The first issue of The Wisconsin Light appeared on November 20, 1987 under the direction of Publisher Jerry Johnson and Editor Terry Boughner, lifetime partners for more than 20 years.  The front page banner included the motto: “Give the People Light and they will find their own way.”

Ten years later on November 6, 1997, The Wisconsin Light published a 120-page anniversary issue called “A Decade of Light.”  It included a massive timeline of all major LGBT events--local, statewide and national--that had been reported in The Wisconsin Light since its founding, along with hundreds of photos of those events, most taken by Jerry Johnson.  It stands as the most thorough history ever compiled of that 10-year period of LGBT life in Wisconsin.

Therefore, it is with great honor and pride that the Big Night Out auction offers for bid four commemorative tenth anniversary The Wisconsin Light inscribed mugs from the 1997 gala party held at the downtown Hilton Hotel ballroom, an original copy of the gala program booklet, and finally an original copy of the historic 120-page tenth anniversary edition of The Wisconsin Light newspaper.