I am currently on the Board of Directors of the Slovenian Progressive Home and President and Treasurer of Educational and Dramatic Club Slovenia in San Francisco. 

 

I am a native San Franciscan and have been a member of Club Slovenia since 2007 and an officer of the Club since 2011.  My Slovenian roots are tied to my maternal grandparents, Matija Sever (Vrtaca) and Katarina Stauduhar (Wilpen/Bilpa), who immigrated from the “Old Country” at the turn of the 20th century, who were married in the Church of the Nativity and lived on Minna Street in the area south of Market Street.  They survived the 1906 earthquake and, like many other Slovenes in San Francisco after the “Great Quake,” re-settled on the “Hill” (Potrero Hill).  My mom was born in the little house at 2136 – 18th Street in 1908.  The family moved-off the “Hill” in about 1916 as the family was out-growing the little house and choose to be closer to my grandfather’s restaurant on Polk Street and the children’s school at St. Boniface on Golden Gate Avenue. 

 

I grew up in the outer Mission District in the 1950s and 60s, graduated from Lowell High School, attended college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in City and Regional Planning in 1972.  Upon graduation, I served four years in the United States Air Force then worked for the Alameda County Flood Control District and retired at the end of 2016 after working 38+ years at San Francisco State University as a project manager in the Department of Capital Planning, Design and Construction.