The board of supervisors voted unanimously June 14 to name a portion of Willow Street between Buchanan and Laguna after Earl Gage Jr. The street runs through the Western Addition neighborhood of the city where the Gage family — longtime St. Emydius parishioners — lived.
“He was a man who kept his strong faith,” his daughter Blondell Chism told Catholic San Francisco July 24. “No matter what happened, all was good and he was blessed.”
Gage converted to Catholicism to marry his Catholic wife, also named Blondell.
While the department of public works readies the new street sign for an as-yet-unscheduled installation date, San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston has commissioned a mural of Gage to accompany it.
Gage was hired by the San Francisco Fire Department in 1955 at age 28 and was the sole Black firefighter for the next 12 years. He retired in 1983 and died in 2017 at age 90.
His hire was a progressive move for the times and not embraced by all members of the department, said Sherman Tillman, president of the Black Firefighters Association.
There were the fellow firefighters who refused to sleep on any mattress Gage had occupied in the communal firehouse, he said. His mattress was urinated on so repeatedly that the young firefighter took to carrying his own with him from station to station.
“When you think about the discrimination he saw toward himself you’d think a person would be disillusioned and hateful toward the people who did those things,” said Tillman, a longtime parishioner of Star of the Sea Parish on Geary Blvd. “He wasn’t.”
Threats to his safety eventually led Gage away from field work and to a role as the SFFD’s director of community services. There he helped create a new training course for the firefighter’s exam after seeing it was a hurdle for many aspiring firefighters. He was also part of a federal court consent degree that pushed for diversity in the predominantly white, male department.
Tillman called Gage a “man of God who tried to see the best in people despite their flaws….”
The above comes from a July 30 story from Catholic San Francisco via Catholic News Agency.
I’d be very annoyed if my street name changed. Such an inconvenience, and not just for those who will live in the affected portion of the street. Surely there could have been other ways to honor the man than to confuse people by renaming a portion of a street — not the whole thing. So I suppose you’ll drive on Willow Street, then it changes to Earl Gage Jr. Street, then it changes back to Willow Street. It’s nuts. Like maybe the city should pay reparations to the family for the abuse he suffered.
can’t be as bad as when they changed
Army Street to Caesar Chavez
Gage “helped create a new training course for the firefighter’s exam after seeing it was a hurdle for many aspiring firefighters.” It’s called lowering standards.
The racial bean counting that Gage and Tillman engage in has wreaked havoc on Fire Departments (and Police) across the country. Just ask the 20 New Haven, Ct firefighters who went all the way to the Supreme Court: Ricci v. DeStefano.
[Off the Record: Say, Cal-Catholic, Race make you nervous, does it?]
Don’t confuse Earl Gage with Mr. Tillman, the president of the Black Firefighters Association. Did you read the entire article? “Blondell Gage said her father wanted to be just another firefighter who happened to be black, not a ‘Black firefighter.’ He did not consider himself an activist, she said, nor was he in favor of protests.” Whether they should (re-)name a street after Earl Gage or simply name some Fire station or training center in his honor is another question. Unfortunately, there has been a history of discrimination in the Fire service, sometimes including discrimination against “whites.” As one recently retired from the Fire service, I’m quite aware of this. Identity group politics do a disservice to all. Honoring Earl Gage, and others, is appropriate.