Michael J. DeCicco
DIGHTON — Selectman Brett Zografos wants to explain the importance of June as Pride Month.
It’s his goal for reasons much deeper than the fact his name is attached to a controversial plan to raise the Pride flag at Town Hall that failed in January but that town officials are now reconsidering.
It’s about who he is and is proud to be: one of the few openly gay selectmen in the state.
The 36-year-old Dighton native said he became a selectman because he had always wanted to serve the town where he was raised. His father, too, was raised in Dighton, though he was born in Taunton at the Dighton line. His family moved to Fall River for a time then returned to Dighton in 1993. He graduated from the Dighton Elementary and Middle schools and Dighton-Rehoboth High School. He said his was one of the first classes to go all four years through the new middle school, rebuilt after a 1991 fire.
“I am a proud product of the Dighton Public Schools,” he said. “Dighton neighbors, family and friends all helped raise me.”
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Unfriendly encounters early on helped raise him, too. But these influences only strengthened his resolve to return to Dighton and serve and educate. As his gay identity evolved, he said, “There was no role models to go to figure out what I was. No television or movies about it. Though my family was supportive, kids were cruel. That experience changed me. But it made me keep the idea that I wanted to come back and serve as a thank you to the community that raised me. And I wanted to make my community a safe, supportive space for people like me.”
The latter goal is the one that makes him want to speak out during Pride Month. A statement he wrote and read at the time of the selectmen’s proclamation on the event pointed out, “Despite a society that told us time and again to be ashamed of ourselves, we choose pride: in ourselves, in each other, in our community.”
More:Should gay pride flag fly at Dighton Town Hall just in June? Year-round? Not at all?
When he first knew who he was, he explained, “It was not a supportive, welcoming environment. I internalized that it is bad, that I was bad. It’s a perception others too have had of themselves that has to change.”
For Zografos, that perception about himself evolved as he earned an undergraduate degree in cellular molecular biology at Bridgewater State University and a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. He then won a Marie Curie Fellowship award that sent him to Paris to study brain stem human cancer. But there he felt the calling to pursue a career in public service, not science.
“So when my contract was up I returned to Dighton,” he said. “The work (in Paris) was not rewarding — long hours; it’s not a 9-to-5 job. I realized this was not the life I wanted for myself. I’m a social person. I’m not satisfied without human interaction.”
Nowadays he works in the human resources department of an environmental resources firm, Velola North America, and he applies his knowledge of science to grant writing for Dighton projects that need funding of that kind.
“I use my education every day,” he said. “It’s very helpful in grant writing. I helped us get our recent $143,000 Green Communities infrastructure grant. I wanted to use the knowledge, the education that Dighton gave me to move the town forward. Pay it forward.”
When he ran for Dighton selectman, he said, no one asked him about his sexuality. They put him in office based on his experience.
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Does this moment in time feel different as he promotes flying the Gay Pride Flags around town hall?
“People think this is my agenda,” he said. “But that is the furthest from the truth. I just want to foster a position of tolerance, of love. The flag supports all that, supports that Dighton welcomes everyone with open arms.”
He added it is a false choice when some say it’s the Pride flag versus the American Flag.
“My father served in Desert Storm and in Yugoslavia,” he said. “My father was a proud veteran, and we’re a proud military family. I see the rainbow flag as symbolizing the struggle of gay rights and the American dream and the promise of justice for all.”
But he would not be discouraged if “the rainbow flag” never flew at town hall. The town selectmen have done a lot of other good work, he said.
“Whether or not the flag gets raised. I know this town is full of good people. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have chosen to serve them.”
For the record, he said, here’s what the colors of the rainbow flag symbolize: Red: Life; Orange: Healing; Yellow: Sunlight; Green: Nature; Blue: Peace/Harmony; Purple/Violet: Spirit.
