A Letter From The President
Bob Dorr, PFLAG Omaha
Posted on September 19, 2004
One of Omaha PFLAG’s best weapons in eliminating anti-gay bias is a panel of people talking about their own life experiences.
Our panels go anywhere they are invited—mainly to college classrooms. The two-hour appearances include a Safe Schools presentation by a trained speaker and a panel of people telling their stories and answering the audience’s questions. We collaborate in these appearances with a sister organization, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network).
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 6, PFLAG and GLSEN will present a panel at First United Methodist Church, 7020 Cass St., as a part of the National Coming Out Day series of events in Omaha. Going by past PFLAG-GLSEN panels for National Coming Out Day, this should be an interesting, lively evening.
We hope to attract members of First Church and people from the general community as well as our own members. The panel will be in Room 112. Come in the church’s northeast door.
Check out the full nine-day schedule of National Coming Out Day events elsewhere in this newsletter.
PFLAG will hold its regular meeting at 7 p.m. on Oct. 14 in First United Methodist Church’s Mead Hall. We will have our support time, show the acclaimed 24-minute movie, Straight From the Heart, and have a discussion afterwards.
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At our September meeting, PFLAG members elected three new board members: Tom Johnson, Sharon Landreth and Suzy Adams.
Tom is the husband of board member Barbara Johnson, who coordinates our telephone Help Line volunteers.
I can’t resist telling this story about Tom: One morning recently, it was Tom’s turn to speak at his Business Breakfast Club. Club members customarily talk about the work they do. Tom spoke about his job at Qwest. He then turned his talk to a different subject. He told the business group about his gay son, Blake, a third-year law student at Loyola University in Chicago, and about his activist, straight daughter, Brett, a senior at the University of Kansas. He talked about PFLAG and our youth support group, Proud Horizons.
Tom’s discussion of his family might have come as an early-morning jolt to some in the audience. However, afterwards he received a few compliments and no negative comments. “It was worth doing,” he reflected.
Morals of the story: The consequences of being open about being the parent of a GLBT child might not be as bad as you think. And presenting the human faces of our movement to the rest of the world is definitely worth doing.
Tom replaces J Wright as PFLAG’s treasurer. J has done an outstanding job as treasurer for the past three years.
Another new board member is Sharon Landreth. She and her husband, Larry, maintain PFLAG’s newsletter mailing list.
The third new board member, Suzy Adams, is co-leader of our hospitality committee. She is the partner of Carrie Spencer, who is PFLAG’s vice-president and webmaster.
J Wright, his partner Roy Wright and Dave Meyer leave the board. Roy has been our membership-hospitality chairman. Dave has been a board member at-large. Thanks to these past board members for what they have done for PFLAG.
Our board consists of people who may not need the help that PFLAG offers any longer, but realize that PFLAG still needs them to give help to others.
PFLAG’s members reelected my wife Betty and me to new two-year terms. Betty, a past PFLAG president, helps coordinate appearances by our speakers and panelists.
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I hope to see many of you at the Pride Players benefit performance at 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 1, at the Rose Theater for the Performing Arts, 20th and Farnam Sts. The event is in the Rose’s upstairs Hitchcock Theatre.
PFLAG and our youth support group, Proud Horizons, along with GLSEN, receive all income from the event. Thanks to PFLAG member Fred Smith for serving as the coordinator of ticket and raffle sales. Call Fred at 558-7220 if you need last-minute tickets.
Bob Dorr, president
