Suicide rates in San Francisco are down by more than half ever since Bernard Mayes created the first suicide hotline in the city. “Thinking of ending it all? Call Bruce, PR1-0450, San Francisco Suicide Prevention.” That’s what the advertisement read, displayed on city buses in 1961 (Bruce being his pseudonym).
According to close friend Matthew A. Chayt, Mayes died on Oct. 23 at age 85. He had Parkinson’s disease.
Of all his varied endeavors — he was a journalist, a professor and a gay rights activist among other things — Mr. Mayes was most proud of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, the hotline he set up in 1961 with a single red telephone in the city’s gritty Tenderloin District.
In “Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio,” the author, Jack W. Mitchell, himself a former board chairman of what is now called NPR, wrote that Mr. Mayes and other early board members had tried to “solve the old conflict between ‘giving the public what it wants’ (commercial broadcasting) and ‘giving the public what it needs’ (public service broadcasting) by ‘giving the public the microphone.’ ”
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This man’s story is a pretty remarkable example of what conviction, compassion and transformation can look like. Read more about Mayes in The New York Times‘ thoughtful obituary.
