For a number of years the San Diego Historical Society has discussed naming San Diego city streets after the city’s founding fathers — Crespi, Fremont, Remondino, Spreckels, Whaley and a few dozen others. Now, San Diego’s GLBT community may soon be getting a city street named after one of its own founding fathers.

The history of San Diego’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is slipping away from us. Our community lost many early GLBT leaders to AIDS in the ’80s and early ’90s; those who did survive are growing old and few community members really remember or take pride in learning about their roots. Stop anyone on the street or in any number of popular GLBT establishments and ask them who Jess Jessop was and odds are they won’t be able to tell you.

Allow us.

Jessop was the founder of one of the first gay and lesbian community centers in the country, San Diego’s own Center (now also known as the LGBT Community Center). A pioneer who served his country in Vietnam and his community here at home during the last 20 years of his life, Jessop also founded San Diego’s Lambda Archives (formerly the Lesbian and Gay Historical Society of San Diego). In addition, Jessop served as president of the Gay Liberation Front at SDSU, a precursor to many San Diego GLBT organizations that followed.

What could be more fitting than renaming the street that The Center now calls home after the man who founded it some 30 years ago?

A modest man, Jessop didn’t consider himself a leader, but one who acted out of a sense of personal responsibility, committing himself to the task he saw before him in the early 1970s.

Speaking with the Gay and Lesbian Times in his final interview in 1991, Jessop said of his activism, “I was driven very often by anger at the suffering of gay men and women at the hands of a homophobic society…. We will always have it until we stand up and make a change. So, if I’m not going to do it, then who is?

“I’ve always had a sense of personal responsibility, so I just took on certain things that seemed to me to be glaring needs … not being addressed.”

Even on his deathbed, experiencing pain and discomfort, Jessop continued to work, sorting through and cataloging stacks of news clippings for the Lesbian and Gay Historical Society, expounding on the importance of using archival quality cotton paper to properly preserve our community’s legacy.

Preserving our legacy on cotton paper in an archive is important, but putting a name on a green and white metal sign works well too. The Gay and Lesbian Times says the time has come for Jessop to be memorialized in a public forum, as other civil rights leaders have been. Jessop’s legacy should be preserved in a place where people who don’t know who he was can ask, “Who is Jess Jessop and why is there a street named after him?”

The move to rename Centre Street after Jessop began in a column by longtime activist Nicole Murray-Ramirez, which appeared in the Times.

While Jessop isn’t known in the same way major civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Bayard Rustin or Morris Kight are, he undoubtedly paved the way for many local GLBT activists and leaders who followed.

“Jess Jessop was in many ways our Morris Kight and probably would have ended up like Morris had AIDS not robbed us of him,” explained Murray-Ramirez. “He was a strong leader and an activist with a lot of passion, yet he had a gentle soul. He was a fighter; he would never give up.”

Though Jessop himself said he was ready to leave this world, he knew there was still much work to be done in the struggle for equality.

“If I lived to be 100, I don’t think my work would ever be finished,” he said. “There’s always more to do.”

Even with the strides our community has made over the 12 years since Jessop’s passing, there is still much to do today.

“I don’t believe in death of the spirit,” Jessop told the Times shortly before his own death. “Flowers throw off their blooms; they go to seed. People think of them as dying, but they’re just preparing for the next generation.”

Undoubtedly, the seeds of altruism and activism Jessop had sown during his lifetime paved the way for many great things in our community, including the election of San Diego’s first openly gay city council representatives. With the renaming of Centre Street in his honor, Jessop will literally leave a mark on the map of San Diego’s GLBT community. As youth drive down Jess Jessop Street they will be reminded of this unassuming pioneer and be challenged to live a life filled with courageous and selfless acts, daily actions that add up to the sum of leadership.

As Jessop himself said, “Life is what happens while you’re trying to get things done.” Let’s all work to get this most significant thing done.

Please call the office of Third District City Councilmember Toni Atkins, as well as that of Mayor Dick Murphy, and let them know you support the renaming of Centre Street to Jess Jessop Street. Toni Atkins can be reached by phoning (619) 236-6633 and Dick Murphy can be reached at (619) 236-6330. To donate time at the Lambda Archives (formerly the Lesbian and Gay Historical Society of San Diego), in Jessop’s memory, call Sharon Parker at (619) 260-1522 or e-mail LGHSSD@aol.com.