We are honored to present G.C. Brad Brafford, Dr. Karyl Ketchum, and Al Roberts with the Rich Cook Community Bridge Awards.
The Rich Cook Community Bridge Awards are presented annually to honor those in the community who have made a positive impact in and for the LGBTQ community. The award continues to recognize distinguished members of the community who personify MenAlive’s mission of “informing, bringing healing, joy, friendship and building bridges to the public at large.”
AL ROBERTS
Al Roberts was a beaming beacon of light to many. Not only was he a visionary entrepreneur and proud United States Army veteran, but he was also a philanthropist engaged in a variety of projects all while loving his lifelong partner, Ken. Perhaps, more than anything else, Al was an expert at building bridges to connect the right individuals at the right time to make extraordinary things happen.
As the AIDS epidemic started to take hold within the LGBT+ community, Al gathered community leaders, and together they founded the AIDS Services Foundation Orange County (ASF). Begun in 1985, ASF became Orange County’s most respected nonprofit HIV/AIDS organization. Al didn’t stop there: he also created the Hagen Project, a housing community for low-income persons living with HIV/AIDS. Al’s philanthropy included local organizations such as the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, the Susi Q Senior Center, the Boys and Girls Club of Laguna Beach, Laguna Playhouse, Laguna Beach Art Museum, the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, and the LGBT Center Orange County.
Through ASF, Al supported Rich Cook’s dream of building a community for gay men. With ASF’s support and Rich Cook’s vision, MenAlive -Orange County Gay Men’s Chorus came into being.
Al summarized his work in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “I think if people would start thinking about other people and doing things for other people, [they’d find] all of a sudden their own lives are better. When you do something for someone else, it makes you feel good. It’s just a good way to lead your life.”
More than twenty years after Al’s work birthed the Orange County Gay Men’s Chorus, we continue to be grateful for his vision and his dedication.
G.C. BRAD BRAFFORD
G.C. "Brad" Brafford is a gay rights activist and philanthropist in Orange County, California, and an active member of several organizations concerned with gay and lesbian rights, AIDS education and support, political activism, women's rights, and electoral politics. Brad Brafford was a surveyor by occupation and a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers. He served in the U.S. Navy until he was discharged in 1951 due to his sexual orientation. Brad is also a Founder of MenAlive - Orange County Gay Men’s Chorus and a longtime patron and supporter.
Being among the early wave of gay rights activists in Orange County, Brad marched in the Orange County Pride Festival in 2014 wearing a brown bag over his head. Brad said the bag stood for oppression, the inability to be who he was, and the fear of violence that was very real to him and other gays and lesbians in Orange County in the 1970s.
In 1972 he was one of the founders of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County (The Center OC), and he went on to serve on its first board of directors. He also served on the executive committee of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) of Orange County. He was very active in Christ Chapel Metropolitan Community Church in Santa Ana, California, and was involved with several gay social and recreation groups. The Center OC has since been named after him, now known as the Brad Brafford LGBT Center on 4th.
DR. KARYL KETCHUM
Dr. Karyl E. Ketchum's research centers on technology and forms of visual representation as they rely upon and challenge shifting notions of normative identities, bodies, sexualities, and experiences of embodiment. She is currently working on a book-length, digital-humanities-based historiography exploring the use and misuse of gender, race, class, and sexualities in both popular and scholarly texts chronicling the economic, cultural, and aesthetic shifts of New York City’s Gilded Age. She has also published articles on topics such as racial biases in biometric technologies, the deployment of race and gender toward galvanizing and sustaining global online social movements, and queer representation and aesthetics in film and television. Ketchum's work in the intersections of technology, visuality, and gender includes her involvement in FemTechNet, a network of scholars, artists, and activists known for its feminist, decentralized pedagogy experiments.
Professor Ketchum is currently active in a number of initiatives in the state and nationally that focus on education reform. Her book, Gender Diversity and LGBTQ Inclusion in K-12 Schools (Routledge 2018), co-authored with Dr. Sharon Chappell and Lisa Richardson, is a critical first resource for educators interested in creating schools and classrooms that support and protect the rights of LGBTQ students, women students, and gender-non-conforming students and families. She also acts as a pro bono expert witness in transgender immigrant asylum cases and has authored several declarations, along with an amicus brief developed collaboratively with her students, in support of these critical protections.
Ketchum serves on the CSUF Vice President of Information Technology's Advisory Council, the Academic Senate Information Technology Committee, the College of Humanities & Social Sciences Information Technology Committee, the Provost's Online Education Task Force, and the Pride Alliance for CSUF Faculty and Staff Steering Committee. Outside of the University, she serves on the OCEC School Compliance Task Force Steering Committee, the Orange County Lavender Democratic Club's Executive Board, and is a reviewer for The M. Katherine Baird Darmer Equality Scholarship for law students.