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Friday, October 2, 2009

Dick Uyvari and Joe La Pat keep their promise


By far the largest individual donors in the entire history of the Gay Games have been Dick Uyvari (Chicago) and his late partner Joe LaPat, whose generous support enabled an entire women's football team from South Africa, the Chosen Few, to share the experience of Gay Games VII.

This generous support earned Dick and Joe the first FGG Legacy Award for Outreach and Scholarship Support, awarded by a unanimous vote of the Federation Assembly at the 2008 Annual Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.

In Chicago, moved by the joy of these young women present in Chicago in 2006, Uyvari and LaPat, leaders in LGBT sport on a local, national, and international level, made a promise to bring the team back to the Gay Games in 2010 in Cologne.

Since then, Dick has suffered the lost of his partner, illness, and like so many, the effects of the global economic recession. Despite these obstacles, Dick determined that the promise he made with Joe would be kept, and he took the presentation of his Legacy Award certificate as the opportunity to announce that he had just wired to the FGG the funds required to bring the Chosen Few to Cologne.

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The FGG is honored and blessed to have friends like Dick and Joe. There are far too many in need like the Chosen Few, and far too few like Dick and Joe, willing to help. The FGG urges you to join their number, and provide whatever support you can to share the transforming power of the "Games that change the world" with the hundreds and thousands of people who can only come if you help them "Be part of it!".

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