Four years later, a continent away, the Pacific Center was founded to help combat harassment and violence against LGBTQ people.
Between then and now, the woman and the Center have ended up helping each other in countless ways.
The woman, Marty Selnick, who trains new volunteers to staff the PC’s front desk, says of the attack, “I lived in a small town. I was too out, really, but I’ve never known how to be any other way. Things were a lot different then. Places like the Pacific Center are very important.”
Marty landed in the East Bay in the ‘70s, when she began coming to the PC for a peer group for Slightly Older Lesbians. “It was a fun group.” she says. She also came here for counseling for a while.
Though she is acutely aware of issues that confront differently-abled Lesbians, she puts her main activist energies toward the LGBTQ community. “I began volunteering here in June of 1998. It was time to give something back.”
Her life in a wheelchair, the last period of which lasted eight years, has given her first-hand knowledge of accessibility issues at the PC. “I was very sick last year,” she says, “and when I decided to get better, I decided to get a lot better.” Part of her recovery involved volunteering at the front desk. It was a time of recovery for the PC, too, and volunteer training was not what it is now. “I never got trained,” she says. “I came in and said, ‘I can give you two mornings.’ They said, ‘Okay, here’s how you work the phones, here’s the combination to the lock.’ I was pretty much on my own.”
By the time Amy Wooldridge came back on board to direct volunteer services at the Center a few months later, she found Marty equal to the task of training. Amy has since asked her to serve on the Facility and Site Committee to evaluate accessibility at prospective new sites for the PC. “When I started volunteering as a receptionist,” says Marty, “I couldn’t even get my wheelchair to the front desk. I had to park it in the hall and climb around to the chair.” Now getting along with a cane, Marty has agreed to serve on the committee: “Because of how I was injured, I’ve really wanted to marry the causes of accessibility issues and LGBTQ concerns.”
Marty’s interest in “playing” with her computer, as she puts it, has been an additional boon to the Center’s recent fundraising efforts. “Marty is our donor database manager and does an excellent job at maintaining tabs on our donors--their addresses, gifts received, and more,” says Amy. “Without her, we wouldn't have complete, updated addresses for newsletter and other mailings. She’s always a source of inspiration and provides the Center with humor, dedication, and energy.”
Marty’s other interests include her 16-year relationship with her girlfriend Suzanne, movies, and reading. “Works of imagination really draw me,” she says. Her favorite place to visit is “any place I’ve never been before.” A lover of travel, she plans to visit Crater Lake this summer. We’ll miss her at the front desk while she’s gone, but because of the way she’s helped build the front-desk pool, we shouldn’t have to worry about finding subs for her shifts.
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