Will Sandi Be Our 'Cable Car Lady'?

(And now another word about Sanders Beach from Steve Badraun.)

It was 1947, in San Francisco, when city officials decided to rip out all of its cable cars and junk the entire system. The oil companies and motor car industry giants wanted them destroyed.

One remarkable woman , Friedel Klussman, stood alone that day to resist their efforts. She recognized the value of cable cars then and in the future for her native San Francisco. The citizens rallied around Friedel and literally told the politicians "you're not going to get rid of our cable car system". This tiny woman was the seed for an uprising that led to a team of ferocious political advocates who collected 50,000 signatures, got the proposal on the ballot and succeeded with 77 percent of the vote to stop the destruction.

Friedel and her group rallied again and again against new threats to junk the cable cars in 1950, 1951, 1954, and 1971. When Friedel Klussmann died in 1986, workers draped the cities cable cars in black for their "cable car lady". Today almost 10 million passengers a year ride the cable cars. It is the worlds only surviving cable car system and the premier symbol of San Francisco.

Our shoreline, our beach assess, and our views and vistas of our lake are the "cable cars" of Coeur d' Alene. Once and for all, we need to make our stand and never again give lose one small piece of these treasures. Always we need to work to build on these symbols rather than giving them away. Is our heritage of Sanders Beach going to vanish because of one developers wishes? Is Sandi Bloem going to be our "cable car lady'?

Steve Badraun
sbadraun@earthlink.net