Rep. Burton Remembered at Rites for Social Issue Efforts

Rep. Sala Burton (D-San Francisco) was remembered in services attended by more than 120 members of Congress Thursday as a fighter for social causes who had “instant clout” when she took the seat held by her late husband, Phillip Burton.

“She buttonholed the men in Congress by flicking the lint from their lapels instead of twisting their arms,” said Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio).

House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas said Mrs. Burton will be remembered in Washington as one who treated others with gentleness and kindness and became “sort of a den mother of many families of the younger members of Congress.”

“There is in Congress a formal phrase which is used to address a member of Congress--the gentlewoman of California,’ ” the Democrat said. “For Sala Burton, that is not an idle, empty term of reference, but a peculiarly fitting personal description.”

The public memorial service, attended by more than 500 mourners in the packed City Hall rotunda, followed a private burial at San Francisco’s National Cemetery at the 6th Army Presidio overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.

Mrs. Burton’s death at 61 ended a dynasty in San Francisco politics that was led by her husband. Mrs. Burton, a Polish immigrant whose family had fled the Nazis, was elected to her husband’s seat after his death in 1983.