Alameda Pipe-a-thon 2018 ‘takes the fifth’ against cancer
For the fifth New Year’s Eve in a row, the Alameda Pipe-a-thon hit the bars of the Island City, with Scottish ex-pat and Alameda resident Andy MacKay playing “Auld Lang Syne” on the bagpipes in 21 bars and restaurants on the Island. In the process, he raised just shy of $5,000 for the American Cancer Society (ACS).
MacKay was accompanied again by Team Pipe-a-thon, including “Jake and Elwood Blues” (Joe and Jamie, in kilts) along with Rod, Tony, Feargal and Bruno “The Pipe-mobile Drivers.”
The Navy is nearing completion of plans for a cleanup area called Site 32, 60 acres that lie on the old airfield west of the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. The site requires remediation because investigators uncovered radium-226 there. The Navy mixed radium-226, a naturally occurring mineral, with paint to allow dials and markers to glow in the dark. Repeated exposure to high levels of radium can cause cancer.
A look at 2018 through the pages of the Alameda Sun
Part Two: July to December
July
Celebrating the Fourth
In usual grand fashion the city kicked off the second half of 2018 with its famous Fourth of July parade. Mayor Trish Spencer honored four pillars of the Alameda community, naming them the parade’s Grand Marshals: Mas Takano, Pauline Kelley, Duane Watson and Gordon Ma.
Judge Dellbert Gee, right, administers the oath of office to new City Councilmember John Knox White on Dec. 18. Knox White will take his seat on the Council with the city’s new mayor, Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, newly elected Councilmembers Tony Daysog and Jim Oddie, as well as Councilmember Malia Vella.
Oddie, whose term had expired, was elected to fill the seat vacated when Ezzy Ashcraft won the majority.
Jim Franz ‘Retires’
The year began with the city giving Jim Franz, aka the “Energizer Bunny,” a royal send off. Franz moved to Alameda in 1981, where he got a job with the Red Cross and volunteered to sit on Alameda’s Social Service Human Relations Board.
His involvement in community affairs so impressed his fellow Island City dwellers that they named him “Man of the Year” and “Humanitarian of the Year.”
