Headlines from the Granite State
Team rallies around gay player
After an out, gay Colby-Sawyer College soccer player who’d come out to his team earlier in the year took homophobic heat on the field from an opposing team, his teammates and coach rallied around him and won the game with a decisive 5-O victory.
Reported Outsports.com:
“It all started right before halftime when Colby-Sawyer faced the Rivier Univ. men’s soccer team in a Division III clash last Wednesday night. The two schools are in New Hampshire and part of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference.
Couper Gunn, a Colby-Sawyer team captain, was wearing a rainbow-colored captain’s armband in support of his community.
“‘Get that faggot armband off of you,’ Gunn remembered an opposing player saying during the match. … [Despite the heat of the moment,] Gunn had enough self-control to keep his response to words with the player, then talk with the referee and his coach. He was a leader on the team, and he knew he needed to act like one. …
“In that locker room at halftime, Gunn was safe with his soccer family. Coach Reasso walked over to Gunn and addressed his player directly, not shying away from what had happened.
“‘Look at me,’ Gunn remembered his coach saying to him. ‘You’re a very brave man. You’re a strong man.’
“Gunn doesn’t remember the rest of Reasso’s halftime talk, but he said it was something about the other team coming after one of their brothers, and they needed to show Rivier what that meant to all of them.”
And that’s exactly what the team did.
Fabulous Find grant
the Fabulous Find Boutique in Kittery chose the LGBTQ+ youth focused nonprofit Seacoast Outright as a recipient of Fabulous Find’s monthly grant program. The grant enables Seacoast Outright to continue their much-needed support and advocacy work on behalf of LGBTQ+ youth in the Greater Seacoast area.
“A gift like this from a fellow nonprofit organization on the Seacoast is a great example of how we can help each other locally and have a big impact,” said Seacoast Outright Executive Director Hershey Hirschkop in a statement.
“We are a tiny organization with a mighty mission,” she said. “The grant of $7,318.71 goes a long way to helping us serve our LGBTQ+ youth, whether it’s our ongoing Game Night, Friday Night support group or our monthly Parent’s Group, or subsidizing our annual events, such as Portsmouth Pride. We want to thank Fabulous Find in Kittery for seeing the value in assisting other organizations in our own backyards, too. This donation will help us support our ever-expanding list of programs.”
Fabulous Find is a boutique-style resale shop at 139 State Rd. (Route 1) in Kittery that identifies nonprofits to support with the boutique’s income. All profits from the boutique are donated each month to local nonprofits. The busier the month, the greater the donations back to the community.
More: thefabulousfind.org and seacoastoutright.org
Remembering Charlie Howard
Almost four decades after three teenagers in Bangor, Maine, killed Portsmouth, New Hampshire native Charlie Howard in 1984 for being gay, the city of Portsmouth still remembers him and is honoring him with a remembrance bench.
“Charlie was a very caring person who was always concerned about others,” Howard’s former high school teacher and former Portsmouth mayor Robert Lister told Seacoast Online, back in 2019 when the application was made to install the bench.
“Though bullied,” Lister said, “Charlie always seemed to turn the other cheek. He would always convey his feeling that he was his own individual. I am convinced that had he lived, he would have been a prominent advocate for the rights of individuals.”
NH LGBT History Project, which raised funds for two benches in Howard’s name, posted on Facebook: “The bench in memory of Charlie Howard was installed on Commercial Alley in Portsmouth last week. Through your generous donations we now have a marker on Charlie’s grave in Kittery, a memorial bench at Portsmouth High School and now a memorial bench in downtown Portsmouth. A dedication/service will be held in June for the High school bench and in July for the downtown bench. We could use help organizing both events so contact us if you are interested.”
“I think the death of Charlie Howard shocked people in the Bangor area out of their complacency about matters of sexual preference and prejudice,” author Stephen King, a Maine resident, told the Bangor Daily News back in 2019 when the benches were approved for installation. “I know it did me.”
