Talking to Lee A. Newell II ... Gay Horizons ...
"That was the first group I was involved in. They were upstairs at Clark and Diversey, and before that it was at Beckman House. They had moved out and I came in after the shit hit the fan. The original Gay Horizons was a coalition of all the different groups at Beckman House: Michael Bergeron had the phone line, and the doctors had Howard Brown Clinic, and the social workers were moving from the outreach services and the youth group, to psychotherapy services. There was no income being generated at all. From what I came to understand ... I don't really know the facts of the situation, this was before I got there ... but when they moved out of Beckman House, Howard Brown decided to go off on their own, because they were unwilling to support the social services.
"Howard Brown had the free clinic. Everyone of a certain age remembers that you went to the 'free clinic' and it only cost $15. The first guy would come up and ask for a donation, then if you said no, then two people would come up for a donation, and if you still said no, they would take you into a side room and three people would sit you down and ask for a donation. But it was a 'free clinic,' if you could hold out long enough, you didn't have to pay.
"What happened was that Howard Brown went their own way and Gay Horizons ended up in this small suite of offices upstairs from the Astro restaurant, across the hall from Gender Services, and there was a masseur up there. It was a drop-in center, open from 7 to 11 p.m. On Saturdays we had the youth group meeting. We had a small lobby area and the phones were there, and there was a big meeting room at the back. In the lobby there was this private office that psychotherapy used, which was just starting. This would have been '76, '77.
"Bill Krick had been vice president, and the president was a guy named Kent McClure, and he, apparently, had very bad feelings around the Howard Brown split. Kent McClure never came back. In fact, I was told I was the first chairperson who had ever served out the entire term. Bill Krick was called the 'Blessed Reverend' for a number of reasons, because he could be very hard to take. What they should have done was call elections and elected somebody to be official chairperson, but Bill didn't want that because he enjoyed running the place from being vice president. He had all of the authority and none of the responsibility."
The first time ...
"I first walked in there to volunteer on the phone lines, and two weeks later I was elected chairperson. It was like, 'Come to our annual meeting. Would you like to be chairperson?' I was naive enough to say yes, and they elected me.
"The guy they elected as my program director was a wonderful soul by the name of Ron Hawbaker; that's a name that will bring back shivers to a lot of people. Ron had owned a bar and he liked young men and he hung out with a lot of the street kids. Now, street kids in those days hung out at the Yankee Doodle at the corner of Clark and Schubert; it was just an old-fashioned hamburger stand.
"There were lots of runaway-throwaways, and you'd find 14, 15, 16 year old kids all the time. So our youth group was primarily street kids and there must have been 20 or 30 of them that came every Saturday. They loved it, because they ran the youth group. When they had meetings, I would come and open the facility, and they would go in and close the door and have their meeting. The adults didn't interfere with them and they really liked that.
The Gay Horizons
problem raffle ...
"There were all kinds of weird things that went on while Bill Krick was running the place from the second seat. One thing they had done was get together with Rogers Park Gay Center, and decided they would raise money by having a raffle. They would give away $3,000 for an automobile, you could actually buy an automobile in those days for $3000, and the 2nd prize was a 10-speed bicycle, and I forget what the third prize was. It was a great idea, and they started selling tickets at a dollar a piece.
"However, when this was started, they neglected one of the basics of a benefit auction. As everyone knows when you do a benefit auction, the first thing you do is obtain the prizes. You don't plan on giving away $3,000 and then plan to get that $3,000 by selling tickets. There's a basic flaw in fundraising when you do that. Needless to say that flaw existed in this plan."
Problem solved ...
"Me being naive and active in all kinds of Boy Scouts, youth advisory councils and all kinds of stuff through high school, I took charge. I had no qualms about going around to people and saying, 'Look, we've got this problem. Let the community sit down and figure out how to take care of it.' So we started having big meetings where we had bar owners in and we figured out how we could get tickets sold in the bars, so we could cover our costs. I think we ended up making a few thousand dollars.
"In the meantime, Ron was in charge of the tickets and he was giving them out to the hustlers to sell for us, and we ended up missing about 1,000 ticket stubs. That was probably my most difficult time; when we had the meeting and we had to fire Ron. He was fired from that, but he stuck around and helped out with Gay Horizons. It was like, 'OK this is obviously not the kind of task that Ron is good at.' That didn't make him less of a good person, to me at least. I don't know what other people thought of him."
Future historians take note: The memory section in this column contains just that—Memories!—and are only to be used as a starting point for your research. Send your stories to Sukie de la Croix at Outlines. He also interviews over the phone or by e-mail sukiedelacroix@iname.com .
What a
Difference a
Gay Makes
The Gay/Lesbian Movement, 5, 10, 15 & 20 Years Ago
July 16-22
1995: 5 Years Ago
U.S.: British-born poet, critic and novelist, Sir Stephen Spender, dies at age 86. t John Hinson, 53, the former Mississippi member of Congress and conservative Republican, dies of AIDS. Hinson resigned his House seat during his second term after he was arrested on charges of having sex with another man in a federal office building in 1981. Hinson acknowledged that he was gay after his resignation and went on to work for the gay-rights movement. He helped found the state lobbying group Virginians for Justice and Fairfax Lesbian and Gay Citizens Association. t A front-page article in The Wall Street Journal is headlined: "Has a Curmudgeon Turned Into a Bully? Some Now Think So. Chicago's ( Mike ) Royko Slurs Cops, Gays, Women." t Keanu Reeves tells Vanity Fair: "There's nothing wrong with being gay, so to deny it is to make a judgment. And why make a big deal out of it? If someone doesn't want to hire me because they think I'm gay, well, then I have to deal with it, I guess. Or if people were picketing the theater. But otherwise, it's just gossip, isn't it?" t Britain: Guinness, the British brewery known for its stout ales, plans to begin using a gay couple in some of its TV ad campaigns.
1990: 10 Years Ago
U.S.: The Chicago Department of Health release its six-month summary of data on AIDS diagnoses, showing a total of 406 cases reported between January and June of 1990. Chicago's reported AIDS cases since 1980 stand at 2,960, of whom 1,848, or 62 percent, are deceased. t Women interested in S/M charge that the organizers of the largely lesbian Michigan Womyn's Music Festival are discriminating against them on the basis of their sexual behavior. "S/M women have been denied festival services they have paid for," says Marla Stevens, an Indiana activist and member of Michigan WHIPS, an S/M group. t Six AIDS activists are each given a three-day suspended sentence and six months probation, stemming from their raucous demonstration in the Washington office of Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.. t Ireland: Moslem missionaries in Ireland say that pork is a proscribed meat because "It has been proven that the pig is the only homosexual animal."
1985: 15 Years Ago
U.S.: The Gay Men's Health Crisis of New York is given a community service award by the Reagan Administration. A month later the Reagan Administration tries to take it back. Congressman Ted Weiss of New York says it would not be returned. t A lesbian grandmother who says she raised her granddaughter from birth goes to court in Philadelphia seeking visitation rights to the child. The woman's son-in-law has custody of the girl and forbids her to see the child. t Moral majority leader Jerry Falwell launches another letter-writing campaign calling for the quarantine of persons with AIDS. t Britain: Princess Diana admits that she is firing anyone who claims to be a "confirmed bachelor." The term is commonly used to refer to gay men in England.
1980: 20 Years Ago
U.S.: Arson strikes the Metropolitan Community Church in Tallahassee, Fla. The day before, Rev. Robert Angell received a phone call, in which the caller said, "I'm going to burn you alive." t Joffrey Ballet company director Sally Field assures the press that the Joffrey is "gay free." "All the boys in my company are straight," she tells reporters asking about Ronald Reagan Jr., a member of the Joffrey and son of the presidential candidate. t Britain: Homosexuality is legalized in Scotland.
