page 14
INTERVIEW:
%
Gay Peoples Chronicle
May 1, 1985
Bob Reynolds Ruminates, Reminisces
By CHARLES CALLENDER
On Februry 23 Bob Reynolds finished a term of office as President of the GEAR Foundation. Certainly a newspaper should not be a vehicle for publicizing its own officers. At the same time, it has a responsibility to cover significant events, even when these center on its personnel. Bob Reynolds is an important figure in the Cleveland gay community, the GEAR Foundation is an important organization, and his presidency has been significant in several ways. Even though he also happens to be Business Manager of the Chronicle, we thought it important to interview him. Carried out February 15, the interview has not been updated.
Callender: You're finishing a term of office as president of the GEAR Foundation. Has it been about two years?
Reynolds: I took the position in August, 1983.
Callender: What change do you see in GEAR between the time you took office and now? Reynolds: Basically, I'd start with the change of leadership in June, 1982. John Lehner and the people who had really held the GEAR Foundation together and had led it into buying the building in the Tremont area for a community center several years earlier completely removed themselves, for a variety of reasons, in those elections. The new Board, which numbered only 6 because of a change in the by-laws, was having problems. Two of its members, Rich Foxeri and Earl Korb, had a great deal to do with my becoming somewhat involved.
We had an interim Board for about three months, from October 1982 until February 1983. It
was pretty evenly divi ded between those who felt strongly about saving the organization. Along with people like Randy Goodman. and those who have served on the Board, and the volunteers,
I think that from that somewhat inauspicious beginning I have held the organization together and stabilized
it.
But
What I see as my major contribution to change is the fact that today the Foundation functions fairly effectively without a strong leader. if you look at the Foundation and the way it functions, I don't think that's necessarily true. I give that impression only to those people who want to see it.
Callender: Is that statement for publication?
Reynolds: Yes. The Foundation functions just fine without any contact whatsoever with me in its practical day-to-day operation. That is not what I consider a strong, autocratic leadership role. So I think that's one of the changes, and a major change.
Overall, I think
we ve been able to maintain and strengthen the ties that GEAR" has had with the broader political and social gay community. So the gay population stiprtheast Ohio is still well represented with the media, with political aspects, and with the social-services aspects that encompass the total community.
And GEAR has helped new organizations form, enabling them to weel whatever their more narrow purposes might be. This is not to discount the role of organizations like Dignity, which is as old as GEAR and has
obviously made a major contribution to the community. But Dignity has dealt with a very specific area, while GEAR has been covering all the gaps. I think
that throughout the years whenever a need has been percived in the community, GEAR has been the organization that's stepped forward to at least help nurture the beginning.
Callender:
You see this role as characterizing GEAR from the very start?
Reynolds: Yes. And I think it still does that.
Callender: GEAR itself being general-purpose? Reynolds: More or less. And also service-oriented.
Callender: And to some extent enabling other organizations to form Ehrough providing...
Reynolds: start at.
A base to
Callender: My impression is that there's a considerable amount
To Be Continued in
A Future Issue
of hostility towards GEAR.
Reynolds: J think
that's a fair statement yes. I'd like to say that I think this host-
gity is within the
community, rather Ehan felt by outsiders. Callender: Agreed.
Why do you think this hostility exists?
Reynolds: For a lot of reasons. Whenever an organization is on the leading edge of a movement I think It has to take the heat, so to speak. You have the closeted community that doesn't particularly want to be recognized, feeling strongly that there shouldn't be a GEAR. You had other people from whom GEAR provided an outlet. But because of their own strong wills, personalities, and convictions, they couldn't find common ground or agree on long-range goals. For a moment in the · development of the gay community ther e was reason to band together, but then they became factionali zed. So they became enemies of GEAR rather than its supporters, and with their enmity based on personality rather than on goals and purposes. People have a long memory for things that they don't like, and when they, like something they seem to forgel it very quickly. And that's very true of all communities. The fact that GEAR has survived since 1974 attests to its usefulness to this community.
COMING OUT RIGHT
BOOKSTORE
ON WEST 25TH
1921 West 25th Street
(1⁄2 block N. of West Side Market)
566-8897
#