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:
“Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)