Reunion

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

The Green Room | San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

401 Van Ness Ave. | San Francisco, CA 94102

About Reunion

Program

6:00–7:00 p.m. Cocktail Hour & Silent Auction

7:00–8:00 p.m. Awards Program

8:00–9:00 P.m. Drinks & Dessert

Gala Hosts

Reunion was hosted by two fantastic performers!

Kylie Minono is a dedicated community organizer, both in and out of drag. She was elected Grand Duchess 39 with the Grand Ducal Council of San Francisco and has helped to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for local charities. She is also a highly sought-after entertainer throughout California and was crowned Miss Star Search 2015. Known for her generosity and kindness, many have referred to her as “San Francisco’s Sweetheart.”

MADD-DOGG 20/20 has been rocking the scene since 2006. He has held several titles in those years, including two-time San Francisco Drag King winner. He was the Grand Duke of San Francisco for the San Francisco Ducal Court and won a Bestie Award in 2019 for Bay Area Best Drag King. He continues to support the community through fundraising and helps to keep kings visible.

Silent Auction

In keeping with tradition, we hosted a silent auction during the Gala.

2022 Honorees

History Makers Award Honorees

Donna Personna is a transgender rights activist and fine artist who works in painting, photography and mixed media. She was friends with the 1970s sensation the Cockettes and played a part in “Elevator Girls in Bondage.” More recently, she co-wrote a play about the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, one of the first recorded LGBTQ riots in U.S. history that marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.

Olga Talamante is the former executive director and current board member of the Chicana Latina Foundation. During the mid-1970s, she became well known for her experience as a political prisoner in Argentina and since her release, has remained active in the Chicano, Latin American solidarity, LGBTQ and progressive political movements.  In 2012, she was honored as a Community Grand Marshall for the San Francisco LGBTQ Pride Parade, and until 2020, she served on the boards of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Horizons Foundation. 

Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH), which will be represented at the Gala by Per Sia and Julián Delgado Lopera, was founded in San Francisco in 2015 by Michelle Tea and RADAR Productions, under the leadership of Julián Delgado Lopera and Virgie Tovar. Since then, it has grown from a modest initiative of drag queens reading stories to children at local public libraries into a global phenomenon, offering literary and creative programming for kids and teens of all ages led by drag queens, kings, and creatures all over the world. DQSH celebrates reading through the glamorous art of drag, captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood, and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. DQSH is a global network of local organizations, each of which is independently managed and funded.

Founders Award Honorees

Zane Blaney’s “golden voice” led to his first radio job at age 15 in Worland, Wyoming. Further radio work followed in Denver, Albuquerque and Sacramento before his move to San Francisco in 1978, where he produced documentaries for public radio, videotaped the first Gay Games and helped establish the first GLAAD chapter outside New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he oversaw the installation of San Francisco government television facilities, and the construction and operation of a public access TV studio. Many of his audio and video materials are in the GLBT Historical Society’s archives, the San Francisco City archives, and the Museum of Albuquerque.

John Caldwell grew up in San Francisco and as a UC Berkeley undergraduate he found comradeship in the theater department and discovered gay nightlife in the city before embarking on a real-estate career. In the summer of 1982 he became acutely symptomatic with HIV, but care at San Francisco General Hospital and activism with Project Inform sustained him until he met Zane Blaney two years later. John & Zane’s life partnership is now in its 39th year.

In 1986 John saw a short notice in the Bay Area Reporter entitled “New Group Seeks Gay History.” It brought him to Willie Walker’s living room, filled with bankers’ boxes of catalogued papers and ephemera, and he has been a supporter of the GLBT Historical Society ever since. In 2020, John and Zane made a foundational gift to help the GLBT Historical Society install a new Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) to ensure long-term preservation and accessibility of digital files. While the work was planned before COVID-19 hit, the pandemic made the need for digital access even more urgent. The Society is currently in the second stage of the project and is already using the system to better facilitate remote research appointments.

“The society’s archive preserves the raw data of queer communities,” say Zane and John. “It allows historians to analyze and build narrative understandings of our past to inform future generations. Digitizing our growing collection of papers, oral histories, videos and ephemera gives anyone, anywhere access to these truths. Let the record show.”

Click here to see our recent past honorees.

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