Gentle giant at the helm

FERNDALE – Affirmations Lesbian & Gay Community Center board member George Westerman may not be a swamp-loving ogre, but he is tall, hardworking, dependable, and unwaveringly sincere. Hence his nickname: Shrek.
"Leslie (Thompson, Affirmations Executive Director) started it and it has kind of caught on," said Westerman. "I don't mind it. Even though Shrek is a green ogre, he's a friendly green ogre so he has some redeeming qualities."
"He's a big guy and he's really friendly," said Thompson of the nickname's origin. "I think he was picking on me one day and so I called him an ogre and he said, 'But I'm friendly,' so it kind of went to Shrek after that."
Those who have been following Affirmations' quest for a newer and bigger community center are probably familiar with Westerman. He's been involved in the project from its inception nearly four years ago, and is currently the volunteer Campaign Director for the center's Capital and Endowment Campaign. The campaign, new building location, and an architect's sketch of a conceptual design were announced at the Big Bash March 27.
As Campaign Director Westerman works in the forefront as well as behind the scenes. "I basically run the committee meetings and facilitate the subcommittees and work with the staff, Leslie and Michael Mirto (Development Director at Affirmations), to make sure we keep moving forward," he said. "I tell people that I don't do much because it's the people on the committee who do the work, I just kind of come in and run the meetings. But it's a lot of work and I do do more than that. I go out and ask people for money, make sure we're looking at all the budget stuff and the plans and really am part of a group that consults if we have any issues that come up."
Right now the project is "heavy duty into fund raising mode" according to Westerman. "We have raised well over two and a quarter million dollars at this point," he said. "I think we're hopeful that we'll finish our fund raising and meet our goal some time in 2005. From a facilities standpoint we've purchased a building. We've purchased half of what used to be the F&M store (on Nine Mile in Ferndale) and we're working on finalizing the design. We've engaged an architect and we have an initial design, very conceptual."
On May 25 Affirmations held a design forum to ask the community for input about the new center. "We had some amazing discussion from the community," he said. Concerns and suggestions ranged from placement of certain rooms to the fact that the conceptual design includes lots of glass making for a very visible interior, a possible problem for LGBT people who are not yet out. Desire for a quiet place to just hang out was also expressed. "So from those discussions we are going to revise the design, and also based on our budgets, we need to now finalize the design of the building and at that point we'll start looking for contractors. Once we've got the design pretty much finalized we'll be able to put it out to bid."
Westerman has been on the Affirmations board for several years, though he can't remember how many. "I say it's about four years," he said. "It could be almost five but I think it's about four years, seems like 20 sometimes."
In 1992, Westerman joined Affirmations with his partner, Cliff Lemon, soon after the couple moved to Ferndale, where they've lived since the fall of 1991. "We actually joined when we were invited to a dinner there. They brought people over to learn more about the center. Jan Stevenson was ED at the time and took us on a tour and there was dinner catered by Pronto," he said. "We became members at a very basic level and eventually became donors and started giving more money because we saw all the good work that Affirmations was doing and eventually I was asked if I would consider joining the board and I thought that would be a good way to use my time."
Earlier in his life Westerman's time was spent as part of the Lutheran Church. Raised on a farm in what he called "rural, conservative, Southern Indiana," Westerman never planned to travel far from home. He went to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, only two hours from his family. He planned on graduating and getting a job in Indianapolis or Cincinnati, both about an hour from home.
"And it was actually my junior year in college that I got an opportunity to do an internship with IBM out in New York," he said. "My parents were like, 'Oh, don't go to New York, you'll be killed.' And so I spent a summer out there and realized that there was something outside of Indiana and I had to get the hell out."
Westerman moved to New York to work for IBM. "I hadn't dealt with the fact that I was gay yet. I had actually suppressed it," he said. "I didn't deal with it until I was in New York."
He continued, "It was out there where I exhausted the last of all of the things that I knew to try to become straight or to not be gay," he said. "And finally after college I realized that even dating a woman wasn't going to change me."
Westerman confided in a friend who had come out to him a year earlier. "So I had someone I could talk to, which was probably the first time in my life I could talk to somebody about how I was feeling," he said. "I confided in him and he said a very interesting thing. He said, 'I thought you might be gay for a long time and I hoped that you weren't.' It was a very strange thing to hear from a gay man and so I asked him why he hoped that I wasn't and he said, 'Well I know how important your church is to you and I just think you're going to go through hell.' And he was pretty much right."
After working in New York for about five years, Westerman got a transfer to Michigan. Sticking to his Lutheran roots, he took a part time job with the church in addition to his job at IBM. "In the mid-nineties I worked for a couple years part time for the Lutheran Bishop in Detroit on social justice issues, which itself was kind of rewarding," he said. "But at some point I just realized that, I don't want to say abusive, but it was not a healthy place for me to be because in many ways I was still dealing with coming out and so I quit that job and within a year after quitting the job I left the church entirely."
The time he'd previously devoted to the church was quickly filled by Affirmations. "It kind of took on the same role that the church had for me, a place that would soak up as much time as I would give it, but it seems healthier to me to give my time in this way," he said. "In this case it was an opportunity to really help make a place that's safe for people and to provide opportunities for people to network, to meet other people. That's one of the coolest things, I think, Affirmations offers. Youth group is great, all the groups are great, I think the Helpline is critical, but the fact that we're really starting to offer a lot of programs that give people in the community a chance to meet other people and to build community is, right now, the most important thing to me about the organization."
With the new building project, Westerman has more than enough to keep his hands full. The new center is a project he is excited about and believes in. It wasn't always so, however.
"When I first joined the board, we had an opportunity to buy the building we're in," he said. "At that point I said to a fellow board member, you know programs are what's important to me and if I ever feel like this board is getting so caught up in bricks and mortar discussions, I'm outta here."
Westerman felt like talking about getting a building was a waste of time, but by August of 2001 he'd changed his mind. "I made the earlier comment about 'I'm outta here if we get caught up in discussions about facilities,' but by then I had really seen that the current facility was holding us back. We were starting to turn away groups. I'd actually been in the building when someone came in and couldn't climb those steps you have to go up or come down when you come in and it's disheartening. And we couldn't have big meetings or events there, like town hall meetings. So I was really kind of in the boat at that point, that okay I've been on the board a couple of years and I see that while this space has served us well we've pretty much outgrown it."
So strongly does he believe in this project that he's at the helm of fundraising for it, even though fundraising is far from his favorite thing. "I hate fundraising," he said. "I think it's natural to have an aversion to asking people for money. I have that aversion. It does not come naturally to me. And so I shouldn't say I hate fundraising, hate's a strong word, but I have a strong aversion to going out and asking people for money and here I am doing it."
In Westerman's mind, however, the end justifies the means. "It's something that needs to be done and it's very cool what we're doing, and if you keep the end goal in mind then it's easier to get through."
A new center, said Westerman, can provide a hub for building a strong, connected community, which will ultimately change perceptions. "There's a lot of negativity directed to our community by people who don't like us and don't understand us and want us to go away. And I see that when the LGBT community comes together that we have power, that we can do things," he said. "A community center can provide that hub where not only the community can come together, but even organizations can come together, and I think that's the best way that we can enact change is by having a uniting place to come together."
He continued, "If we can provide that place where people can learn, where they can socialize and have fun and be supported – these are all words from our mission statement – and then I think we have a lot of power and I think we change the viewpoint of our detractors."