Victoria Manalo Draves Park

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Victoria Manalo Draves Park
Draves was honored with a Google Doodle on August 3, 2020.

By Cindy Casey

Some find themselves in SOMA’s Victoria Manalo Draves Park to tend to their public garden. Some come to walk their dog, and others to enjoy the only open space in the Western SOMA CBD area.

To many, the park has always been a constant presence. However, not that long ago, it was a giant slab of black top with Jessie Carmichael Elementary School, housed in a battery of temporary trailers at the back of the two-acre parcel.

Bessie Carmichael School opened as a temporary school in 1954. It served as a school for the SOMA area in its bleak, rundown way for 52 years.

In 1996, then-Mayor Willie Brown and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate a series of property transfers between the agencies for the construction of a new neighborhood park. In February 1997, the Board of Supervisors approved an exchange and lease agreement between the City and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to purchase the Bessie Carmichael School site for a new city park.

It wasn't until 2006 that the reality of a decent school for the neighborhood children and a park for the area was realized.

And yet, who was Victoria "Vicki" Manalo Draves?

Draves (December 31, 1924 – April 11, 2010) was born in San Francisco to a Filipino father and an English mother who had met and married there. She grew up in the SOMA area, attending Bessie Carmichael School with her twin sister Connie, and was very aware of the prejudices of the time aimed at her bi-racial family.

Draves, who wanted to become a ballet dancer but could not afford lessons, instead took summer swim classes from the Red Cross in the Mission District pool for a nickel. Sadly, prejudice followed her there. In 1940s San Francisco, public pools were segregated by race, with "whites only" access, except for one day a month, when people of color were allowed to swim. The pools would be drained and cleaned the next day.

Despite the odds, she went on to be an Olympic diver, winning two gold medals in platform and springboard diving at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.