George turns 90
George Harris celebrates his 90th birthday this week. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice) George Harris has been a pillar of the Dallas LGBT community since the 1950s DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer taffet@dallasvoice.com When George Harris and Jack Evans became the first couple to legally marry in Dallas County, they had already been together 54 years.
That day in 2015, Dallas was the largest metropolitan area in the country to gain marriage equality, and a photo of the couple applying for their marriage license in the County Records Building was printed in newspapers around the world.
Evans passed away a year later, and still, Harris said, “I think about him all the time.” After his husband’s death, Harris said he found the apartment they shared depressing.
So he moved to a new apartment near the American Airlines Center. “I love it here,” he said of the fifth-floor flat that is decorated with awards and accolades the couple won over the years, and with paintings Evans created through the years, including a special one that hangs in the bedroom: It was the last painting Evans did before he died. “I didn’t plan on living this long,” Harris said this week of his 90th birthday. “What keeps me going are my friends.
