IT’S TIME FOR OUR FIRST ANNUAL FASHION SHOW!

ALL ALPHA OMEGA MEMBERS ARE INVITED! (so’s too)

POTLUCK- Bring a DISH to FEED 4 or 5

When: Saturday, April 13, 2002

Time: dinner’s at 7pm

What to bring: 2 outfits to model (1 formal, 1 casual)

Index card including:

Description of outfits

Approx. cost

Where to purchase

This is your chance to walk down the runway and strut your stuff!

DOOR PRIZES! 

SPECIAL ANNOUNCER!

LADY-LIKE ATTIRE REQUIRED AS ALWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the beginning, there was Genesis. Genesis was a forming Tri-Ess chapter started by the wife of a cross dresser. This caring wife’s name was Diane. Diane was married to Jill, who was the first leader of the group called Genesis. Genesis became Alpha Omega.

The first three officers of Alpha Omega were Jennifer – President; Tanya – Vice President, and Deborah Lee – Secretary/Treasurer. The original Alpha Omega newsletter was called the Alpha Omega Outreach; and Tanya and Deborah Lee were the newsletter crew.

In the late summer of 1989 Alpha Omega finally had a firm meeting place at a hotel on the west side of Cleveland. Before that, meetings were held at member’s homes, and that was its own set of experiences. The hotel meeting room had a small wet bar in one corner of it with a sink, and that was the extent of the kitchen facilities other than a couple 110 volt outlets. But we always had great, hot meals for the meeting. 

The group rented a room for those who needed changing facilities, and rooms were available if someone wanted to stay overnight after a meeting. 

A place called Memoirs was a lounge some of the members would go to after a meeting for a drink or two, and to be out in public for a little bit. 

Jennifer and Tanya each served three years in their respective offices. Deborah Lee had to remain as Secretary/Treasurer because nobody else would take the nomination for the office. Michelle became the second vice president of Alpha Omega. Michelle was also responsible for the artwork that was the covers of the Alpha Omega newsletter for several years; and Michelle also did several comedic cartoons that were also a staple of the back cover of years of newsletters. 

Gloria became the second president of Alpha Omega. Tanya and Deborah Lee were still the work force behind the group’s newsletters, and we mailed out about sixty newsletters each month. 

Jennifer became the first "Lady of the Year" at the first Awards Ceremony in December of 1991.

In 1992, Gloria and Michelle were re-elected to office, and Sandy became the first wife to hold office in Alpha Omega as secretary/treasurer. From early 1990 until March 2000, Kathleen and Gloria were continual participants in the set up of every Alpha Omega meeting. (We only missed about six meetings in over ten years.) 

The Alpha Omega Outreach became LeFemme Silhouette, and that has been the name of our newsletter ever since. Gloria wrote here first newsletter article in April of 1989, and over the next eleven years wrote over four hundred items that helped to fill the newsletter pages. After Tanya stepped down as editor of the newsletter, Deborah Lee took over the editing and publishing of the newsletter until her own time became so limited that she could no longer do it. It was then that Kathleen and Gloria took over the editing and publishing of the newsletter, and did so for about four years.

In 1989 Gloria had become keeper of the Alpha Omega Library, and did so until just recently.

In December of 1992 Deborah Lee became the second Alpha Omega "Lady of the Year". April of 1993 saw new officers installed. Megan became president. Kristen became vice president, and Elaine, Deborah Lee’s wife became the next secretary/treasurer. She held that office for the next eight years.

Situations evolved in 1993 so that in October that year a new president and vice president were elected. Gloria was elected for the third time as president. Charlotte was elected as vice president. There were no awards given in 1993.

In April 1994 Gloria, Charlotte, and Elaine were all re-elected to office. In December 1994, Gloria was chosen as Alpha Omega "Lady of the Year" for the first time. Lori had become chairman of the Interview committee, and did all the needed work for , I believe, the next seven years. Kathleen and Gloria initiated the first of their "Non dressed up cookouts" at their home in September of 1992, and it has been an annual tradition for the last nine years.

In April 1995 Charlotte was elected as the new president of Alpha Omega, with Diane Vernon as vice president, and Elaine as secretary/treasurer. Charlotte did the necessary steps to incorporate Alpha Omega as a non-profit corporation in the state of Ohio. Charlotte’s job made it so she had to move out of the area towards the end of her term.

In April 1996 Diane Vernon was elected president of Alpha Omega, Diane Brennan as vice president, and Elaine as secretary/treasurer. In December 1995, Charlotte was chosen as Alpha Omega’s "Lady of the Year". In December 1996 Gloria was chosen as "Lady of the Year" for the second time.

In April 1997 Diane Vernon, Diane Brennan and Elaine were all re-elected to office. During Diane Vernon’s term, Alpha Omega moved from the hotel as a meeting place to a local church that had meeting space available. For the first time Alpha Omega had a full kitchen for meal preparation and a more secluded setting for meetings which added to the security of our meetings. Also during Diane’s term, Alpha Omega helped work a booth with IFGE at the National Convention of Social Workers that was held in Cleveland at the Convention Center. Several members helped work the booth. 

Due to Diane Vernon’s hectic work schedule, Gloria helped fill in at meetings when Diane was unable to attend. In December 1997, Gloria was chosen as Alpha Omega’s "Lady of the Year" for the third time.

In April 1998 Gloria was elected president of Alpha Omega for the fifth time with Marla as vice president and Elaine as secretary/treasurer. In December 1998 Lisa was chosen as Alpha Omega’s "Lady of the Year".

In April 1999 Gloria was elected for her sixth time as president of Alpha Omega, with Olena as vice president and Elaine as secretary/treasurer.

In 1998 Alpha Omega was selected as a Commended Chapter by TriEss at the Holiday en Femme. Alpha Omega also moved to its present location for meetings.

In November 1999 Alpha Omega was chosen as TriEss Chapter of the Year, the highest honor a chapter could attain from TriEss National. Also, Cheryl won the Service award from TriEss, and in time became a TriEss board member.

In December 1999 Peggy was chosen as Alpha Omega’s "Lady of the Year".

In Gloria’s sixth term Alpha Omega went online with email and a web site. Also a rewrite of the Alpha Omega constitution was initiated.

In April 2000 Diane Brennen was elected as president of Alpha Omega with Olena as vice president and Elaine as secretary/treasurer. In April 2001 Karen was elected president of Alpha Omega, with Diane Kent as vice president and Lisa as secretary/treasurer.

In 2000 and 2001 Alpha Omega sponsored the TriEss Summer Board meetings, and in 2001 was the sponsoring chapter for the annual SPICE convention. In Karen’s term as president Alpha Omega was selected as a TriEss Flagship chapter. In December 2001 Karen was chosen as Alpha Omega’s "Lady of the Year."

And so we are pretty much up to present, with the chapter ready to vote on a new constitution and elect officers for 2002. Over the last decade plus, Alpha Omega has had the support of many in its efforts besides the officers. Lisa and Ari took over editing and publishing the group newsletter from Kathleen and Gloria. Peggy provided meals for countless meetings with help from many others. Diane Vernon and Allie did annual stir fry meals for the group and were staples of the clean up crew.

Abby took over for Lori as chairman of the Interview committee, and did well to continue the work started by Lori. Karen, Lori’s wife, helped set up dinners for the wives and helped with set up and clean up. Olena and Marla provided a lot of humor to meetings, and Olena wrote a couple fabulous skits for the group. Gloria provided several skits for the Christmas parties, and made it so the group got to meet Rambo Rabbit at Easter, Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and Oswald Elf at Christmas.

Fran, Tabitha, Cheryl, Olena, Kathleen and others provided their acting skills for several skits. Andrea, Diane Brennan’s wife, worked on meeting setups, cleanups, meals, and whatever was needed to be done during Diane’s time in office and whenever possible.

The wives and women of Alpha Omega have always been a special and essential part of what made our group special. Diane (the founder), Elaine, Sandy, Kathleen, Karen, Allie, Cheryl, Ari, Sherry, Andrea, Janet, Joanne, Betty, Debbie, Tabitha, and others have given much to Alpha Omega over the years.

Michelle Thomas has filled in for Diane Kent as vice president when needed. Marissa, Joan, Paula, and others have been there to set up meetings, bring food, and fill in as needed.

Alpha Omega’s history is only highlighted here, and I know I haven’t mentioned everything that has been done, or everyone who has been a part of A-O’s history. I hope I have given you, though, a sense of the history that has been Alpha Omega.

As time passes, I hope many more pages can be written of the history of Alpha Omega. Be proud of Alpha Omega’s history, remember our history, and be a part of the history yet to unfold.

Sincerely,

Gloria Sue Fenton

I

My heels clicked sharply on the walk leading to the door of the saloon. I stopped, paused, and checked my equipment. Pen, notepad, hair in place, lipstick not smeared?…… bodyguard? A girl pen-slinger can’t be too careful these days. I took a deep breath, pushed open the swinging doors and glided into the dimly lit hall. On the left were a crowd of people with name tags. Not the people I was gunning for. Case-Weatherhead B-schoolers out for a good time, quick with a financial statement but otherwise too self-absorbed to cause any trouble. Further into the gloom, I spotted the characteristic haircuts. Abercrombie clones. Giving my body guard a cautionary signal I slinked up to the two closest men and drawled, "So who’s the alpha gorilla round here?" The two looked at each other, and stopped to think. Then they pointed at each other and grinned, "SHE is".

Ok, that’s poetic excess. Nevertheless, close enough to the truth that an organization with Guerilla Queers Bar’s mission shouldn’t take offense. GQB as it is known for short, is one-half political theatre, one-half social club. Started in San Francisco as a comic protest against the uniformity and conformity of gay-club culture, it has spontaneously spread across the country. If you look on the web, you might find the San Francisco version a bit over the top for our mid-Western sensibilities. (There is a reason that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence don’t have a branch in Cleveland. )

The program is simple. From 6 to 9 P.M., on the first Friday of each month, a bunch of people on an e-mail list gather at a bar, club, or restaurant they only heard about the week before. It could be any venue in the city having the right size, energy, and location as determined by the loose collective of people who deny running the show. Brian and Brooke, who do seem to be the alpha gorillas, started the Cleveland branch after reading an article about GQB in the Advocate. The Tree House in Tremont, BW3 in Coventry and Jillian’s in the Cedar/Fairhill district have all been venues. Where next, who knows? Anywhere that isn’t on the top of the list of gay clubs is open to a GQB invasion.

Anyhow, my bodyguard soon found people who’d lived in Texas the same time he did, and vanished on a nostalgia trip. I ended up chatting with a tall, impossibly beautiful lesbian woman, who poured out her life story to my eager ears. She’d come up from Akron, with a male buddy who thought she’d like the GQB venue as a way to expand her social life. As she came back from collecting her coat from the other side of the bar, she leaned over and whispered that she loved overhearing conversations. As she’d walked by, she heard someone say, "Boy, now that one I could swear was a real woman." That made my evening. What would make yours? Guerilla Queer Bar is a story waiting for you to write your own chapter. Grab a pen and a party attitude. You can sign up for the e-list that posts the venue for the next event at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/guerrillaqueerbarcleveland.

A Note for Readers:

Alpha Omega does not in general cover events or locations at which spouses would not be comfortable. Hence, some of the regular watering holes, though known to everyone, are not listed in our resource section on the Web. While GQB is distinctly a function of the GLBT community, we saw nothing about the activity that would be offensive or suggestive. Nothing a bold spouse or SO shouldn’t enjoy, if any kind of bar hopping is or was part of your life. GQB however is an advanced activity. If you’re worried about passing, or being recognized don’t go. If you aren’t at ease with all kinds of people in the GLBT community don’t go. And if you don’t know how to make your own party, walk up to strangers and say "hi", if your idea of a good time is watching life go by around you, silently nursing a drink don’t go. This probably isn’t a good venue for you shutterbugs and trophy hunters either. But if you like to meet people, make friends, do a little outreach on a one-to-one basis, share a few laughs, then this could be a nice once a month alternative.-dsf

 Heterosexual cross-dressers bother almost everyone. Gay people regard them with disdain or affectionate incomprehension, something warmer than tolerance but not much. Transsexuals regard them as men "settling" for cross-dressing because they don't have the courage to act on their transsexual longing, or else as closeted and so homophobic that they prefer wearing a dress to facing their desire for another man. Other straight men tend to find them funny or sad, and some find them enraging. The only people on whose kindness and sympathy crossdressers can rely are women: their wives and, even more dependably, their hairdressers, their salespeople, their photographers and makeup artists, their electrolysists, their therapists, and their friends.

Drag queens make sense to most of us. They represent a congruence of sexual orientation, appearance, and temperament—feminine gay men dressing as women for a career, like RuPaul, or, less lucratively, for prostitution, or to express their sense of theater and femininity. (Barney Frank as a drag queen makes no more sense, intuitively, than Dick Cheney as one.) Actors whose most famous performance is as a female—from Barry Humphries, with his brilliant and textured Dame Edna, to Flip Wilson, with his one-note gag of Geraldine—don't puzzle us. Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire and the boys in Some Like It Hot don't puzzle us; they're just men doing what they have to do to survive, learning a nice lesson about the travails of womanhood, and giving one on the benign uses of masculine self-esteem. Even the cross-dressing women of history, women from many countries and every century since the ancient Greeks—from Joan of Arc to Pope Joan to America's jazz-playing Billy Tipton, from Little Jo Monaghan, the cowpoke, to Disney's adorable Mulan—don't puzzle us, they chose to live as men because they couldn't otherwise have the lives they wanted.

Heterosexual cross-dressers—straight men who have not only a wish but a need to wear women's clothes and accessories—manage to be marginal among heterosexual men, marginal among other men who wear women's clothes, marginal in the community of sexual minorities, and completely acceptable only to fetishists, who take anyone who claims to belong. Gay men do not say, "Oh, you're a straight man who likes to wear a dress? Welcome aboard" Straight men do not say, "Well, except for the dress thing, you're just like me. Howdy, partner" Even in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where cross-dressers hold their annual fall Fantasia Fair, few of the residents, gay or straight, seem to recognize these men as people with whom they have a lot in common. 

Many heterosexual cross-dressers never come out of the closet, not even to their wives. Others tel1 their wives after ten or twenty or thirty years of marriage, sometimes because they've been caught wearing their wives' clothes, sometimes because the clothes have been discovered. the revelation that a man himself is the "other woman" is a staple of crossdresser histories.) Heterosexual cross-dressers often spend their whole adult lives ordering size 20 cocktail dresses from catalogues and dressing in secret, with only the mirror for company. But lots of these men, driven by loneliness, by unmet narcissistic needs (all dressed up and nowhere to go), by risk-taking impulses (it's not hard to grasp that a fortyfive-year-old 240-pound former Marine strolling through the Mall of America in full drag is consciously courting risk), want to cross-dress outside their bedrooms. Engineers and accountants, truck drivers and computer programmers, disproportionately represented among the retired military, predominately Christian and predominately conservative (far more moderate Republicans than liberal Democrats), these men go to get-togethers in Kansas City, in Pittsburgh, in Seattle, all over America. They make forays into malls in pairs, and they go to tolerant gay bars in small groups. They browse in the Belladona Plus Size Shop of Beverly, Massachusetts, and they hang out at Cross/Cross Consultants, of Houston, which offers special package rates for shopping, a makeover, and dinner at a restaurant. They go to weekly or monthly meetings, of six or ten or twenty guys, in Nashua, New Hampshire, and Trenton, New Jersey, in Springfield, Missouri, and Water Mill, New York, and throughout the Bible Belt. Arizona has enough cross-dressers to support chapters in both Phoenix and Tucson. A man who crossdresses and needs to be seen can go to conferences like Fantasia Fair and Fall Harvest, in the Midwest, or take trips on any number of cruise lines that happily host groups of cross-dressers and their spouses amid a thousand other guests sailing to Catalina and other destinations. 

Sometimes the wives wish to come, to support their husbands and to enjoy the trip, or to hang out with other wives, like golf widows or wives in Al-Anon. Some come because their husbands need them to. "I don't mind, but really, if he could learn to do his makeup properly and fasten his own bra, I'd rather stay home" one woman told me at Fall Harvest 2000. (Later she called to say that she had bought her husband a video guide to makeup for men and a magnifying mirror, and that she was resigning as his dresser. "He can ask one of the other guys to hook his bra,' she said.) Happy wives are everyone's favorites, but happy or cowed, enthusiastic or grimly accepting, the wives at these functions are simultaneously objects of much public appreciation and utterly secondary to the men's business. The world of crossdressers is for the most part a world of traditional men, traditional marriages, and truths turned inside out. 

Reliable statistics about the number of heterosexual cross-dressers don't seem to exist In the fall of 2000 I spent several weeks trying to pin down that number. I checked with the Intemational Foundation for Gender Education, in Waltham, Massachusetts, which acts as switchboard, referral service, news agency, and educational center for both cross-dressers and transsexuals, and with GenderPAC, a lobbying organization, but neither group knew. "Too many guys in the closet, a voice at the IFGE said. "How could anyone presume to count?"

Note:  Complete article can be found on this site: Conservative etc.