lyric.org
LYRIC Center for LGBTQQ+ Youth
Our vision is to develop loving, compassionate, and strong families with LGBTQQ+ youth by addressing cultural differences, building healthier relationships, decreasing shame, ending isolation and increasing skills related to coming out.
!["He loved his college coach [at Air Force]. I called the coach up one day after Pop was telling me that he was quite an artist. So I talked to him and told him, 'With Pop's birthday coming up, I'd love to get one of your pieces of art and I'll give it to Pop as a gift. I'll pay whatever you want for it.' He said, 'No, I'd never charge you anything. I'll just send you something.
He sent me a beautiful picture of a Native American. I got the picture and put a beautiful frame on it. Then, I went to an art gallery and told the dealer, "Let's put this in your store; I'm going to pull a prank on Pop. I want to take him in there and have him find the painting. I want you to put a big number on it.' He put a $25,000 tag on it.
So we go to the art store and are just looking around. We try to get Pop to go down this one aisle where the painting is. He's looking around and he sees it. He says, "I think this is from Coach!' He looks at the name and sees the autograph at the bottom. He says, "That's my Coach! That's him!' So I said, 'Is that really, Pop? I'd like to buy it for you.' We take it up to the cashier and he says, 'It's $25,000.' I said, 'Wrap it up and give it to Pop.'
"Pop couldn't believe that I'm buying him a $25,000 painting from his coach. I had all the other assistants with me. So we get the picture wrapped up and we're walking out. He starts crying (laughs). He's literally bawling like a baby. So we decided we're going to tell him about the prank at dinner and that we played a joke on him. We get to dinner and we tell him everything that happened. We had so many laughs over that. We still laugh about it today. Pop kept saying, "God damn it, Nellie; you got me!'"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ht52dcxiba7oivrlzaeob2wj/bafkreifz5cbpaw7kxne3jhqt3us5vp2dcyjwoh5e7wtpbqjjcfw7rkwxuy)