Over 100 people turned out to honor Dr. Al Best this past Sunday, June 22, at an annual Community Tribute Dinner at the U.S. Grant Hotel. Each year, the dinner pays tribute to outstanding members of the GLBT community for their contributions and activism over the years. Past honorees have included Ben Dillingham, Bill Beck and Rick Ford, all of whom showed up to applaud Best for his achievements. A veritable who’s who of local leaders, activists and politicians were also in attendance to pay a long overdue tribute to Best.

Nicole Murray-Ramirez, who founded the tribute dinner and served on the planning committee, reminded those in attendance of the book Trail Blazers, which tells the stories of the first openly gay and lesbian candidates to run for office in the United States.

“When it came to the chapter on San Diego I was shocked, then angry, and threw the book in the author’s face — you know how demure I can be,” Murray-Ramirez said. “It told how Neil Goode was the first openly gay candidate to run — Neil Goode being the second — never mentioning Al Best and his courageous campaign in 1979. This is just another case of how our community’s history is being rewritten or ignored.”

Murray-Ramirez also presented a check for $1,000 from the Imperial Court in Best’s name to Something Special Food Pantry and another for $2,000 to the civil rights fund of the Human Dignity Foundation.

The first of many proclamations and commendations presented over the course of the evening came from the office of Third District Councilmember Toni Atkins, which was delivered by staff member George Biagi. The proclamation declared June 22, 2003, to be Al Best day in the City of San Diego for the work that he has done, not only for the GLBT community, but also in the HIV and AIDS community. Along with the proclamation came a letter from Atkins, which Biagi read.

“Your presence at the forefront of the struggle for respect and equal rights of both these communities has been vital for their advancement,” Atkins’ letter read. “Today both the LGBT and HIV/AIDS community enjoy extraordinary visibility due to your unwavering perseverance, hard work and dedication. You have refused to let adversity stand in the way of your dreams and you have opened doors for a brighter future for our community.”

Best made his mark on San Diego’s gay community by being the first openly gay man to run for an elected office. While he didn’t win, he set the course for several other politicians with similar aspirations. In the ’80s Neil Goode made a run for the city council as well, and the GLBT community finally scored a victory with Chris Kehoe in 1994. Despite all of that, it wasn’t until this year that San Diego saw its first gay man elected to office, Frank Tierney, who currently serves on the Coronado City Council.

“I would like to thank you for everything that you have done in order for me to get there,” Tierney said to Best. “I want to thank Al for his for his effort to provide excellent leadership in 1979 when he chose to run for city council and he ended up losing his job — and that’s something that I don’t have to worry about.”

Congressman Bob Filner actually ran in his first election the same year that Best made his run for city council. Filner’s political aspirations carried him all the way to Washington, D.C., but he still remembers campaigning with Best and what an impact he had on him.

“We were with each other every night and I got to see this openly gay person every night,” Filner said. “What we saw was a man who was knowledgeable about the issues, a man who spoke about them with an eloquence that very few could match, a man who had a grace about himself and what he did for the gay and lesbian community by just being. Al Best was incredible. People would not see the first openly gay man, they saw a man who was a credible San Diego council candidate, who should have been there.”

While Best finished fifth out of 11 candidates who were running for the council, he did remain active in the community and when Filner was elected to the City Council in the ’80s Best played a major part in helping draft and get the Human Dignity Ordinance passed. Best also played an important part in getting The Center opened in its facility on Normal Street.

“As we look at our 30th year I am astonished by how many times your name appears in the materials that I go through,” Delores Jacobs, Executive Director of the LGBT Community Center, said. “One of the things you may not know is that you still stand — remember we have a youth center — and you still stand as a figure for those youth to look towards and up to in terms of what’s possible for them.”

One of the youth Best made an impact on was in attendance at the tribute as well, representing Congressmember Susan Davis. Todd Gloria explained that he first encountered Best at a function sponsored by the gay student group at the University of San Diego, where he attended college.

“At that point in time, I always had an interest in government and public service but I didn’t believe that my sexual orientation and my ambition in public service could go together,” Gloria said. “I thought that one excluded the other and I met Al who told me how he had married both and that I shouldn’t be despondent and that there was a future.”

One of Best’s oldest and dearest friends, Ben Dillingham, also provided some insight into the world Best was living in when he ran for political office back in 1979.

“Gay people in his position rarely spoke for us openly back in the ’70s,” Dillingham said. “The comfortable life of the closet was rarely traded for the epithets or threats of mortal harm engendered by standing atop the barricades in the struggle for gay rights. Al was one of the few who, knowing the establishment would only listen to someone who looked and talked like them, was willing, at the risk of his job and life, to give our cause articulation and a neighborly face.”

Of course Best got in the last word of the evening. No evening with Best would be complete without him telling one of his many famous stories and for the tribute it was a story about campaigning for section eight housing for seniors in the Point Loma area, where he was introduced as the “first ever self proclaimed homosexual in San Diego County.” After giving his speech he was approached by a woman in her late 60s who came out to him, saying, “I’ve never been able in my entire life to tell anybody I’m gay and I hope, I plead with you not to tell anyone here because they will force me to move.”

Best introduced her to the gay and lesbian community and she lived the last four years of her life as an openly lesbian woman. The next morning at his campaign meeting he said to his volunteers, “You know, we won last night … because you volunteered. We had friends who came to us and said we can’t be seen in public with you any longer because people know who you are. I told the volunteers that we won because we opened the door for someone.”

Best encouraged everyone in attendance to continue to open doors for people, saying that whether by helping people with HIV and AIDS or by coming out, it was the best way to honor him.

Next year’s tribute dinner will be held in honor of local attorney Bridget Wilson for her twenty-five plus years of service to the community, and will mark the first time a lesbian has been honored at the tribute dinner.