Acknowledgments

Dedication

We dedicate this book to the many GLAAD/LA members, supporters, volunteers, donors and later those of Hollywood Supports as well. They are responsible for the many victories and accomplishments detailed in the book. This book is, essentially, our love letter to them.

With Gratitude

There were innumerable fabulous and dedicated people involved in the work of GLAAD and Hollywood Supports, as well as, in recent years, helping us recall everything that was done and guiding us to tell the story in the most effective way we know how.

Some of the key figures — both from the early GLAAD/LA board and among our fellow activists of the time — who reviewed drafts of this book and answered our many questions were Ann Bradley, Bohdan Zachary, Carol Anderson, Charlotte Innes, Dana Gorbea-Leon, Dean Hansell, Josh Baran, Karen Ocamb, Lee Werbel, Michael B. Keegan, Dr. Peter Nardi, Stan Newman, Steve Taravella, Dr. Sylvia Rhue, Torie Osborn and Will Halm. We can’t thank them enough.

We’d also like to acknowledge the partnership with the other GLAAD Chapters, their staff and volunteers, especially GLAAD NY, GLAAD SF and GLAAD DC.

Our developmental editor, writer Marsha Morman, helped tremendously as we molded the story into a more coherent narrative. She also did interviews on our behalf with many of our former colleagues and fellow activists, of which excerpts appear in the book.

Our fabulous agent, Maile Beale of ARC Literary, somehow saw the potential in our book proposal and linked us up with the truly brilliant Rochelle Bourgault, a writer and specialist in editing successful book proposals. As a result, Maile was able to find us a most wonderful publishing house: Broadleaf Books.

Our editor at Broadleaf, the thoughtful and ever engaging Shari MacDonald Strong, has been a pleasure to work with and a great partner in helping to make sure that even those who didn’t grow up in the times described can fully understand and relate to the story told here.

We are also grateful to David Hyde Pierce for the generous foreword, and to Lily Tomlin, Lillian Faderman, Sheila Kuehl, V, and others for lending their names and words of support.

On a personal level, over the several years we drafted, researched and edited this book, we have relied and depended on the boundless support of our families and closest friends.

Richard particularly holds the memory of his late father Jack as a constant inspiration in his activist work, having watched Jack transform from a bigot in his early years to the most sensitive, supportive and pro-active gay ally anyone could imagine. Jack taught him that peoples’ attitudes and behavior could dramatically change if provided the information and real-life examples that many of us lacked growing up. He also thanks his sister Janis Snyder for feedback on early drafts of the book, and helping with memories, and his “gay parents,” Cedric Yap and Ted Liebst, for their feedback and lifelong friendship and inspiration.

Jehan thanks her close friends Andrew Posey and Camille Argus for reading and reviewing several drafts, and Susan and Rolly Kent who took the extra time to offer insights, edits and champion us. To her parents, Frank and Oli, for their strong support, love and eventual conversion to the cause. Her daughters Maya, Anjoum, and Anissa gave advice and buoyed her. And love to her wife Dwora Fried, who has always had her back and her heart since 1981 and counting.

And we thank and appreciate each other. As one might glean from the book, the two of us have very different personalities and came from wildly different backgrounds. Somehow our mutual, early appreciation of and respect for each other’s complementary strengths and passion for this work sustained us through a decade of intense activist work. We are thankful that we have maintained a friendship and partnership, albeit thousands of miles apart now, that has enabled us to tell that story.