[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 17 (Tuesday, February 11, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E213]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  TRIBUTE TO HERB CAEN, SAN FRANCISCO'S BELOVED ``BOSWELL BY THE BAY''

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 11, 1997

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues in the Congress to 
join me in paying tribute to San Francisco journalist Herb Caen, who 
died last week at the age of 80. For 60 years, he has been a staple of 
San Francisco journalism, and, in the words of the New York Times, he 
is ``a columnist known for his ardor for San Francisco.'' He began his 
career in the bay area in 1936 when he joined the San Francisco 
Chronicle, and his well-known column first appeared on July 5, 1938. 
Last year, as my colleagues will recall, Mr. Caen was awarded a 
Pulitzer Prize for his ``continuing contribution as a voice and a 
conscience of his city.'' I called the attention of my colleagues in 
the Congress to Herb's honor on that occasion and paid tribute to him 
in the Record in April of last year.
  Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me now in honoring the 
memory of Herb Caen for his contribution to the uniqueness of our 
delightful city of San Francisco and for his contribution to 
journalism. Mr. Speaker, I also invite my colleagues to read the 
obituary of Mr. Caen that appeared in the New York Times.

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 2, 1997]

                Herb Caen, Newspaper Writer, Dies at 80

                         (By Michael J. Ybarra)

       San Francisco.--Herb Caen, whose 60-year journalism career 
     was devoted to doting on San Francisco and whose affections 
     were more than amply requited by legions of ardent readers, 
     died this morning at the California Pacific Medical Center 
     here. He was 80.
       To call Mr. Caen ``Mr. San Francisco,'' as was sometimes 
     done, was redundant. No other newspaper columnist has ever 
     been so long synonymous with a specific place. To his fans, 
     Mr. Caen (pronounced cane) was sui generis, a towering icon 
     in his adopted hometown--although he was largely unknown in 
     much of the nation, his column of stubborn localisms not even 
     traveling well across the San Francisco Bay.
       But in the city, and no one ever doubted what city he was 
     talking about, Mr. Caen enjoyed the status of a beloved 
     Boswell by the Bay.
       Part of his appeal seemed to lie in the endless bonhomie he 
     projected, always nattily turned out in suit and fedora, 
     often with a martini glass in hand. Mr. Caen exuded a whiff 
     of elegance from a bygone era.
       Indeed, his role model was Walter Winchell, the legendary 
     gossip monger, but with the malice shorn off. And unlike 
     Winchell, who outlived his own celebrity and doddered on into 
     obscurity, Mr. Caen's status as a living landmark grew with 
     his longevity.
       In April 1996, Mr. Caen turned 80, won a special Pulitzer 
     Prize for his ``continuing contribution as a voice and a 
     conscience of his city'' and married his fourth wife. In May, 
     he told his readers that he had inoperable lung cancer--he 
     smoked for 40 years but quit 25 years ago--and 5,000 letters 
     poured in. The city proclaimed June 14 Herb Caen Day and 
     75,000 people turned out to shower the writer with affection.
       Mr. Caen was born in Sacramento on April 3, 1916, although 
     he often said he had been conceived while his parents were 
     visiting San Francisco. He wrote a high school gossip column 
     called ``Raisen' Caen'' and after graduation he went to work 
     as a sportswriter at The Sacramento Union. In 1936, he landed 
     a job at The San Francisco Chronicle, arriving in town when 
     Coit Tower was only three years old and ferries were the only 
     way to cross the bay.
       Mr. Caen began writing his column on July 5, 1938, and 
     wrote it six days a week until 1991, when he cut back to five 
     and later to three. ``I can't find a way out: too many bills 
     and ex-wives and a kid in school, things that chew up the 
     income,'' he told an interviewer just before he turned 80. 
     ``I never intended this to be permanent, but it looks like 
     it's going to be.''
       He is survived by his wife, Ann Moller, and a son, 
     Christopher, from a previous marriage.
       Except for an eight-year sojourn at its rival, The 
     Examiner, Mr. Caen has been a fixture of The Chronicle, and, 
     according to surveys, better read than the paper's front 
     page. Editors had even estimated that as many as a fifth of 
     the paper's 500,000 readers might cancel their subscriptions 
     after Mr. Caen's death.
       So avid were his fans that for years The Chronicle even ran 
     old columns on Sunday, packaged as ``Classic Caen.'' Local 
     bookstores are full of still in-print copies of old columns 
     recycled into tomes.
       The columns combined gossip, news, word play and love to 
     San Francisco and those lucky enough to live there, even when 
     acknowledging the unpleasant side of the city. ``The hookers 
     are brazen, the abalone is frozen, and every night is 
     Mugger's Day,'' he wrote in 1971. ``Yet, in spite of it all, 
     San Francisco remains one of the great tourist cities. Most 
     triumphantly, there is life in the streets--raw, raucous, 
     roistering and real.''
       Over the years Mr. Caen's journalistic work habits became 
     as effortless as breathing: he wrote in the morning, held 
     court in bars or cafes in the afternoon and took the pulse of 
     the city at A-list events in the evenings, where the man with 
     the cherubic smile and bald pate fringed with curly gray hair 
     was as much a star as anyone he wrote about.
       Though the self-deprecating Mr. Caen referred to his daily 
     output, pounded out with two fingers on a Royal typewriter, 
     as journalistic stoop labor, he tossed out more than a few 
     enduring bons mots. Baghdad-by-the-Bay and Berserkeley were 
     his coinage. ``Don't call it Frisco,'' he admonished readers 
     once, and locals never did again.
       A play has been based on his columns and a mention in the 
     same spot has been said to have saved numerous productions 
     and restaurants.
       At the same time, critics complained that he did not pay 
     for his own meals or clothes or even always write his own 
     column--charges that Mr. Caen never failed to shrug off, 
     along with criticism that he was getting bitter in his old 
     age. ``That started when I was about 30,'' he recalled once. 
     ``Herb, you're getting old and bitter.''
       But on Herb Caen Day, when a three-mile stretch of 
     waterfront sidewalk was named in his honor, the columnist was 
     all honey. ``I've loved this town before I was born, and I'll 
     love it after I'm gone,'' he told the crowd. ``One day if I 
     do go to heaven, I'm going to do what ever San Franciscan 
     does who goes to heaven--he looks around and says, `It ain't 
     bad, but it ain't San Francisco.' ''

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