A new map for San Francisco's Corona Heights Park designating the two features posthumously named after a gay political leader in the city has made its public debut. It was recently uploaded to the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department's website for the greenspace overlooking the LGBTQ Castro district.
Clearly designated on the map at the park entrance by Roosevelt and Museum ways are both the Bill Kraus Meadow and Pathway. A portion of the main trail into the hillside property is now depicted in a dirt-like color with Bill Kraus Pathway marked on it.
Below the path is a green triangle emblazoned with Bill Kraus Meadow. It is shaded in a lighter tone to set it off from the rest of the grassy area in that section of the park, where a bench bearing a plaque in honor of Kraus can be found at the end of the field at the bottom of a rock outcropping.
Kraus, a gay man and congressional aide, played an instrumental role in organizing the city's LGBTQ community politically in the 1970s and 1980s until his death at age 38 in early 1986 after contracting meningitis. Later that year city rec and park officials approved naming the path and meadow in Kraus' honor.
"One of his favorite spots was to hike up on top of the crest and look at the downtown skyline," recalled Ron Huberman, 78, who was Kraus' housemate and close friend.
Living nearby the site in Duboce Triangle, they could be found on most weekends at Corona Heights Park taking advantage of its scenic views and relative quietness, said Huberman, a gay man now retired from his job as a lieutenant in the district attorney's investigation unit. Often, Kraus would be working on speeches for his bosses, the late congressmembers Phillip Burton and his wife, Sala Burton, who had succeeded her husband in office following his death in 1983.
"He really loved that park, and early Sunday morning, as I mentioned, there was very few folks there, so he could concentrate on his 'speech' writing for Congressman Phillip Burton," recalled Huberman. "I would usually bring along a book that I happened to be reading, and a couple bottles of water, as Bill liked his peace and quiet so he could concentrate!"
Huberman and Kraus were co-owners of their apartment building along with a number of other gay men. They also helped found what is now known as the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, which was named in Milk's honor following his assassination in 1978.
At the time, Kraus was serving as president of the progressive LGBTQ political group. Just the year prior, he had helped get Milk elected as the city's first gay supervisor.
Kraus went on to urge the Democratic Party to support gay rights as a delegate and platform committee member at the national conventions in 1980 and 1984. As AIDS began to ravage the city's gay male population in the early 1980s, Kraus was a vocal proponent for closing the city's bathhouses and urging safer sex practices.
Following his own diagnosis in 1984, Kraus moved to Paris to take part in an experimental AIDS drug study. His "exile" from the U.S. garnered national media attention about the glacial pace of the drug approval process in America. When the medication he was taking was approved for trials in the states, Kraus returned to San Francisco.
The late gay San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts would later chronicle Kraus's role in the early days of the AIDS epidemic in his book "And the Band Played On." (Gay British actor Sir Ian McKellen played Kraus in the 1993 HBO movie based on the book.)
At some point Kraus' park bench plaque was painted over. And as there was no signage marking that the Bill Kraus Meadow and Pathway existed, few parkgoers knew about them.
It wasn't until January 2014 that parks officials erected an informational sign about Kraus' life and a map of the Bill Kraus Meadow and Pathway in addition to installing a new bench plaque honoring Kraus. They had done so at the urging of schoolteacher John Mehring, who had reread Shilts' book and saw it mention Kraus frequented Corona Heights Park.
It sparked him to do some internet sleuthing, leading him to read Michael T. Roper's 2001 book "Memories of My Gay Brothers" that mentioned the city had memorialized Kraus by naming a meadow after him. Yet, in visiting the park, Mehring found nothing to indicate where the meadow was located nor could he locate any online maps with it labeled.
"I asked people, can you tell me where Bill Kraus Meadow is. I talked to people who use the park and none knew about it," Mehring, who died in 2018, had told the Bay Area Reporter over a decade ago.
His inquiries with parks department officials led to the creation of the Friends of Corona Heights Park and the effort in the 2010s to see that Kraus be properly honored at the city greenspace. In addition to the bench and signage about Kraus, there is a wood bulletin board at the front of the meadow bearing his name.
Materials previously not updated online
Yet, as the B.A.R. discovered this summer, the website for the park hadn't also been updated at the time to include mention of the meadow and pathway being named for Kraus or explain who he was. The map posted online for the park also omitted mention of the two park features.
After the B.A.R. inquired last month about the omission, and that of two facilities named for local LGBTQ icons at the Castro's Eureka Valley Recreational Center from its website, rec and park staff within hours had updated the park websites to add the information.
They also said a new map for Corona Heights Park would be created and uploaded. By early September, the old map had been replaced with the new one.
"At least his name is on two places, on both of the maps, and they are positive about the actual 'pluses' of the park!" Huberman told the B.A.R. when informed about the wayfinding update.
He added that it is important not to lose the city's rich LGBTQ history and to help new residents to San Francisco learn about it. Just last month Huberman was talking to a friend who was unaware there was a plaque for Kraus in the park.
"If we don't let people who are new to the community and new to San Francisco know about those of us who went before us, we don't know our history. And the history is really important," said Huberman.
The new map should also be installed at the park. As noted on it, the signs are "made out of 100% salvaged materials."
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