OutSpokane's Voices of Victory spotlights the history of our community's struggle for equality, annually featuring a different individual, advocate or artist whose work has advanced GLBT civil rights. Voices of Victory consists of youth and community-wide forums, plus an evening meet-and-greet session with the year's specially chosen honoree, who also usually serves as the Pride Parade's Grand Marshal.

We established the Heritage Pride Institute in 2006 in response to a LGBT community request for more information about movement landmarks and leaders. In 2010 we renamed the Institute to Voices of Victory in an effort to reimagine what pride looks like today, highlight the successes of the LGBTQA rights movement, and share a vision for the future. We understand how important it is to recognize our heroes - and to educate our LGBTQA youth, and remind ourselves, of their legacy. It's hard to forge a path forward if we don't know how we got where we are. The rights many of us now take for granted were won with the blood, sweat and tears of many brave pioneers.

2011 Honorees

2011 Honoree Major Margaret Witt

Margaret Witt’s biography is now part of the national historical record in the long fight to repeal the U.S. government’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Witt, a decorated flight nurse who lives in Spokane, reached a final settlement in her landmark lawsuit against the policy in May and will retire with full benefits as an Air Force major.

“I am proud to have played a role in bringing about the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” says Witt, 47. “I am so pleased that tens of thousands of lesbians and gays who have served their country honorably will be able to serve openly.”

Margie, as she is called by her friends and family, was born March 21, 1964, in Tacoma, Wash., to parents who were teachers. She has an older brother and sister. She earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma in 1986 and a master’s degree in physical therapy from Eastern Washington University. She is now pursuing her doctorate in physical therapy while working as a rehabilitation coordinator at the Veterans Administration hospital in Spokane.

She lives in the Manito Park neighborhood with her partner Laurie McChesney and three dachshunds.

Major Witt's 18-year career in the Air Force included service during Operation Enduring Freedom, for which she received an Air Medal endorsed by President George W. Bush, who noted that she had delivered “outstanding medical care” to injured service members and that her “outstanding aerial accomplishments … reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force.”

In 2003, she received another medal for saving the life of a Defense Department employee who collapsed aboard a government-chartered flight from Bahrain.

Witt was present in Washington, D.C., December 22, 2010, when President Obama signed legislation passed by Congress repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Edited by Catherine Willis  

2011 Honoree Helen Bonser

Helen Bonser began life as Helen Lynam. Her mother was a schoolteacher, her father a World War II veteran and a homesteader. The land the Lynam family homesteaded in 1947 was some of the last distributed under the Homestead Act of 1862. A dedicated leader, her father helped build a community from the ground up. That close-knit and dynamic new community fostered Helen's enduring belief in activism. She soon took up the fight for equality in her Northern California hometown when she noticed that migrant farm workers were not treated as well as the farmers whose crops they harvested.

  Later, as a young wife and mother in the 1960s, Helen joined the Civil Rights Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area and battled to get equality in the schools for minority students.

The 1970s brought consciousness of inequalities between men and women and Helen worked for true equality among/between the genders.

  After traveling the world as a military wife, Helen settled in Spokane with her family in 1975. She thought she had retired from activism, but that was not to be the case. When her daughter Terri came out as a lesbian in 1981, Helen faced the greatest challenge to equal and human rights she had ever experienced. Indeed, there were no support groups for either Helen or Terri at that time. After becoming better informed about GLBT issues, Helen wanted to do something – anything – to make society safer and more welcoming for Terri and her friends.

  She joined the Spokane chapter of PFLAG in 1984 and found a new home base. Since that time Helen has led her PFLAG chapter, attended conferences and has spoken about her own journey in venues from Spokane to Washington D.C.  In Spokane, Helen helped start the INBA, Odyssey Youth Group, and, of course, the Spokane Pride Celebration.

On June 3, 1992, Helen and another mom, Marion Dumolin, enlisted the help of a group from Emmanuel Metropolitan Community Church to make T-shirts, advertise the event and to begin a pride celebration. The two moms had to meet with the Spokane Business Association and with the Spokane Police. There were many doubts and fears over the safety of anyone trying to march openly on Spokane streets proclaiming gay pride. Though threats were made against would-be participants, security measures were taken, and some 450 marchers stepped into the street singing "We are A Gay and Gentle People."  Marchers came from all areas of Spokane, along with activists from Seattle, and others just came to see what would happen.

That was the day Spokane "came out"! "Our wonderful and beautiful GLBT people and their allies have never turned back, notes Helen. "Now we have an actual parade and a huge celebration in the park."  For Helen, it has been a privilege and joy to keep moving equality forward. She thinks Spokane's GLBT population has made the greatest progress of any group in this town in the past 25 years!

Edited by Catherine Willis

Past Heritage Pride Institute Honorees

In 2006, Internationally acclaimed author Patricia Nell Warren, whose 1974 novel The Front Runner challenged the mores of our nation regarding same-sex orientation, was the Heritage Pride Institute's first honoree.

In 2007, we were pleased to host Grethe Cammermeyer, the highest-ranking officer in the United States armed forces to acknowledge her homosexuality while still in the service. She successfully challenged the military's policy banning homosexuals prior to the implementation of what's now commonly called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

In 2008, we were able to bring two-spirit Steven Barrios (Long Time Holy Rain), a Native American community activist and HIV/AIDS educator who lives on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning, Montana.

In 2009, Marcia Botzer, a founding member of Equal Rights Washington - the organization that would help ensure the rights of LGBT citizens remained protected by Washington's expanded Domestic Partnership Law in 2009, spoke on her experiences as a community leader and visionary.

In 2010, Barb Williamson, teacher of literature, writing, cultural studies, and film at Spokane Falls Community College as well as co-advisor of The Alliance, the LBGTQ club at SFCC was one of our honorees. The title of her talk was “Queer Literary Images: Reading Homophobia Subversively or Just Wishful Thinking?” Also honoreed in 2010 was Nova Kaine (Jason Johnson). Nova spoke of her six carnations, she has graced stages and Cabarets in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, Spokane, and Portland. Over the course of 40 years she has slowly made her way across the country hoping to someday make the pilgrimage to Gay Mecca - San Francisco spreading the name and the love all the way across the nation.