Longtime event planner for Caven steps in while board searches for a permanent replacement
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
Chris Bengston has been named interim executive director of Dallas Pride, and she said she accepted the position to put some structure back in her life. Bengston worked for Caven Enterprises for 36 years and retired when the company was sold a couple of years ago. But she never got to enjoy that retirement because she spent last year battling cancer.
But she’s well now and so was willing to “help them out” as the Dallas Pride board looks for a new permanent executive director.
If the board decides to create an assistant director’s position, Bengston said she’d consider that job. But in the meantime, she said, she knows a few people who are interested in the position, and “I just want to keep things rolling.”
As far as experience goes, Bengston has about as much experience staging events in the Dallas LGBTQ community as anyone. At the age of 36, she went to work for Caven Enterprises as a bartender.
“I was their first female bartender,” she said, adding, “I happened to be straight.”
She lived down the street, didn’t have a car and wanted a part-time job so she could buy one. At the time she was working full-time at an advertising agency, but her job at Caven quickly became full-time as well.
“My advertising employer said, ‘We think you like your other job better,’” she said. They were right.
So Bengston began working at 4001, a disco then located in the building where the restaurant Roy G’s is today. That was a men’s bar, so they moved her down the street to The Old Plantation, which stood where S4 stands today and which had a more mixed crowd.
While Bengston started as a bartender, she became assistant manager and, finally, manager of what had by that time become Village Station.
In 2003, Bengston became on-site event manager for the company, and, in 2014, she became secretary of Caven Enterprises, sitting on its corporate board of directors.
As event manager, she began working with all the nonprofits, including, for example, David Hearn, who had created the AIDS funding agency Greg Dollgener Memorial AIDS Fund and had started doing Metroball in his backyard.
“As it grew, he came to me and wanted to know if we could do something at S4,” Bengston said. “I said, yeah, let’s make it grow.”
And grow it has, attracting top-quality talent and raising tens of thousands of dollars for GDMAF.
“It was a real treat for me when Dallas Bears came to me and wanted to make their event bigger,” Bengston continued. “That was an experience — working with big old burly guys who were as sweet as can be.”
Nonprofits regularly approached Bengston to partner with them for fundraising events. “We didn’t charge for using the space,” she said, “and money collected at the door went back to them.”
That included what she described as “a lot of pageants.”
Stonewall Democrats approached Bengston to have candidate forums in the bars, and “We made it happen,” she said.
Of course, the first major candidate to campaign at JR.’s was Ann Richards, who walked through shaking hands with everyone in the bar before heading out to other places along the strip.
“Helping people having a successful event — that’s my thing,” Bengston said. “I think people see how good our partnerships have been by length of time they’ve been with us.”
And Cedar Springs Road is where Bengston raised her son. “My son was the first child born in the bar,” she said.
Well, not literally born IN the bar, but he was certainly raised there by a lot of uncles. She said the beautiful thing about it is the number of Caven employees and customers who’ve had families since then.
Bengston never put her son, Alex, in daycare. He was always in the bar with her. One time, someone called the police on her, but when Officer Rick, the cop on the beat, came into the bar, “He took one look at us and said, ‘Oh, my God. It’s you and Alex,’” Bengston recalled, adding that the officer just turned around and left.
And how did Alex turn out? He loves drag. He enjoyed the pageants with the evening gowns. And he lives in Longmont, Colo. with his girlfriend.
And that, Bengston said, is how she got into community.
She spoke about the highs and lows of working on Cedar Springs Road.
“I was there when we had the AIDS crisis,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many kids, employees cried on my shoulder.”
At one point, Bengston said, she spoke at six funerals in six months.
“But when gay marriage was approved, the block went crazy,” she continued. “I still get chills.”
Bengston said many of the people she worked with were afraid to leave the gayborhood, so, as the event planner, she’d schedule outings on their Mondays and Tuesdays off to go to the zoo, to the Arboretum or to Six Flags.
Speaking about people outside the LGBTQ community, Bengston said she is furious about newly-signed legislation targeting her friends. “I get so angry when I hear things about community,” she said. “You don’t have to agree, but don’t hurt.”
She said there are some unknowns in the legislation that could affect next year’s festival and parade and even Halloween on Cedar Springs Road. And that makes her angry. Speaking of her long-time friend Cassie Nova, the Caven show director, and other drag queens she’s known for 30 years, Bengston said, “The millions of dollars they raised! People just don’t get it.”
As far as this year’s Pride festival and parade, she said, the parade went well and the festival went very well. But she’s concerned about the number of people she’s heard from who said they stayed away because they were concerned about their safety.
“People who came had a great time,” she said, noting that the massive protests some people expected just didn’t happen.
She’s already had a meeting with everyone who planned this year’s parade and festival to see what can run better next year. But Dallas Pride has one more event planned for this year first — a block party on Cedar Springs Road.
Originally scheduled for June 24, it’s been moved to Aug. 26 — mostly for budget reasons. Bengston said they’re still looking for sponsors, because the more money they have, the more they can do.
She noted that Aug. 26 is the last weekend before all the new legislation goes into effect.
“I hope to see 1,000 drag queens on the street,” she said, along with some great music — “but we’re still putting it together.”
Her goal for Dallas Pride? “We’re going to make Pride better.” To do that, she said, you need to give the community the best and just allow everyone to have a great time.
“Speaking from the heart, I love this community. It’s given me my friends, journeys, experiences, my child. It’s given me so much. Shaped me to be the woman I am,” she said.
So Chris Bengston is temporarily back out of retirement and running Dallas Pride mostly because “I missed the people.”
And she’s back 36 years after first going to work for Caven so she could save some extra money “because I wanted to buy a car.” Which she did, by the way — “a red Camaro.”
