On Friday Sep. 29, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein passed away at the age of 90. Feinstein, who was an alum of Schools of the Sacred Heart San Francisco, was the longest serving female senator in American history.
“Given Senator Feinstein’s role in city government and in the US Senate, we had great pride in the fact that she came from here,” Head of School Rachel Simpson said. “She herself would attribute a lot of her voice and her formation as having taken place here,”
Feinstein was first elected as mayor of San Francisco in 1978, which made her the first female and Jewish mayor in the city, according to United States Senate. As mayor, Feinstein worked towards overseeing the HIV/AIDS crisis, controlled the city’s first $1 billion budget, executed gun control legislation, and more.
“Feinstein was such a successful woman and it is really inspirational to be studying in the same place where she went to high school,” junior Kaiya Koenigsberg said. “I know she was very close to the school and we are all remembering her and thinking of her family,”
Since Feinstein’s election to the Senate in 1992, she had voiced her concern towards global issues she stood for, such as LGBT rights, preservation of California’s forests, and other economic and social policies, according to Ballotpedia.
“She remained an incredibly loyal friend to our program for decades including inviting eighth graders into her office whenever students would visit Washington D.C,” Simpson said. “She would allow for that, and host students in a personal way,”
When Feinstein was at the school, she created an archival school project titled “Palace Beautiful,” according to sacredsf. The project focused on the architectural elements of the Flood Mansion and Feinstein, then Goldman, provided the lettering for the project.
“She was most recently here on campus in the spring for the memorial of Mary B Mardel,” Simpson said. “That event, again, expressed very generously her appreciation for the foundation of the education she received here as the reason why she felt able to become the contributor to public life that she was able to be.”
