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Pagc 6 Alabama Forum October 1988

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Excerpt from the Biography of
Leonard Matlovich

For most of the half-million people who attended
the weeklong schedule of events surrounding the
October 1987 March on Washington, the highlight
was the march itself. For Leonard Matlovich,
however, the highlight was a project which he initiated
and organized, the Never Forget Project
Like the project he initiated to honor gay Vietnam
veterans, once again Leonard was concerned with
the creation of memorials for gay people. This
time the focus was his former political antagonist,
Harvey Milk.

"I was talking to Harvey's lover, Scott Smith, one
day and found out that there isn't any memorial to
Milk outside of San Francisco. In San Francisco, a
library, a community center, and a public plaza
are all named after him. But even here, there is no
one particular spot that people go to pay their respects
to Harvey Milk. I thought that was
shame, for people need to have a place to pay
homage to a person they feel has made their lives
better.

"Later, when news of my oun tombstone hit the
press, a friend suggested that might do the same
thing for Harvey that I did for gay Vietnam vets
like myself...create a permanent memorial in
public cemetery. The idea for Never Forget
evolved from that. But what really gave me the
commitment to go through with it was remembering
my visit to the cemetery where Alice B. Toklas
and Gertrude Stein are buried in France. I was
incredibly moved that Toklas and Stein, who were
lovers, put their names on the same tombstone. I
realized again that in this country we have nothing
similar, and I was determined to do something
about it.

"I established Never Forget in order to create
kind of gay Arlington Cemetery, a place to bury
and honor our heroes. And I chose Harvey Milk
as the first of our leaders to honor because he did
so much to inspire and motivate others. He was
the movements first true martyr. Even though
Harvey never lived in Washington, Congressional
Cemetery seemed like a logical place for the
memorial because he was one of the first openly
gay officails in the nation, and Congressional
Cemetery is a place for national leaders. Besides,
we'll never know, but had he lived, Harvey Milk
might very well have been elected to Congress. In
anycase, when people visit San Francisco, they
don't do so with the idea of honoring the dead.
Yet in Washington, it's part of the psyche to visit
national cemeteries.

"Because Harvey's ashes were scattered on the
Pacific Ocean outside the Golden Gate Bridge,
there was no permanent grave sitc anywhere, so
we felt free to buy a plot for him in Washington.
His lover, Scott Smith, had saved some of the ashes,
so we placed them in an urn for Harvey, along
with part of his pony tail, a love letter from him to
Scott, a piece of his official stationary from City
Hall, a copy of one of his speaches, and a photo-
graphic negative of him. On Saturday morning,
the day before the march, we held a ceremony
which was incredibly moving for me. Hundreds of
people gathered to honor Harvey and to hear Troy
Perry, Frank Kamny, Harry Britt, Morris Knight,
and myself speak. Then we all filed by the grave
site and laid flowers in front of the urn itself.
Many people cried openly.

"I suppose it is somewhat ironic that I was the one
who organized the ceremony for Harvey, since we
had our very major differences. However, like I
said before, had Harvey Milk lived, I think he and
would have become friends. Besides, perhaps
was fitting for him to be honored by someone he
once regarded as a rival. For Nixon to go to China
made the gesture more valid than for a liberal
Democrat to have gone. Maybe having a conservative
person see the importance of what Harvey
represented makes the memorial more significant.
"Now I hope other gay leaders will choose to be
buried in Congressional Cemetery as well. I'm excited
about it becoming our Arlington. Think what
it will be like a hundred years from now for the
young kid from Altoona, Pennsylvania, who Harvey
always liked to talk about, to visit the graves
of his gay role models.

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