Robert Emery

Emery’s recent passions have been documenting history and services for the elderly

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Robert Emery has worked tirelessly for the LGBTQ community for years, but over the last 12 months, it seems he has been everywhere, all the time. This week, Dallas Voice honors Emery as our 2022 LGBTQ Texan of the year, in recognition of all the time and effort he has put into the North Texas LGBTQ community this year and in all those year that came before.

In September this year, Emery was recognized for his efforts earlier this year when Black Tie Dinner honored him with the Kuchling Humanitarian Award.

As the first speaker of the evening at Black Tie, he set the tone for what was to come, cheering on Beto for governor and other progressive candidates, publicizing his then-upcoming Archives for All, Y’all conference and encouraging the crowd to get involved in the work of Coalition for Aging LGBT.

A rousing speech is what Black Tie expected from Emery, a former board member, and a rousing speech is exactly what they got. In 2005 and 2006, he served as producer of the Black Tie event. He and his committee brought in Lily Tomlin, Sharon Stone, Geena Davis and Alan Cumming.

A passion for preserving history
Just days after Emery received the Kuchling, he and The Dallas Way hosted Archives for All, Y’All, a 13-state conference that focused on archiving the local history of LGBTQ communities across the South. Emery, a founder of The Dallas Way, is currently the organization’s president.

Emery chaired the host committee that organized and staged the three-day Archives for All, Y’All conference, held at the El Centro campus of Dallas College. Bringing the conference to town was a multi-year, COVID-delayed effort.

Sponsored by Queer History South, a group based in Birmingham, Ala., the conference was aimed at historians, librarians, archivists, educators, students and others interested in preserving local queer history. While events like the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City are well documented, other events in our history have not always been adequately — or accurately — documented, especially when it comes to effects of such events outside of the northeast.

Unfortunately, the history of the LGBTQ-rights movement outside of large East Coast cities isn’t always preserved.

Dallas was one of the first cities to organize a queer history project, partnering with University of North Texas to archive photos, documents and artifacts. Emery was among those organizers who, a decade ago, first spoke to officials at UNT and other area schools about maintaining the archive. He helped choose UNT as the repository for the archives. From the extensive archives that have been accumulating over the past decade, the Archives for All conference featured a photographic exhibit in El Centro’s gallery highlighting the fight for equality in Dallas.

Not only did Emery organize the Archives for All, Y’all conference, he was also a presenter. His session focused on Outrageous Oral, The Dallas Way’s entertaining presentation of local LGBTQ history. Outrageous Oral sessions have been held in The Rose Room and at UNT. Each program features a few speakers who each relate the story of one piece of history.

But Emery’s use of the archives created by The Dallas Way and the many contributors to the collection goes much deeper. When set designers and costumers for the film The Dallas Buyer’s Club needed information to make the film authentic to its early 1990s setting, Emery worked with them at UNT, pulling out T-shirts and photos from the era. And when the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum included LGBTQ rights in its exhibits, Emery worked with museum staff on which stories from our community to tell.

Dreanna Belden, assistant dean for external affairs at UNT libraries, said, “We have a strong partnership with The Dallas Way that we value very highly at UNT libraries.” It was because of such a strong partnership and working relationship with The Dallas Way and with Emery, she said, that she joined the board.

“He’s great to work with and has a passion for history and preservation,” Belden said of Emery. “He’s a wonderful partner in helping us collect and archive in Dallas.”

She said Emery is someone who starts with a great vision and then gets things done. She cited the inspiring keynote speaker he secured for the conference — former White House aide Moe Vela — and the crowd he helped turn out for the opening of the exhibit at El Centro. College officials said they never get such a large crowd for their gallery openings.

A passion for the elder LGBTQs

But as much as he does for The Dallas Way, Emery is equally active in Coalition for Aging LGBT where he is a founding board member and served as treasurer and housing chair.

Senior housing has been a passion of Emery’s for years, and his original intention was to open a senior living facility. But his research found that many LGBTQ people didn’t want separate housing, and he knew he couldn’t possibly address the need for tens of thousands of LGBTQ seniors in the DFW area, anyway.

So, he looked for a way to find facilities in the area that were friendly to the community.

In 2018, Emery spearheaded the North Texas LGBT-Friendly Senior Housing Guide. While other cities had produced brochures or guides as large as eight pages, Emery and his housing committee team went all out, doing things Dallas style. They eventually published an 80-page evaluation of senior living facilities in the four large DFW counties.

Facilities were rated based on policies such as explicit nondiscrimination protections, procedures, outreach and competency training. Procedures would include ways to file a complaint against other residents who have made discriminatory remarks or use of preferred pronouns. In the outreach category, CFA wants to know how the organization reaches out to the LGBTQ community and if it offers any LGBTQ programming and, finally, whether staff goes through any LGBTQ competency training.

Of course, Emery and his team wanted facilities to succeed, so he didn’t just ask if they offered competency training, he began to offer it. Others said they welcomed the community but had no programming of interest to the LGBTQ community. So, Emery began suggesting simple ideas — like a van ride to Gaybingo or a group outing to an LGBTQ-themed movie.

The trick to the housing guide’s success hasn’t been just adding one facility after another to the list. The real work has been following up with those listed to seek out those who have done the work to improve their scores and truly become welcoming communities as well as to identify those where there are problems.

Of course, keeping up with those facilities during the pandemic made the work even more difficult.

Anyone who works with Emery notes his creativity and energy, including former CFA Chair Sandy Anderson. “It seems like he has no boundaries, but everything he touches seems to sparkle,” Anderson declared, adding that he is always enthusiastic, and working with him is fun and exciting.

When Emery comes up with an idea — Boom! He makes it happen, Anderson said. “When he’s in on a project, he’s in all the way,” she said. “He can make a goat in a potato sack look good.”

So far, Emery has had much better tools to work with than goats in potato sacks. But even if it comes to that, we have no doubt that his commitment to and passion for empowering the LGBTQ community and improving the world we live in, will continue to be a bright light for years to come.