In many ways, this year’s 30th San Diego Pride parade will bring long-time community activist and this year’s Grand Marshall Nicole Murray-Ramirez full circle. He is famously one of the three original organizers of the first San Diego Pride event, which took place in 1974, and the only one still with us today. He is also the brainchild behind our community’s first student scholarship fund (the Nicole Murray-Ramirez Scholarship Fund), the Community Coalition breakfast, the Community Easter Egg Hunt, the Community Tribute Banquet, the annual Tijuana blanket drive and Toys for Kids program, the Toni Atkins Lesbian Health Fund and the Ben F. Dillingham Community Grant (both administrated by The Center), the Queen Eddie Youth Fund, Orgullo (co-founder), the Latin Pride festival and Bienestar (co-founder with Carolina Ramos), the Nicky Awards, Mr. and Miss Gay San Diego as well as many other pageants, and The Center’s Wall of Honor.

One can’t have a conversation with Murray-Ramirez without noticing the political passion and astuteness of this somewhat controversial San Diego activist (who is also a long-time columnist with this paper.) One also can’t help but notice his thorough knowledge not only of GLBT politics, but GLBT history.

He knows it, because he’s lived it.

When it came time to get a permit for the original 1974 Pride parade, it was Murray-Ramirez who, with co-organizers Jess Jessop and Tom Homann, was greeted at City Hall by a policeman saying, “A homosexual parade? We’re not going to have a downtown homosexual parade in San Diego.” The parade went on, permitless.

While much of his time these days is spent “doing lunch” with politicians like city attorney candidate Mike Aguirre or Congressmember Bob Filner, Murray-Ramirez remembers when his activism was profoundly stigmatized.

“I got involved when I first hit this city,” says Murray-Ramirez, who arrived in San Diego from Los Angeles in the late 1960s as a pre-operative transsexual, and remembers being turned away from restaurants. In the early 1970s, a full decade before the AIDS crisis got many GLBTs organized, Murray-Ramirez petitioned the mayor (Frank Curran) to meet with a group of GLBT activists. They were denied, with the comment, “I don’t have a homosexual constituency.”

Murray-Ramirez’s activism was furthered when the AIDS crisis hit.

“I was there during the early dark days of AIDS,” says Murray-Ramirez. “We founded an AIDS food bank [in 1983]. We had no corporate sponsors. Those days were the hardest. We even had to have a separate account number using only the initials ‘AAF’ because people were afraid to write checks to the ‘AIDS Assistance Fund’.”

But the personal had become political, and Murray-Ramirez was always good at the political.

The AIDS Assistance Fund was established when, at an informational meeting with AIDS Project in 1983, an entire room applauded, as Murray-Ramirez recalls it, when it was announced that the “second San Diegan with AIDS” had been relocated to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Murray-Ramirez says he remembers standing up and saying, if we can’t accommodate and feed people with AIDS in this city, “that’s unacceptable”. The AIDS Assistance Fund was founded by Murray-Ramirez, along with John Ciaccio, Clint Johnson and Tom Homann, who have all since passed away but are commemorated on The Center’s new Wall of Honor.

“I come up with the ideas,” Murray-Ramirez says, “but never have I done [anything] alone.”

When Murray-Ramirez rides the parade route this week, he says, those lost will be very much in his thoughts.

“I have been down this route many times,” says Murray-Ramirez. “But I think this time will be more emotional, for so many reasons. The first is, no one can do everything alone, and so I will be thinking about all those people who have helped me, stood beside me, fought along with me, who have been lost.”

One more reason Murray-Ramirez says this ride will be emotional is because his mother will be riding with him.

“It’s almost like my family has come full circle,” explains Murray-Ramirez. “My father always wanted me to be successful in politics and my mother always wanted me to be successful in religion. My mother has come to terms that I have made a difference. She has truly come to accept that I — that her two sons, actually — are gay. She now even tells her friends.

“I come from a very conservative, Mexican-American family. When my father found out I was gay, he asked that I not use the family name. So I legally took the last name of Michael Murray from my first relationship. Sometimes I would use the ‘R’ as a middle initial, but I would never use the name.

“I was living as a transsexual for about four or five years,” Murray-Ramirez continues. “I was seriously considering the full operation. I was on female hormones, living as a female seven days a week, 24 hours a day. My dad couldn’t deal with it really. But when he got Alzheimer’s, I asked my mom if I could take our family name, and so I legally had my name changed to Nicole Murray-Ramirez.”

Murray-Ramirez kept more than just his family name. He also kept a sense of tradition instilled in him through a religious, Mexican family.

“I was an altar boy in the Catholic Church when I was young,” he explains. “I was very involved in the church. In fact, I was very serious about becoming a priest. I was about to go to a well-known seminary.”

There was one small glitch: He liked to have sex.

“I could not be an active heterosexual or an active homosexual and be a priest. I would have to be asexual,” says Murray-Ramirez. “Consequently, I couldn’t be that. It tore me up. I was extremely emotional and full of turmoil over this.”

While Murray-Ramirez did not go on to be a priest, he did go on to become one of the San Diego GLBT community’s strongest voices. Murray-Ramirez is quick to point out, though, that he is not fond of the title “spokesperson” or “leader.”

“I would definitely consider myself an activist,” says Murray-Ramirez. “That is the difference. A lot of people may criticize me for speaking on behalf of the GLBT community, but you will never see an article or a speech I give where I identify myself as a spokesperson or a leader. What I am is an activist.”

The tenor of Murray-Ramirez’s political views has changed over the years. Thirty years ago, Murray-Ramirez was a registered Republican who had fought hard to elect Richard Nixon to serve in the Oval Office. During the 30 years that has passed since he looked on in disappointment as Nixon resigned, Murray-Ramirez may have changed political parties, but his admiration of Nixon has never wavered.

“Very few Presidents grew up in a house their father built,” explains Murray-Ramirez. “He was a poor man from a poor family who worked hard for what he believed in. I guess I can look at the whole person. When you look at history, I think people will come to understand that Nixon was the moderate who was reaching out to the Civil Rights Movement more than anyone else. It was the conservative Republicans who were trying to stop the Nixons, Fords and Rockefellers. I believed that Nixon was a moderate, a progressive.”

Murray-Ramirez went on to support Republicans Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. But when AIDS hit, Murray-Ramirez was stopped dead in his tracks.

“I can never forgive him,” says Murray-Ramirez of former President Reagan. “On the one hand, I simply cannot forgive the man for what he didn’t do for AIDS. I firmly believe that many people would have lived longer if he had not ignored the problem. I think the difference is night and day what could have happened versus what did because he chose to ignore it.”

Murray-Ramirez’s Republican ties afforded him opportunities to meet with Nixon, Ford and Reagan. Murray-Ramirez recalls the time when he met the Gipper: “I was wearing a rainbow flag pin and I remember Reagan asking me, ‘What is that symbolic of?’ I said, ‘It represents the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community. Reagan said, ‘Oh, I see.’ It was clear that he was very taken aback.”

Contrast that with Murray-Ramirez’s memory of his first meeting with then-President Bill Clinton: “I remember that I was wearing a red ribbon,” says Murray-Ramirez. “Clinton was so tall. When he saw me, he looked into my eyes and said, ‘You know, I have lost a lot of friends to AIDS.’ … I could tell this man had been affected by this disease.”

While 30 years have passed since he stood at the first Pride rally and spoke out on GLBT issues, Murray-Ramirez knows the path to this moment has been paved with the hard work of others.

“I have so many memories that will come to me this week,” says Murray-Ramirez. “Like all families, we have had our ups and downs, our fights and our triumphs. But in the end, I think those who have passed on will be looking down on me and saying, ‘Job well done, girlfriend.’”