Carolyn Hall and Candy Marcum then (below) and now (above)
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Candy Marcum and Carolyn Hall have been a team in their activism for more than 40 years, and, later this month, those years and that work will be honored when the couple receive the North Texas LGBTQ Chamber’s Jack Evans and George Harris Lifetime Achievement Award at the Pride in Business Celebration, Awards and Business Expo.
This will only be the fourth time the award has been presented. The first time it went to Evans and Harris, then to Mark Shekter. The third time the award was presented was to Vivian Armstrong and Louise Young, and that’s when the award was renamed for Evans and Harris.
Marcum and Hall’s career of activism began for each in the early 1980s, before the couple met. In 1981, Marcum met Howie Daire and together they opened Oak Lawn Counseling Center, the first out counseling office in Dallas.
Two years later, Marcum and Hall met when Oak Lawn Counseling Center was looking for board members. Both were in other relationships then, but they noticed and remembered each other from that meeting.
“I heard this melodic voice in another room, and it transfixed me,” Hall said. “She finally came into the room, and I couldn’t get beyond it. I just heard her.”
Marcum became single in 1984 and Hall early in 1986. Their first date was in 1986 at Razzle Dazzle Dallas, the June Pride celebration that was held on Cedar Springs Road that year.
“We went separately and met inside the gate,” Marcum said.
They did exactly what Marcum recommends her clients don’t do: After just six months, she rented the U-Haul.
By now, the AIDS crisis had reached Dallas, and Howie Daire was one of Dallas’ earliest casualties. “Two other counselors officed with me,” Marcum said. “They both also died of AIDS.”
She said many of her clients weren’t out to their families. So they would bring their parents to a counseling session, knowing they’d behave better in front of a professional. And during a session they’d tell them, “Mom. Dad. I’m gay” — pause — “And I’m dying.”
Don McCleary was a managing partner of Gardere Wynne, the largest law firm in Dallas at the time. He was also board chair of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, now known simply as HRC. Marcum developed a friendship with McCleary and joined The Dallas Insiders, a group of people who contributed $100 a month to HRCF. When she was asked to chair the group, Marcum made one major change: She thought the group should have a national focus. A few other cities had similar donor groups, but they called their organizations the Federal Club. After the Dallas Insiders became the Federal Club, Marcum and McCleary traveled around the country helping other cities form new branches.
After McCleary died, Marcum and Hall were recruited to sit on the national HRC board.
Marcum attended her first board meeting in San Francisco, learning there that, as a board member, she was expected to raise $50,000 per year. Her understanding before joining was $50,000 every three years.
So she called Hall and said she was going to come home, because she had no way to raise that kind of money. But Hall had other ideas.
Hall said, “When I was asked to join the board, I had no skills. I didn’t know what purpose I’d have on the board. But one thing I knew how to do was give a party.”
She recalled how, to keep the counseling enter open, the bars would stage drag shows that raised $2,000-3,000. As the counseling center morphed into Oak Lawn Community
Services with programs like The Buddy Project, they needed to raise more money, so Hall, who is an interior designer, staged a party in the parking lot of the Dallas Design Center in the Design District, dubbing it “The Queen’s Ball.” The party raised $20,000, kicking off a series of several such parties each year for several years in a row.
So with that success in mind ,when Marcum got home from her first HRC board meeting, Hall suggested they throw a dinner party and invite three tables of eight. Marcum called chef Wendy Krispin. Elizabeth Birch, HRC’s CEO at the time, flew in for the event. They raised $50,000.
Marcum became board chair and served for four years. Her activism with her wife continues through today.
LGBTQ Chamber CEO Tony Vedda said he wanted to present this award to Hall and Marcum a number of years ago, but Marcum objected. She worried that a lifetime achievement award would make people thing they were done. Retired. Out of the activism business. And that was just not true.
The couple finally agreed to accept the award this year.
Vedda said over the years, he’s seen them work with the chamber board and numerous other boards throughout the community. Summing up their work, he said, “They have helped shape our community.”
Marcum said, “We could not have had the life we had without having this relationship” with each other, a relationship she described as “stable and somewhat calm.” With that in mind, she added, having not just won this award, but winning it together “means a lot to us.