He loved to save things and always said that sometimes, it’s a small thing that brings back a memory.

As McDonald gathered the shards, he tucked them in envelopes and mailed them home to his mother. By war’s end, he had mailed 25 envelopes and collected more than just glass. He had documented the coordinates and the city where each piece was found and his observations of what remained after the battles. About one, he wrote:

“On or about Oct. 23rd, I entered the first German city to fall to our forces, the imperial but now roofless city of Aachen, a good thousand years old. A very new Church of the Holy Ghost on the outskirts had been the scene of a firefight and a wrecked tram stood by the forlorn and empty church. Down by the Cathedral, I saw an aged woman lugging two suitcases as she crawled over stone piles. Where was she going with her pitiful burden?”

“This church, obliterated during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, was a favorite of high church Episcopalians from the Pacific Northwest. In 1933, I had worshiped there many times, a special wrench to find this favorite ‘Fortress of the Faith’ gone.”

“I had just arrived in Normandy. There was an apple orchard where our Army headquarters was tented. In the evening, I walked into the flattened town spread out around a badly bombed church. A ghostly silence covered the deserted area except for the shoveling noise of a lone man trying to uncover his house. He saw me and glared. I represented the war, which had brought ruin to his house and home.

“I picked up some of the church glass and moved on.”

The shards might have remained hidden, their stories lost to time, if not for a chance meeting. McDonald, who continued to travel the world for many years after the war, had finally settled in San Francisco, a city he admired for its boldness and verve. After serving a congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, he had eased into retirement when one day he struck up a far-reaching conversation with a fellow resident at his retirement home. The topic turned to stained glass, and McDonald mentioned his unique collection. The woman knew of Le Roux’s work and reached out to her.

The Remembered Light works were completed in 2007 and put on display, first in the Presidio, before eventually making it to New Orleans’ World War II Museum, where COVID held them captive for a year. Finding a place to exhibit was sometimes difficult, Bruce McDonald says, because some museums shy away from religious exhibitions. But Remembered Light is not about religion, he says. It’s about one man’s journey through war. McDonald wants people to learn and see the connections between war and peace, as the exhibit returns home to San Francisco.

“Fred was a very articulate and educated worldly person,” Le Roux says. “At the end, I want people to have a sense of humanity, not just of religion and war. I want them to think about the impact of destruction. I’m sure people will feel the sorrow, but I want them to also feel hope.”

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Stained glass artist Armelle Le Roux installs “Remembered Light,” a stained glass art exhibit made from the window shards of churches bombed in World War II collected by Fred McDonald, then a chaplain in the US Army. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group/TNS)

SAN FRANCISCO (Tribune News Service) — For more than 50 years, shards of colorful glass, preserved in 25 carefully labeled envelopes, had been stored in an old Italian shoe box under Fred McDonald’s bed.

The broken bits, taken from bombed and bullet-riddled churches throughout Europe during World War II, represented more than just shattered dreams and lives. To McDonald, a Seattle native who died in San Francisco in 2002, they were tangible links that fused history to the present, as well as the future.

Now that glass is the showpiece of an exhibit at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. “Remembered Light” includes the works of 13 artists who used those fragments, along with McDonald’s memories, to fashion new stained glass windows, sculptures and 3-D pieces. At the end of its run — the exhibit will be open Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 20 — the works are destined for a more permanent installation in the Presidio Chapel.

Armelle Le Roux, a celebrated stained glass artist who has worked with teams restoring stained glass at San Francisco City Hall and managed prominent projects for Grace Cathedral and for New York City’s St. Thomas Church, learned of the hidden gems through an acquaintance and was the first artist to realize the potential of McDonald’s treasure trove.

She met with McDonald to discuss ways to bring the glass back into the light.

“At the time,” Le Roux says, “we talked about creating some sort of memorial piece. But because the glass had been saved as separate pieces, each with a name and history, everything had meaning, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

Le Roux began creating two stained glass pieces that incorporated two sets of shards, working them into designs based on their provenance and McDonald’s recollections. Eventually, she brought in other artists to create additional pieces.

Ariana Makau, an Oakland-based glass artist and conservator and founder of Nzilani Glass, says she was immediately struck by the project.

“It intrigued me on multiple levels,” Makau says. “It was like traveling through space and time, the way each piece of glass had been documented. That he had the foresight to do that appealed to me as a conservator.”

McDonald, an Episcopal minister, traveled to Germany in the early 1930s and witnessed the rise of Adolph Hitler, a man he first admired but came to despise. When was broke out, McDonald enlisted as a chaplain in the US Army, assigned first to San Francisco’s Fort Mason and later to the 12th Army, under the command of the legendary Gen. Omar Bradley. He soon found himself following the advancing troops through England, France, Belgium and, finally, Germany.

McDonald was tasked, says his great-nephew, San Francisco restaurateur Bruce McDonald, with finding suitable churches to hold services for all the non-Catholic soldiers. His travels included several places he’d visited during peace time, where he began picking up the broken remnants of stained glass windows.

“He was quite a packrat throughout his life,” Bruce says. “He collected menus from restaurants around the world. He loved to save things and always said that sometimes, it’s a small thing that brings back a memory.

As McDonald gathered the shards, he tucked them in envelopes and mailed them home to his mother. By war’s end, he had mailed 25 envelopes and collected more than just glass. He had documented the coordinates and the city where each piece was found and his observations of what remained after the battles. About one, he wrote:

“On or about Oct. 23rd, I entered the first German city to fall to our forces, the imperial but now roofless city of Aachen, a good thousand years old. A very new Church of the Holy Ghost on the outskirts had been the scene of a firefight and a wrecked tram stood by the forlorn and empty church. Down by the Cathedral, I saw an aged woman lugging two suitcases as she crawled over stone piling. Where was she going with her pitiful burden?”

About another, he wrote:

“This church, obliterated during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, was a favorite of high church Episcopalians from the Pacific Northwest. In 1933, I had worshiped there many times, a special wrench to find this favorite ‘Fortress of the Faith’ gone .”

And about another:

“I had just arrived in Normandy. There was an apple orchard where our Army headquarters was tented. In the evening, I walked into the flattened town spread out around a badly bombed church. A ghostly silence covered the deserted area except for the shoveling noise of a lone man trying to uncover his house. He saw me and glared. I represented the war, which had brought ruin to his house and home.

“I picked up some of the church glass and moved on.”

The shards might have remained hidden, their stories lost to time, if not for a chance meeting. McDonald, who continued to travel the world for many years after the war, had finally settled in San Francisco, a city he admired for its boldness and verve. After serving a congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, he had eased into retirement when one day he struck up a far-reaching conversation with a fellow resident at his retirement home. The topic turned to stained glass, and McDonald mentioned his unique collection. The woman knew of Le Roux’s work and reached out to her.

The Remembered Light works were completed in 2007 and put on display, first in the Presidio, before eventually making it to New Orleans’ World War II Museum, where COVID held it captive for a year. Finding a place to exhibit was sometimes difficult, Bruce McDonald says, because some museums shy away from religious exhibitions. But Remembered Light is not about religion, he says. It’s about one man’s journey through war. McDonald wants people to learn and see the connections between war and peace, as the exhibit returns home to San Francisco.

“Fred was a very articulate and educated worldly person,” Le Roux says. “At the end, I want people to have a sense of humanity, not just of religion and war. I want them to think about the impact of destruction. I’m sure people will feel the sorrow, but I want them to also feel hope.”

©#YR@ MediaNews Group, Inc.

Visit at mercurynews.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Vehicle break-ins in San Francisco have become so common place over the past year that some desperate car owners have resorted to leaving their trunks open to avoid having the windows smashed by thieves.

A recent photo taken in San Francisco showed two SUVs parked side by side with their trunks ajar and no one inside the vehicles.

A similar trend also has been observed in Oakland, which has seen a spike in car break-ins and auto thefts as part of a larger crime wave that has engulfed the Bay Area, with homicides, assaults and thefts all skyrocketing.

‘Imagine having to clean out your car and leaving it open in public, just so people won’t break your windows. Oakland we looking sad man,’ another witness who wrote it happen on social media.

‘It doesn’t really surprise me,’ said Oakland’s Interim Deputy Police Chief Drennon Lindsey.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who earlier slashed $120million from the budgets of the city’s police and sheriff’s departments in response to demands from Black Lives Matter activists, on Tuesday announced she was asking the city’s Board of Supervisors for more money to be given to the police to stamp out drug dealing, car break-ins and theft.

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Car owners in San Francisco seeking to avoid having their windows smashed by thieves have resorted to keeping their trunks open, as seen in the photo above

San Francisco has seen a 32 percent increase in car break-ins and a 25 per cent increase in auto thefts in December compared to the same time last year

In November 2021, data indicate that there were 3,375 reports of larceny theft in San Francisco, most of which were car break-ins.

Dashcam footage shows brazen smash-and-grab thieves drive down San Francisco street breaking car windows and lifting bags out of cars

Breed argued that San Francisco officers should get aggressive and ‘less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city’, as she went back on her plans to defund the police.

‘It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,’ she said. ‘And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies.’

Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s progressive district attorney who ran on a platform of criminal justice reform and accepted $2million from left-wing philanthropist George Soros, has been blamed by many for spiking crime rates in his city.

Breed called for progressive policies that have allowed criminal behavior to make a mockery of the city’s famed tolerance and compassion to be replaced with ‘more aggressive policing’.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday slammed the ‘attitude of lawlessness’ sweeping the nation, citing the mobs of robbers who have targeted luxury boutiques in her hometown of San Francisco and stores in other cities. But she stopped short of endorsing Mayor Breed’s plan to step up policing.

San Francisco and Oakland are in the throes of a car break-in epidemic amid nearly across-the-board rising crime rates

Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, has been blamed for spiking crime rates in his city

Law enforcement experts warn the preemptive move by beleaguered car owners to leave their trunks open is a bad idea.

‘They could steal your batteries, your tires,’ former SFPD Deputy Chief Garret Tom told KGO. ‘They could go into your glove compartment and find out where you live.’

The San Francisco Police Department has reported a 32 percent increase in car break-ins and a 25 percent increase in auto thefts in December compared to the same time last year.

Tom said that in his nearly 40 years on the force, he has never seen people opt to keep their trunks open to protect their windows from being smashed.

‘We’re in different times… that’s unbelievable, he said.

In the city’s most popular tourist destinations, the situation is especially dire, with the rate of car break-ins jumping an astonishing 200 percent compared to last year.

In November, data indicate that there were 3,375 reports of larceny theft, most of which were car break-ins, reported NBC Bay Area.

The Bay Area has been targeted by organized smash-and-grab raids on retailers

A group of about 40 to 50 teenage shoplifters made off with an unknown amount of jewelry and other items in Hayward, California, in November. Experts and officials say national crime networks are behind many of the ‘smash-and-grab’ operations

Between January 1 and November 29, there were 19,270 car break-ins reported in San Francisco, which translates into nearly 20 break-ins per 1,000 in the city, which is more than in Atlanta, Washington DC, Houston and Los Angeles.

Prosecutors and police in San Francisco have been pointing fingers at each, with the Office of District Attorney Boudin blaming cops for making arrests in less than 2 percent of car break-ins, and the police slamming the DA for releasing the thieves with little to no jail time because of California’s ‘zero-bail’ policy.

Oakland has been seeing a similar trend, with car owners opening their trunks to protect their vehicles from being damaged by marauding thieves.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has appealed to private property owners to buy security cameras and register them with the police to help catch the bandits.

Police departments in both San Francisco and Oakland have stepped up patrols in busy areas during the holiday season. They are urging motorists not to leave any valuables in their cars, nor to leave their trunks open.

California’s Proposition 47 – lighter sentences for thieves

Proposition 47 was passed by California voters on November 5, 2014.

It made some ‘non-violent’ property crimes, where the value of the stolen goods does not exceed $950, into misdemeanors.

It also made some ‘simple’ drug possession offenses into misdemeanors, and allows past convictions for these charges to be reduced to a misdemeanor by a court.

Under California law, though, if two or more person’s conspire to ‘cheat and defraud any person or any property, by any means which are in themselves criminal’ they can face no more than one year in county prison, a fine of $10,000 or a combination of the two.

The Bay Area has been in the throes of a smash-and-grab epidemic, which has seen roving bands of thieves, sometimes armed with baseball bats, ransacking high-end stores and getting away with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.

In late November, nearly 100 thieves wearing ski masks carried out a brazen smash-and-grab flash mob robbery at a Nordstrom store in a San Francisco suburb, an estimated $125,000 in merchandise was stolen.

Security experts and officials agree that organized crime networks are responsible for many of the large-scale ‘smash-and-grab’ retail thefts, with syndicates recruiting young, low-level crooks and paying them $500 to $1,000 to steal specific items for resale online .

Aside from the organized crime rings, the growing problem has been attributed to police officers’ apparent reluctance to pursue retail criminals in the current political climate, prosecutors’ failure to prioritize larceny and theft, and the decriminalization of low-level offenses in some jurisdictions.

California Gov Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has vowed to crack down on gangs of retail thieves, despite a controversial 2014 law – Proposition 47 – that barred prosecutors from charging suspected shoplifters accused of stealing less than $950 worth of merchandise with felonies.

Mayor London Breed launched an emergency police intervention Tuesday aimed at curbing open drug use, brazen home break-ins and other criminal behaviors taking place in San Francisco’s crime-ridden Tenderloin neighborhood and across the city

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When you picture a residential street in San Francisco, you probably think of a row of ornate, brightly painted Victorian houses, all lined up on a steep hill. But there is one important feature of this image that is easy to miss, although without it it would make the scene very strange. A curved bay window wrapped in the facade is a signature piece of Bay Area architecture – even if it really has nothing to do with the Bay Area.

The typical bay window is not only found in Victorians – more on that later – but is just as important for the Bay Area as fog or the Golden Gate Bridge. The style of the windows is actually older than the Bay Area. It is unclear exactly when bay windows were “invented”, but they grew in popularity during the English Renaissance and saw a boom from the early 16th to the early 17th centuries. This explains why the windows are still so common in cities around the world, with a remarkable prevalence in the UK and later New England.

The bay window that most San Franciscans think of – the one displayed on a classic Victorian building like the Painted Ladies, for example – is a particular type of two shorter windows and one longer window that converge at angles to form a “bay window.” ” to build. Tim Kelley, an advisor and conservation advocate in San Francisco, said they performed in the city in the late 1880s.

They continued to enjoy great popularity during the Victorian era when so much of the architecture was praised for its function. “You get more light when you put a bay window in, and the Victorians took advantage of that,” said Bonnie Spindler, a San Francisco-based real estate agent and “Victorian Specialist”. “At the time they were built, [residents] relied on gas lighting and the interiors were painted dark to hide the soot from the gas lights and the soot from the coal burning. “

She said this helped especially in foggy San Francisco.

The windows protruding above the building also provided additional space. “While bay windows have aesthetic (shape) and functional (natural light and views) features that add to their iconic status in San Francisco architecture past and present, there is an economic motivation for bay windows that is often overlooked,” said Steven Doctors, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of San Francisco. “… Bay windows efficiently increase the number of square meters of a building, often by protruding beyond the property line and into the air space above the public pavement. This ‘free’ space in public space increases the number of square meters of the building and thus increases its economic value or rental income for private property owners. “

Row of seven Victorian houses in central San Francisco known as Painted Ladies.

LimeWave – Inspiration To Explore / Getty Images

San Francisco is also known for preserving older homes, and much of what has been preserved has been old Edwardian and Victorian homes that have bay windows, Spindler said.

There’s also an obvious reason why bay windows are mistakenly synonymous with the Bay Area – it’s in the name. “We are the Bay Area and they are bay windows,” said Spindler. “There are many other bays, but we are probably the most famous one.”

Today bay windows are more common in San Francisco than Victorian homes, and they come in all styles and sizes. They can be found in Art Deco, marina, and even some Tudor Revival homes, although many more use an arched window that includes four or more windows to create a more rounded arch. In any case, the houses still fulfill their original intention – more light and more square meters.

Rob Thomson, president of the Victorian Alliance, said bay windows in San Francisco can also be used as a handy shortcut when determining the age of a home. “No bay (flat front) or an angled bay usually means it’s 1870s or earlier. A box shaft is associated with the 1880s, and a rounded shaft means it’s 1890s or later, ”he said. “The system isn’t perfect, and there are exceptions, but it’s a useful tool and a great way to sound smart to your friends.”

Not only are Bay Area windows quintessential, they’re so popular that they even add value to a home, Spindler said. She said that having fireplaces makes them high on people’s list of favorite features when looking to buy real estate. But there is something incredibly unique about the windows that has almost no other function. “They are really bay windows that draw your attention from the outside of the building and draw your attention from the inside of the building,” she said. “There are very few functions that migrate from the inside to the outside.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include additional information about bay windows and the age of houses.

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NEW YORK – Ruth Westheimer was 10 years old in 1939 when she boarded a train with 300 other Jewish children that was leaving Germany. She brought a doll, a favorite doll named Matilda. But a younger child was crying inconsolably, so Westheimer gave the little girl her doll. Because she needed it more, she says.

Today Dr. Ruth, America’s Favorite Sex Therapist, 88 years old. She lives in a New York apartment full of books, photos and degrees.

And dollhouses.

Space for miniature space lovingly arranged by liver-stained hands. They give her joy and comfort and testify to the innocence she lost so long ago.

Westheimer was in her late 60s and already a celebrity when a friend started building dollhouses in her home. She asked if she could have one. Now she has two, plus several more square “rooms” in bookcases and a collection of other boxes and tissue holders that also serve as dollhouses.

She is demanding about their content. They are Jewish houses with menora and other religious symbols. The dolls and furniture are from England – most of them bought on trips to London and Europe – and were made between the First and Second World Wars. “I’m only interested in the good years,” she says during an interview in her apartment in Washington Heights.

“That brings luck,” she says, proudly holding up a tiny chimney sweep figure in a doll’s house near the apartment entrance. “You can touch it!”

The faces of her dolls are expressive and wise, she explains. “Not like the Barbie doll,” she insists. “Because you can’t tell a Barbie doll what it’s about. She has a stupid face. She’s very fashionable – lots of clothes – but you can’t tell her about your problems. You can tell these people your problems. “

Westheimer, who will speak about her collection at the museum’s dollhouse exhibition on December 5 at the National Building Museum in Washington, has four grandchildren. But she says the houses were never meant for her. These are yours.

Because what they give her most of all is control. “I wasn’t in control of my life,” she says. “But I’m in control of it.”

Karola Ruth Siegel was an only child. Her parents were Orthodox Jews from the lower middle class in Frankfurt. But her childhood was enchanted. She remembers having roller skates, strollers, 13 dolls, and the undivided attention of her paternal grandmother.

Every Friday her father, a salesman, took her to have ice cream and then to the temple. Again and again he would impress upon her the value of education. “The most important thing for my father was studying,” she says. “Because nobody can take that away from you.”

She remembers how a neighbor warned in autumn 1938 that she had to leave Germany. Her parents tried to protect her from worry, but “I just knew terrible things were happening,” she says.

After the Broken Glass Night – she doesn’t use the word “Kristallnacht” because it sounds too beautiful and noble – Nazis came to the door of their apartment on the first floor. Westheimer watched from the window as the men marched their father to a covered truck. Before climbing in, he turned to look at his daughter. She waved and he waved back. Then he smiled.

“Because he didn’t want me to cry,” she says.

Weeks later, a postcard came from her father who was in a labor camp. It said she should get on a Kindertransport – a train that saves Jewish children from the Nazis.

“That was the only way he could leave the labor camp and return to Frankfurt,” she recalls. “So I didn’t have a choice.”

Frightened and sad, she hugged her mother and was loaded onto the train in January 1939. As he drove out of the station, she began to lead the other crying children in familiar songs. The text that you remember today is: “God does not sleep … no sleep.”

She knew that she had to distract the children from their tears, she says, “because I remembered my father turning around and smiling.”

Most of the Kindertransport passengers were on their way to the UK, but she went to Switzerland, where she ended up with 50 others in a children’s home that became an orphanage.

She exchanged letters with her parents for almost two years. She knew they had both ended up in a ghetto in Poland. But then the letters stopped.

Only a few years later did she find out with certainty that her father had died in Auschwitz. Her mother was listed as “missing”. Disappeared.

The orphanage, she says, is “a good place”, except that girls are not allowed to go to school. But she had a friend who went to high school in a neighboring village, so every night she co-opts his books and taught herself history and English.

At 17, after the war ended, Westheimer moved to Palestine to help build a Jewish state. She worked in a kibbutz for a while, then moved to Jerusalem and joined the Haganah, a Jewish defense organization. Westheimer, six feet tall and full of energy, trained as a sniper. However, a few months after her service, a grenade broke through the girls’ dormitory during the Israeli War of Independence, severely injuring both of her legs.

She trained as a kindergarten teacher, met a man and moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. When her husband wanted to return to Israel, they divorced but remained good friends.

In 1956 she came to the United States to look for an uncle who had survived the war and moved to San Francisco. “I wanted to see if he was as small as me,” she laughs.

She settled in Washington Heights, which became an enclave for many German-Jewish refugees. She remarried, had a daughter, and divorced when her second husband returned to Europe.

Westheimer had long dreamed of studying medicine, but without a science background that seemed impossible. So she got a public health research position at Columbia University and then became a project manager at Planned Parenthood. There she met the 2,000 women who were to do their doctoral thesis on the subject of contraception.

After a few years as a single mother, she met Fred Westheimer, a telecommunications engineer, to whom she was married for almost 38 years. He adopted their daughter and they had a son together.

Westheimer received his PhD in education from Columbia University with a focus on sex education and studied with Helen Singer Kaplan, a pioneer in the field of sex therapy. In 1980 she was tapped by local radio producers in New York to do a short weekly section answering the listeners’ most private questions. Her then-controversial show grew to two hours as audiences reacted to her blunt conversations about erections and orgasms. Her strong German accent and disrespectful humor made her an icon of the time.

She has published 40 books, still teaches at Columbia, and speaks all over the world. She is out and about almost every evening, in the theater, at the opera or at a charitable event. She has a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and is planning new projects in the works. She has no intention of slowing down because she survived and continues to survive. “I lived while 1 1/2 million Jewish children died,” she says. “So it is my duty to fix the world.”

Dr. Ruth has been a widow for almost 20 years, and during this time her apartment, which she has lived in for five decades, is full of dolls and figures.

A doll stands on a side table that looks so much like the one given away – shining eyes, springy curls and delicate turtles embroidered on her white dress. It even has the same turtle badge on its back. Westheimer identifies with the turtle – a creature that carries its home on its back but has to stick its neck out to get on in life. She has had turtle figurines from all over the world, so many that her coffee table has to be moved to make room for a small glass of water.

Her parents and grandmother “would have been very happy to see what happened to me,” she says. And she, too, is happy, remembers the joy of her early childhood and the achievements of her life.

The darkness in which it does not linger. “But I don’t forget either,” she says.

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Basil Yaqub, of Fremont, California, visited San Francisco with his family on Saturday to celebrate the purchase of a new car.

After dinner at a restaurant, Yaqub said he parked in the city’s garage in Union Square so the kids could run around the square. This was his family’s first trip to Union Square since before the pandemic, and his children were excited.

When Yaqub returned to the garage with his wife and children, he found three broken windows on his new Maserati, which he had just bought the day before. The broken window panes chipped off the paint, and he said repairs would cost in the range of $ 20,000. The child’s desk hidden in the trunk was stolen.

“It was really an awful experience,” he told SFGATE. “I’ve lived here for 22 years and have been going to SF for years. I love it but then this.”

A family friend drove them into town and the windows of his Lamborghini were also smashed.

On June 6, 2021, windows were smashed into a car park in Union Square, San Francisco.

Basil Yaqub / Courtesy

“There were eight cars in a row with broken windows,” said Yaqub. “Our two cars and six others. It was a nice car. It is the first time in our lives that we have spent money on a beautiful car. I wouldn’t be so sad if it was a normal car life. “

Yaqub took his family to an Uber home and drove in his car covered with broken glass.

Smashed car windows are a well-known scene in San Francisco, and KGO, who first reported the story, pointed out that Yaqub “represents one of 6,911 other car break-ins cases reported across the city this year, just a decrease from one percent is “. from that time last year. “

The city operates 22 parking garages. The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency confirmed that security is reduced as occupancy is only 40% of pre-pandemic levels.

“Out of necessity, we had to prioritize those employees who provide the most comprehensive services to our workshops,” SFMTA said in a statement. “Security is not being replaced, but currently responsibility has shifted to other employees who maintain our parking facilities. We are focused on tracking vehicle intrusion metrics on a daily and weekly basis and have the ability to provide additional security.” if necessary, with a one-day notice period. It is important to note that the security contracts of our car park operators are not being terminated, but are being put on hold. Break-ins into urban garages remain minimal. “

According to SFMTA, the city’s garages with new lighting, signposts, acoustic alarms, cameras, gate arms and payment machines with digital intercoms are safer than ever.

“In addition, there is a completely new parking management system behind the scenes and a 24/7 command center that is connected to every machine,” said SFMTA.

The San Francisco police were not immediately available for comment.

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