The West Hollywood branch of Wells Fargo celebrated LGBT Pride Thursday night unveiling a Pride mural featuring local LGBT legends.Organizers probably had no idea the event would coincide with the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy that changed the course of World War II. Ironically, the end of that war saw the movement for LGBT liberation kicked into gear with an ingenuity that challenged the ugly legal and societal mindset about homosexuality in the 1950s when Harry Hayand a handful of others founded the Mattachine Society in Silver Lake. That lead to the development of ONE Institute and ONE Magazine in the 1950s—a very young Dorr Leggis featured at a typewriter in the mural; community reporter Jim Kepneris featured in a video.
But it was the defiant living legends celebrated at the mural unveiling who changed the world. Pictured above: Ivy Bottini, Jeanne Cordova, E. Lynn Harris, Don Kilhefner, Pat Rocco, Rev. Troy Perry.
Rev. Troy Perrylaunched the Metropolitan Community Churchin 1968, one year before Stonewall. Perry, Morris Kight and Bob Humphries founded Christopher Street West in 1970 to commemorate the Stonewall Riots on the West Coast at the same time New York celebrated in Greenwich Village. Pat Rocco, (pictured above with his sister Cynthis and Perry) who took many of the photos from that era and who served as CSW’s first director, flew in from Hawaii to attend the event. Rocco told former CSW President Rodney Scott that he might have been first, but Scott “was the best.”
They were all delighted to see Don Kilhefner, now a practicing Jungian therapist, who co-founded the L.A. Gay Community Services Center and the Los Angeles arm of the Gay Liberation Front. (Kilhefner is seen her with photographer Anthony Friedkin, who took the iconic photo of Kilhefner and Morris Kight featured on the mural over their heads.)
Ivy Bottini,called a “Lavender Menace” and kicked out of the NOW feminist organization she co-founded, was also there, as was “outlaw” Jeanne Cordova, still representing butch lesbian Latinas. (Pictured above with Cordova’s spouse, KPFK Feminist radio host Lynn Ballen.)Lynn Harris(below with Ivy Bottini) was also there representing intersex people with an unfathomable dignity long before there was even a modicum of respect for or understanding of transgender and intersex people.
Stuart Milk, founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, praised Wells Fargo for the financial institution’s commitment to diversity, telling a story of how in 2007 in Orlando, Florida, he chose to ride as Pride Grand Marshall in the Wells Fargo coach instead of the Disneyland float because Wells Fargo had without question paid for his transgender friend Gina Duncan’s reassignment surgery. She was then the regional manager for their Orange County bank.
Milk noted that his uncle, assassinated gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, “took those bullets because he believed in the potential of this community.” Asked if he regretted that Harvey Milk didn’t live to see this day, Stuart Milk said, “He absolutely did see this day—he dreamed of this day” and the celebration of diversity. Harvey Milk was recently honored with a Forever Stamp from the U.S. Post Office. His image appears in all five Wells Fargo LGBT murals around the country.
Wells Fargo’s Diane Miller (pictured here with Mark Ng and Stuart Milk) had the idea of the community mural 12 years ago. “When we realized how important the local history, we started to look at individual communities and fashioned a mural for them,” Miller said. They sought photos from local LGBT organizations and using the latest technology, the photos were digitized and colorized to give them new life.
Wells Fargo’s Jonathan Weedman, Senior Vice President for Community Relations and President of Wells Fargo Foundation, looked around the room and declared: “This is a Joint Session of Congress, when it comes to important people.” He recalled how 22 years ago he approached his top boss and asked to have Wells Fargo sponsor the CSW Pride parade. Not many corporate sponsors were forthcoming with support for the LGBT community, but Weedman’s boss said: “It’s a good idea. It’s about time.”
Weedman said that lead to “thoughtful” sponsorship of a number of LGBT and AIDS organizations—some of which no longer exist, such as the AIDS service group Aunt Bee’s Laundry. (Founder Miki Jackson now is a consultant for AIDS Healthcare Foundation.) The idea being the giving was simple: Wells Fargo is only as strong as the communities where we do business.”
Weedman also gave a shout out to West Hollywood City Councilmember Abbe Land who was mayor in 1996 when they inked a deal to open the West Hollywood branch. “Look at how far we’ve come,” he said. Then, pointing to Ivy Bottini, Weedman said: “Ivy—I remember when you and I had cocktails with Quentin Crispin Pasadena!”
After the ceremony, as the legends and guests mingled and gazed up at the mural wrapped around the wall overhead, Rocco and Bottini declared that they had come up with a name for themselves as living legends: “The Originals.”