THE CALIFORNIA legislature has approved a resolution naming a highway after the late Faculty of Arts and Letters professor Alice Bulos, who dedicated over 40 years of her life to community service.
Assembly Concurrent Resolution 165 changed the name of a stretch of State Route 35 in Daly City to Alice Peña Bulos Memorial Highway in honor of the late Thomasian.
“We see the influence of Alice Peña Bulos throughout our communities, as well as in elected local and state government leadership. [I]t is my honor to carry the legislation that celebrates her legacy,” California assembly member Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) said.
The Alice Pena Bulos Memorial Highway signposts will be installed in 2021 and will be the first highway to be named after a Filipino-American in the United States.
The city council of Daly City in 2019 passed a resolution to name the Serra Station Townhouse Project Community Room after Bulos.
Filipino-American activist
Known by many as “Tita Alice,” Bulos dedicated her life to empowering many generations of Filipino Americans through civic participation.
In 2016, the late ex-mayor of San Francisco Ed Lee said Bulos was considered as the “Grand Dame of Filipino American Politics.”
“She unified Filipino American politics, understanding how powerful the collective voice could be in advocating for the community. She made raising that voice easier through the Filipino American Grassroots Movement, a voter registration drive to bring more Filipinos into the political process,” Lee said in his speech at Bulos’ memorial service in 2016.
Bulos’ influence includes forming the Filipino American Grassroots Movement and co-founding the state Filipino American Caucus and Fil-Am Democratic Club in San Mateo County.
She served as regional chairwoman of the National Filipino-American Women’s Network and board member of the National Asian Pacific Democratic Council.
“To ensure her legacy did not end with her, she mentored young leaders to continue advocating for those who could not advocate for themselves,” Lee said.
From 1993 to 2000, she became the first Filipino-American appointee of US President Bill Clinton to the Federal Council on Aging. She was a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging in 1995.
Before she was an employment counselor in Sacramento, California, she served as a sociology professor and head of the UST Sociology Department.
She obtained her master’s degrees in social and behavioral science from the University.
Bulos and her family moved to San Francisco and later to Sacramento in 1972. She founded the Thomasians USA Alumni Association in 1987.
She spent many years as a San Mateo County resident. She died of heart failure in 2016 at the age of 86. Nolene Beatrice H. Crucillo and Ma. Alena O. Castillo
