Local
Wendy Rieger to retire from NBC4
Long-time anchor champions LGBTQ rights
Long-time NBC4 anchor Wendy Rieger on Dec. 10 announced she will retire after 33 years with the television station.
Rieger in an email to colleagues said her last day will be on Dec. 21, which coincides with the Winter Solstice.
“There is an elegance to the universe if you let it reveal itself,” she wrote. “As a Celtic Pagan, the 21st of December is a high holiday. The Solstice. When I saw two years ago that my contract would be ending on 12/21/2021, there was a perfection to those numbers. It felt like a good time to pull a fresh page from the stack and start writing a new story. Then COVID, and COVID and COVID and the whirl of events that have kept everything swirling around the room these past years.”
She talked about her pending retirement with co-anchor Jim Handly later that day.
“At a certain point, as I used to say to some of my dates, how can I miss you if you won’t leave,” said Rieger as Handly began to laugh. “There’s a certain point where we need new chapters in our lives and we can’t get too attached to something that we’ve done, that we know, that’s become second nature, no matter how much we love it.”
Rieger, who is originally from Norfolk, Va., joined NBC4 in 1988 as a general assignment reporter. She began to anchor the station’s weekend evening newscasts in 1996 and the 5 p.m. broadcasts in 2001.
“When I was here 33 years ago, this was the Land of the Giants in that Jim Vance was here. George Michael was here. Bob Ryan,” Rieger told the Washington Blade on Monday during a telephone interview from NBC4’s Northwest D.C. studios. “You sat on the set with those three and it was like working in a redwood forest, and that was the Era of the Giants.”
Rieger throughout her career has championed the LGBTQ community.
She participated in a number of D.C. AIDS Rides and emceed several SMYAL Fall Brunches.
Rieger in 2017 made a cameo in the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington’s adaptation of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” The Blade in 2015 named Rieger “Best Local TV Personality” for that year’s “Best of Gay D.C.” issue, which featured a cover photo of Rieger straddling a drag queen as she applied lipstick.
Rieger joked that “people at work said we would have liked to have had a heads up that you were going to be straddling the guy.”
“I said, well that was my idea,” she told the Blade. “And when they said they weren’t going to care and I said, you know, in this business, especially dealing with TV news and an organization, they said, you always ask for forgiveness, not permission. They’re never going to give it to you. I said, let’s just do it if we like it.”
Rieger credited Patrick Bruyere, a long-time volunteer for LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS service organizations who passed away from cancer in 2017, with introducing her to the LGBTQ community in D.C.
She said that Bruyere in 1999 asked her to host a fundraiser for One in Ten, a group that once ran the Reel Affirmations LGBTQ film festival, at the Lincoln Theater.
“I said, ‘I’d be glad to do that,'” told Rieger, recalling the conversation she had with Bruyere. “But you know, I’m just Wendy Rieger, I just anchor the news, you know. Don’t you have someone bigger? And he said, he actually said this, ‘I need a straight person because no one’s going to listen to us.’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
“I saw so many people in the gay community moving into neighborhoods and using this vast creative spirit to renovate. And this renaissance that was happening all throughout our city, it was because of gay creativity,” Rieger told the Blade, referring back to her reaction to the lack of support that the One in Ten fundraiser had received.
“I was stunned that this was still going on. This bullshit was still going on. This crap is still going on,” she said.
Rieger said discrimination cannot “occur anywhere.”
“Enough with this shit,” she said. “I’m so tired of bigotry and ignorance. It is exhausting. It is just exhausting. I’m just sick of it.”
Rieger also expressed her gratitude to her LGBTQ viewers who “let me into your family.”
“That meant so much to me because now I had a tribe,” she said. “My ancestors, when they came over from various parts of Europe, we just didn’t do anything, but become sort of, you know, WASPs in suburbia, What the fuck is that? I’m sorry. What the fuck is that? It’s just like something my mother would say; we were just colorless, odorless and sexless.”
“You guys really gave me something to attach to and a kind of family to belong to,” added Rieger. “I still feel like I have a community simply because my gay friends are just so warm. And I’m sorry, y’all are still the most fun people around ever, ever, ever.”
Rieger diagnosed with brain cancer in June
Rieger had open heart surgery in October 2020. She announced her retirement less than six months after doctors diagnosed her with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
“I knew there was something in my head,” Rieger told the Blade. “So, I was an advocate for myself in the bitchiest way, and I got into an MRI really fast.”
A friend referred Rieger to the Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Her doctor, Pascal Zinn, removed the tumor within 10 days of having the MRI that found it. Rieger underwent radiation for six weeks and is now participating in a cancer vaccine trial at Duke University.
“It says on my file, life expectancy 14 months,” she said. “Odds are meant to be defied and she said the people who survive this the most are the ones that say fuck you to this cancer and they go live their lives and there’s nothing wrong with them.”
Rieger last month married Dan Buckley, a retired NBC4 cameraman who worked at the station for 37 years, at their home in Rappahannock County, Va.
Rieger during the Dec. 10 broadcast joked her husband is “having coffee and toast and taking walks while I’m coming to work” and she wants to “go hang out with him and do other things.” Rieger also hinted that she would like to learn how to play the cello or even the tuba.
She said she and her husband have yet to decide whether they will live full-time at their home in Rappahannock County or at their apartment in Chevy Chase. Rieger told the Blade that her husband’s parents are originally from Ireland, and he would like to travel there on the Queen Mary 2.
“Sometimes you have to get off the trail to see the trail, and so that’s what we’re going to let ourselves do,” said Rieger.
Maryland
What Anne Arundel County school board candidates think about book bans
State lawmakers passed Freedom to Read Act in April
BY ROYALE BONDS | Parents’ efforts to restrict content available to students in school libraries has become a contentious issue in Maryland. Conservative parent groups, such as Moms for Liberty, have been working to get books they believe are inappropriate removed from libraries in Carroll and Howard counties, sparking protests, new policies, and even a state law.
The Freedom to Read Act, passed in April, sets standards that books cannot be removed from public and school libraries due to an author’s background. Library staff that uphold the standard are protected under this act. The law, however, does not prohibit removing books deemed “sexually explicit,” the stated reason local Moms for Liberty chapters challenged school library books.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner website.
District of Columbia
D.C. Council member proposes change for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
Parker also seeks increased funding for LGBTQ programs in FY 2025 budget
D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only LGBTQ member, has asked his fellow Council members to support a proposal to change the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs to become a “stand-alone entity outside the Executive Office of the Mayor to allow for greater transparency and accountability that reflects its evolution over the years.”
In an April 30 letter to each of his 12 fellow Council members, Parker said he plans to introduce an amendment to the city’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Support Act to make this change for the LGBTQ Affairs Office.
His letter also calls for adding to the city’s FY 2025 budget two specific funding proposals that local LGBTQ activists submitted to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that the mayor did not include in her budget proposal submitted to the Council. One calls for $1.5 million to fund the completion of the build out and renovation for the D.C. Center for the LGBTQ Community’s new building in the city’s Shaw neighborhood and $300,000 in subsequent years to support the LGBTQ Center’s operations.
Parker’s second budget proposal calls for what he said was about $450,000 to fund 20 additional dedicated LGBTQ housing vouchers as part of the city’s existing program to provide emergency housing support for LGBTQ residents and other residents facing homelessness.
“The Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs currently manages about 90 vouchers across various programs and needs,” Parker said in his letter to fellow Council members. “Adding an additional 20 vouchers will cost roughly $450,000,” he wrote, adding that dedicated vouchers “play a crucial role in ensuring LGBTQ+ residents of the District can navigate the complex process of securing housing placements.”
In her proposed FY ’25 budget, Bowser calls for a 7.6 percent increase in funding for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, which amounts to an increase of $132,000, bringing the office’s total funding to $1.7 million.
“To be clear, I support the strong work and current leadership of the Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs,” Parker says in his letter to fellow Council members. “This push for change is in recognition of the office’s notable achievements and the significant demands being placed on it, which require a greater level of accountability.”
Parker told the Blade in an April 30 telephone interview that he believes Japer Bowles, the current director of the Office of L|GBTQ Affairs is doing an excellent job in operating the office, but he believes the office would be able to do more for the LGBTQ community under the change he is proposing.
“Making it a stand-alone office versus it being clustered within the Community Affairs division of the mayor’s office, it will get more attention,” Parker told the Blade. “The leadership will have greater flexibility to advocate for the interest of LGBTQ residents, And we will be able to conduct greater oversight of the office,” he said, referring to the Council’s oversight process.
Parker noted that other community constituent offices in the mayor’s office, including the Office of Latino Affairs and the Office of Veterans Affairs are stand-alone offices that he hopes to bring about for the LGBTQ Affairs Office. He said Council member Brianne Nadeau, who chairs the Council committee that has oversight for the LGBTQ Affairs Office, has expressed support for his proposal.
Also expressing support for Parker’s proposal to make the LGBTQ Affairs Office a stand-alone office is the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission Rainbow Caucus. Vincent Slatt, the caucus’s chairperson, submitted testimony last week before the D.C. Council Committee on Public Works and Operations, which is chaired by Nadeau, calling for making the LGBTQ Affairs Office a stand-alone office outside the Executive Office of the Mayor.
Slatt also stated in his testimony that the office has a “chronic staffing shortage” and recommended that at least three additional staff members be assigned to the office.
Daniel Gleick, the mayor’s press secretary, told the Blade the mayor’s office is reviewing Parker’s budget proposals, including the proposed change for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
But in testimony at a May 1, D.C. Council budget hearing before the Council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor, Lindsey Parker, Mayor Bowser’s Chief of Staff, appeared to express skepticism over making the LGBTQ Affairs office a stand-alone office. Lindsey Parker expressed her thoughts on the proposed change when asked about it by Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At-Large), who chairs the committee that held the hearing.
“I would proffer that it doesn’t matter whether the agency is within the EOM [Executive Office of the Mayor] or not,” Lindsey Parker told Bonds. “They will still be reporting up into one would argue the most important agency in the D.C. government, which is the one that supports the mayor,” Lindsey Parker said. “So, it’s the closest to the mayor that you can get,” she said “So, you could pull it out and have a different budget chapter. I actually think that’s confusing and convoluted.”
Lindsey Parker added, “The Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, with their six FTEs right now, if they were a stand-alone function they wouldn’t have all the non-personnel services in order to operate. They need to be under sort of the shop of the EOM in order to get those resources.”
By FETs Lindsey Parker was referring to the term Full Time Equivalent employees.
Rehoboth Beach
Former CAMP Rehoboth official sentenced to nine months in prison
Salvator Seeley pleaded guilty to felony theft charge for embezzlement
Salvator “Sal” Seeley, who served as an official with the Rehoboth Beach, Del., CAMP Rehoboth LGBTQ community center for 20 years, was sentenced on April 5 by a Sussex County Superior Court judge to nine months in prison and to pay $176,000 in restitution to the organization.
The sentencing took place about five weeks after Seeley pleaded guilty to a charge of Theft in Excess of $50,000 for allegedly embezzling funds from CAMP Rehoboth, a spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Justice told the Washington Blade.
Seeley’s guilty plea came shortly after a grand jury, at the request of prosecutors, indicted him on the felony theft charge following an investigation that found he had embezzled at least $176,000 from the nonprofit LGBTQ organization.
“Salvatore C. Seeley, between the 27th day of February 2019 and the 7th day of September 2021, in the County of Sussex, State of Delaware, did take property belonging to CAMP Rehoboth, Inc., consisting of United States currency and other miscellaneous property valued at more than $50,000, intending to appropriate the same,” the indictment states.
“The State recommended a sentence of two years of incarceration based on the large-scale theft and the impact to the non-profit organization,” Delaware Department of Justice spokesperson Caroline Harrison told the Blade in a statement.
“The defense cited Seeley’s lack of a record and gambling addiction in arguing for a probationary sentence,” the statement says. “Seeley was sentenced in Superior Court to a nine-month prison term and to pay a total of $176,000 in restitution for the stolen funds,” Harrison says in the statement.
Neither Seeley nor his attorney could immediately be reached for comment.
At the time of Seeley’s indictment in February, CAMP Rehoboth released a statement saying it first discovered “financial irregularities” within the organization on Sept. 7, 2021, “and took immediate action and notified state authorities.” The statement says this resulted in the investigation of Seeley by the state Department of Justice as well as an internal investigation by CAMP Rehoboth to review its “financial control policies” that led to an updating of those policies.
“As we have communicated from day one, CAMP Rehoboth has fully cooperated with law enforcement,” the statement continues. “At its request, we did not speak publicly about the investigation while it was ongoing for fear it would jeopardize its integrity,” according to the statement. “This was extremely difficult given our commitment to transparency with the community about day-to-day operations during the recent leadership transition.”
The statement was referring to Kim Leisey, who began her job as CAMP Rehoboth’s new executive director in July of 2023, while the Seeley investigation had yet to be completed, following the organization’s process of searching for a new director. It says Seeley left his job as Health and Wellness Director of CAMP Rehoboth in September of 2021 after working for the organization for more than 20 years.
“Mr. Seeley’s actions are a deep betrayal to not only CAMP Rehoboth but also the entire community we serve,” the statement says.
Blade Summer Kickoff Party returns to Rehoboth
Andy Cohen coming to D.C.
Want to dance for a good cause?
Calendar: May 3-9
Brittney Griner considered suicide in Russian prison
HHS reverses Trump-era anti-LGBTQ rule
4th Circuit rules gender identity is a protected characteristic
Pride season has begun
PHOTOS: Capital Pride Pageant
