As Cece Cox nears retirement as head of Resource Center, the baton will be passed in a long line of leadership. From Baker v. Wade (the 1980s court challenge to strike down Texas Penal Code 21.06, which in effect criminalized homosexuals) through successive milestones, the Dallas LGBTQ community has been shaped by leaders who stepped forward when the challenges seemed almost impossible to overcome.
That history includes the transformation of the Dallas Gay Alliance from primarily a political organization into one that delivers essential community services. The organization experienced expansive growth during the 1990s, including the extraordinary contributions of John David Thomas, and into the 2000s with the remarkable nearly-two-decade tenure of Cece Cox.
Through each generation, the challenges changed. But the commitment to building a stronger community never did.
During the early 1980s, what was then called the Foundation for Human Understanding became the focal point of our community’s collective response to the AIDS pandemic. It created a food bank, a financial assistance fund, a crisis line, a community center and youth programs, and it provided legal and medical support services.
These were not simply programs. They were lifelines for people who, in many cases, had nowhere else to turn.
Working with the national legal organizations ACLU and Lambda Legal, the Dallas Gay Alliance challenged discrimination in court. It brought lawsuits against Parkland Hospital to force an end to discriminatory practices and waiting lists for people with AIDS. It also sued the city of Dallas to secure the right of lesbians and gay men to serve openly as police officers.
Then, in the midst of all this work, a February 1989 arson fire destroyed the organization’s office on Cedar Springs Road.
Staff and volunteers did not stop. Within a day, they relocated the clinic and offices to the next block on Cedar Springs. Later, the Dallas Gay Alliance purchased the former Metropolitan Community Church building at 2701 Reagan Street and transformed it into a community center. It included a kitchen where people living with AIDS could receive nutritious meals and additional meeting space for the many organizations that had become part of a growing Dallas LGBTQ community.
During those years, a young Cece Cox became an outstanding volunteer, most notably with the Dallas chapter of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and Dallas Gay & Lesbian Alliance. She demonstrated the leadership, intelligence, compassion, and commitment that would eventually make her one of the community’s most impactful leaders.
After working for the Turtle Creek Chorale, a midlife career change led her to practice law at a regional firm before she joined Resource Center as associate executive director, charged with leading LGBTQ programs, which were much needed and greatly underfunded.
Leveraging her business and community network, she launched the mental health counseling in partnership with Southern Methodist University, ensured the preservation of community history with the creation of the Resource Center LGBT collection at the University of North Texas, established a fulltime advocacy department and expanded other programs.
Three years later, in 2010, when then-Executive Director Mike McKay left to pursue another opportunity, he asked Cece to consider applying for the position. By her own admission, she was both terrified and excited. But she accepted the challenge and was selected by the board of directors.
Stepping in as CEO, she inherited a daunting legacy, a struggling capital campaign, an organization that needed to grow in space and scope to remain relevant and a large monthly mortgage payment on land purchased for expansion. Her leadership was characterized by extraordinary community organizing, courage, collaboration and an unwavering determination to keep moving forward.
Cece recognized the shoes she had to fill, but she didn’t turn and walk away. Instead, she fought discrimination locally, regionally and nationally at a time of increasing hostility against LGBTQ people, and she helped raise the profile of Resource Center from its grass roots into becoming one of the largest LGBTQ organizations in the country.
She summoned an extraordinary inner strength and possessed a rarely seen institutional resolve. Rather than retreat, Cece found inspiration in the courage of the organization’s founders and the “get it done” spirit of the Dallas community.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the organization she helped build has become one of the nation’s most vibrant and effective LGBTQ campuses. Today, it includes a state-of-the-art community center, a full-service health clinic with pharmacy, a food bank and affordable housing for seniors — services that touch the lives of thousands of people each year across Dallas, Texas, and neighboring states.
Cece did all that.
And she did it while carrying forward a tradition established by the generations who came before her: When the community needed someone to step forward, someone did.
Now Cece’s door is closing.
But another door is opening.
Christopher Wagley will walk through it and take his place on a path that has defined Dallas LGBTQ leadership for more than four decades — a record of perseverance and accomplishment that few communities can match.
Each generation did its part. Each inherited something from those who came before and left something stronger for those who followed. Now Christopher takes up the mantle, acutely aware that he is filling Cece’s shoes — I mean, high heels.
Dallas now has two jobs ahead: recognize Cece Cox for her extraordinary service and support Christopher Wagley as he begins the next chapter.
He will succeed with our help.
William Waybourn succeeded Bill Nelson as president of the Dallas Gay Alliance during the AIDS crisis. Under his leadership, the organization helped establish the AIDS Resource Center, the Nelson-Tebedo Clinic, a food bank, the AIDS Financial Assistance Fund, the Dallas Legal Hospice and a community center, now known as the Resource Center. In 1980, Waybourn and his husband of 53 years, Craig Spaulding, co-founded Crossroads Market with Nelson and Tebedo. Craig and William now live outside Washington, D.C.