and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of his city." (Fellow Chronicle columnist Art Hoppe, who had sworn an oath with Caen twenty-five years earlier not to accept a Pulitzer, released him from the oath without being asked.) The following month doctors treating him for pneumonia discovered he had inoperable lung cancer. He told his readers: "In a lightning flash I passed from the world of the well to the world of the unwell, where I hope to dwell for what I hope is a long time. The point is not to be maudlin or Pollyanna cheerful. This is serious stuff." June 14, 1996, was officially celebrated in San Francisco as Herb Caen Day. After a motorcade and parade ending at the Ferry Building, Caen was honored by "a pantheon of the city's movers, shakers, celebrities and historical figures" including television news legend Walter Cronkite. Noting that several San Francisco mayors (sitting or retired) were at liberty to attend, Caen quipped, "Obviously, the Grand Jury hasn't been doing its job." Among other honors a promenade along the city's historic bayfront Embarcadero was christened —a reference to what Caen called his "three-dot journalism" for the ellipses separating his column's short items. This was particularly appropriate given the recent demolition of an eyesore against which Caen had long campaigned: the elevated Embarcadero Freeway, built astride the Embarcadero forty years earlier and derided by Caen as "The Dambarcadero." A tribute was inserted in the Congressional Record. Caen continued to write, though less frequently. He died February 1, 1997. His funeralheld at Grace Cathedral despite his Jewish heritage ("the damndest saddest, most wonderful funeral anyone ever had, but the only man who could properly describe it isn't here," said Enrico Banducci) was followed by a candlelight procession to Aquatic Park, where his will had provided for a fireworks display—climaxed by a pyrotechnic image of the manual typewriter he had long called his "Loyal Royal". "No other newspaper columnist ever has been so long synonymous with a specific place... Part of his appeal seemed to lie in the endless bonhomie he projected," said his New York Times obituary, comparing him to Walter Winchell "but with the malice shorn off." The Chronicle projected a one-fifth decline in subscriptions—surveys had shown that Caen was better-read than the front page. Reprints of his columns remain a periodic feature of the Chronicle. Bibliography The San Francisco Book, Photographs