Help Miss April and Her Kids Avoid Eviction

**PLEASE SHARE**

Hello, you might know me as Miss April from The Roxy. I am hoping you can help my two kids and I with some back rent and other expenses so we have a fighting chance to get back on our feet. We are in urgent danger of being evicted. As hard as it is for me to ask for help, I must. I've found myself in a desperate situation that frankly terrifies me, and I don't know where else to turn.

For 27 wonderful years, I helped my mother - Suzanne Hale, also known as The Lovely Suzanne - with her 24-hour diner in downtown Portland, Oregon, called The Roxy. It was so much more than just a restaurant. For us and for so many of our beloved regulars it was also a safe haven for our LGBTQIA+ community to be welcomed with open arms and express our creativity. We fed, caffeinated **and proudly employed** every kind of person; queer and straight, cis and trans, housed and unhoused, and so on.

I grew into my adulthood at The Roxy, and later on I waitressed through two pregnancies inside of those walls. To me, we didn't just make and serve food, we nurtured people for a living. We nurtured community. That place was a part of my very identity.

So when The Roxy closed its doors for good in March 2022, it was just like a death in the family. What my mom grieved most was the loss of what she considered to be a platform for public service, which speaks volumes about her character. She was a fierce ally, and I found her passed away in her bed later that year. She was 67 years old.

The magnitude of the loss of both my mom and The Roxy in the same year, and the trauma of being the one who found her body, has hit me so very hard. My two kids are also still grieving the loss of their grandma, and it's becoming more difficult lately to be there for them. She was "my person", the one who knew me better than anyone in the world and we were incredibly close. It's difficult to speak so publicly about it, but I am still struggling to cope. I am debilitated to the point that I am having trouble with basic functioning. Meanwhile, my savings has run out and I've gotten quite behind on rent and bills. Our landlord intends to evict us unless I can get caught up quickly. I haven't been able to pay rent in several months, and while our landlord has been very patient, we have received an eviction notice with a court hearing scheduled.

This GoFundMe is a short-term plan to dig out of the hole that my depression has dug. My long-term plan is to enroll myself in an intensive outpatient counseling program, as my therapist recommends, so I can recover from my depression enough to start working again.

We would be tremendously grateful for anything you can contribute. Can you please help us?

Note: If we're blessed enough that the money raised here exceeds what we end up needing, I will donate the remaining funds to the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court here in Portland, to which my beautiful mom was proudly elected Rose Empress XLIII in 2000.

***A little background about The Roxy and my mom, The Lovely Suzanne:

We opened The Roxy in 1994 as a 24-hour diner on 1121 SW Stark Street, now renamed Harvey Milk Street. It was owned by Suzanne Hale, a single mother who started waiting tables at age 16. She was 39 when it opened.

The Roxy was the kind of place where a high school kid whose parents didn't accept that they were gay or trans could go to meet other kids like them so they could feel valid, and not be alone. Keeping those kids safe was our most important job.

It was also the kind of place where you could go on a Sunday morning to carbo-load a bunch of hangover helpers from a smartass menu written by my sarcastic genius of a mother. You could go there when the DJ told you that you didn't need to go home, but you couldn't stay there. We were there if you just needed a safe, warm place to wait for the buses to start running again while enjoying some comfort food, some incredible people-watching and the best jukebox in town.

The Lovely Suzanne had a servant's heart, in the most sincere depths of her soul. She utilized her restaurant in ways that enabled her to serve those in need. I continue to be proud of her every single day, and she is terribly missed.