UnitePageVA
Defending Every Right to BeIn Memory of our dear friend John Lineberger
Vision Statement
UPVA dreams of a day when folks living in the Page Valley of Virginia will engage every human being with fairness and equality.
Mission Statement
The mission of UPVA is to help all of us get through this crazy, wonderful, difficult, beautiful journey of Life. We are a community of LGBTQI and supporters affirming & welcoming all persons who strive not to judge other persons based on ethnicity, gender, age, weight or looks.
Our goal is to ensure all are treated with equity and embraced as full members of our community. We will defend every right to be, educate ourselves and others while having fun as we go.
UPVA Community & Membership
The UPVA Community is open to anyone who agrees not to discriminate. Joining is as easy as finding our closed group on Facebook and clicking the join button. If you need, any existing member can invite you to join the page.
The UPVA community participant can be included in our business listings and will be invited to most events. We rely on our members for advice in running the UnitePageVA organization. UPVA Members will be invited to all Community and Member events including our annual Page Pride.
Spring 2023 – Don Harrell – President:
UPVA has had an interesting start to 2023. Unite Page VA (UPVA) started in 2019 as an exploratory committee and was promptly impacted by a world pandemic to be called Covid-19. Covid shut down many of our activities in 2020 through 2022. As many of you are aware, the founder and visionary behind UPVA passed away suddenly in late 2022. We miss him!
The board met in January and agreed with the vision and dream of John Lineberger that the need for a group like Unite Page is much too important to let this organization slowly fade. The board chose to revitalize ourselves and our organization. We are looking forward to a bright future for a group that promotes equality, advocacy and education around the LGBTQ community in and around Page County. Unite Page VA (UPVA) has three primary goals:
- Welcome and embrace Equality in all persons, Educate ourselves and our neighbors on areas important to us as the LGBTQ community and to have fun doing the first two!
- We strive to welcome all members of the community, our friends and our families too. As we continue to revive our organization, we are excited for the opportunities to meet you,
- Listen to you and to have fun together as a community!
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Don Harrell, and I am the new president of Unite Page VA (UPVA) Working in DC, my husband and I bought a “weekend” house in Luray in 2009. It was an easy commute from DC to the Valley and we came up to our part-time home most weekends. Opportunity knocked, and we transitioned to Luray full time in 2014. We knew this was a special place when we would walk to Main Street – an obvious gay couple – and have total strangers wave to us. Of course, we had our share of less pleasant experiences, but the number of friends and neighbors who have supported us during our time here is much greater.
UPVA strives to be a safe place for all of us to be… Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Trans, Queer and Questioning, our Allies, our Friends and hopefully our families. For those who do not have family, we hope we will become your chosen family.
I am very pleased to announce our newest communications tool with the presence of this new website. Along with our Facebook page, we hope to keep you all informed of events and information in and around Page County that could be of interest to you as we all live our daily lives.
Stay tuned to Facebook and favorite this website because as we build new events and activities, we want you to know and participate with us!
Happy Spring and Welcome Back to your Unite Page Virginia.