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DAILYREPUBLIC.COM | Well said. Well read.
Desmond Tutu dies at 90
He was an Anglican archbishop who won the Nobel Prize for his battle against apartheid The Washington Post
Ryan Blake/Courtesy photos
Keeping busy
Richard Renwick and Cristian Cuadra work on a signal pole at the Western Railway Museum.
Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s ebullient apostle of racial justice and reconciliation who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against the system of White domination known as apartheid, died Dec. 26 in Cape Town. He was 90. The cause of death was complications from cancer, according to Roger Friedman, spokesman for the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust. Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, and he was hospitalized on several occasions in recent years to treat
infections associated with his cancer treatment. A small, effervescent man with a crooked nose and infectious toothy grin, Tutu served as Black South Africa’s informal ambassador to the world during the dark days of repression and as a crucial voice in the campaign for racial equality that culminated with Nelson Mandela’s election as the country’s first Black president in 1994. Throughout the struggle, he preached nonviolence even while denouncing apartheid as “an evil system.” After the fall of apartheid, Tutu chaired the See Tutu, Page A8
Western Railway Museum uses down time for renovations Amy Maginnis-Honey
AMAGINNIS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET
RIO VISTA — Alex Marcopulos has had a few guests at the Western Railway Museum approach him and ask the story behind the “grey car with the boarded-up windows” in one of the car barns. Many have mentioned they donated to the GoFundMe set up to raise funds for the purchase and transportation of the car. “I like to show our inquisitive visitors our fully restored MUNI car #1016, which we store in Carbarn 3,” he wrote. “It’s also a PCC car like the 502, although it does have a few distinct differences in its body shape and styling. “When visitors get an idea of the art-deco beauty of these cars when fully restored they often leave us with wonderful words of encouragement as well as the occasional interest in volunteering,” Marcopolus wrote. The San Diego Electric Railway PCC No. 502 arrived on the last day of 2020. A bevy of heavy equipment, and a handful of volunteers, were on hand to unload and prep the 1937 streetcar. It’s the first Pres-
Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post file (2009)
President Barack Obama awarded Archbishop Desmond Tutu the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
The San Diego Electric Railway PCC No. 502 arrived at the museum on the last day of 2020. idents Conference Committee streetcar to arrive on the West Coast. PCCs were the last streetcars built in the United States prior to the light rail vehicles. The car needs lots of TLC. Hopefully, work will begin on the restoration in the next year or two. “Covid reduced how much time we had to work on things,” Mar-
copolus said, adding volunteers at higher risk for coronavirus have been not been able to help as much. Marcopulos and other younger volunteers have done a variety of projects at the museum, including restoring a signal relay box that will be used to store relays and an See Museum, Page A8
WRM’s new director was Dirt The Cat’s agent Amy Maginnis-Honey
AMAGINNIS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET
Courtesy photo
Eric Mencis is Western Railway Museum’s new executive director.
SUISUN CITY — Eric Mencis is the new executive director for the Western Railway Museum. “There are not enough words to describe how excited I am to join this fantastic preservation team. It is a thrill to help preserve the electric railway history of the region. A train lover from the beginning, I took my very first ride on the rails at the Illinois Railway Museum Union, back when I was three years old,” he wrote on the museum’s Facebook page. “They had one of the electric interurbans running that day. The one memory I have, and probably the first real memory I have, is that I was fascinated by the raising and lowering of the trolley poles.” He brings almost 15 years expe-
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rience of working on different historic railroads. “My sense of adventure and love of trains took me from my family home in Joliet, Ill., to Durango, Colo., for college. At Fort Lewis College, I studied tourism & hospitality management. Of course, I went there for the railroad too, and I worked my way through school, car attendant on the famed Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad,” he wrote on Facebook. Other parts of his career include the Skunk Train right here in California. “Those were exciting times, operating their “Skunk” motorcar over the grades and back between Willits and Fort Bragg,” he wrote. Mencis also served as an agent for See Director, Page A8
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Study: Covid can persist for months after traversing entire body Tribune Content Agency The coronavirus that causes Covid-19, SARSCoV-2, can spread within days from the airways to the heart, brain and almost every organ system in the body, where it may persist for months, a study found. In what they describe as the most comprehensive analysis to date of the virus’s distribution and persistence in the body and brain, scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health said they found the pathogen is capable of replicating in human cells well beyond the respiratory tract. The results, released online Saturday in a man-
uscript under review for publication in the journal Nature, point to delayed viral clearance as a potential contributor to the persistent symptoms wracking so-called long Covid sufferers. Understanding the mechanisms by which the virus persists, along with the body’s response to any viral reservoir, promises to help improve care for those afflicted, the authors said. “This is remarkably important work,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the clinical epidemiology center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, See Study, Page A8
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