[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 53 (Wednesday, April 25, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E625]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     A TRIBUTE TO BONNIE GARTSHORE

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. SAM FARR

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 25, 2001

  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life 
of Bonnie Gartshore, a woman of letters and history who will be honored 
in Monterey, California on June 9.
  The living memory of Monterey and Pacific Grove, Bonnie is a mild-
mannered journalist, a determined educator, an accomplished poet and a 
lifelong human-rights activist.
  She was a feminist before the term was coined. And as a devoted 
Catholic, she has always displayed her conviction, piety and humanity 
through her life and her work.
  Bonnie was introduced at a tribute dinner at Carmel Mission in 1983 
as ``a true peacemonger and an incorrigible advocate for the poor and 
beleaguered.'' At that dinner Bonnie, ever the teacher, called 
attention to the statues of Benny Bufano, pointing out that he always 
turned the palms of hands outward, ``open to receive and also to let 
go.'' That's an important lesson, Bonnie explained. ``Something I have 
learned: If you are busy hanging onto things, you are going to miss a 
lot along the way.''
  Bonnie was born in Monterey 75 years ago--on Nov. 23, 1925--in the 
heyday of the sardine industry that was centered just a few blocks from 
her Filmore Street home. She called it a great place for living and 
learning, with few houses and a mix of people that included school 
principals, doctors, drunks and bums.
  It was the Monterey that John Steinbeck wrote about. And it 
conditioned her for life. ``I wasn't surprised by anything because I 
had seen it all growing up,'' she said later. As for childhood: ``What 
I did as a young girl growing up in the New Monterey that used to be, 
was soak in the twin pleasures of forest and beach, develop a delight 
in reading and a curiosity about people and places, and absorb the 
values of my mother, who was a mixture of middle-class morality and 
liberal political views.''
  Her parents tried to calm her independence by sending her to Catholic 
school in the 1930s, hoping the nuns would straighten her out. But 
Bonnie ended up writing some of the services and sermons for the 
priests of the diocese. Bonnie is one of the few women ever asked to 
deliver a homily at San Carlos Cathedral. She did it, of course, 
preaching on her theme: ``Jesus doesn't leave anyone out.''
  She graduated from San Carlos School in 1939 and went on to Pacific 
Grove High School, where she discovered a knack for writing and became 
editor of the school newspaper. Bonnie then went to San Jose State 
College as a journalism major. She edited the campus paper, the Spartan 
Daily, of course, and graduated with honors in 1947.
  Once out of school, Bonnie went to work for the Monterey Peninsula 
Herald and started what has become a 53-year association as a writer 
and editor through three locations and four owners. She began her 
career in the society section, where ``the girls'' were assigned in 
those days, as the assistant editor. Her first office was in the tower 
of the building at Pearl and Washington Streets, which was The Herald's 
location in those days, Morgan's Coffee & Tea these days.
  Bonnie's first stint with The Herald lasted for 15 years. Then she 
left to tour England and Scotland, work for the Paso Robles Daily 
Press, do research in Big Sur, and work as assistant editor of The 
Observer, the weekly newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of 
Monterey. She also took a variety of jobs that included writing 
advertising brochures, doing publicity for the Monterey County and 
Santa Cruz County Fairs and writing the introduction to an aphrodisiac 
cookbook.
  Bonnie also handled special sections for The Herald and wrote 
occasional stories for The Herald's Weekend Magazine until she 
eventually returned full time. In 1990, after establishing herself as 
Monterey's ``historian in residence,'' she started a weekly history 
column, Looking Back, for The Herald. The Monterey History & Art 
Association recently published a collection of those columns as a book 
titled ``Footprints from the Past.''
  Bonnie also developed a writers' workshop for the inmates at the 
Soledad Correctional Training Facility. She described it at the time as 
``something useful I could do.'' Subsequently, she was hired by 
Hartnell College in Salinas to teach English and speech classes at the 
prison, an avocation that lasted for a 20-year stretch. During that 
time, Bonnie staged a poetry reading at the Carl Cherry Center for the 
Arts in Carmel in order to raise money to publish a book of the 
convicts' poems.
  She has also published two books of her own poetry, ``Trying to Put 
it Together'' in 1988 and ``Taking My Cue from the Walrus'' in 2000.
  Beyond her professional pursuits, Bonnie's devotion to religion has 
made her a lifelong activist for peace and social justice. ``In the 
1960s I came to understand that religion and activism go hand in 
hand,'' she explained.
  She picketed with the United Farm Workers before it became 
fashionable, marched with civil rights and peace groups, helped 
organize a Monterey memorial of the bombing of Hiroshima, interviewed 
the homeless and presented programs about humanity in Monterey, Pacific 
Grove and Carmel. She organized programs for Catholic women, presented 
retreats and wrote liturgies for the priests of the other gender.
  Bonnie has made her home in Pacific Grove for the past 45 years, 
where she's been active in anything literary, including the Monterey 
Peninsula Dickens Fellowship, The Robert Louis Stevenson Club of 
Monterey and the Cherry Foundation in Carmel.
  In 1989, when Bonnie was presented the Woman of the Year award from 
the Quota Club of Monterey-Pacific Grove, she told that audience: ``I'm 
learning all the time. . . . There were all these people along the way, 
all the wonderful people I was learning from.''

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