Beloved community leaders Gary Cooper and Richard Hartgrove will receive the Bettie Naylor Visibility Award, and the co-founders of one of Austin’s favorite businesses, Tim and Karrie League of the Alamo Drafthouse, will receive the Equality Allies Award at the Human Rights Campaign Austin Gala Feb. 15, co-chairs Heather Beckel Luecke and Philip Wright have announced.
Now in its 18th year, HRC Austin’s annual Gala has been one of the most successful in the country, raising record funding to support civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, and receiving national recognition. The black-tie Gala will be held at Four Seasons Austin on Feb. 15, 2014, with a theme of “Love, Everyone”, highlighting that all love is equal.
Gary Cooper and Richard Hartgrove, together for 30 years and legally married just last year, have been one of Austin’s most philanthropic couples since they moved to the city in 1995, holding numerous friend- and fund-raising events in their Westlake home for a wide variety of worthy causes, many related to the LGBT community, including Atticus Circle, OutYouth, AIDS Services of Austin, HRC, and Lambda Legal.
Individually, each has served on numerous boards: Hartgrove for ZACH Theatre, Austin Lyric Opera, Conspirare and the University of Texas College of Fine Arts Advisory Board.among others; Cooper for ASA, OutYouth, and Triangle on Stage—the Gay and Lesbian friends of Austin Lyric Opera, where he also led the effort to raise $250,000 for the Long Center capital campaign, putting the Triangle name prominently on the Long Center’s Founder’s Wall. He and Hartgrove were also founders of the Roundtable, an informal coalition of LBGT organizations that started the first local Habitat for Humanity Pride Build.
