SAN FRANCISCO – Greenbrae’s Bill Del Monte rode in on a shiny, black 1931 Lincoln convertible early Monday morning as the star of the 105th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
At 105 years old, Del Monte is one of the last survivors of the earthquake and the only one to appear to commemorate the anniversary of the quake at Lotta’s Fountain on Market Street. The fountain served as a place for the community to gather after the earth shook that day.
It was only Del Monte’s third appearance at the predawn event.
“I’d always figured 5 a.m. was too damn early,” Del Monte said with a laugh, as he bundled up in a San Francisco Giants blanket to brace against the early-morning cold. He wore a commemorative fire department hat for the occasion.
He made the trip in recent years at the urging of family and organizers, but he said Monday would be his last.
“This is the last time I’m sure. A few weeks ago I was saying ‘no’ to this, but they talked me into it,” said Del Monte, who turned 105 on Jan. 22. “I guess I’m a hero for today.”
Asked about his key to longevity: “I wish I knew.”
Del Monte was interviewed for the crowd of 200 by event host Bob Sarlatte, then at 5:12 a.m. after a countdown, a cascade of fire and police sirens rang in the anniversary.
Del Monte has been in the Bay Area all his life. He married Vera Minetti in 1934 and they were together almost 58 years until she died in 1992. Del Monte has spent most of his work life playing the stock market, being wiped out in 1929, but he rebounded and keeps his eye on the market via the Internet.
“I did get out of it right before the crash two years ago,” said Del Monte, who has lived in Marin for the past four decades. “I have missed some of the rebound, but I do think it will dip again. Then again, I have been wrong before … and I have been right.”
Del Monte — who lives at The Tamalpais retirement community — was all of 3 months old when the earthquake rocked his home at Kearny and Broadway streets.
He was told that when the earthquake hit, his mother grabbed a tablecloth, put him inside and wrapped him up.
Del Monte’s father saw the fire advancing on the home and he was able to find a horse and wagon to haul a few household items and the family. His family’s house burned down. The family took off past burning buildings and headed to the waterfront, where they were able to get a ferry to the East Bay town of Elmhurst — now a part of Oakland — to a summer home there.
That’s where Del Monte, along with his mother, three brothers and one sister, lived in the days and months after the quake.
His father — who founded the still-in-existence Fior d’Itallia restaurant in 1886 — rebuilt the eatery and the family home that sat behind it. Del Monte worked as a hat-check boy and a cashier at the restaurant.
“Of course I was too young to remember any of the earthquake,” Del Monte said with a smile.
The 7.9-magnitude quake hit Marin with equal force. Many fewer people lived in Marin then, but it made an impression on those who resided in the county.
“We heard a terrific rumble,” said Tina Pastori, who was a child living in Fairfax in 1906, in an oral history provided by the Anne T. Kent California Room at the Marin County Library. “It sounded like an explosion was going to happen. It was a roar until finally it came into a terrific crash and all we could hear, I could hear, was breaking of glass, like windows cracking.”
In San Anselmo, the San Francisco Theological Seminary, a stone building without any reinforcing, began to crumble.
“The big tower in Scott Hall went off, most of it through the roof,” recalled Warren Landon, in an oral history. He was 16 at the time. “And there was a terrible mess.”
He said San Rafael shook hard.
“I was in San Rafael, sound asleep when I was pretty near shaken out of bed and when I got up, the chandelier was swinging around and so on,” Landon recalled. “I looked out the window and I could see other people running out, so I headed downstairs and followed them out.”
West Marin, closest to the rupturing San Andreas Fault, began shaking violently seven seconds into the quake. On the Skinner Ranch in Olema, the fault displaced a fence by 18 feet and a fissure appeared, documented later in a famous photo by G.K. Gilbert.
The Del Monte Family 