Flint Native Howard Bragman Creates Million Dollar "Coming Out" Fund at U-M

Howard Bragman in front of his childhood home on Sheffield Avenue in Flint.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center, the nation’s first LGBTQIA+ college support center, celebrated “PR Guru” and U-M alumnus Howard Bragman has made a $1M bequest to establish the Howard Bragman Coming Out Fund. The fund will be used to provide emergency financial assistance to students through the Spectrum Center, including help for mental and physical health services, short-term housing, long-term housing, transportation, and tuition. 

Growing up in the Midwest in the 1960s, without a lot of peers or role models to look to, Bragman (AB ’78) never quite fit in. “As a fat, Jewish, gay kid in Flint, Michigan, I always felt like a Martian,” he said. 

That all changed when he got to U-M. 

“This campus allows you to be yourself. It allows you to spread your wings in the way you want to spread your wings,” he said. Now a celebrated public relations expert and crisis manager, Bragman has gone on to an illustrious career of helping people — some quite famous — do just that, his approach to work and life formed in large part by his time on campus. 

But Bragman knows that even in a place as progressive as Ann Arbor, coming out as gay is a challenging journey. “I tell people, stay strong, even when it hurts. And, I promise, it hurts sometimes. But, there are places that will help you ease the pain sometimes. That’s what the Spectrum Center did. That’s what Michigan did,” he said. He created the Coming Out fund to make sure the center will continue providing support and guidance to U-M’s LGBTQIA+ community. 

“I don’t care how liberal the school is. I don’t care how accepting and loving your parents are. I don’t care how ‘woke’ the times are. Coming out is this most personal of journeys and it’s a challenging journey,” he said. “It’s so important for students to know they are not alone and that the Spectrum Center is there for them. I want to assure that other people get that same access that I had; life-changing, life-saving access,” he added. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t had the resources that the university had provided.” 

“I purposefully did not overly define or constrain the limits and uses of the fund,” explained Bragman. “In the four-plus decades that I have been out, the needs, and indeed, the very definition of our community has changed. I think it would be the height of arrogance for me to set the parameters of my gift after I am gone. I trust that the Spectrum Center will remain attuned to the acute needs of future generations.” 

After graduating from U-M, Bragman went on to a prominent career in public relations and crisis management. After serving as a vice president in the Chicago and Los Angeles offices of Burson Marsteller Public Relations, he founded media strategy and public relations firms Bragman Nyman Cafarelli (BNC) (which was bought by Interpublic Group) and Fifteen Minutes, was a Vice Chairman of Reputation.com, and currently runs La Brea Media in Los Angeles. A dynamic activist for LGBTQIA+ rights, he has earned acclaim for helping dozens of actors, athletes, and executives come out as gay over the past 30 years. 

He hopes his gift inspires other alumni to give, but also hopes to raise awareness of what the Spectrum Center is. “The Spectrum Center is certainly one area where Michigan is the leader and best!” he said. “I hope this will let the students know that they have this extraordinary resource available to them.” 

Bragman helped organize the Spectrum Center’s 40th anniversary commemoration and is excited about the 50th anniversary celebration, which kicks off this fall and will culminate in a gala on May 20, 2022. 

“It’s important to understand that the Spectrum Center has endured; that’s huge,” he said. “It was founded only two years after Stonewall, which we look at as the birth of the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement. So the center is not a flash in the pan, but something venerable that’s been on campus for a long time and is going to be on campus as a permanent fixture, like the pillars outside Angel Hall.” 

For more information about the Spectrum Center’s 50th Anniversary and how to get involved, click here. To support the Howard Bragman Coming Out Fund, click here.

Howard Bragman and Michael Sam

Flint Expatriate Howard Bragman, shown here in front of his childhood home on Sheffield Avenue, is the public relations expert who oversaw Missouri football player Michael Sam's coming out before the NFL draft. Blake Thorne has a profile of Bragman in today's Flint Journal that touches on his Vehicle City roots and his approach to working with Sam:

Bragman's philosophy — one the agents and Sam were on board with — was that Sam needed to tell his story, on his terms, and quickly get back to focusing on football. The announcement came with just a few high profile interviews: ESPN and The New York Times. Sam would not be making public appearances or marching in parades or making the talk show rounds. He needed to show future teams, the league and the rest of the world that his priority is football. 

“I just want to make sure I could tell my story the way I want to tell it,” Sam said in the Times. “I just want to own my truth.”

Flint Portraits: Howard Bragman

Need advice on getting famous? Flint Expatriate and PR guru Howard Bragman has advised everyone from Cameron Diaz to Paula Abdul. The Coolidge Elementary and Zimmerman veteran offers up his secrets in a new book called "Where's My Fifteen Minutes?"

Howard described his early experiences dealing with public opinion while growing up in Flint in a recent email:

"I know what it’s like to be an outsider—I grew up a fat, Jewish, gay guy in Flint. In Hollywood, those are the first three rungs up the ladder of success, but in a town like Flint, it’s three strikes and you’re out. It’s a little like that Twilight Zone episode with a whole planet full of deformed people and they make fun of the normal guy. You just have to be in the right place for you. I’ve been out of the closet—open about my sexual orientation—for a very long time, going all the way back to when I graduated college and began my professional life more than thirty years ago. I made the choice early on to live honestly and authentically for me.

"Early on, I was doing PR for the Lou Rawls Parade of Stars concert to benefit the United Negro College Fund in Flint. The day before the concert, the local paper did a huge story on Lou Rawls. My grandmother read the paper and called me.

“'What a coincidence,” she said to me. 'You’re here for a Lou Rawls concert…and there’s a big article about him in the paper today.'

“'I did that,' I said modestly.

"'You did what?' my grandmother asked.

“'I got the article in the paper,' I said.

"Long pause.

“'So,” my grandmother asked, confused, “where’s your name?'”

Howard Bragman: It Gets Better

After a rash of recent suicides, columnist Dan Savage has launched a youtube campaign inviting "gay adults to tell stories about having transcended the tortures of youth," according to The New York Times. "In countless videos, lesbians and gay men — including Project Runway’s Tim Gunn — bare their souls, share their triumphs and make that simple promise: It gets better."

Here's one of the videos by Flint Expatriate Howard Bragman, a public relations specialist who has advised Cameron Diaz and Paula Abdul:

Flint Photos: Howard Bragman on Sheffield Avenue

Flint Expatriate and public relations expert Howard Bragman was back in Flint last week and had a chance to visit his childhood home on Sheffield Avenue near McLaren Hospital. It has to be a great feeling when the old homestead is looking so good.

Lead and Copper: A Flint Water Crisis Documentary

Amanda N'Duka of Deadline Hollywood reports:

Oscar-winning producer Paul Haggis (Crash) and his producing partner Michael Nozik have teamed with director William Hart on Lead and Copper, a documentary on the ongoing water contamination crisis in Flint, MI. 

The issue began in 2014 when Flint switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. The water from the river was not treated with corrosive inhibitors, and as a result thousands of children were exposed to lead contamination. A number of people involved with the conspiracy and cover-up have been charged with crimes, and it was a key issue during the presidentialial election cycle. 

“Once I learned of the depth of the problem and the extent of the cover-up, I was compelled to take a closer look and tell this story in the way it deserved to be told,” Hart said. 

Producers Alex Olsen and Patrick Letterii are also behind this documentary as well as Glen Zipper of Zipper Bros Films and venerable publicist Howard Bragman, a Flint native.

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

Now Available for Pre-Order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones in Great Britain, and Indigo.

Praise for Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

"One can read Teardown and go 'My, my, my! What a horrid town! Thank God I don't live there!' Oh, but you do. Just as the 'Roger & Me Flint' of the 1980s was the precursor to a wave of downsizing that eventually hit every American community, Gordon Young's Flint of 2013, as so profoundly depicted in this book, is your latest warning of what's in store for you — all of you, no matter where you live — in the next decade. The only difference between your town and Flint is that the Grim Reaper just likes to visit us first. It's all here in Teardown, a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once great American city."
— Michael Moore 

"There must be a thousand good reasons to flee Flint. I can't assume there are many reasons to return. Gordon Young's Teardown supplies a few of these answers. A humorous, heartfelt and often haunting tale of a town not many could love. Fortunately for us, a few still do."

— Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales From the Assembly Line

“Teardown is the tragic and somehow hilarious tale of one man's attempt to return to his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Gordon Young is a Flintoid at heart, and his candid observations about both the shrinking city and his own economic woes read heartbreakingly true.”

— Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

“Armed with an aluminum baseball bat and a truth-seeking pen, Gordon Young returns to the post-industrial wasteland of his hometown — Vehicle City, aka Flint, Michigan — in search of a derelict house to buy and restore. At least that's his cover story. Young's true mission is to reclaim his past in order to make sense of his present. If you're bewitched by the place where you grew up, you'll find comfort and a sense of home in the pages of Teardown.

— Jack Shafer, Reuters columnist and a former Michigander

“Like so many other Flintites, I visit my hometown with a mix of sadness, repugnance, and anger. Flint is too easy to criticize, but I look back in gratitude for the values Flint instilled and the bonds I made that remain with me to this day. You can take the boy out of Flint, but you can’t take Flint out of the boy.”

— Howard Bragman, author of Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?

“Teardown is a funny and ultimately heartbreaking memoir. The travails of house hunting are skillfully interwoven with Gordon Young’s attempt to reconcile life in his adopted city of San Francisco with his allegiance to Flint, Michigan, the troubled city of his childhood. The result is an all too contemporary American story of loyalty, loss, and finding your way home.”

— Tom Pohrt, artist and author of Careless Rambles by John Clare, Having a Wonderful Time, and Coyote Goes Walking.

For more information, including excerpts, photos, and events, visit www.teardownbook.com.

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young will hit bookstores in June 2013. It's available now for pre-order. Go to teardownbook.com for photos, excerpts, reviews, links to online stores like Barnes & Noble, and more.

At the height of the real estate bubble, Gordon Young and his girlfriend buy a tiny house in their dream city, San Francisco. They’re part of a larger influx of creative types moving to urban centers, drawn by the promise of fulfilling jobs, bars that offer a dizzying selection of artisanal bourbons, and the satisfaction that comes from thinking you’re in a place where important things are happening. But even as Young finds a home in a city sometimes described as 49 square miles surrounded on all sides by reality, a vital part of him still resides in industrial America in the town where he was raised: Flint, Michigan. It’s the birthplace of General Motors, “star” of the Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me, and a place that supplies the national media with never-ending fodder for “worst-of” lists.

Filled with nostalgia and compelled to help his struggling hometown, Young hatches a plan to buy a house in Flint. He embarks on a tragi-comic odyssey to rediscover the city that once supplied the country with shiny Buicks and boasted one of the highest per capita income levels in the world, but now endures a real unemployment rate pushing 40 percent. What he finds is a place of stark contrasts and dramatic stories, where an exotic dancer can afford a lavish mansion, and speculators snap up cheap houses on eBay by the dozen like jelly donuts. There are desolate blocks where only a single house is occupied, and survivors brandish shotguns and monitor police scanners. While the population plummets, the murder rate soars. Throw in an arson spree and a racially motivated serial killer and Young wonders if Flint can be saved.

And yet, he discovers glimmers of hope. He befriends a rag-tag collection of urban homesteaders and die-hard residents who refuse to give up on the city. Dave Starr, a well-armed shop rat who logged 14,647 days in a G.M. plant, battles cancer and economic decline as he joins forces with his neighbors to preserve a lone block surrounded by decay. Pastor Sherman McCathern negotiates with God in his heroic effort to transform an abandoned church and improve the lives of his congregation. Mayor Dayne Walling, a Rhodes Scholar in his thirties who spent his adult life grooming himself to run Flint, has the toughest job in politics — one that sometimes necessitates police protection for his family. And Dan Kildee, a local politician and urban planning visionary, grabs international attention — and trades jabs with Rush Limbaugh — by arguing that Flint and other troubled urban areas should manage decline instead of futilely trying to stop it.

Young’s insights, hard-hitting and often painfully funny, yield lessons for cities all over the world. He reminds us that communities are ultimately defined by people, not politics or economics. Teardown reveals that the residents of Flint are still fighting, in spite of overwhelming odds, to reinvent their city. In the end, Young learns that you can go home again. But the journey is likely to be far more agonizing and rewarding than you ever imagined.

 

Praise for Teardown

There must be a thousand good reasons to flee Flint. I can't assume there are many reasons to return. Gordon Young's Teardown supplies a few of these answers. A humorous, heartfelt and often haunting tale of a town not many could love. Fortunately for us, a few still do.

- Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales From the Assembly Line

Teardown is the tragic and somehow hilarious tale of one man's attempt to return to his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Gordon Young is a Flintoid at heart, and his candid observations about both the shrinking city and his own economic woes read heartbreakingly true.

- Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

Armed with an aluminum baseball bat and a truth-seeking pen, Gordon Young returns to the post-industrial wasteland of his hometown — Vehicle City, aka Flint, Michigan — in search of a derelict house to buy and restore. At least that's his cover story. Young's true mission is to reclaim his past in order to make sense of his present. If you're bewitched by the place where you grew up, you'll find comfort and a sense of home in the pages of Teardown.

- Jack Shafer, Reuters columnist and a former Michigander

Teardown is a funny and ultimately heartbreaking memoir. The travails of house hunting are skillfully interwoven with Gordon Young's attempt to reconcile life in his adopted city of San Francisco with his allegiance to Flint, Michigan, the troubled city of his childhood. The result is an all too contemporary American story of loyalty, loss, and finding your way home.

- Tom Pohrt, illustrator and author of Careless Rambles by John Clare, Having a Wonderful Time, and Coyote Goes Walking

Like so many other Flintites, I visit my hometown with a mix of sadness, repugnance, and anger. Flint is too easy to criticize, but I look back in gratitude for the values Flint instilled and the bonds I made that remain with me to this day. You can take the boy out of Flint, but you can't take Flint out of the boy.

- Howard Bragman, author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes?