Public Accomplishments
As mayor, Shell promoted civic self-esteem. She reached out to the minority community. She chided NBC The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson for his reference to "beautiful downtown Bakersfield" (Carson also referred to Burbank, though his remarks were not considered malicious). “I tried to get Johnny Carson to come here and see for himself . He never made it", Shell remembers.
A partial list of her accomplishments include:
(1) Founding the Beautiful Bakersfield Committee with an annual awards dinner and the restoration of the community Christmas parade
(2) Establishing a committee of veteran’s organizations to build a memorial to Medal of Honor recipient Larry Pierce of Bakersfield and to all from Kern County who served in the Vietnam War. The memorial is located at the county courts building.
(3) Creating the Bakersfield Historical Preservation Commission
(4) Establishing the annual Bakersfield Prayer Breakfast
(5) Serving on the California Local Government Task Force under appointment from Republican Governor George Deukmejian
Read more about this topic: Mary K. Shell
Famous quotes containing the word public:
“We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)