Leona M. Bridges Made Sure Everything Added Up

SAN FRANCISCO — Leona M. Bridges spent her career making the numbers work. Billions in other people’s money. The retirement checks of every city worker in San Francisco. The bonds that built the city’s parking garages.

Her brothers and sisters put it simpler. She was the one who “made sure everything added up, and always made sure everyone was taken care of.”

Bridges died Sept. 26. She was 70. On Oct. 28, San Francisco gathered at Third Baptist Church on McAllister Street to send her home.

The room

The day started at 10 a.m. with an Omega Omega service, the farewell Delta Sigma Theta gives its own. Then came the memorial at 11, led by the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, Third Baptist’s senior pastor.

The list of people who came to speak, one minute each, told you who she was. The offices of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, State Controller Malia Cohen and Mayor Daniel Lurie. The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The San Francisco Employees’ Retirement Board. Delta Sigma Theta. The NAACP. The National Council of Negro Women. San Francisco State University. The California State Baptist Convention. And the Ushers Ministry of Third Baptist, where she served for years.

Kevan Peabody sang “Well Done.” Deacon Douglas Haynes sang “What Are They Doing in Heaven.” Deltrina Johnson sang “I Won’t Complain.” The Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, delivered the eulogy.

The work

She was born in Louisiana and became a San Franciscan the way the best ones do, by choosing it and then giving herself to it.

She earned her business degree at San Francisco State in 1979 and an MBA from Golden Gate University’s Ageno School of Business. For more than two decades she was a managing director at Barclays Global Investors, working in global securities lending and trading, custody and client service, until BlackRock bought the firm in 2009. The work took her around the world, including Africa. The industry magazine Global Custodian put her in its Securities Services Hall of Fame.

Then she gave the city the same skills.

Appointed to the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System board in 2013, she served as its president, its vice president and, at the end, its acting president. Nominated by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, she served as a director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and a commissioner of the Parking Authority, and stayed on its Bond Oversight Committee. She sat on the California State University system’s Investment Advisory Committee. Recommended by Pelosi and nominated by President Joe Biden, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which oversees retirement savings for millions of federal workers and members of the military.

The ladder

Some people climb the ladder and pull it up behind them. Leona Bridges held it.

At San Francisco State she created the Leona M. Bridges Endowed Scholarship in Business for students who came in without money or a head start. The university put her in its Alumni Hall of Fame in 2011. She served on the SF State Foundation board, the Golden Gate University business school’s advisory council, the West Bay Local Development Corporation, Third Baptist Gardens and the Delta Research and Educational Foundation. She was a life member of Delta Sigma Theta’s San Francisco Alumnae Chapter and served on the sorority’s National Social Action Commission. She was a life member of the NAACP’s San Francisco Branch and the National Council of Negro Women’s Golden Gate Section.

She had access, and she spent it on people who didn’t.

The honors piled up. Citizen of the Year from the National Council of Negro Women. The Trailblazer Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women of San Francisco. Woman of Achievement from Legal Momentum. The Eagle Award from the National Association of Securities Professionals. A Certificate of Honor from the Board of Supervisors. An honorary Doctor of Laws from the American Baptist Seminary of the West, where she was a trustee.

She kept it simple anyway. She believed “we should always be a blessing to others,” and she lived that way.

The faith

At Third Baptist she served on the Usher Board and the Finance Committee. Of course she did. Beyond her home church, she was general secretary of the California State Baptist Convention.

The laugh

Don’t picture her quiet. She lived fully and laughed often. She was a loud, loyal sports fan, the 49ers above all, and nobody who watched a game with her ever mistook her for a spectator. She traveled, and from wherever she went, the postcards came home. She took pictures of big moments and small ones. And she was always ready to shop.

The family

She was named after her grandmother. Her siblings say she carried that woman’s spirit, wisdom and strength. She was the mentor for her nieces and nephews and for a lot of young people who weren’t related to her at all.

She and her mother, Thelma Bridges, were exceptionally close. Thelma gave her the faith that carried her. Thelma survives her.

“You had a remarkable way of making everyone feel loved, supported, and never alone,” her mother wrote in the service program. “Rest peacefully, my sweet girl. I will love you always.”

She is also survived by her siblings Brenda, Gwendolyn, David, Patricia and Tracy, and by a host of nieces, nephews, godchildren and friends who became family. She was preceded in death by her brothers Lawrence and Otha.

People like Leona Bridges don’t leave. They stay in the people they lifted, and in the stories those people keep telling.

Gifts in her memory may be made to the Leona M. Bridges Endowed Scholarship in Business at San Francisco State University.