Herb Caen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who for six decades chronicled his beloved city with wit, wisdom and gossip, and who himself became an enduring symbol of its charm, died Saturday. He was 80.
Diagnosed with inoperable cancer in April 1996, Caen wrote sporadically to the end, despite his failing health. His wife, Ann, was at his side when he died at Pacific Medical Center."I've lost a friend, San Francisco has lost its most passionate lover and the world has lost a fine journalist," said former CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite, who had known Caen since World War II.
Mayor Willie Brown ordered the city's flags flown at half-staff in honor of the man with whom he ate lunch nearly every Friday.
"He was an extraordinary human being," Brown said. "He was so interested in life and so well-informed and so inquisitive about everything and so ordinary in many respects. He was constantly in pursuit of the truth. He loved to tell the story."
Caen's daily collection of local news, gossip, jokes and one-liners amused millions of readers across Northern California as they sat down to their first cup of coffee each morning.
But Caen - pronounced "cane" - was perhaps best known for his wistful paeans to his "Baghdad by the Bay."
"There is no way to give up on San Francisco, once you have fallen under its spell," he said in his book "One Man's San Francisco." He wrote of moments "when the wind and the light are right, and the air smells ocean-clean, and a white ship is emerging from the Golden Gate mist into the Bay, and the towers are reflecting the sun's last rays."