This year, the Buffalo Brunch will present its community service awards to two local organizations and one individual.  Shari Jo Reich will be honored for her long time community activism. WNED-TV for consistently televising shows regarding issues that affect the LGBT community. Unity Fellowship of Christ Church for being a welcoming and inclusive congregation. A community citation will go to Greg Rabb.

Biographical Information on Honorees

A native of Buffalo, Shari Jo Reich is a 1983 magna cum laude graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, where she received simultaneous honors from the Political Science Department.  She earned her law degree in 1986 from the SUNY at Buffalo School of Law, and was awarded the Order of the Barristers.  She also received the Law School Award for Proficiency in Estates and Surrogate’s Law. She is currently Managing Partner at Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak, LLP . Shari Jo is a long time supported of the LGBT community. She has given of her time, talents and treasure in such ways as: GLYS Board, “Pride Center” on W Ferry, WNY Aids Program, lectures and support for Marriage Equality and many other issues important to the LGBT community, and legal representation to many in the community.  Shari Jo and Sheryl were married in 2010 and are raising their two children in Williamsville.

WNED signed on the air in 1959, the first public television station in New York State.  After joining in the transition to PBS in the late 60’s, WNED produced some ground breaking series that had national distribution including drama’s like “Longtime Companion”, the ground breaking documentary “Tongues Untied” and the first series highlighting the lives of Lesbians and Gay men, “In the Life”.  We have also shared the stories and told the history of the Gay Rights movement with great documentaries like “Before Stonewall” and “After Stonewall”.  Along with stories from the past like “Coming Out Under Fire” and “The Naked Civil Servant”.  And the list continues to this day where stories about alternative families are included in such children’s series like “Arthur” where we visit a family in Vermont with two moms who produce maple syrup.  And documentaries like “Out in Nature: Homosexual Behavior in the Animal World” that sheds light on a subject that had been long suppressed. 

Unity Fellowship of Christ Church – Buffalo is part of Unity Fellowship Church Movement.  UFCM was founded in 1982 by the then Rev. Carl Bean to not only address the scourge of HIV within the black community but to also provide for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of color an inclusive place of fellowship and worship.  Unity Fellowship Church has the distinction of being Buffalo’s only progressive and inclusive fellowship for people of color that worships in the black church tradition.  As they are coming upon their fifth year anniversary Unity Fellowship Church – Buffalo is proud of their record of progressive theology and social justice within the Western New York area.  In that time organizations such as Evergreen Medical, The MOCHA Center, GLYS, PFLAG, Rainbow Spirit Rising, Stonewall Democrats, Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, Partnership for the Public Good, and Open and Affirming Congregations are just a few considered allies in the struggle for justice and equality.

Greg Rabb is in his third two year term as the only openly gay elected official in the eight counties of WNY as President and Councilman-at-Large on the Jamestown City Council.  He serves on the Finance Committee of the Council and is the Public Co-chair of the Jamestown Strategic Planning Commission, Vice Chair of the Jamestown Urban Renewal Agency, and member of the Board of Directors of the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities.  With the legalization of marriage equality in NY Greg also became a City Marriage Officer having presided over approximately 75 same sex marriages in Jamestown for couples from ten states and Taiwan.  He recently was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.