María R. Salazar was 5 years old when she held her first important job. “I was the water girl,” she recalled of working at a tender age in the beet, onion and potato fields of Idaho, where her parents toiled as migrant workers. “Whenever it would get really hot, I would take the jugs out…
Former Children’s Shelter Resident Blue Hess Overcomes Great Odds
Three years ago, when Blue Hess decided he would volunteer at The Children’s Shelter, he never imagined he’d become one of the nationally accredited nonprofit’s most vocal advocates — speaking regularly to local media and working with the community to help spread the word about its many services. Since its founding in 1901, The Children’s…
Most Influential 2015: Melissa Gohlke
As a UTSA Special Collections library assistant, Melissa Gohlke has been building local LGBTQ archives for the past five years. Her master’s thesis was on the history of San Antonio’s queer community, and she “caught the bug” for conserving LGBT records after interning at the Happy Foundation Archives. Gohlke says working with special collections is…
A brief history of SA’s queer media
San Antonio has had many queer publications over the decades, some lasting only a few months, others having remarkably long runs. 1970s This 1974 issue of Together Gay, a publication of the San Antonio Gay Community Center, provides an interesting example of how some queer San Antonians creatively responded to the challenges they faced. Gene…