Vanessa went to public kindergarten and switched to Catholic school for the rest of her education. The family was Catholic, and Vanessa\u2019s mother believed that a Catholic school education was of higher quality than that of public schools. Vanessa attended Holy Cross Elementary and Middle School and then St. Matthias Girls Catholic School in Huntington Park, now the coeducational St. Pius X\u2013St. Matthias Academy in Downey. Vanessa said that she wanted to enroll at the high school primarily because she was charmed by the beautiful, white sweaters that were part of the uniforms.<\/p>\n
Vanessa paid for her tuition by typing for St. Vincent de Paul and Catholic Charities during the summers and holidays thanks to her mother, who\u2019d encouraged her to learn to type.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom said we had to work if we wanted to go to Catholic school,\u201d she said. \u201cShe told me, \u2018No matter what they say about you, as long as you\u2019re educated, they can\u2019t take that away.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanessa realized that she was a lesbian when she was about 14. Some teenagers called her a “bull dyke” when she was walking home, and Vanessa had no idea what the phrase meant. When she found out shortly after, she immediately realized that was who she was. She had her first girlfriend when she was in high school.<\/p>\n
Vanessa wanted to be a nun for a while because of their clarity and attitude toward education but decided against it because, in her own words, she “cursed worse than a sailor.” After she graduated St. Mathias, she was accepted into University of Southern California. She never found out who paid her tuition, but figured it was someone from the church.<\/p>\n
She majored in journalism and social science. \u201cI could do the work of God that way,\u201d she said. She also likely tempted the patience of, if not God, at least the university administration with her badass activism. During a Ku Klux Klan appearance at USC, Vanessa participated with the Black student organizations in blocking their path with trash cans and other metal objects. In another, more hardcore activity, she joined a student group who expressed their displeasure over a racist regulation that ordered Black students working in the cafeteria to wear hairnets \u201cbecause their hair was more likely to fall out and land in the food.\u201d The group set a section of the university kitchen afire by jamming paper towels in the stove\u2019s gas jets.<\/p>\n
Vanessa graduated from USC in 1978. Her mother was in the hospital and couldn\u2019t attend the ceremony. She died shortly after. It was heartbreaking for Vanessa.<\/p>\n
After graduation, Vanessa worked for Catholic Charities in Los Angeles and moved to Long Beach with her then-partner, Mary Martinez, to open a homeless center. In 1983, they both worked with Judi Doyle, Marilyn Barlow and Robert Crowe to found Long Beach Pride<\/a>. Mary was fluent in Spanish and could communicate with some of the workers who made deliveries and did setup. Vanessa was put in charge of security.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had about 5,000 people for the first Pride Festival \u2026 it was scary for all of us,\u201d Vanessa said in an LBHS interview<\/a> for their Women in the Spotlight series. \u201cThere were threats on Pride\u2019s phone. Our own City Council was not supportive of us. \u2026 We made buttons with the faces of council members who voted against us and put a circle with a red slash over them. We wore those proudly our first year.\u201d<\/p>\n Vanessa recalled inviting the police department to her home to discuss security.<\/p>\n \u201cI hid the marijuana plant that was in the window,\u201d she said. \u201cOne policeman came to help \u2014 he was with Special Events. So, I introduced him to all the people, and I asked what we could do to make it a pleasant atmosphere for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Vanessa\u2019s committee put together a manual for safety and trained groups of people with its guidelines. She let the police know that Pride had plenty of trained volunteers so that officers wouldn\u2019t need to step in unless they were needed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted them to understand that we didn\u2019t want them to come in with billy clubs unless we needed billy clubs,\u201d she said. \u201cIt did work for those first couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n Some people weren\u2019t going to do their part no matter what. A group of religious fundamentalists threatened to protest the Pride event. Vanessa said that they were told that they were welcome to stay and yell and scream in one place but not up and down the street because that\u2019s where fights were going to break out. The cops agreed to the sequestering, but the fundamentalists did not. They walked up and down the street during the event holding signs and spouting fire and brimstone.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very scary for all of us \u2014 people spitting, saying you\u2019re going to die [from AIDS],\u201d Vanessa said.<\/p>\n Vanessa was pumping gas at the station at Alamitos Avenue and Ocean Boulevard, wearing her Pride Security T-shirt, when someone threw a Bible at her and hit her on the shoulder.<\/p>\n \u201cI picked it up, and I looked at him, and I said, \u2018This is not what you do with God\u2019s word,\u2019\u201d Vanessa said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t know what to say.\u201d<\/p>\n The fundamentalists still come to the Pride parade but stay in their corner and yell while beautiful noise goes on everywhere else.<\/p>\n Vanessa was involved with Pride for 29 years. She served on its board for 27 years and as president for five years. She was also security chair.<\/p>\n She continued her work as social services coordinator for Catholic Charities until September, 2013. She worked as field deputy and case manager for then-Congressman Alan Lowenthal<\/a> from September 2016 to November 2018. During her time at Pride and thereafter, she wrestled with health issues and collected an impressive number of exes, some of whom still speak to her.<\/p>\n \u201cWe secretly remained \u2018the love of my life\u2019 for the years past the 2008 breakup despite subsequent relationships and even marriages,\u201d said Gavett Burch.<\/p>\n Vanessa also collected an impressive number of honors and awards. Among them are the Outstanding Woman Award, Human Rights Award, the Lesbian Rights Award for community service, and the inaugural Ellen Ward Leadership Icon Award<\/a>. She was \u201csainted\u201d by the nonprofit community organization Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence<\/a> as Saint Mama Bear of Pride. She continued her calling as a community worker; her favorite project was a Christmas toys program for orphanages in Mexico and for Children with Aids.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up tracing my fingers along the frames of photos featuring her and Hillary Clinton, among other leading politicians,\u201d Dani said.<\/p>\n Vanessa left Long Beach in 2018 to share a home with her wife in Ceres, California. In mid-March, she died, leaving a wife, two grown children and a huge group of friends, fellow warriors, lovers, proteges, accomplishments, emotions all over the spectrum and an empty space that will always echo with her calls to action.<\/p>\n \u201cRest in power, Vanessa,\u201d Dani wrote. \u201cYour impact is still here. Your fight mattered. And your legacy will continue through every life you touched, including mine. I am so proud of you \u2014 we\u2019ve got this from here, I promise.\u201d<\/p>\n Great thanks go to Gavett Burch, Dani Heard, Ethel Daniels, Robert Garcia, and Bianca Moreno and Max Baddiley of HSLB for helping fill in a lot of the blanks in Vanessa Romain\u2019s story.<\/p>\n We need your support.<\/p>\n Subcribe to the Watchdog today.<\/p>\n The Long Beach Watchdog is owned by journalists, and paid for by readers like you. If independent, local reporting like the story you just read is important to you, support our work by becoming a subscriber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Become a Watchdog today. Sign up to get the latest from Long Beach’s independent, journalist-owned newsroom in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-342774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Vanessa---Mary006.jpg\")
Vanessa Romain and Mary Martinez, from the archives of the Historical Society of Long Beach<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/plaque-detail-1.jpeg\")
In 2014, Vanessa Romain was among the first Long Beach leaders in the LGBTQ+ community to receive a plaque with their name engraved on it on the wall at Equality Plaza in Harvey Milk Park. The list of honorees has grown since then. Photos by Kate Karp<\/p>\n