Task force announces Wall of Honor inductees

compiled by Cynthia Laird

Gay actor Leslie Jordan and Black lesbian Achebe Betty Powell are among this year’s posthumous inductees for the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City. The National LGBTQ Task Force and the International Imperial Court System formally announced the inductees May 15.

The honor wall recognizes deceased LGBTQ luminaries. This year’s installation will take place Thursday, June 22, at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, according to a news release.

The Bay Area Reporter previously reported two of this year’s inductees, drag icons Heklina and Darcelle XV, would be among the class of 2023. Nicole Murray Ramirez, a Latino drag queen and San Diego community leader who helps oversee the memorial project as a member of the Imperial Court System, revealed that news to the paper in April, shortly after attending the “Drag Up! Fight Back!” march and rally in San Francisco to protest anti-LGBTQ legislation in many states.

Heklina, the drag persona of Stefan Grygelko, died April 3 in London at the age of 55. She was a former San Francisco resident who had relocated to the Palm Springs area. Darcelle XV, the drag persona of Walter Cole, was a well-known fixture in Portland, Oregon and reported to be the world’s oldest living drag queen until her death March 23 at age 92. As for the other inductees, Jordan was an Emmy Award-winning actor best known for his role as Beverley Leslie on “Will & Grace.” He died last October at the age of 67.

Powell was the first Black lesbian to serve on the task force’s board of directors and attended the historic meeting of gay and lesbian leaders at the Carter White House in 1977. She died in February at the age of 82.

Gay playwright Terrence McNally will also be inducted. His career spanned six decades and he was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He died in 2020 and was 81.

Pioneering gay art patron J. Frederic “Fritz” Lohman will also be inducted. With his partner, Charles Leslie, Lohman launched the first gay art space in New York City in 1969, exhibiting homoerotic art that most galleries deemed too controversial at the time. Lohman died in 2010 and was 87.

Finally, Gloria Allen, an American transgender activist, will be inducted. She ran a charm school for trans youth in Chicago’s Center on Halsted. The school only lasted a few years, but it inspired a hit play, “Charm,” by Philip Dawkins, and her experiences are chronicled in the documentary film, “Mama Gloria.”

Murray Ramirez stated that it’s important for LGBTQ people to know their history.

“I founded the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor because I believe that a community, indeed a civil rights movement, that doesn’t know where it came from and whose shoulders it stands on really doesn’t know where it’s going,” Murray Ramirez stated.

The event also coincides with the task force’s 50th anniversary year.

“As we reflect on 50 years of hard-

Obituaries >>

Michael Anthony “Tony”

Alvarez

April 2,1966 – November 24, 2022

Michael Anthony “Tony” Alvarez was born on April 2, 1966, in San Jose, California, and passed in his home of 25 years in San Francisco on November 24, 2022. After his high school years, he lived in Southern California and Arizona before moving to San Francisco in 1998.

Tony worked for years at the nowclosed, legendary Tenderloin bar The Gangway, where he was loved and appreciated by its many patrons. He also tended bar at the popular Cinch Saloon on Polk Street.

Courtesy National LGBTQ Task Force won progress we hold tight to the fact that we not only fight for rights, we fight for people,” stated Kierra Johnson, a bi Black woman who’s executive director of the LGBTQ civil rights organization.

See page 12 >>

Tony loved reading and music, specifically rock, with favorite performers Blondie, Pat Benatar, Debbie Harry and Suzi Quatro, and The Runaways. He also enjoyed opera and classical music, fundraising, baking, and pets. His wry sense of humor and generous heart will be missed.

He is survived by siblings Bill and Terri, and will be missed dearly by close friends Chris Rogers, Marco Middlesex, Darryl Pelletier, and many friends in the Bay Area.

A community celebration of life will take place Saturday, May 20, from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Midnight Sun, 4067 18th Street, San Francisco. For more information, email MRSFL96@aol.com

Stitching queer stories

“Queer Threads” first exhibited nearly a decade ago at the LeslieLohman Museum of Art, New York City’s LGBTQ art gallery. Since its debut in 2014, Chaich said the show has traveled around the U.S., appearing at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2015/2016, and at Arcana Books as a mini exhibit in Los Angeles. During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, “Queer Threads” pivoted, collaborating with American University to exhibit installations in two storefront windows in Washington, D.C. with a series of virtual discussions.

The San Jose exhibit was delayed twice due to COVID.

“Queer Threads” also became a coffee table book featuring works from the original exhibit along with additional artists’ works.

Chaich, 50, who has worked with queer artists for most of his other exhibits, pinpointed three areas of inspiration for “Queer Threads.” First, his interest in craft and quilting stretches back to his mother and grandmother’s crochet, embroidery, knitting, and quilt works.

“I always was surrounded by all these fibers and textiles and so admired the work and care they put into it,” he said. “That matrilineal level of just the creativity, beauty, and kind of meditative process that it was for them just was always surrounding me.”

Second, coming out as a gay man in the early 1990s and seeing the AIDS quilt laid out on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. “was profoundly moving to me,” he said.

Cunningham called the AIDS Memorial Quilt “one of the most powerful activist tools ever created.” From the moment it was unrolled “on the front lawn of America” at the National Mall at the LGBTQ March on Washington in 1987 the AIDS crisis could no longer be ignored, he told the B.A.R.

“The quilt will continue to remind society of how corrosive stigma and discrimination is and how powerful the antidote of love, compassion, and art are,” he said.

The quilt’s impact on Chaich wasn’t just because of the HIV/AIDS crisis, but also “this tremendous piece of textile art.” The “message was very influential for me and understanding the power of what fiber and textile can uniquely do in that public space around a social cause intrinsically connected to my gay identity at the time,” he said.

The AIDS quilt was co-founded by gay activists Cleve Jones and Mike Smith and straight ally Gert McMullin.

Chaich said his final point was the third wave feminist movement’s taking back craft with feminist magazine Bust publisher and editor Debbie Stoller’s “Stitch and Bitch” series, “reclaiming the domestic and being empowered through that and that intersection of queerness and feminism.”

“In some ways, that kind of third wave