Eve Bach, a eulogy by Saul Bloom

This eulogy was written by Saul Bloom and read at the memorial service for Eve Bach.


Eve Bach was my colleague, my big sister, and friend. I was putatively Eve’s “boss” for the last 17 years. Not long before her diagnosis we joked that it looked like Eve would be working for Arc Ecology longer than the City of Berkeley and that maybe we should think about a retirement program.

I met Eve through the good offices of that East Bay institution Gus Newport. Gus and I were working together to capture the benefits and address the impacts of the military base closures in Alameda County. I mentioned to Gus that Arc was between Economist/ Planners and asked if he had a recommendation. Gus had two. The first was Eve Bach and the second was that she was worth putting up with. I met Eve and Gale at a dinner at Gus and Katherine’s house and shortly Eve joined our staff.

Eve was attracted to our mix of environmental, economic, urban, military, and social issues, analysis, community organizing and action. A force of nature, Eve could be relied upon to manage numerous and complex projects with aplomb. Eve had a knack for seeing through to the core components of a given issue swiftly and accurately. As non dogmatic as any resident of Berkeley could reasonably be expected to be, she listened well. It also didn’t hurt that she was technically brilliant with a breathtaking mastery of a broad range of subjects from the arcane particulars of California’s Public Trust, to affordable housing, to economic development, and environmental assessment.

Quite naturally each community and organization sees the world through their particular issue and lens and was the quality of the fibers woven into that individual thread of Eve’s work that amazed them. As Eve’s “boss” I had perhaps a unique opportunity to have a reasonably comprehensive view of the enormity of her contribution to the Bay Area at least since she joined Arc. I have had the privilege of receiving the thanks and the complaints for the technical and strategic support Eve provided. For me as the person receiving her ongoing reports, updates, and strategizing with her; it was the quality of the threads and the intentional pattern in the weave of the tapestry that amazed.

Over the course of her time with us, Eve provided assistance to communities in Vallejo on the redevelopment of Mare Island, in Concord on the Concord Naval Weapons Depot, in Oakland on the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, in Alameda on the Alameda Naval Air Station, and in San Francisco on Treasure Island, the Presidio, and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - and these were just the bases.

Eve and Ruth Gravanis terrorized San Francisco City staff over the development of Treasure Island. For nearly five years I received regular complaints from a beleaguered director of the Mayor’s office of economic and workforce development regarding Eve’s “unfair” criticisms of the plan. One criticism was that the City had put the island’s ferry terminal in the wrong place. In 2006 the plan was reorganized and the terminal landed literally within feet of where Eve had been arguing it should be, using the same rationale Eve had articulated years earlier. Now the Mayor’s office says that Eve and Ruth had nothing to do with that decision. I will leave it to you to judge the wisdom of that statement. In conversation Ruth recently related that she had told Eve that it had irked her that Eve’s work went unacknowledged. According to Ruth, Eve turned to her with a smile and that slight over the rim of the glasses stare she had as if to say “you have a lot to learn about politics.”

Eve’s commitment to affordable housing was deep. Eve understood how things hung together. San Francisco’s campaign slogan for their shipyard plan is Jobs, Housing, and Parks. Eve’s take on the slogan was - when neighborhood residents don’t get the jobs, they won’t be able to afford housing, and so some will live in the parks - which is why the City passed legislation in Sacramento last year to make the park smaller.

We had hoped to see the Navy’s Alameda East Housing facility converted to affordable housing, so when plans were announced that they would be demolished Eve became incensed. Soon she was working with a small community group in Alameda called Renewed Hope and shortly thereafter we were embroiled in a lawsuit with the City of Alameda and giant real estate developer Catullus. Today because of that lawsuit Alameda is committed to develop 25% of the housing on the site as affordable, even if they aren’t happy about it.

Ferry terminals, affordable housing, as if that were not enough in 1994, Eve provided the business plan to reutilize the large dry dock at the Hunters Point Shipyard for obsolete ship recycling. Between 1995 through 2001 Ship Recycling at the Hunters Point Shipyard provided close to 90 union jobs for a work force consisting primarily of residents of Bayview Hunters Point. More work for Bayview residents than has the massive Lennar Shipyard development project over as many years. Unfortunately the program came to an end the year after a certain Texan took the White House and ship recycling was directed to Brownsville where vessels are today scrapped in unlined trenches dug along the shoreline.

Eve studied traffic patterns in Oakland’s China Town for Asian Neighborhood Health Services, and made a substantial contribution to the development of CALTRANs environmental justice policies. Eve helped Sylvia McLaughlin organize the Public Trust Group monitoring the preservation of the Bay’s shoreline and later served as its chair.

In 2005, Eve, working closely with Joan Cardillino from the State Coastal Conservancy and an advisory team that included the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Literacy for Environmental Justice, and subcontractor Hargreaves Associates created “From Pollution to Parkland” a study of waterfront park development strategies for the Hunters Point Shipyard. “From Pollution to Parkland” would be graced with the 2007 American Society of Landscape Architects national award for excellence in research and planning. You can see the uncredited influence of her work in the parks and open space concepts proposed in the Shipyard master plan today.

Heavy industrial economic development, wetlands and public trust protection, traffic and transit planning, park planning, and affordable housing. Eve imbued these projects with her dedication to ethics in government, ethics in nonprofit management and programming, professionalism, a commitment to the rigorous pursuit of the subject matter, and unending curiosity. Watching Eve move from issue to issue with her perpetual grace and good humor was like watching an athletic child’s joyful leap hand over hand from one suspended loop to another above the sand lot that is Bay Area politics and development.

Deeply compassionate to friends and colleagues, with more than a dollop of Jewish mother thrown in, Eve was more like an older sister than employee which made being Eve’s boss occasionally challenging. Gus was right on that count. Eve had her ways and kept nearly as close an eye on me as she did on government. We fought like family, trusted each other’s judgment - like family, and linked arms like family when needed. I could always tell when Eve approved of something I had done because it was at those times that she would make a point of calling me boss. Those times, or when she was angry because I had to corral and focus that incredible energy.

Like an older sister, I looked up to Eve as a role model. The beauty of her home and garden, her appreciation for food, her joi de vivre, the parade of dogs and packs of puppy’s with paint on their heads to tell them apart, the traveling, her extensive community of friends, and her great love for Gale and Nadira and of course, her enormous joy at so recently becoming a grandmother to Nigel.'

I am not right with this, I am resigned but I am terribly angry. The Jew in me has spent hours arguing with the ceiling about justice. In these matters Eve would have given me a slight smile and a shrug of the shoulders. Fight the one’s you can win she would say in a glance.

Each of us create ripples and eddies of influence as we move about the world. Some touch history, some have enormous effect on their immediate family and friends, some are simply a breeze and then gone. It is those special people among us who can affect their immediate surroundings as well as their community writ large to become a light to their world. From this aging organizer’s view these individuals resemble stars against a deep sky. I am so pleased and honored to have been associated with Eve’s brilliance. Today that sky is just a bit darker.