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July 8, 1980

Ms. Bettie Naylor
Human Rights Advocates
P.O. Box 2036
Universal City, Texas 78148

Dear Bettie,

As I told both you and Kathy individually on the phone, I have not been happy with the way you handled the fund-raising possibilities of Gay Price Week in Dallas. I want to record the events both for myself and so that the other board members will be informed, since the fund-raising function is such an important one and since it seems to have gone so slowly in 1980.

On Saturday April 5, I attended the TGTF board meeting in Austin, where I heard of the lack of progress in fund-raising, that Woody Eggers had not been paid, that the interpretation of when you and kathy were to be paid was somewhat different from my understanding, and that there was no money for advance work for the next legislative session. Because I believed that all these items were important, I decided to lead a major membership and fund-raising effort in the northern region for Gay Prode Week. Therefore on Sunday April 6 I attended a meeting of the Dallas Gay Pride Week Committee, told them of our problems, and received enthusiastic support, including; 1) a decision to ask you to be the main speaker at the rally, so everyone would be informed of the lobbying effort 2) a willingness to include some other TGTF event on the schedule, should we decide in favor of one 3) commitment to support selling lobby dollars at the rally and beer bust, as well as at the preceding week’s carnival booth, should TGTF sign up for both. I used $125 of my own money to pay the TGTF half of the rental for the crafts fair information table and a carnival fund-raising booth, arranging to share each with GAUNT, so expenses and staffing would be less for each group.

On Wednesday April 9 I wrote about all this, asking for immediate reply, especially about lobby dollars and about possible other events, as they had agreed to solicit business to redeem $ at the time they were lining up donations for the auction to be held May 6. Debbie Shaffer called you about the speaking engagement for the rally, and I gather discussed redeeming with you. I don’t know the details of when it was decided not to solicit for lobby dollar redemption until after the auction, but you told me you and Debbie decided this because of a belief that it was too much to ask at one time. I received no response concerning any other activity by you on your paid trip to this region, so dropped the idea.

I was involved in GLAD and GAUNT activities the next four weekends, and in the Democratic meetings May 10, but checked with Debbie several times, and was assured she was in touch with you and would be receiving information about lobby dollars at any time. On May 14 I left for Iowa on family business, not returning till May 31. When during the next week I learned from JohnLewis and from Debbie that nothing more had been heard from you on lobby dollars, I was too tired and too involved in preparations for product sales to push it.

On June 9 I received a copy of the letter you sent Debbie, which bothered me very much since it assumed that we were prepared to sell–but we had never received information or support from you on this project till that letter–for instance, on how many people we’d need, how to line up businesses, copies of a form I presumed you had for them to sign saying what they’d do, or information about how your cancelled November and January Dallas preparations had done, (Later you said you had no such