When Zachary Crump won a Gay and Lesbian Tennis Alliance tournament six years ago, the West Garfield Park teen first let his mom believe the set of four letters on his trophy meant Great Lakes Tennis Association.
“In the African-American community, being gay is not accepted,” says Crump, now 25, who as a college freshman came out to his mom. “When I told her what it really meant … it was … the end of my family life. I am the sixth of eight children, so that was a large chunk of people who just forgot I existed.”
The emotional brace he lost in traditional family Crump found-from word of mouth among friends-at the Center on Halsted, Chicago’s nomadic mecca of support that’s now billed as the nation’s most comprehensive hub for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.
The Center on Halsted, a years-in-the-making testament to Chicago’s gay power, got its 2,000-donor $20 million permanent home last June just east of Wrigley Field, at the corner of Halsted and Waveland in Lake View.
Past the mostly glass façade, a symbol of nothing to hide, the three-story complex houses a spacious recreational hall (named for tennis legend Billie Jean King, who calls Chicago home part of the year), a 175-seat theater, a commercially equipped kitchen, a computer lab, a child-care center and a rooftop garden (named for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley). The rooms in-between are the go-to spots for the center’s wide-ranging roster of social service programs: counseling, coming-out support groups, advocacy and help for victims of domestic violence and hate crimes, and hotlines for questions about HIV, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.
“I wish I had found it earlier because now I don’t know where a lot of GLBT youth would go if it were not for the center,” says Crump, who is volunteering there while working to save money to return to school for a degree in elementary education. For the center’s new tennis program, Crump is a coach.
In the last year, the center’s program for 13- to 24-year-olds helped 650 people, according to Youth Program Director Janine Denomme. About 200 of those young people, Denomme said, had unstable living conditions or were homeless and needed a hot meal or a referral for housing-with medical services and other serious support.
On June 8, the Center on Halsted celebrated its first anniversary at 3656 N. Halsted.
“Every one of our programs has increased exponentially … with us being a much more visible place and having so many people wanting to collaborate with us,” Denomme says. “It is a very diverse group of people that comes here.”
For people 45 and older, the center’s SAGE program (Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders) has more than 35 events a month.
At 67, June LaTrobe, the center’s transgender liaison, says SAGE has made her retirement years full. Events range from coffee chats to yoga lessons. There are opportunities to talk about such issues as preparing for retirement, caring for aging parents, and dealing with health care, in addition to coming out.
“I consider myself female and am a male-to-female transsexual,” says LaTrobe, “so I am taking hormones and have recently begun to live 24-7 as a woman. For me at my age … my transformation is where it is going to be.
“SAGE provides me with friends who have a historical and personal perspective on the rainbow community that is certainly different than someone who might be 10 or 15 years younger than we are.
“Many of us … have lived through the Compton Cafeteria riots in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, remember the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, and have survived the height of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s. I find it refreshing to communicate and commune with people for whom you don’t have to explain as much GLBT history as you might at other times.”