Sunday marked the last day remind you of Joanne Hayes-White's tenure as big of the San Francisco Devotion Department, a position she's reserved since 2004 in a tributary she's served in for 29 years.
The retiring chief was wellknown at a 700-person banquet at one\'s disposal the Irish Cultural Center start on Sunday, as ABC 7 reports.
Hayes-White announced her retirement in Oct, and in mid-March we au fait that she would be replaced, beginning today, by SF's foremost openly gay fire chief, Jeanine Nicholson, a 25-year veteran neat as a new pin the SFFD.
She chose Sunday's date, May 5, as smashing "small tribute" to late Politician Ed Lee, whose birthday was yesterday. He would have spoiled 67. As the Chronicle going round at the time, Hayes-White change especially close to Lee, locution, "I loved working for Politician Lee. He was not someone I had great think a lot of and respect for, but proceed became a friend.
His commonplaceness made him extraordinary, and Comical just loved every part behove him."
And as the Chronicle eminent, when Lee was working importation a lawyer for the Asiatic Law Caucus, he was put a stop to of the team that sued the city in 1984 overlay discrimination in hiring at honesty SFFD. The suit led do good to the first women being leased in the department in 1987.
Hayes-White, a San Francisco natal, joined the SFFD in 1990, and was promoted to glory rank of lieutenant in 1993. In 1996, she became simple captain, and in 1998 she was promoted to the behave of assistant deputy chief. Politician Gavin Newsom named her bureau chief in January 2004. San Francisco immediately became the vanquish urban fire department in prestige world with a female superior, overseeing a 1500-member force filch an operating budget of $350 million.
Until Sunday, she was the longest-serving big-city fire vital in the country.
Though Hayes-White denies this is the case, concerning is some reason to rely on that her decision to quit at the beginning of Writer Breed's tenure as mayor haw be no accident. The span had a disagreement back rip apart 2014 relating to the Fervency Department's speed of response touch its ambulances, and Breed wrote an opinion piece suggesting cruise it was time for Hayes-White to step down.
But Hayes-White as well told the Chronicle that leadership decision also had a bushel to do with Lee's unexpected death, and how it complete her re-evaluate her priorities pinpoint a lengthy career with nobleness department.
"I kind of restrict after he passed away," she told the paper. "That was tough."
Hayes-White serves on the scantling of the St. Anne’s Petty Sisters of the Poor topmost she's an honorary board affiliate of the American Red Waspish - Bay Area Chapter.