COMMENTARY: We Owe You One, Carolyn

FAYETTEVILLE — We don’t have a lot of written modern history in Fayetteville, which means that a lot of folks will make their mark upon the community and vanish without a trace. We find monuments, plaques and occasionally stone markers on street corners to men and women of some past prominence, but the names of ordinary men and women who rose up among us in times of political or moral crisis are often lost to us.

The good, as they say, is oft interred with their bones.

In 1996, Carolyn Wagner’s son William was the victim of a brutal gay bashing outside a laundromat on University Avenue by fellow Fayetteville High School students.

As they separated him from his friends, the motivation for the attack was made clear, by the word “queer,” accompanied by the savage punches that fell upon him.

“So you’re afraid to fight me alone, huh?” William taunted his attackers. The response was even more violence. Though his attackers ran away like the all bullies once they knew the police were their way, they had succeeded in breaking the sophomore’s nose in two places and causing kidney damage.

Later that night his attackers were in police custody. But for the Wagner family, it was far from over. They had moved to Fayetteville, one of the most progressive cities in the country according to Utne magazine, precisely because they believed that it offered their son some measure of safety.

Sometime before the attack, an anonymous teacher at Fayetteville High School had called to warn them that some students were planning to attack their son, but one hears this sort of thing all the time when one has an openlygay child.

Though many in the community were supportive of the Wagner family after the attack, soon after the incident, an early morning caller told Carolyn, “The fag is going to get a cap in the head.”

There are turning points for all of us in our lives. Carolyn Wagner had just wanted a quiet life in Fayetteville, a “progressive” community where she knew her children would be safe. And then it wasn’t so safe.

So she set about trying to make it safer.

Sadly, William hadn’t been the only victim of gay-hatred in our community. A young girl attending one of Fayetteville’s junior high schools was taunted and physically attacked by some students once it became known that her mother was involved with another woman. It became so severe that her mother felt compelled to withdraw her from school.

Sometime before, a young man had been murdered after being picked up in one of Fayetteville’s gay bars. These events were all chronicled on A&E’s “Investigative Reports.”

So we were tarnished, after all.

But Carolyn Wagner set about to help make Fayetteville a little better, to be that progressive community that Utne had touted.

She took on the Fayetteville School District and won. Where some might say, “Good job, that’s enough.” It wasn’t for Carolyn Wagner.

When Alderman Randy Zurcher introduced the Human Dignity Resolution in 1998, Carolyn threwherself into that fight as well, with the group the Campaign for Human Dignity. Not only did the members of this group advocate for the resolution, which would have added sexual orientation to the job protections that City of Fayetteville employees would have, they also fought against the constant barrage of misinformation that opponents of the Resolution were spreading.

In the midst of that, she took time to speak before the Washington County Quorum Court when they decided to - after almost a decade - take job protections away from gay and lesbian employees who worked for the county.

When the Human Dignity Resolution was defeated in a public vote in November 1998, many could have been forgiven for not being involved with political or social causes ever again. But it didn’t stop Carolyn.

Even after she and her husband moved from Fayetteville, she remained active in civil rights, cofounding Families United Against Hate, and in 2000 she was the Grand Marshal in Tulsa’s annual Gay Pride Day Parade. In 2010 she was profiled by the magazine published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, when she talked about her father’s involvement with the Ku Klux Klan.

Carolyn spoke for many when she said. “It’s time to stand up, and say, ‘we’re not going to tolerate it.’”

It’s human beings who make up the soul of a city. Only that, and nothing more. Thanks, Carolyn. We owe you one.

RICHARD S. DRAKE IS THE AUTHOR OF “OZARK MOSAIC: ADVENTURES IN ARKANSAS ALTERNATIVE JOURNALISM, 1990-2002.” HE IS ALSO THE HOST/ PRODUCER OF THE INTERVIEW PROGRAM “ON THE AIR WITH RICHARD S. DRAKE.”