By Richard Knee : 48hills – excerpt
Upon learning that fellow good-government activist Bob Planthold had died, Maxine Anderson reminded associates of an old African proverb: “When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.”
Planthold died in his apartment on Jan. 27. He was 73. As of this writing, the medical examiner had not determined the cause of death. A funeral service is set for Friday, Feb. 11, at 2 p.m. at the San Francisco Columbarium, 1 Loraine Court.
Planthold forcefully and effectively advocated for the disabled community, especially when it came to public-transit access, government transparency and participation in the political process. He was the only person to have served both on San Francisco’s open-government watchdog commission, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, and on the city’s Ethics Commission,
“Bob’s was a rich, interesting library from which we were fortunate to borrow from time to time,” said Allyson Washburn, who chairs the steering committee of San Franciscans for Sunshine, a group hoping to strengthen the city’s government transparency laws. Anderson is one of a handful of people on the committee. (Reporter’s disclosure: I also am on the committee.)…(more)