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Message text written by Dave Rowney
"
SF autocross community,
One of our dedicated SFR track workers and my fellow UC Berkeley staff
member, Grace Katagiri, lost her last race with cancer. She usually
worked communications and was always very encouraging to me during my road
racing days. She will be missed.
http://www.sfrscca.org/InMemoryOf/GraceKatagiri/index.html
Dave"
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Dave,
That's very sad news. Thanks for the info. Way back when we were
first dealing with the City of Albany over use of Golden Gate Fields (circa
1990), Grace was the region's sound control chief (or had just retired from
that job) and I talked to her several times about how to handle sound at
GGF.
The first time we presented the region's case to the Albany
Planning Commission, we won and had the right to stage events at GGF. The
catch was the permit was only good until the end of the year which ended up
being just one event.
Then there was a change in SFR's Solo II management and the new
people did not re-apply to the City. No events at GGF. Two years passed and
another Solo II leadership change happened.
Larry Heath was the new Solo II guy and Art Muncheryan, the guy who
sold GGF on the whole deal in the first place, campaigned with the City of
Albany to bring Solo II back to GGF. Art, the Racer's Dentist, scheduled an
appearance before the Planning Commission and was set to use his
"chair-side" manner to make it all happen again. It worked the first time.
Alas Art's wife was pregnant and she had a class on birthing to attend
smack on the same evening as the Planning Commission. So Art called me and
asked me to substitute since the two of us had made the pitch the first
time around. I had wanted to avoid being involved this time as I had a
respect problem with "Claudia," Albany Planning employee. (She has since
moved to Emeryville.) To be brief. We lost.
Several months later, talking to Art, he told me the natural birth
classes didn't really help as his wife had their child via C-Section.
We finally got back to GGF about four years ago.
--John Kelly
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