Shivering on a Richmond district street, Eric Mar was wearing nothing but underwear as he watched 20 years of his life burn to rubble.
Meanwhile, 15 blocks away, Jade Mar, his newborn daughter, was safe with his wife at the Kaiser hospital on Geary Boulevard. Except now they had no home to return to, and the many gifts that were meant to welcome Jade into the world were in ashes.
It was the early morning of April 6, 2000. Mar — the cool-headed San Francisco supervisor who was then a professor at San Francisco State University — said he was startled awake following a dream in which he was engulfed in smoke.
But the dream was actually reality.
His bed was on fire (apparently, the frayed wire of an electric blanket ignited it), and the blaze was swiftly growing out of control. He ran from his flat in his skivvies, coaxing his 80-year-old mother along with him. They survived without injury — even Mar’s cats escaped unscathed.
What perished, however, were the gifts and the room Mar and his wife had carefully prepared for Jade, as well as his classic comics, his book collection, his trumpet case and most of the photographs he cherished. He lost almost everything, except his underwear.
“It was really traumatic,” Mar said. “I was on a high about being a father, but there was a feeling of tremendous loss.”
Losing all those things was not what hurt, he said. And it wasn’t that those possessions would be expensive to replace.
“Luckily, we had renter’s insurance,” he said.
What hurt was that all that had been stored in the flat, where he and his wife had resided since 1984, was a history of two decades of his life. He had planned to show Jade those comics. He wanted to read to her from those old books. He had hoped to give her more than just stories.
More than nine years later — a week before Father’s Day — Mar recalled the story of the fire from his City Hall office. It remains difficult to discuss, he said. He sighed while recalling the blaze’s aftermath.
“And then to see it in a street in a pile,” he said. “But you start over. And with the new kid, it made it OK.”
Just four years later, Mar endured another major loss when his father — the family man and war veteran who revealed very little of himself — passed away.
“He was a very happy person, but he kind of kept to himself,” Mar said. “He was somebody that didn’t complain about things.”
His father, Richard, arrived on Angel Island from China in the 1920s, at age 2. He was raised in Modesto, was the center on his junior college basketball team, gained citizenship through his Army service and eventually moved to Sacramento, where he married Mar’s mother and worked as a draftsman at the water resources department.
Mar described Richard as an attentive father who taught Mar and his brothers to be gentlemen. The elder Mar shared a passion for baseball and basketball, and his son smiles when recalling how his father would often hum the classic tune “I’m in the Mood for Love.”
“My dad probably gave up a lot of his dreams, like many people, to fully provide for the family,” Mar said. “I regret that I didn’t talk with him more. I have to fill the void by now learning about the Chinese-Americans in the Delta, and the Chinese in World War II.”
Long before Richard died, before Jade was born and before his Richmond district flat burned down, Mar was already working to answer the question marks of his father’s past. While attending UC Davis in the early 1980s, Mar took an instant liking to Asian-American studies.
“It allowed me to learn about my family’s history,” he said.
Mar would later use his education to tell others about the struggles Asian-Americans have faced — struggles that his father refused to complain about.
Between 1992 and last year, Mar taught Asian-American and ethnic studies at SFSU. He was also once director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights and was a longtime social-justice activist with various grassroots organizations.
Even today, Mar said he continues researching his father’s life. He’s recently taken several trips to Angel Island to further that effort. He brought Jade along, who is now “9 going on 16,” Mar said.
“I’m trying to know more about how my father came [to the U.S.] with his mother, and how they settled in Modesto,” he said.
Meanwhile, the supervisor said, he’s making it a point to talk more about himself with Jade than his father had with him.
“I try to make her the very center of the universe when I’m with her,” Mar said, adding that the father-daughter dynamic makes it a little easier.
In what he calls a nearly impossible balancing act between his political career and family life, Mar often reads to his daughter, tells her stories involving the people in her life, occasionally walks her to school, takes her to the movies and shares with her his love of comics.
“She wants to be a cartoonist when she grows up,” Mar said.
While he cannot show her the comic collection that burned with the rest of his belongings only days after she was born, Mar now knows he can create a new one with his daughter, or simply enjoy those she creates for him.
To Mar, fatherhood is not just about doing what your father did for you, but doing even more.
Supervisor’s daughter quickly following in father’s footsteps
Supervisor Eric Mar is hardly the lone politician in his family.
Jade, a third grader at McCoppin Elementary School, has become quite a public figure during her short lifespan, Mar said.
From an early age, Mar, formerly a commissioner for the San Francisco Board of Education, brought Jade to his school board meetings, where she learned the value of diplomacy, he said.
“She had to interact with people all the time,” he said. “She makes friends very easily.”
The 9-year-old is also becoming a bit of a star on Mar’s Twitter page, where the supervisor has written about her political policies.
“Jade says the new [General Motors] should make electric cars,” he wrote in a recent post.
But there is a dark side to her political involvement, Mar said.
When she accompanies Mar to various City Hall receptions, she’s able to find out who the most important person is in the room before gravitating towards them, Mar said.
“She kind of stumbles towards them,” he joked. “I guess I have to worry that she looks for people that she thinks are influential as a way of getting her own influence.”
Mar said he’s afraid that “she’s seen me do that” and learned from him.
He certainly should worry. Jade’s growing up rather quickly — way more quickly than a father celebrating his ninth Father’s Day would want.
She not only can search Google and look up answers on Wikipedia, she is also already done liking Hannah Montana, he said.
“Now she’s a Hannah basher,” he said.
— Mike Aldax
A few of Mar’s favorite things
Favorite movies
– “Tsotsi”: “What I loved about that movie is it humanizes people who are the most demonized in society.”
– “Up”: “There were parts that I cried and parts where I was jumping for joy. And the animation is so amazing.”
Recommended books
– “America is in the Heart” by Carlos Bulosan. “It’s about a Filipino immigrant laborer, about values we have about what to make America.”
– “People’s History of Sports” by Dave Zirin. “He’s trying to tell sports from the players’ and the fans’ perspective, not from the owners or a mainstream perspective. I love his style.”
Favorite book he’s read to his daughter
– “Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel,” a children’s book by local artists Anthony Robles (author) and Carl Angel (illustrator).
Favorite activities with his daughter
– Reading and telling each other stories.
– Going to Giants games together. “One glitch is that her mom’s from L.A., so there’s this part of [Jade] that wants to vote for the Lakers or Dodgers. I’m trying to break her of that.”
Favorite sport to watch or play
– Baseball
Favorite TV shows
– “The Wire”
– “30 Rock”
– “Saturday Night Live”
Last vacation
– Honolulu, where his wife was born.
Favorite park or playground
– Angelo Rossi Park, Arguello Boulevard and Anza Street
Favorite bike ride
“I live at 7th and Fulton, and it’s a beautiful ride to work [at City Hall].”
Jade’s first word
“It was more like, ‘What dat?’”
Favorite activities in The City
“Walking on the sand at Ocean Beach; just being in Golden Gate Park, with all the activities … including the de Young Museum and the Academy of Sciences.”
Favorite restaurants
– Giorgio’s at Third Avenue and Clement Street
– Sushi Bistro at Balboa Street and Sixth Avenue
Best dessert place:
– Genki at Clement Street and Fourth Avenue (best crepes and tapioca drinks)
Best restaurant to bring kids:
– Mel’s on Geary Street.
– Joe’s Ice Cream on Geary Boulevard and 18th Avenue
Eric Mar
Age: 46, born August 15, 1962
Born: Sacramento
Residence: Richmond district
High school: Kennedy High School
Family: Wife, Sandra Chin-Mar, a public school teacher, and 9-year-old daughter Jade
College: UC Davis
Career milestones
1992-2008: Associate professor at San Francisco State University, taught Asian American and ethnic studies
1993-1997: Assistant dean for New College Law School in San Francisco.
1998: Elected to the San Francisco County & Central Committee of the Democratic Party.
2000-2008: Serves as an elected commissioner on the San Francisco Board of Education. Also serves on the Select Committee of the Board of Supervisors and Board of Education, which coordinates policymaking between city government and the school district.
2009: Becomes the supervisor for San Francisco’s District 1, which includes the Richmond district, replacing Jake McGoldrick.
