My mother and her family lost everything that day, April 18, 1906
My mother, Ellen Raicevich and
her six brothers and sisters; George, Spiro, Peter, Nita, Rudolph, and Valeria
lived on Hayes Street at Franklin. She was 19 and the oldest child of Spiro
Raicevich.
He was a second-hand dealer and his store was on the ground floor with the
family's flat above it. His wife, Lily, had died in 1902, at age 42. She was the
daughter of Encarnacion Ortega of San Juan Bautista.
My mother told me that when the quake struck she and my Aunt
Nita got out of bed and knelt beside it to pray. The quake subsided with little
damage to their building. The family got dressed and went downstairs to the
street believing the event was over... it was not.
A block away a woman thinking her husband would go to work
that morning lit a fire in her stove. The chimney was down and soon sparks had
ignited the roof and quickly spread. It would be called the "Ham and Eggs
Fire." This is the fire that caused the
destruction of the Mission district as well as the Hayes Valley section,
including the Mechanics' Pavilion and the City Hall
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Realizing his building would be
destroyed, Grandfather Spiro quickly gathered up the family's possessions and
walked West on Hayes Street. They reached Lyon Street and found a vacant flat
and moved in.
Spiro eventually opened his second-hand store at Hayes and
Gough, a block from his original store and remained there until his death in
1942.
In 1939 I lived at Hayes and Fillmore and went to
Commerce High at Hayes and Franklin. Every day I walked by the site of my
grandfather's home. It remained a vacant lot for years, and I could look through
the fence and see the brick foundation, all that remained from 1906.
Bill Roddy
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