Leather Archives & Museum: 25 Years (1991-2016) [digital]

that the effort to create an institutional infrastructure
for the leather/kink “historical society” be given
attention and energy. Once a non-profit
corporation is set up and a board installed,
fundraising for the “historical society” should
become one of the funding priorities stressed
by the NLA. We should make that a big part
of our message to the leather community.
Even now we should be encouraging people
of history. One of the main ways material gets
lost forever is when people die and do not
make some kind of provision to save it. I have
painful personal knowledge of many fantastic
collections of artifacts that have been either
deliberately destroyed by heirs, or tossed in
the garbage by people who knew nothing of
their value. Even before we have a perfect
facility, we need to be reminding people of
the need to provide for their photos, run pins,
club insignia, club documents, newsletters,
posters, art work, etc. And if we can also
provide even a temporary repository, we will
be doing a great service. If there is a nonprofit
organization set up, we can also encourage
people to include it in their estate planning
(Report to the NLA Executive Committee,
May 21. 1991).
Little of this ambitious agenda was
accomplished by the NLA itself, and
realistically, the organization was not ideally
equipped to do so. In retrospect, the attempt
to establish a single, general-purpose
organization charged with doing everything
the leather communities needed was far less
viable than establishing single-purpose
organizations with more specialized
functions. However, NLA did play a critical
role in the transition to what would become
the LA&M.
to donate their memorabilia either to the NLA
or to someone willing to be a custodian until
there is a better place to put the stuff. NLA
could even do what the local San Francisco
lesbian and gay historical society did for
many years and rent a storage locker to store
the material until there is a better place to
house it. We might want to budget for such a
storage locker and appoint someone to
receive the material in the interim. Whoever
does receive it should have some knowledge
of how to store it so that it will not deteriorate
while it is in the locker…
In this time of so much morality, a lot of our
community’s past is landing on the junk heap
Tony DeBlase was also a member of that
same NLA Executive Committee, and later
that year, he coordinated the educational
programs for Living In Leather VI, held in
Chicago. He arranged a workshop called
“Preserving Our Leather Past.” He appointed
me as chair, and rounded out the panel with
Woody Bebout, that year’s Mr. Drummer, and
Chuck Renslow, whose own varied career
made him one of the most consequential
figures of leather in the 20 th century. The
workshop description read: “A report on the
need for, and the movement towards,
preserving a record of our past and the
establishment of a national Leather Archive.
Thoughts on the preparation of wills and
other methods of seeing that historically
important documents, works of art, and other
items are preserved.”
As I recall, my own contribution focused on
the kinds of storage media needed for
archival preservation, and their expense. In a
conversation with Chuck Renslow after the
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