Dalton's Social Year by Ann Walton Sieber Preserving memory, loving people through the lens of a camera–on the prowl with Dalton DeHart, compulsive photographer and Montrose community treasure

[ Click here to see Dalton's DeHart's Photos for the Year 2000 ]

"Oh, my yes, oh, my my yes." Dalton DeHart is flipping through a pile of his photographs from 2000. "Oh, Roy Green, isn't he a panic?" he says, pointing to a grinning muscular man in a Mardi Gras mask. "I just love him. Now that's Grant Martin, of course. There's Sharon Montgomery. Miss Brunjes and company. Brian Keever. Oh, what a doll. Do you know Kevin Davidson? He's wonderful.... That's a horrible picture of that sweetheart there.... I don't know who that queen is.... Michael and Richard, they are princes, absolute princes." Clumps of smiling men face the camera, drag queens strut, social groups from glossy to boozy mingle and pose and primp and beam.

"Oh, now, that Ray, he is just too wild for the West," Dalton says, as I pull out a beautiful picture of Ray West performing in the Miss Camp America show last October. He's wearing a green sequined bathing suit, black evening gloves that come above the elbow, and on his head a large gold ball with green ostrich feathers. Behind his long legs, the other dancers are red blurry streaks. "He is just one of my favorite people," Dalton says. "Oh, my yes, he will do anything. I love Fay Ray."

Dalton and I are selecting a mix of pictures to represent a year of Dalton's ramblings with his famous camera. For the past 14 years, Dalton has made it his personal business to attend every function of Houston's gay community that he can fit on his dance card. Halloween Magic. The Black Tie Dinner. Naked Boys Singing. Empower. T-dances at Rich's and Sonoma. Christmas Songfest. Stewart Zuckerbrod's baby-naming. Panel discussions, holy unions, drag contests, leather contests, music festivals, receptions, fundraisers, galas, worship services, bar crawls, birthday parties, going-away parties, memorials, protests. Dalton attended 284 functions in 2000 (as of December 18, when we had to cut off our count and go to press), which often meant going to two, three, four, or even more events on weekend evenings. He shot 1,125 rolls of film, a total of 41,625 pictures, costing him thousands of dollars. He shot 858 pictures of Halloween Magic alone. 925 pictures of Miss Camp America (1,140 before he pulls out the bad ones). He numbers every single picture, so that he can find photos taken years prior. One mother tracked him down to get a photograph he'd taken of her son several years ago at the Montrose Softball League. She wanted to enlarge it and use it at his memorial. This sort of thing happens a lot. "You really captured who he was," she told him. And he's been doing this since 1986.

I don't remember meeting anybody else who does what Dalton does-for the gay community, or any community, for that matter. I guess you could call the picture-taking a hobby. But it's moved from hobby, to calling ... to ministry. (And maybe on to obsessive addiction, as Dalton jokes frequently about needing to start a 12-step chapter, call it Photographers Anonymous.) In presenting a year's review of the Montrose social scene as seen through Dalton's camera, we thought it could serve as memory food, as well as a map of the Montrose social scene, a social calendar (and you can practically use it as a calendar, since so many of the community's events are on an annual rotation). Of course, it is not completely inclusive-the bias is definitely toward the events and parties with men.

I tease Dalton that there ought to be an honorary chair named for him at the Gulf Coast Archives and Museum-he is active with GCAM, and has told them he'll leave his photos and negatives to the archive when he dies. Over the past decade and a half, Dalton's visual record has become the community memory.

"You are a phenomenon," I say to him.

"And I like to count that as a positive thing ," he says in his self-deprecating Southern drawl, "although sometimes I say Oh, me." He covers his face in fake despair.

I asked Dalton if I could accompany him on one of his nights of making the social rounds. He said sure, and we planned for December 9, a Saturday during the holidays when he had four stops on his agenda: two parties, the Magnolia Ballroom's holiday party, and then on to Rich's, where Dalton needed to get some beautiful boy shoots for Eclipse. That afternoon he called me to say the owner of the Guava Lamp had also asked him to stop by and photograph their anniversary party. I had to pass on the bar function, so I teamed up with him at 8.

Both of the parties were in sumptuously elegant settings-John Robinson's suite at the Beaconsfield, a preserved historic hotel on Main complete with doorman and elevator operator, and Jim Humble and Gary "Dame Edith" Evans grand showpiece in the Westmoreland area.

We make our way slowly through the crowded rooms at the parties, Dalton nodding and smiling (click), here a kiss, there a "now let me see" (click), "Wait for me!" (click). Everywhere Dalton goes, men clump together and smile, lovers snuggle and face the camera, groups band together and disband to make way for other groups to clutch, wait for the click, and disband. It's like walking through life with a series of panorama postcards unfolding before you. Dalton introduced me to about a million people (about 999,000 of them men)-all marvelously friendly and gracious. Not only does Dalton know just about everybody, he also knows who is okay with having his or her picture published in OutSmart or the Voice, and who isn't. We go from room to room until we've photographed every person there, and then we go on to the next event.

In case you were wondering, Dalton does have a regular job, in fact more than a regular job-he's a professor of English and composition at San Jacinto College and is head of the program for remedial reading and writing. He could put "Dr." in front of his name if he were thataway inclined, which he's not. He's of a certain age which he'd prefer to not get too specific about, but he is approaching early retirement.

Dalton grew up in Buna, a small town the other side of Beaumont. He first taught at the high school in Buna, then Lamar University, moved to Illinois to pursue his doctorate, and returned to Texas in 1980 to teach at San Jacinto College in Pasadena. For the next decade, Dalton lived in Pasadena, photographing Pasadena civic events, the Strawberry Festival, high school football games-and slowly started making the weekend drive into Montrose. He moved into the city in 1992, into a scenic condominium on Timmons, where he lives by himself. He loves running into his students when he is out at community events; although they can sometimes be pretty surprised and pleased, he's never found any to be embarrassed. "If I'm in JR's, then they know I'm not going to have a problem with them being in JR's," he says.

In looks, Dalton strikes me as a "sandy" person-his hair, his easy-flowing manner, his tall will-o-the-wisp stature, his unobtrusive professor's cardigans. He is what people are referring to when they say they love Southerners. He is frank and honest, yet never sharp; ever genial, he serves as a natural social lubricant, without making it seem like work atall.

Back at Dame Edith's party, we're making our circuit through the many festooned rooms, including the spacious bathroom suite, where a cheery group poses first in the shower (fully clothed) and then in the jacuzzi, and then back to the shower again, a slightly different group amassing themselves. ("I still have my clothes on!" "Well, take them off!" "No cigarettes in the shower," "Oh, get in there, honey," "Wait for me!") I am sitting down resting my feet when something rushes past, flapping me in the face. It is the black leather jacket of a comely young man, lithe and blonde, who has just dashed by and deposited himself front and center amidst the nest of joking men in the sunken tub, his long black leather-clad legs draping themselves oh-so-picturesquely over the tiled rim. Dalton obligingly snaps, laughs, snaps again. "Oh, that's good. Very good."

After about four hours of party cheer, smiling so much I wonder if I'll have muscle strain in the morning, I realize I am done in. It is midnight, and I tell Dalton I am ready to go home. "Oh, that's perfectly fine," he says in his ever-genial voice, letting me off at my car as he continues to two more major events.

The following week, we regroup in the OutSmart office, where Dalton and I spend hours and hours and days and days poring through photographs, picking the few out of the thousands. Right now, the year 2000 in pictures is interesting to look at, but it still looks normal. In another five or 10 years, it will start to look odd and memory-stirring-the clothes, the activities. In the photos, people we know will look a little different, a little more smooth-faced, dark-headed. In 15 years, the 2000 pictures will look downright dated. The young men in the tub will still be handsome, but no longer young. Some may be married (maybe to each other), some may have left Houston, some may not be with us at all. In 20 years, these photos of Dalton's will be more precious than gold.