The Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive in Vallejo was damaged last month after a driver plowed into the converted garage that houses it and reportedly fled, while the founder is expressing support as she works to have the building repaired.Ms.
Bob Davis, a trans woman who founded the archive in 2017 — it opened in September 2018 — told the Bay Area Reporter in a phone interview that no one was injured during the incident, which occurred on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility."I was rushing to events in San Francisco and ran into the archive to get some brochures," Davis wrote in an email to supporters. "Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by an SUV parked in the middle of the office.
How did that get here??!"Neighbors said the driver lost control, smashed through the rear wall of the archive, and ran. He hasn't been seen since, Davis added. "The damage was largely confined to the office, which is one of two rooms that houses the small archive.
It obliterated the whole office," she said.The archive is named in honor of the late northern California transgender pioneer Louise Lawrence (1912-1976), who began living full-time as a woman in 1942, first in Berkeley then San Francisco, as the B.A.R.