While Cece Cox, center with megaphone, oversaw tremendous growth and expansion of services during her time as Resource Center CEO, her efforts to bring activism back into the organization is another of her greatest legacies. (Photo courtesy of Resource Center)
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Since she announced her retirement a week ago, Resource Center CEO Cece Cox has been much lauded for the new buildings she has brought to the center’s list of facilities. But her greatest legacy might be adding activism back into the organization’s mission.
Cox leaves Resource Center as the second-largest community center in the country in terms of budget, number of people served, programs and properties owned. Only Los Angeles is bigger
And fundraising is definitely one of Cox’s biggest skills, allowing her to oversee building a new community center, a five-story senior housing building and a new health campus.
When Resource Center was founded in 1984, it incorporated under the name Foundation for Human Understanding. The organization was known as the AIDS Resource Center, but because of stigma, few people would write a check to an AIDS organization. They would, however, certainly write a check to a group dedicated to human understanding.
After drugs to suppress HIV came on the market, the organization dropped its euphemistic name. But it wasn’t until Cox took the helm that the organization became known as Resource Center.
In 1999, the organization’s budget was about $3 million. Under Cox’s administration, the budget grew to $35 million. And she grew programs including Youth First and counseling services. The former Nelson-Tebedo Clinic began by doing HIV testing. Today, the health clinic provides full primary health care.
Cox grew the agency with smart, strategic partnerships. The counseling program, for example, grew out of a friendship with David Chard, who was dean of SMU’s School of Education and Human Development.
To give counseling students experience in working a variety of settings, Chard jumped at the opportunity to include the LGBTQ+ community. And to offer counseling, Cox built space in the new community center building on Cedar Springs Road.
To build senior housing, Cox took advantage of government programs that help subsidize properties for lower and fixed income residents. She partnered with several organizations including Volunteers of America, one of the largest providers of quality, affordable housing in the country.
So, working smart has been key to Cox’s success as Resource Center CEO.
But one thing was missing from the agency when she was promoted to her current position: activism.
When the organization began, activism was front and center for the first executive director, John Thomas. But activism in the 1980s was about AIDS. The Texas Legislature was working on a plan to quarantine all gay men to stop the spread of AIDS at a time when we didn’t know what was causing so many men in our community to die. Thomas led street activism efforts, like die-ins at city hall, and he was an organizer of the March on Washington.
But with Thomas’ death, much of the activism died too. Leaders of AIDS organizations were afraid that lobbying and protesting would endanger their organizations’ non-profit status.
Cox said she became an activist in Dallas. She worked with GLAAD, played in the women’s softball league, became the director of marketing and development for the Turtle Creek Chorale, volunteered with Theater Gemini in the back of the original AIDS Resource Center
on Cedar Springs Road and, finally, became president of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance.
Two things inspired her, she said. First was Randy Shilts’ book And the Band Played On. Second was an incident involving a Dallas criminal court judge named Jack Hampton, who gave a lighter sentence to a convicted murderer because his victims were gay.
Soon after Cox became Resource Center CEO, the raid on the Rainbow Lounge happened in Fort Worth. TABC agents and Fort Worth police officers raided the newly-opened gay bar, injuring patrons using heavy-handed tactics and leaving one man hospitalized with head injuries.
The raid coincided with the 40th anniversary of Stonewall.
Cox hired Rafael McDonnell as advocacy manager, and they protested in Fort Worth and spoke at city council meetings until TABC did something to compensate the victims and change their methods.
In speaking to the head of TABC, Dallas Voice learned at the time that they had no idea what Stonewall was. And Cox learned that she and Resource Center could make a difference. As part of the resolution, TABC hired Resource Center to do LGBTQ+ sensitivity training across the state. There hasn’t been an incident involving the regulatory agency and a gay bar since.
Cox said from that experience, she learned that activism was a necessary part of upholding the organization’s mission. “We’ve had a lot of successes,” she said. “Sometimes it’s working quietly behind the scenes.”
One of the first projects she and McDonnell put together was contacting cities, school districts and government agencies, like the toll road authority surrounding Dallas, about adding non-discrimination ordinances and policies to their city codes at a time before marriage equality. Grand Prairie, for example, responded that they had already done it administratively. Some cities held public hearings and took public votes while others ignored Resource Center.
But all of the LGBTQ+ workplace benefits and protections written into city charters, school policies and government bodies in the DFW area began with Resource Center’s activism and its boldness in asking for these protections.
Cox knows there’s a lot more that needs to be done. As proud as she is of the 84-unit senior housing facility Oak Lawn Place, she said it hurts that there’s an 18-month wait to get in.
So why is Cox announcing her retirement now?
“I don’t want to drop dead at my desk,” she joked. “I’ve poured a lot into this job.”
She said she wants to spend more time with people she cares about and tackle projects around the house that have piled up.
“And hike. I love New Mexico,” she said. “And read all the books I’ve had no time to read.”
Resource Center is doing a national search for a replacement. Cox hopes the person the board hires is in place before the end of the year.
She expects there to be a few months overlap so she can show the new CEO the wide variety of jobs running Resource Center entails — chief activist, fundraiser, head of a medical practice and a dental practice, landlord to 84 senior residents, working with the food bank to stock a food pantry, overseeing a counseling program and keeping programs thriving for LGBTQ+ youth, transgender men and women, seniors, Black men and more.
And once she is gone, she said she’ll still be only a phone call away.