![]() ![]() ![]() Hansen’s tally stands at 3,000, but her research continues and a higher figure could be recognized by the supervisors by the time the centennial is commemorated in 2006. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last month to raise the death toll in time for next year’s centennial of the April 18, 1906, catastrophe. Now, for the first time, her project has finally been recognized by city officials here. Its been lauded by other researchers, including state historian Kevin Starr and Gary Kurutz, curator of special collections for the California State Library, who calls Hansen “San Francisco’s preeminent historian whose work on this subject is way ahead of others.” Hansen, the city’s archivist emeritus and curator at the virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, has reopened a window on this city’s history that’s not Chamber of Commerce romantic but real. “Even if they find only your bones, your name on some ledger or some other tiny trace you once existed, people have the right to be remembered.” “No one should be just left to disappear,” she said. She considers the people on the list part of her family. Her list started as a part-time project but eventually grew into an uncompromising passion. At age 79, this petite woman with the strawberry-red hair listens closely to these ghosts of the past, the unremembered Italian longshoremen, Irish nannies and Chinese laborers - hearing their voices rooting her on as she places names and faces to her growing record of the dead. ![]()
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