Brief History of CMRA

NEW!  A list of all CMRA officers since 1977 is now available!  Click here to see this list.  Much thanks must go to Bob Rourke for compiling and updating the list.  Bob also wrote the essay below.

CMRA was founded during the meeting on May 5, 1977 at the Round Up bar on the corner of 8th St and E St S.E. The Roundup bar was former Joana's bar for lesbians. The bar across the street from Joana's was Johnnie's.  The huge, successful first Eye party was held at A.A.A.D basketball tournament in April 1976. They called it, the "EYE" party because it was a secret code, winking an eye to others letting them know that there is a gay and lesbian party upstairs in the hotel room at Omni Shoreham. The Eye party was chaired by Frank Del Russo, Betty G. Miller and Gigi Doran. Betty G. Miller told me a story at ASL Lavender Linguistics conference last year that she had to stand at the hotel room door and use her body to block out many curious Deaf straights from entering the Eye party. About 275 people attended the party.

They had another Eye party at the Round Up bar during the last week of April 1977. As a result, there was a big profit from the Eye party. The Eye II party committee had a meeting, regarding the decision with what to do with the profit. The committees agreed to establish deaf gay organization of Washington, D.C. area so that profit would go to the club fund. They originally named the organization, Metropolitan Rainbow Alliance (MRA). Later in the fall of 1977, the word Capital was added and became CMRA.

Marvin Evinks was the first CMRA president. James Humphrey later was elected as 2nd CMRA President.

In 1978, the Kitty jar was invented and the label on jar was written by Ricky Drake. It is still ALIVE and GOOD around collecting money for church uses.

In January 1979, the CMRA officers experimented to hold the first coffeehouse and show the captioned film in the church basement. They never thought that it would end up continuing every 2 months for many years.  Nowadays we still have coffeehouse.

In February 1979, the first Potomac Prism newsletters were sent out.

In the same month, CMRA co-hosted with Gay Alliance of GWU (George Washington University) for a Valentine's Party to raise funds for a new TTY at Gay Switchboard hotline. CMRA and Gay Alliance continued to co-host several parties (Halloween, Spring party) for several years.

In October 1981, CMRA held the second annual Regional Conference in which regional chapters sent representatives to participate in two days of meetings and discussions. In June 1985, CMRA also held the Ninth Annual Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf Convention.   After the successful Convention, CMRA made a contribution of $200 to the Whitman-Walker Clinic.

In May 1982, they had 5th Anniversary party at Crystal House II penthouse on Eads St. in Crystal City. They served spaghetti dinner, salad and garlic breads. The admittance cost was 1 dollar for members and 2 dollars for non-members. James Barela was the CMRA president.

On May 9th, 1987, CMRA's10th Anniversary party was held at Holiday Inn on 550 C St. SW. Roy Collins was the CMRA President. James Humphrey won the Man of Decade award for being active in CMRA for many years.

In October 1987 and again in April 1993, CMRA directed a very large group of Deaf people, in participation of the historical event 'National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights' in which 500,000 people from all over the country attended.

In 1990, CMRA was incorporated.

On April 17, 1992, CMRA's 15th Annivesary party was celebrated on the cruise down on Potomac River. Teresa Newman (former Davisson) was the CMRA President.

On May 9-10, 1997, CMRA's 20th Anniversary weekend was successful as well. We had "Hello, Hello" party on Friday evening at St. James Church hall. On Saturday, ASL-LL V was held at Foundry United Methodist Church and co-sponsored by CMRA. The Anniversary banquet was held at Doubletree hotel.  Josh Mendelsohn was the CMRA president.  Kent Babson won the Man of Decade award. Matt Brown won the Man of Year award. Barbara Hathaway won the Woman of Year award. The "Most Fabulous" awards were given out for most fabulous "shoes", "Van-Dyke beard", "Vanna White Do", "Dyke", etc. CMRA history was presented by Ricky Drake and Bob Rourke. The slides of old CMRA pictures were shown.

I want to share a funny story that happened while I [Bob Rourke] was CMRA president during 1988-1989. Tom Kane, as Special Project officer, and his aides helped plan for the Gay Pride parade making the banners and colorful rainbow handshaped "ILY" signs on poles. Tom Kane made one of the banners that misspelled the word, lesbian as "LESBAIN." On the morning right before the parade started, I caught the spelling error on the banner and hurriedly looked for a marker. We scribbled with the black markers covering up the error. Yet, it looked a bit funny but it was overlooked in general, anyway.  We were relieved not having to be embarrassed by others thinking that we, Deafies are nuts. However, we won the best unity award of all groups in the parade afterward!

There are many other important things about CMRA that we should not overlook such as CMRA hosted the regional conferences three times (1982, 1990, and 1996) and hosted a very successful RAD conference back in 1985. CMRA also hosted many successful parties with a turnout of large number such at Omni Shoreham hotel back in 1989 during Deaf Way. It was unbelievably crowded and the room and outside in hallway was so packed. They had to move to the much larger and roomy hotel lobby. CMRA has co-sponsored several events with Lambda Society of Gallaudet University, BLADeaf, Deaf AIDS Action (DAA), ASL Lavender Linguistics and several other Deaf organizations.