inspirational couples
San Diego LGBT Pride honors two longtime Inspiration Couples during this year’s Pride celebration.
Their involvement in the parade is an inspirational show of support to the scores of other lifetime partnerships formed within the
LGBT Community. They reflect the many fulfilling partnerships that have existed throughout the LGBT community for many years
and they cast a human light on achieving full marriage equality for all people.
LINDA SMITH AND NIKI MOREHEAD
The early Pride movement in Chicago reflects the beginning of a longtime rela-
tionship between Linda Smith and Niki Morehead, who will celebrate their 35th
anniversary in August. The women met as staff members of the Girl Scouts while
on a camp outing in Wisconsin. After returning to their homes in the Windy City,
they maintained a friendship for a year before they began dating. Smith worked
in the admissions department for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while
Morehead completed her undergraduate studies in recreation.
The couple’s first Pride experience took place together in uptown Chicago, in
1975, during a time when the climate was far less accepting of the LGBT com-
munity than it is today. “It was risky even being there,” recalls Morehead. “The
parade was small, and a lot of the crowd was hostile.” But the women continued
attending the parades for the next two years until moving to San Diego in 1977.
“The Pride parades here felt more open in comparison,” she adds.
Morehead earned a master’s degree in education from San Diego State Univer-
sity. She has taught special education for the past 19 years, and currently teaches
for the Chula Vista School District. Smith, now retired, worked for 25 years as a
realtor for Casa Pacific Realty and Keller Williams. Last August, they married at
the San Diego Courthouse, followed by a lunch at C-Level. “It felt like the entire
restaurant was in celebration of us,” Smith notes.
Residents of Kensington, the couple have been longtime members of Front
Linda Smith Niki Morehead
Runners and San Diego Dignity. They are also fans of San Diego State Women’s
Aztecs Basketball and the Grape Street Dog Park, where they often take their
dogs, Jake and Bea, for runs. The secrets to their relationship says Morehead:
“We’ve both come to a place of believing that bad times always get better, and
the good times get even better.”
VERN MILLER AND RAY WOODING
When Vern Miller and Ray Wooding met at a San Diego house party 50 years
ago, Miller recalls that words like “gay” and “homosexual” were never used to de-
scribe same-sex relationships. He says that his family members back then were
“very accepting” of Wooding, but without any open discussion or labels applied
to their ongoing partnership. “It was just assumed that we were a couple,” adds
Miller, who was working for San Diego Office Supply at the time. Soon afterwards,
he enrolled in Southwestern Beauty College in downtown San Diego and went
on to work for three different salons in La Jolla for 35 years.
During the first year of their relationship, Wooding attended a mortuary college
in Los Angeles, which resulted in “a lot of commuting on Greyhound buses,” Miller
quips. Then in 1961, the couple took up residence in East San Diego as Wood-
ing began working locally as a mortician. Three decades later, when the AIDS
epidemic struck, Wooding became among the first morticians in San Diego to
handle funeral arrangements for AIDS victims during a time when many funeral
directors avoided such cases. Prolific international travelers, the couple currently
maintains two residences, in southeast San Diego and downtown. Last year they
married at the San Diego Courthouse in a low-key, quiet ceremony. “Never in
Vern Miller Ray Wooding
our lifetimes did we dream we would have experienced that,” says Miller. “It’s as
remarkable as when man first walked on the moon.”
STONEWALL 2.O ACTIVISM FOR EQUALITY 23
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