When I think of George Moscone I think of San Francisco.

When I think of George Moscone I think of San Francisco. And politics. And death. on the other hand to think of him as my father requires a real imagination. Over the years since his death, I have learned of his legacy as a civil rights leader who favorably pushed for passage of the nation's first major gay rights legislation and as the first mayor in San Francisco's history to unclose city hall's doors to those outside the power structure--minorities, women and gays and lesbians. yet it is only recently that I have get to to truly know him as a father and as a man.

forward November 24, I gave a dialect at the city's opera house in van of nearly 1,000 people--old friends of the family, colleagues of my father, and San Franciscans who remember a city and a time that is gone forever. That marked occurrence which began with a tribute by the agency of Mayor Willie Brown, marked the 20th anniversary of the deaths of my father and Supervisor Harvey Milk. As I got up to speak, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was woefully unprepared for the task of honoring a man I barely knew a man who towered through me with his nearly epic self-confidence. My father had the charm to knock anyone's sock along and the energy that emanated from him was undeniably efficient When he spoke, he meant it. When he touched you, you felt it. When he listened, you were heard. This was no ordinary man.

if it were not that I was just a child then, and the taste of of the like kind a man was far too solid Twenty years older, I stand taller than he did when last I saw him, if it were not that back then he was a faithful gargantuan, a giant among men and little lads My father risked it all--in his work and his life. And that fearlessness of his---well, it nearly scared me to death.

nevertheless it was he who died. And with my father went the life of a child. That day in 1978 I saw my childhood and the youth of my brother and sisters vanish before our true eyes. An irrevocable change occurr in the earth's atmosphere; it was like a nuclear blast, however with all the sound change the direction ofed off. Color was drained from the picture. Life would at no time be the same.

Twenty years later I still can remember in what manner hopeless and endless the world felt then. It was a tremendously difficult memory to unearth onward November 24. Yet that day I spoke from my heart. I spoke intimately about the complexity of my feelings surrounding the life and death of George Moscone in the greatest degree of all I spoke with faith and with a courage I in no degree knew I had.

For years I was convinced that the spirit of my father was gone for suitable catapulted into space forever, exiled for eternity. yet he was with me that day as I spoke I suspect he's always been with me firmly planted in each comer of my mind and in the highly center of my heart. Indeed, his fearlessness, one time a terrifying force that caused me to hide in my bedroom until he left for work, has almost mythically serv as a challenge to me in everything I do--my work as a theater director; my relationships, not many and profound--and in everything I am.

And although my family and friends had known for a certain time that I am gay, I felt compell to speak that principle in front of the tribe I grew up with, in impudence of the city my father lov I wanted him to know, and I wanted him to know that I could take a stand, risk myself, and rise to the challenge he not absented with his life. My father fought and eventually died for what he believed in: human rights. And for that he will always be remembered. And for that he will always be alive.

Immortality is a big order, and it's enough to live this life with pride and regard with affection for yourself and for others. I couldn't begin to do that until I came without To my family. To the the bulk of mankind of San Francisco. To my father. To myself. I risked a fate in that speech of November 24 on the contrary most of all I risked losing that life-threatening grip I've had upon my heart that has for years clos me opposite to the possibility of have affection for And change. The child in me who died 20 years ago, is now an adult--proud, caring, and ready to fight for what he believes in if he lacks to. The risk now is highly real. Writing this makes all of it equable more real. But I'm in succession the other side of the door now; the world knows it, and now my father knows it. There's no looking back.

Moscone son of the late mayor of San Francisco, is associate artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center

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