What luck!
Lucky to be born gay at the time when it was difficult to be gay ….. it made me who I am today. It taught me to fight for what is right but I’m getting ahead of my story:
I was a pre-Baby Boomer allowed by supportive parents as a 9-year-old to happily deliver show bills to every Boulder City house and at age 11 to have my own business cutting grass.
Lucky to have been hired as a teen reporter by both the Las Vegas Sun and Review Journal-when they were real competitors—to report high school sports and write feature articles about my very lucky mentorship in exploring and writing by the famous Southern Nevada explorer and National Geographic photojournalist, William Belknap.
Lucky to be sent to Chile for a Mormon Church mission where I learned Spanish and was able to lead and work with the Boy Scouts of Chile, who were recognized by the President of that country for planting 100,000 trees on their mountains during a long reforestation campaign.
Lucky to enter college at Johns Hopkins and finish at BYU with a Masters in Public Administration and to be sent by the Organization of American States to evaluate the governmental effectiveness of several South American countries and to have the experience of living and working there and, more recently, in Asia gaining some understanding and great appreciation for both Asian and South American cultures.
Lucky to have married a Chilean lady, who had the patience and spirit of adventure by driving 12,000 miles back to Las Vegas with me. She gave me two wonderful children, who in turn share their six children with us. She was a wife who understood me more than I did myself and took me to the biggest gay club in Los Angeles to introduce me to the community she knew I really belong to.
That led me to starting another lucky streak of 35 years and still going on by meeting my spouse Marlon who has given me the freedom and support to live my life and be the best of who I can be. He has given me the inspiration and energy to be able to be of service to our community when Las Vegas Gay community was at its infancy.
Lucky to have the property for 29 years now where Piranha is located that gave us the opportunity to serve the gay community of Las Vegas when there was no community center, rather our house came to be used as the de facto gay center because we left our doors unlocked for the gay student organization of UNLV to have access anytime they needed a space. In that same house, we worked with the students to develop the iconic fundraiser The Black and White Party and grew it from 50 people to 850 in our backyard before it had to be moved to the resort hotels. Up to now, it’s one of the biggest fundraisers of the community. In that same property, we had and co-owned the Bright Pink Literature (now Get Booked across the street) and one of the first gay coffee houses, the Mariposa Cafe.
With my family behind me (ex-wife, children and their spouses, grandchildren and my spouse) equipped with wide knowledge and understanding of various countries and cultures, it is time to serve Nevada and its people who have given me so many opportunities as I grew up.
It is time to take Nevada to its third wave of progress, which has been stalled for ten years now, and to give back and share my luck not only to my gay community but to the people and state that have given me so much as well.
With the same luck, I would like to be able to serve as the first gay statewide elected public official of Nevada.
