As he ordered a salmon salad for lunch at a downtown hotel on Thursday, Leon Williams looked out the window and reflected how much San Diego had changed since he arrived here in 1941.
Almost all the buildings in view along Broadway were built following redevelopment efforts he championed. Neighborhoods have become more inclusive.
Tensions with law enforcement decreased and public transportation services increased during his almost four decades of service on the San Diego City Council, County Board of Supervisors and the Metropolitan Transit System’s board of directors, before he retired in 2006.
And in another significant change, a black man can order a meal and get a room in a downtown hotel. That’s not the San Diego Williams encountered when he stepped off a bus in 1941.
“They just said, ‘We don’t serve your kind,’” said Williams, 93, who that day tried to check into the Pickwick Hotel, now the Sophia Hotel, where he dined at Currant American Brasserie on Thursday.
He found a room that first night at a friend’s house and had not returned to the hotel until Thursday, when Williams, his wife and daughter attended a book-launch lunch with the author and publisher of his new biography, “Together We Can Do More: The Leon Williams Story.”
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Carrier said she also learned that the civility that was Williams’ trademark on the City Council also was his secret weapon for success.
“He believed that you could never be confrontational and get anything done,” she said, describing Williams as a determined, relentless visionary...."
To continue reading this story by Gary Warth, go to: http://www.sandiegouniontribun...rvice-leon-williams/
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