Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 04:24:09 :
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2002
section A, page 24
Gloria Breckenridge Vollmayer -- journalist, Haight-Ashbury activist
Gloria Breckenridge Vollmayer, a journalist, society maven and public relations specialist known for her acerbic wit, high energy and pluck, died of pulmonary fibrosis Oct. 17 at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. She was 71.
Ms. Vollmayer, a platinum blonde whose legs were featured in a national advertisement for stockings in the 1950s, was not easily forgotten in San Francisco, and not just because of her looks.
During numerous incarnations as a writer, promoter and neighborhood activist -- she spearheaded the drive to put up trees in the Haight-Ashbury -- she came in contact with pretty much everybody in town.
In the 1970s, she was an assistant to the society editor at The Chronicle, where she impressed co-workers with her spunk.
"She was a great asset because she knew all the swells and wasn't cowed by them," said Ruthe Stein, The Chronicle's deputy arts and entertainment editor. "Gloria was really perky and also very well organized. I can still hear her on the phone digging for stories."
She was born Gloria Breckenridge in Wahoo, Neb. Her family moved west during the Depression, and her father got a job with the San Francisco Port Commission.
She graduated in 1949 from Lowell High School and received a journalism degree in 1953 from Stanford University, where she also wrote for the school newspaper.
After college, she worked for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. In 1954, she moved to New York, where she worked for American Home magazine. The stocking advertisement gave her legs national attention.
She married John Vollmayer in 1958, and they moved to Sacramento, where she became close friends with C.K. McClatchy, then owner of the Sacramento Bee, and did fund raising for the Crocker Art Museum.
Ms. Vollmayer moved back to San Francisco in the early 1960s after divorcing her husband. In San Francisco, she became the first food critic for the Nob Hill Gazette and, with Carmen Wyllie, wrote the "Hard Times Cook Book, " for cooks down on their luck during the 1971 recession.
She worked in public relations and corporate communications for the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the San Francisco Design Center at Showplace Square.
Ms. Vollmayer collected Wall Street Journals the way other people collect first editions. As president of the Haight-Ashbury Merchants Association in the 1970s, she badgered the city into doing something that the flower power movement had failed to do -- get trees planted on the sidewalks.
She made such a stink about trash on the streets that a local television station showed her dragging a sack of garbage left out by a neighbor to the culprit's doorstep.
Some of the locals say the gentrification of the Upper Haight began with Ms. Vollmayer.
Deeply interested in politics, Ms. Vollmayer once confronted then- Assemblyman Willie Brown about lunching at the Balboa Cafe instead of dealing with issues such as drugs. Witnesses said the encounter had left Brown uncharacteristically speechless.
Stein and others said Ms. Vollmayer's parties were legendary, including her "hen parties," at which men were not allowed.
"She was a party lady," said her longtime roommate and friend, Al Karstensen. "She was crazy about Bobby Short, the pianist. Needless to say, she had great legs, but alas, she always wore pants."
Ms. Vollmayer is survived by a daughter, Karen of San Rafael; a son, William of Reno; and one grandchild.
A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Nov. 17 at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. The family suggests donations to the Daniel Pearl Memorial Fund, Stanford University, Communications Department, 326 Galvez St., Stanford CA 94305.
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