life
A Commitment to the Queen City Connie Vetter, QNotes 2020 Person of the Year
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BY Chris Rudisill | QNotes Contributor
Her last internship in the wenty years ago, Corretta program brought her to Charlotte, Scott King spoke to a crowd where she has “proudly” resided at Ebenezer Baptist Church ever since. “I fell in love with in Atlanta, Ga. while opening Charlotte,” remembers Vetter. “It the city’s Martin Luther King Day just felt like home.” observances. Remembering her Tailoring her practice around late husband’s legacy to service, her strengths, Vetter focused she urged a nation to envision a on estate planning, family and society filled with compassion. adoption rights and adult guard“The greatness of a community ianship. She focuses on the needs is most accurately measured by of LGBTQ individuals and couples the compassionate actions of its and is an experienced mediator. members,” she stated. She always has a personalEach year, qnotes selects a ized approach, something she person or organization that is calls a “client-focused practice.” benefitting the LGBTQ community Vetter remembers a moment through service or by breaking recently crying over a letter that down barriers in the region. Many came from a client. While she have stepped up this year to supmay not be changing the laws like port a community wading through she dreamed of as an early law a pandemic and one can idenstudent, Vetter is definitely helptify numerous instances where ing people understand their legal compassion has prevailed over rights and protections. “I get hugs despair. Yet, one person stood from my clients, and that’s not out, with years of service to the something a lot of attorneys get,” LGBTQ community and a sense of reflects Vetter. mentorship that’s now impacting She is a member of the North the city’s leaders of tomorrow. Carolina State Bar, Mecklenburg Since coming to Charlotte in County Bar, National LGBT Bar 1993, Connie Vetter has served in Association, National LGBT Bar nearly 20 community organizations Family Law Institute and is on the in a board or committee member board of directors for the Pauli role, not to mention the countMurray LGBTQ+ Bar Association. less times she has volunteered In 2016, Mecklenburg County Bar her skills as one of the city’s most honored Vetter with the Julius recognizable LGBTQ attorneys. Chambers Diversity Champion “Connie is more than just a pilAward, something she points lar of our community,” said Chad out was as much for them as Turner, the president and CEO of it was for her. “That was them the Charlotte LGBT Chamber of (Mecklenburg County Bar) putting Commerce. “She has been an intheir ‘money where their mouth tegral contributor to the progress was,’” says Vetter. and growth of our city.” She has also presented a numVetter grew up in small farm ber of legal workshops on topics town in Illinois before moving to ranging from LGBTQ parenting to Ohio in her early teens after her HIV/AIDS to transgender equality father, a chemical engineer, had and LGBTQ diversity. In 2003, she been transferred with his compresented on LGBT Civil Rights pany. “We moved from my little at the National Conference for 1,200-person town to a suburb of Community and Justice and at the Cincinnati where there were more Attorney and community leader Connie Vetter, Civil Rights Youth Conference. people in my high school than in qnotes’ 2020 Person of the Year. the town I grew up in,” says Vetter. (Photo Credit: qnotes staff) She remembers hating it at the time, but realizes now the abundance of educational opportunities she would have there Before marriage equality, Vetter successfully helped get compared to those in her hometown. domestic partnership benefits for city and county employees, She went on to Ohio State University and came out orders that were both rescinded after the 2015 U.S. Supreme in her senior year. After graduating with a Bachelors in Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. journalism, Vetter and her girlfriend at the time moved Hodges. Her professional skills proved beneficial and allowed to Boston, Mass. She got a job with the Bay State Banner, her an inside track to city and county attorneys. an independent newspaper serving the Black community Like many people, Vetter still remembers the moment since 1965. the Obergefell decision came down, as well as the time “That was phenomenal — as a 22-year-old, white waiting when marriage equality passed in N.C. the year lesbian Midwesterner to be dropped into Dorchester and before in 2014. “I’ve marched in the streets, marched Roxbury … and be the only white face … was a wonderful in Washington, marched in Charlotte,” she says. “In my experience,” says Vetter. lifetime, we’ve gone from getting kicked out of the military She then decided to go to law school with the idea of … heck, we’ve gone from it being listed as a mental illness, bringing cases that would change laws, or impact litigato where we are now — to our private intimate relations tion, similar to the work of organizations like the ACLU, being unlawful to not anymore.” Lambda Legal and National Center for Lesbian Rights. She has worked with Time Out Youth Center for She graduated from Northwestern University Law School years and was a board member of OutCharlotte from in 1993, and quickly realized that while the work of those 1995-1997. From 1997 to 1998 she worked as a hotorganizations was hugely important, it wasn’t her strong line peer counselor for the Charlotte Gay and Lesbian suit. “I don’t like litigation,” she says laughingly. “That was Switchboard. In 2007, she helped envision Charlotte’s going to be a big problem.” Lesbian and Gay Community Center and served on its
Board of Trustees through 2009. She served on the Charlotte LGBTQ Steering Committee until earlier this year. From 2015 to 2016, she was a volunteer server at the Men’s Shelter of Charlotte’s First Sunday Dinners and has been part of the Pet Therapy Team at Carolinas Medical Center and Hospitality House. Vetter has also supported philanthropy in Charlotte’s LGBTQ community as a board member of The Wesley Mancini Foundation and on the annual meeting event planning committee for the Charlotte Lesbian and Gay Fund. “I like sitting on boards of directors,” says Vetter. “I like doing what I can.” Numerous honors include the Don King Community Service Award in 1999, the Righteous Woman Award in 2004 from New Life MCC, ACLU of North Carolina’s Sharon Thompson Award in 2013 and being named as part of “25 in 25” by the Charlotte LGBT Chamber of Commerce in 2017.
Uplifting the Community
Following a public outcry to the financial and organizational mismanagement of MeckPac earlier this year Vetter was able to bring the community together when few could see beyond the bitter entanglements that were quickly dividing a community. William Loftin spoke to qnotes about Vetter’s leadership saying “You could not have honored a better human being.” Loftin is the former chair of Charlotte Black Pride and the current transitional chair of MeckPAC. He has seen firsthand the breadth of Vetter’s activism, philanthropy and “love of community.” “As leaders, we sometimes allow egos and pride to get in the way of us truly reaching our objectives and uplifting the community,” he said. “Connie sees beyond all of that and, because of her humility and willingness to work across every divide, she will continue to leave a mark upon the many lives in the LGBTQIA+ community of Charlotte.” Vetter and Bishop Tonyia M. Rawls recently resurrected the local Change Agents Lunch (formerly known as the “leader’s lunch”) and she has tried to create opportunities for members of the community to come together and talk. Vetter served as co-chair of MeckPAC, then called the Mecklenburg Gay & Lesbian Political Action Committee, from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2006. In 2005, she spoke to qnotes about the organization, “With hate groups ready to limit and take away basic human rights of LGBT citizens, we need to keep working to elect and educate local elected officials.” see Vetter on 14
A Lifetime of Change
Connie Vetter was the recipient of the Julius Chambers Diversity Champion Award from the Mecklenburg County Bar Association. (Photo Credit: Facebook)
Dec. 25, 2020 - Jan. 7, 2021
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