Empathy for an Admiral

San Francisco, CA

July 20, 2018

Who am I? Why am I here?

– Admiral James Stockdale, 1992 Vice Presidential Debate

The ship left New York Harbor in January 1846, rounded the Horn, paused at the Sandwich Islands to arm it’s cargo of Latter Day Saints, and set off to conquer the Mexican pueblo of Yerba Buena.

The Brooklyn passed thru the Golden Gate and sailed to the cove, under an American flag flapping in the breeze atop Telegraph Hill. 

Sam Brannan cursed the sight…not because he despised the cloth, but because he had not been first to raise it. John Montgomery earned that honor twenty days earlier.

One week prior to Brannan dropping anchor at Yerba Buena cove, Brigham Young compounded Brannon’s angst by proclaiming the Salt Lake Valley, rather than San Francisco Bay, to be “the place” at which the Mormon Empire would be centered.

At most everything else he attempted in his new home, Brannan was second to none. 

He delivered the first sermon in English, was the first defendant in a court of law under American jurisdiction, founded San Francisco’s first newspaper, and revealed Sutter’s secret and sparked a mad rush by proclaiming the discovery of American River gold up and down the streets of San Francisco.

He also performed the first wedding in San Francisco under the American flag.

Your correspondent has now performed the last…at least till further notice.

Till yesterday, the only activity I completed here to facilitate a wedding was when I allowed the Haight Clinic to extract and test my own blood so that I could marry Rita.

I have co-starred in one wedding, played supporting roles in a few, witnessed several from the box seats, and many more from the bleachers…but my credentials to perform a wedding are, to say the least, slight. 

Despite that limitation, and having felt a bit like James Stockdale meandering thru his Vice Presidential debate, I am honored my brother and his betrothed asked, and that the City of San Francisco allowed, me to officiate their ceremony.

I once heard a priest say he preferred performing funerals to marriages…because he had yet to see a funeral fail.

The same rationale likely explains why people would rather die than speak in public. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, they’d rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy. 

Still, that is an awfully cynical perspective. Funerals obviously entail a great degree of certainty…like buying Argentinian bonds or playing Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol.

But an ideal wedding is inspirational and uplifting. Like an Easter Mimosa, it combines two delightful components to form an entirely new and enervating entity. 

Both parts contribute unique tastes and attributes, provide appropriate balance and mutual support…and interact so as to to minimize lingering headaches. 

My job today was to serve as bartender for this matrimonial mix, to enable a smooth dissolution of each part into a new whole…and otherwise, like flight controllers at a major airport, not to be noticed. 

An elegant location lent the grace, grandeur, and sublimity suited to a proper wedding ceremony. And a good thing too…because the over-matched officiant borrowed, with interest, all of each that he could.

San Francisco’s City Hall replaced an even larger domed structure that was destroyed in 1906. The new Baroque edifice stood at the apex of the short-lived Beaux-Arts “City Beautiful” movement that swept the Belle Époque era in the US, manifesting itself most emphatically in San Francisco’s post-quake resurgence. 

Like an Amway pitch at a Vegas bachelor party, the devastation of 1906 cleared the ground of prior occupants, and cleaned the slate on which Danial Burnham could carve his plan for wide boulevards and grand public spaces. 

While Burnham rubbed his hands in anticipation, the magnitude of destruction and the urgency to rebuild repelled novel notions, prompting reconstruction to quickly proceed within the lines of the prior layout.

Only the new Civic Center, with its monumental assemblage of opera venues, concert halls, theaters, libraries, and museums orbiting City Hall, would conform to Burnham’s vision.

The dome recalls that of Les Invalidés in Paris and, in a small victory for local government, eclipses the height, if not the imperial reach, of the Capitol in Washington, DC. 

Arthur Brown, a graduate of L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, designed the building, which burnishes credentials that also include the War Memorial Opera House across the street and Coit Tower across town.

The building covers two city blocks and was completed in 1915 in time for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. 

Telamones by Henri Crenier support the west entrance, while Doric columns and colonnades along the porticoes, façades, and dome reinforce the structure and theme of this magnificent building. 

The 1989 Loma Prieta quake twisted the dome four feet and caused considerable damage elsewhere, forcing a retrofit that has the restored structure floating, like interconnected North Sea oil rigs, atop 600 base isolators planted beneath the foundation to dissipate periodic ripples of the earth.

From the east front, one wanders toward the majestic Main Library and Asian Art Museum, across the impressive grandeur of Civic Center Plaza. 

The iconic grand staircase leads to the second floor Mayors Balcony,  flanked by statues of the assassinated mayor George Moscone and his successor Dianne Feinstein.

As I approached my appointed post, surveyed the scene over which I’d preside, contemplated the play I was about to direct, and recalled the lines I’d need to recite, the plot suddenly seemed not so much to thicken as to congeal. 

The sage Stockdale again sprang to mind…“Who am I? Why am I here?” 

I have long struggled with the first question…but the second is easy. 

I was there to bring the wedding off with only one hitch, and in that regard the ceremony was a success. Vows were exchanged, dignity was retained, and the happy groom kissed his beautiful bride.

Brett and Jennifer followed in the matrimonial footsteps of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe by exchanging rings under this dome.

The Yankee Clipper and Norma Jean followed their ceremony with photos taken outside our old North Beach parish church at SS Peter and Paul, giving rise to the understandable misperception that they were married there. Actually, DiMaggio was married there…just at an earlier time and to another woman.

Brett and Jennifer avoided the Paparazzi, and accommodated the instincts of four dozen grateful guests, by immediately shifting their scene to their Marina District reception. 

Evoking a liberating fin de siècle salon for Victorian free-thinkers, The Dorian was a perfect venue for this easy-going group that wanted only to celebrate an occasion and enjoy each other’s company.

By the end of a wonderful day and convivial evening, we all knew who we were, and why we were there.

JD