Yesterday I happened upon an article in the San Francisco Chronicle marking the 44th anniversary of the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, who were shot and killed in City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White.
On November 27, 1978, I was a twenty-two year old college student living in San Francisco while majoring in music at SF State University.
I’ll never forget listening to the radio as I parked my car in front of my apartment in Park Merced and hearing Dianne Feinstein (President of the Board of Supervisors) announce that the Mayor and Harvey Milk had been murdered, followed by gasps and cries from the assembled reporters.
The shock was intense and visceral, compounded by the fact that it came only ten days after the Jonestown massacre — when more than 900 people, mostly San Franciscans, died at a compound in Jonestown, Guyana, when ordered by cult leader Jim Jones to drink poison. A squad of People’s Temple members was also sent to shoot an investigative delegation led by Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, as it prepared to fly home from a nearby airstrip. Ryan and four others died on the airstrip, and 10 others were wounded.
I remember feeling as though the world had turned completely upside down. These things simply didn’t happen in a sane world. Or so I thought.
A certain innocence was lost that November in San Francisco.