CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Dimming the Fatal Allure of Golden Gate Bridge : As grim toll mounts, the mayor wants to install telephones linked to suicide hot lines. But some experts say that doesn’t go far enough.

Three months after the Golden Gate Bridge opened in May, 1937, a war veteran named Harold B. Wobber climbed over its rust-red railing and plunged 220 feet to his death. Since then, a grim parade of tormented souls have followed him, giving the San Francisco landmark dubious fame as the No. 1 suicide shrine in the Western world.

Most were killed instantly, but one who survived his four-second tumble called it “the only stylish way to go.” Another described it as “certain death in a painless way,” and “a romantic thing to do.”

San Franciscans have long regretted the morbid legend their beloved bridge has become, and Mayor Frank Jordan, hoping to reduce deaths and rid the bridge of its haunting stigma, is advocating a plan to equip the span with emergency telephones linked directly to suicide prevention counselors.

“It is high time we took some action to prevent this ongoing tragedy,” the mayor recently said.

Experts applaud the idea but say it doesn’t go far enough. They want a suicide barrier erected on the bridge, a solution proven effective at the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco Bridge, and other once-notorious plunging platforms.

“Phone lines are a step in the right direction, but they won’t save those who are really determined to go,” said Dr. Jerome Motto, a UC San Francisco psychiatrist and authority on suicides. “The bridge is like a loaded gun on your coffee table. If we really want to save lives, we need to unload that gun.”

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Luis Marin, an accountant from Guatemala City, peered over the Golden Gate’s iron railing, staring at the frothy gray waters far below. “How,” the tourist wondered as he aimed his camera downward, “could anyone make such a jump?”

The Golden Gate’s chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, was convinced that no one would. A year before the bridge carried its first car, Strauss promised that its railings and security system would make suicides impossible.

Wobber’s death leap quickly proved Strauss wrong and today the official tally of victims totals 938--a number that excludes 422 “possibles” whose bodies never turned up. On average, there is a suicide from the bridge once every three weeks.

Many leave notes that bespeak their despair. One memorable message, left by a 72-year-old man in 1959, read: “Survival of the fittest. Adios--Unfit.”

Inside the Golden Gate Bridge Gift Center, workers turn somber when the topic is raised. From their posts amid the shop’s key chains and T-shirt racks, they can see the bodies drop.

“My husband was a painter on the bridge,” said a cashier who preferred not to give her name, “and he always had these horrible nightmares. He would hear them screaming as they jumped. He believed they changed their minds halfway down.”

Jackson Fung is the Golden Gate’s chief of operations, the boss of those whose duties often include cajoling the suicidal back from the edge. Fung says each worker has his own counseling techniques, which sometimes work and sometimes don’t.

“Sometimes we’ll offer them a drink--hard liquor--and that breaks the ice,” said Fung, a 33-year bridge employee. “Other times you can trick them, offer them a cigarette and then grab their wrist when they reach for it.”

One of Fung’s more memorable encounters involved a man perched on the far side of the east railing, just out of his reach. When the man told Fung he didn’t like Japanese people, Fung replied, “ ‘That’s good, because I’m Chinese.’ That got us to talking, and he came back over.”

One frustrating phenomenon, bridge workers say, are the repeat customers. Attempted suicide is not illegal in California, and many return for a second try after they are released from a mandatory 72 hours of observation at a local hospital.

The man Fung dissuaded from jumping is a case in point. “He came back, and he asked for me. This time we spent three hours talking.”

It worked. He didn’t jump.

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Psychologists have long puzzled over the peculiar attractions the Golden Gate holds for the suicidal. The obvious ones are accessibility--you don’t need a gun permit or prescription--and the fact that jumping is quick and lethal.

“There is also an undecipherable aspect of the bridge that draws people, something we may never understand,” said Richard Seiden, a psychologist and longtime student of bridge suicides. “It’s like those other places with mystique, like hanging trees and lovers’ leaps. It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Through the years, civic leaders have debated anti-suicide solutions ranging from electric fences to safety nets to signs urging people to “Think Before You Leap.” In the 1970s, a proposed 8-foot-high barrier was widely studied and ultimately rejected for reasons of aesthetics and cost.

But the issue was revived earlier this year after a man from the suburbs threw his 3-year-old daughter over the bridge and then jumped after her in one of the most horrifying suicides in bridge history.

Although some argue that a barrier would only persuade the suicidal to go somewhere else to kill themselves, research suggests otherwise. Seiden said one study of a rare handful of Golden Gate survivors showed that the vast majority never attempted suicide again.

Mayor Jordan has not ruled out barriers, but for now is advocating the emergency phones as part of a suicide awareness program. They would link up with a 24-hour suicide hot line, distinguishing them from existing bridge phones used by motorists in trouble.

In announcing his plan a few weeks back, Jordan spoke solemnly about the dark side of the city’s majestic bridge.

“We need to reach out to the countless lost souls, the desperate, hopeless and despairing who believe they have no other option in life,” he said.

Just six hours later, a young woman became bridge suicide No. 938. Her body remains in the morgue, under the name Jane Doe.