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THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Adjournment ` February 7, 2006
On this day the Board adjourned for William Slifer Mar. 7, 1936 - Jan. 24, 2006. Bill Slifer
passed away peacefully at his home in Discovery Bay on January 24, 2006, after fighting a
courageous battle with cancer. Bill graduated from Penn State University with a Business degree
in 1958. He was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He worked for IBM for 30 years,
and after retiring he moved to Discovery Bay, where he became involved with the Town
Management. He was the first President of the Discovery Bay Town Board, and served on it
from 1998 to 2001. Because of his years of service with the Town Board, a park in Discovery
Bay was named after him Slifer Park. He was very proud of this, as is his family. He also held a
position on the M-8 Sanitation District 19 Board. He was involved with the Lions Club, and
served as both President and Secretary. Bill was also a member of the SIRS Branch#161. He
leaves behind his loving wife of 47 years, Barbara; three children, Doug Slifer, David Slifer, and
Debbie Drennan; and by seven grandsons, Vincent, David, Michael, Mark, Matthew, Jon, and
Chris. He will be missed dearly by all.
THIS IS A MATTER FOR RECORD PURPOSES ONLY
NO BOARD ACTION WAS TAKEN
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ADJOURNMENT
THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Date: February 7, 2006 Adjournment
On this day the Board adjourned in the memory of
ATLANTA(AP) - Coretta Scott King wore her grief with remarkable
grace, and it made her one of the most influential figures in the struggle for
civil rights.
tea.„ The "first lady of the civil rights movement," who died in her sleep
WM Tuesday at age 78, was a supportive lieutenant to her husband, the Rev.
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Martin Luther King Jr., and after his assassination in 1968, she carried on
his work while raising their four children.
Coretta Scott King died at an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico. Doctors at the clinic said
King was battling advanced ovarian cancer when she arrived Thursday. They said the cause of
death was respiratory failure.
Arrangements were being made to fly her body to Atlanta. She had been recovering from a
serious stroke and heart attack suffered last August. Just two weeks ago, she made her first
public appearance in a year on the eve of her late husband's birthday.
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, one of Martin Luther King's top aides, said Coretta
Scott King's fortitude rivaled that of her husband. "She was strong if not stronger than he
was," Young said.
News of her death led to tributes to King across Atlanta, including a moment of silence in the
Georgia Capitol and piles of flowers placed at the tomb of her slain husband. Flags at the
King Center-the institute devoted to the civil rights leader's legacy-were lowered to half-
staff.
"She wore her grief with grace. She exerted her leadership with dignity," said the Rev. Joseph
Lowery,who helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King's
husband in 1957.
She supported her husband during the most dangerous and tumultuous days of the civil rights
movement. After his death in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, the young widow said she
was "more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality."
In 1969, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in
Atlanta and used it to confront hunger, unemployment, voting rights and racism.
"The center enables us to go out and struggle against the evils in our society," she often said.
She also accused movie and TV companies, video arcades, gun manufacturers and toy makers
of promoting violence.
King became a symbol in her own right of her husband's struggle for peace and brotherhood,
presiding with a quiet, stoic dignity over seminars and conferences.
She pushed politicians for more than a decade to have her husband's birthday observed as a
national holiday, achieving success in 1986.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was with her husband when he was assassinated, said Tuesday
that she understood that every time her husband left home, there was the chance he might not
come back. Jackson pronounced her a "freedom fighter."
"Like all great champions she learned to function with pain and keep serving," he said,
adding: "She kept marching. She did not flinch."
In Washington, President Bush hailed her as "a remarkable and courageous woman and a
great civil rights leader."
After her stroke, King missed the annual King celebration in Atlanta two weeks ago but
appeared with her children at an awards dinner a few days earlier, smiling from her
wheelchair but not speaking. The crowd gave her a standing ovation.
Despite her repeated calls for unity among civil rights groups, her own children have been
divided over whether to sell the King Center to the National Park Service and let the family
focus less on grounds maintenance and more on King's message. Two of the four children
were strongly against such a move.
Gov. Sonny Perdue ordered flags at all state buildings to be flown at half-staff and offered to
allow King's body to lie in repose at the Georgia Capitol. There was no immediate response to
the offer, the governor's office said.
King died at Santa Monica Health Institute in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, south of San Diego,
said her sister, Edythe Scott Bagley of Cheyney, Pa.
Coretta Scott was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and planning on
a singing career when a friend introduced her to King, a young Baptist minister studying at
Boston University.
"She said she wanted me to meet a very promising young minister from Atlanta," King once
said, adding with a laugh: "I wasn't interested in meeting a young minister at that time."
She recalled that on their first date he told her: "You know, you have everything I ever wanted
in a woman. We ought to get married someday." Eighteen months later, in 1953, they did.
The couple moved to Montgomery, Ala., where he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church and helped lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott that Rosa Parks set in
motion when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. With that campaign, King
began enacting his philosophy of nonviolent, direct social action.
Over the years, King was with her husband in his finest hours. She was at his side as he
received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. She marched beside him from Selma, Ala., into
Montgomery in 1965 on the triumphant drive for a voting rights law.
Only days after his death, she flew to Memphis with three of her children to lead thousands
marching in honor of her slain husband and to plead for his cause.
"I think you rise to the occasion in a crisis," she once said. "I think the Lord gives you
strength when you need it. God was using us - and now he's using me, too."
Her husband's womanizing had been an open secret during the height of the civil rights
movement. In January, a new book, "At Canaan's Edge" by Taylor Branch, put his infidelity
back in the spotlight. It said that not long before he was assassinated, King confessed a long-
standing affair to his wife while she was recovering from a hysterectomy.
The King family, especially Coretta Scott King and her father-in-law, Martin Luther King Sr.,
were highly visible in 1976 when former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ran for president. When
an integration dispute at Carter's Plains church created a furor, Coretta Scott King campaigned
at Carter's side the next day.
She later was named by Carter to serve as part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations,
where Young was the ambassador.
King was born April 27, 1927, in Perry County, Ala. Her father ran a country store. To help
her family during the Depression, young Coretta picked cotton. Later, she worked as a
waitress to earn her way through Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
In 1994, she stepped down as head of the King Center, passing the job to son Dexter, who in
turn passed the job on to her other son, Martin III, in 2004. Dexter continued to serve as the
center's chief operating officer. Martin III also has served on the Fulton County(Ga.)
commission and as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, co-founded by
his father in 1957. Daughter Yolanda became an actress and the youngest child, Bernice,