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Dublin Core
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Title
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Mary Foltz
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Patricia Sullivan
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-03.xml
Interview Keyword
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PA-GALA
OHMS Object Text
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5.4 July 19, 2019 Patricia Sullivan, July 19, 2019 LGBT-03 01:21:27 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg PA-GALA PA Diversity Network Patricia Sullivan Mary Foltz video/mov SullivanPatricia_20190719_video.mov 1.0:|21(5)|46(10)|59(15)|80(6)|95(8)|110(15)|131(3)|148(5)|167(8)|182(6)|203(8)|222(4)|241(2)|258(5)|279(7)|296(11)|315(2)|334(5)|351(14)|372(15)|391(3)|408(9)|427(17)|446(9)|465(16)|486(7)|505(8)|526(3)|545(20)|560(5)|579(14)|600(17)|619(18)|638(5)|657(6)|674(17)|693(18)|712(8)|731(10)|752(8)|771(6)|788(2)|807(3)|828(3)|845(9)|866(4)|885(3)|902(11)|923(15)|942(16)|961(7)|980(9)|997(15)|1014(7)|1033(4)|1054(5)|1075(7)|1092(2)|1109(7)|1134(10)|1163(4)|1186(14)|1205(2)|1222(5)|1245(11)|1264(14)|1287(2)|1310(2)|1329(10)|1350(11)|1371(2)|1386(18)|1409(15)|1428(14)|1449(13)|1472(13)|1493(7)|1512(11)|1533(11)|1556(2)|1575(17)|1586(8) 0 YouTube video < ; iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rkA0R7UFiCo?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"> ; < ; /iframe> ; 0 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, I’m here with Trish Sullivan in her home in Allentown. Today is July 19th, 2019. We’re here as a part of the LGBT Community Oral History Project and Trish has so graciously agreed to be the first person that we’re interviewing for the oral history project. The project is sponsored by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and we did receive funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium for which we’re also very grateful. So to begin I’m just going to ask Trish could you introduce yourself?
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 ; PATRICIA SULLIVAN: I’m Patricia Sullivan.
 ; 0 73 Early Childhood / Family / Life in Florida MF: Fantastic. Well as I said, we’re just so grateful that you’re willing to sit here with us today and tell us a little bit about your life, and I thought we could start by just asking you to tell me a little bit about your childhood. Where are you from?
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 ; PS: Well I was born on a barrier island, the first barrier island off the coast of Florida, Amelia Island, Florida. And I lived there for a part of my childhood, and then I moved inland, but I was born on an island which was pretty great. Liz and I are fortunate enough to still have a place there which is nice. 0 840 Leaving Florida / Schooling MF: So you had said earlier I couldn’t wait to get out of this town, describe for me how did you do that, how did you get out of Florida, where did you go?
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 ; PS: Well, when I graduated from high school I went to a college in North Carolina, Montreat Anderson College, it’s a Presbyterian college. And it basically it’s a liberal arts college, but it trains people to be music educators and missionaries basically. And my parents wanted me to go there, I wanted to go to the University of Florida, they didn’t want me to go there, they was afraid I’d party too much, and they wanted me to go to a little school where it would be controlling, and it would be very moral and upright and all of that. 0 1122 Early Interactions with LGBT People MF: I want to go back to when you talk about being at the first, your first college experience and feeling that you were different. I have a question about how were people at that college or people in your family, or just communities in which you sort of moved through -- how were they talking about lesbian, gay, or bisexual, or transgender people at that time?
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 ; PS: Well, when I was a kid and we would go visit family friends there were gay people there. I remember going to visit a family friend that rented an apartment to a gay man who was obviously a drag queen. 0 1425 Career Path / Life in New York / Gay Scene MF: Why were you drawn to physical therapy as a career path?
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 ; PS: Well it was because I took a -- when I was in college I took one of those placement tests and it said I should have been a like a park ranger or something like that and or a camp person or something like that. And I thought eh, and my “little” sister at college from the class behind me had had polio and she said to me, “You should be a physical therapist.” 0 2094 Meeting Liz MF: How did you meet Liz?
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 ; PS: I met her through mutual friends, one of my former partners and her former partner were doing a workshop together on a special technique that used to treat children with cerebral palsy. And they were in this month long workshop and they got to know each other, and we all went out to dinner at a café and they introduced me to some other friends that knew Liz and then those friends decided we’d make a good couple and set us up to go into New York City to see a play and meet. 0 2471 Starting PA-GALA / Mission & ; Work PS: And our friend Steve Black, who was a part of the group, was just a political mastermind, just an incredible person said let’s start our own organization and we’ll call it PA-GALA and we’ll provide the voter information, and we’ll do it right, because this other organization was giving good information but they just weren’t doing it in the right way, according to us. So we did this, and Steve ran it with Liz, and we continued to do the mailings and interviewed candidates for office, everything from school board right through to senator. Adrian Shanker ; PA-GALA ; Steve Black 0 3018 Anti-LGBT Petition / Anti-Discrimination Ordinance PS: And there was a fanatic in town who worked at Muhlenberg College, and he actually -- his name was Frank McVeigh and he’s no longer with us, but when he was at the college he said such outrageous things in his classes, he was a, not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, he taught psychology. And he said such outrageous things in his classes and students complained about him so much that they took him out of the classroom, and they couldn’t fire him because he was tenured, so they just sat him in an office. 0 3621 Building Political Community / Voter's Guide MF: There’s also a piece here that I think I want to ask a question about which is you’re building political community through the organization, could you talk a little bit about that?
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 ; PS: Well, that was what was so great about PA-GALA and that’s why I say it’s so sad we don’t have it anymore, because we would send out those voter guides and we encouraged people to become super voters which means they voted in the general and the primary election every year, because those are the people that elected officials listened to, they know they vote. PA-GALA ; Voters Guides 0 3856 How PA-GALA Influenced Other LGBT Organizations in the Lehigh Valley MF: Before PA-GALA there were a few other organization like Le-Hi-Ho--
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 ; PS: Right.
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 ; MF: --but how do you think PA-GALA really changed what LGBT organizations were doing in the valley?
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 ; PS: Well Le-Hi-Ho, those were organizations were a lot further back in time. I think when we were doing PA-GALA it was a Gay Men’s Chorus and F.A.C.T. and Pride and there was ACCO which was a women’s group, but it had a large lesbian group that participated in it, but it was a women’s choral group, and there were a few other groups. But the thing we changed was getting people politically active and getting the laws changed, that was what our goal was to make fair laws. ACCO ; F.A.C.T. ; Gay Men's Chorus ; PA-GALA ; Pride 0 4000 Photo Project & ; Marriage Equality MF: Just to give some context to people that photo project that you started was prior to -- it was about sort of moving up to marriage equality.
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 ; PS: Right.
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 ; MF: I was actually in that -- you took our photo and that was an incredibly powerful experience to have those photos put in the state legislature, so you had to look at all of these couples that were denied the right to marry. Marriage Equality 0 4155 End of PA-GALA MF: I want to ask a little bit about the publication you put together, but I’m curious about how PA-GALA came to an end, because you describe sort of sadness that it isn’t here anymore.
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 ; PS: Well, it’s kind of sad -- it was that we had been doing this for a long time, we’d been doing it with Steve and Steve was very hard to work with, I mean he was a genius and I loved the work that Steve did, but I did not have a good relationship with him, I could not work well with him at all. Liz could work with him very well, but he just was difficult to work with and I finally reached the point I just couldn’t do things the way he wanted them done PA Diversity Network ; PA-GALA ; Steve Black 0 4353 Start of Valley Gay Press MF: So while you’re getting involved in PA-GALA you also are at some point starting one of, to my mind, one of the most important publications in the Lehigh Valley that focused on--
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 ; PS: Oh the Valley Gay Press?
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 ; MF: Yes, so could you talk a little bit about the origin of that and what your mission was?
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 ; PS: Well Liz wanted to do a newspaper, Liz always wanted to do a newspaper and with her art background she could create it on -- and we started it at the time of the anti-discrimination law work. Adrian Shanker ; F.A.C.T. ; Gay Men's Chorus ; PA Diversity Network ; PA-GALA ; Valley Gay Press 0 4705 PA Diversity Network
 ; MF: You’ve mentioned the PA Diversity -- is it network on the end? How did that come to be, your participation in PA Diversity?
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 ; PS: Well when we left the voters organization we created that, we had to write a 501C and create a new organization for us to run, because we didn’t want a political organization, the rules are different for them. We wanted an educational organization and so Robert Roush who was in the community and had been one of the people who developed the Gay Men’s Chorus wrote the 501C3 for us and we just created a new organization. Gay Men's Chorus ; PA Diversity Network ; Valley Gay Press 0 MovingImage Patricia Sullivan talks about her life growing up in Florida, her journey to creating crucial LGBT organizations, and it's impact on the LGBT community. MARY FOLTZ:My name is Mary Foltz, I'm here with Trish Sullivan in her home in Allentown. Today is July 19th, 2019. We're here as a part of the LGBT Community Oral History Project and Trish has so graciously agreed to be the first person that we're interviewing for the oral history project. The project is sponsored by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and we did receive funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium for which we're also very grateful. So to begin I'm just going to ask Trish could you introduce yourself? PATRICIA SULLIVAN:I'm Patricia Sullivan. MF:Wonderful and I'm hoping that you, could you spell your name for us? PS:P-A-T-R-I-C-I-A J. Sullivan S-U-L-L-I-V-A-N. MF:What is your birthdate? PS:January 28, 1945. MF:And then I am just going to ask, before we started this interview you and I read a -- or talked about a consent form, and do you consent to this interview today? PS:Yes. MF:Fantastic. Well as I said, we're just so grateful that you're willing to sit here with us today and tell us a little bit about your life, and I thought we could start by just asking you to tell me a little bit about your childhood. Where are you from? PS:Well I was born on a barrier island, the first barrier island off the coast of Florida, Amelia Island, Florida. And I lived there for a part of my childhood, and then I moved inland, but I was born on an island which was pretty great. Liz and I are fortunate enough to still have a place there which is nice. MF:What was it like to grow up in Florida? PS:Well Florida it's a mixed thing, it's a lot of old people and a lot of conservative people particularly in the northern part where I was from, I was right on the Georgia Florida line and it was a very, very small town. And I have to say I grew up in the segregated South, I went to segregated schools all my life and I unfortunately witnessed lots of bad things, you know. And so when I was very young I decided that I had to get out of there and I decided very early that education was my way to do it. So I worked very hard to get a good education and be able to leave there and never go back except to visit. Because the politics is just very hard in Florida. MF:Well I'm curious about that, I mean it sounds to me like you're talking about how your childhood was shaped by sort of seeing institutionalized racism or racism in the South. PS:Well I have to -- maybe I should start by saying something about my parents, because my father was a World War I veteran, he served under King George. And he left the country as a seventeen-year-old to go join the Canadian Army before the United States got in the war, because he felt so strongly about what was happening to the country, and he lost his citizenship as a result of it. And he was gassed in the war, and he came back, and he obviously had very strong feelings about politics. He met my mother on the day she was born, he held her in his arms, and he told the family, "I'm going to marry this person." And he did and he was with her for seventy-five years and she was Canadian, and they left Maine in Canada, he'd actually been born in Maine. They left Canada and came back to the United States during the depression and drove to Florida and stopped in the first town they came to in Florida and made a home for themselves. And my family always had very diverse friends, I recall in my childhood we had a family that we were very close to that was from Persia which is currently Iran. We had several Jewish families that were friends and at least two of them had tattoos from concentration camps. And so my family was very, I wouldn't say they were progressive, but they were very oriented toward diversity. And when I was a kid they made a real point of trying to help me understand that the place we lived and the way we lived, we couldn't overlook the things that were happening there. Like you know if -- when I was young and it was segregated if a person of color came to your house they came to the back door, and they would take a hoe and tap on the steps they wouldn't even come up the steps to the door. And yet my parents had black friends who would come to the back door and come in the house and I'd play with the kids. And my mom would sit and sew and cook with the parent or the grandmother who was there for the day. But that wasn't something you did, so they were very brave about that, my father would go do business for black households, he was an electrical contractor and he would actually go into the community and do services for them. People wouldn't do that, they wouldn't let them use the bathroom, they wouldn't let them -- anything, you know. And so I was very fortunate to have a family that appreciated diversity and made me realize that I shouldn't fall into these habits of things that went on around me. At one point I lived across the street from the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and I learned very young not to just trust everything and everybody, because I sort of had my own personal "Scout" moment when I discovered that this person was the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. It was very scary. And yet I didn't have those problems, I didn't experience those problems, I experienced bullying and things because I was different, I was an outsider, but I saw that happening, I saw all the injustice of that. And it made me want to leave there because I couldn't, I felt I couldn't live that way, I couldn't live in a place where you know there were such strong divisions between people. And so I -- as soon as I graduated from high school I left, and I never went back. But my parents were very, very amazing that way. MF:What was your relationship like with your father, what was your relationship like with your mother? PS:Well, my father didn't say much, he was a very quiet person, he was a very gentle person. He spent a lot of time reading to me. My whole life he read to me, he read me stories, he wrote poetry, he read me poetry. That was the biggest contact I had with him. My mom I was with almost all the time since my dad had been gassed in the war and when I was very young he got sick and they thought he had TB because there was TB all over. And they put him in a sanitarium for a year and isolated him, took him from us, my mom didn't have a job, we had no income because we only lived on my dad's salary. And so my mom took in children to take care of children to make a living and she tied tobacco at the farm where they raised tobacco. She would go at tobacco harvesting time, that was a very skilled chore to do that, you had to be very good to do it. And I used to help her take care of the kids, and so I spent a lot of time taking care of little kids. I could like take twins and diaper both of them at the same time, and wash diapers and all those things you had to do back in that day. And then we discovered after he had been in the sanitarium for a year that he didn't have TB it was the effects of the gassing during the war. And so we lost that whole period of our life where we had to readjust to all these things because he couldn't be with us. And then he came back, he always had a job doing something, you know, he would go into places, people would pay him with chickens or pay him with vegetables, or money. He didn't care whatever, he would do work for anybody that would pay him for things. It sounds so rural doesn't it, but that's the way it was. And he was very educated he -- not formally educated, neither of my parents went to, got to go to school, he was, my dad was an Anne of Green Gables type kid. He was raised in a Catholic orphanage and they sold him to a family to run their store as a young boy. And so he got all his business experience running the store, and making change, and part of his education he memorized the dictionary from cover to cover, so he had an incredible vocabulary, and he was incredibly well-spoken, but had no formal education. And my mom was similar, she was self-educated, I was -- my one sister graduated from high school, but I was the first one in our family to go to college. But I had a good relationship with the both of them, they were great parents, you know, they worked very hard and made do with everything, I never felt as a child that we didn't have anything, but I guess we really didn't, but you know they always made me feel like you know really special and everything we had was just what we needed and we made do with it, it was great. So no trauma there. MF:What were your relationships like with siblings? PS:Well, my two older sisters one was twenty-four years older than I and the other was twenty-three years older or twenty-two years older than I. And between us there were four children that we lost, and the only reason I'm around is because they discovered clotting factor and vitamin K, and while my four siblings died because that medicine wasn't available, I didn't. And so there was, when I was born, my mother and my sister each had a child within three months of each other, so I was sort of raised with one of my nephews as like a sibling. But my sisters weren't at home when I was at home, so I was raised very much like an only child. MF:So you had said earlier I couldn't wait to get out of this town, describe for me how did you do that, how did you get out of Florida, where did you go? PS:Well, when I graduated from high school I went to a college in North Carolina, Montreat Anderson College, it's a Presbyterian college. And it basically it's a liberal arts college, but it trains people to be music educators and missionaries basically. And my parents wanted me to go there, I wanted to go to the University of Florida, they didn't want me to go there, they was afraid I'd party too much, and they wanted me to go to a little school where it would be controlling, and it would be very moral and upright and all of that. And it was a horrible experience. It was -- you had to go to church services and you, Billy Graham lived on campus, his wife's father was the president of the college and he and his wife lived on the mountain on the campus. And they would come to services at the college every week and bring all their kids, and you know Franklin Graham who is being such a ridiculous person now sort of shaming his father's history. Those kids would go to the nursery school and I didn't like to go to the church services so I'd volunteer in the nursery school, and so I always say well you know I knew he was a bad kid because he would always say, "You can't tell me what to do my daddy's Billy Graham." And we just were so used to seeing the Grahams on campus, but it was religious school. There were a lot of gay people there, but nobody was, nobody talked about it, no-one really knew they were gay. I mean I just, I'm assuming they were, I'm really clocking them because I don't know for sure, but seemed to me. But I wasn't really out then and although I knew I was different, and I knew I didn't fit in I just hadn't found a name for it yet. And the best thing I got out of that school was that when I wanted to transfer to the Medical College of Virginia, they let me transfer my old testament as history and my new testament as philosophy. And so I had all the credits to get into the program at the Medical College of Virginia, so it was wonderful and that was easy. It was a beautiful campus and I loved the area, I was president of hiking club and I played soccer and you know fun things like that, but it was every bit was a little bit too religious to me and most of the kids there came from missionary stations around the world where their parents were stationed and they sent them back there to go to school. So they were all geared up to go save the heathens of the world and I was one of them. And then I went to the Medical College of Virginia in physical therapy and that was a great program, one of the best programs at the time I went to it. And I think there were only about twenty-five physical therapy programs at that time, and when I graduated from there I went to -- on all my internships around and then I took a job in New York, just outside of New York City, up by WestPoint and I spent my whole working career at that hospital, it was a rehabilitation hospital run by the State of New York Health Department. That was a great job. MF:I want to go back to when you talk about being at the first, your first college experience and feeling that you were different. I have a question about how were people at that college or people in your family, or just communities in which you sort of moved through -- how were they talking about lesbian, gay, or bisexual, or transgender people at that time? PS:Well, when I was a kid and we would go visit family friends there were gay people there. I remember going to visit a family friend that rented an apartment to a gay man who was obviously a drag queen. And he would come in and out while we were there and everything, it was totally -- no-one paid any difference to him, it was just like he was just there, and no-one said anything about it. My sister, who was a lesbian, when she grew up her best friend, you know, was a lesbian, she was this real tall person who wore cowboy outfits all the time, they called her cowboy. And people talked about that, but they didn't use the words, but it was like nobody paid any attention. And then my mom told my dad she didn't want him to take me to work with him because she wanted me to be different, because he -- my sister worked with him and became a licensed electrician and then she went into the marine corps and she was one of the first women marines that was an electrician. And I think my mom was concerned he was going to teach me all these tasks that would turn me into a dyke or something, but they never said that. And I recall people saying I was queer, I remember hearing that a lot from people, but it was difficult to put that into context, you know. And the friends that I had were all sort of outsiders and we got along well, and I never heard anybody say anything about gay people at all. Let me think there was one instance, I was out having lunch with a friend when I was a teenager and we were at a little barbecue spot and we sat down at a table and there was a napkin on the table, and somebody had written something on it. And I remember her saying to me look at this, and I looked at it and I can't remember exactly what it said, and she says, "That's because they're lesbians, they wrote this on here." And it was I don't know if it was like, "less ben" or, you know, something weird some little code-y thing like that or something. But I remember that person brought it to my attention and I'd never heard anyone use those words before, and this was like one of my best friends. But you know I never heard any talk about it when I was in college I never heard any talk about it. But like I said a college that was segregated when I was a sophomore they finally allowed a black woman from the community to come to classes, but she couldn't stay on campus. And my roommates and I said well she could be on our suite we gladly have her in our suite and they wouldn't let her stay. They would only let her come for day classes. And it wasn't until I was in New York that I really started being out and knowing I was out and why I was out so to speak. I mean when people say to me when did you think you were gay and I always do this, (mimes a doctor holding a newly born baby by the feet and lightly spanking it to get the baby to get its first breath) because I just always had -- now that I know what it is I've always felt I was that way. But I didn't have the experience or the background to know what it was and then in physical therapy there were so many lesbians in the field. It was like being a coach, you know, everybody was a lesbian, you would go to conferences and it was like going to a pride fest, you know, it was great. MF:Why were you drawn to physical therapy as a career path? PS:Well it was because I took a -- when I was in college I took one of those placement tests and it said I should have been a like a park ranger or something like that and or a camp person or something like that. And I thought eh, and my "little" sister at college from the class behind me had had polio and she said to me, "You should be a physical therapist." And I had no idea what it was, but I went, and I looked at the catalogue and I matched my credits to it, and I thought I can do this, and the government was giving scholarships to go because there were a lot of war injuries and they needed people to be physical therapists. And so I was able to get a scholarship and so it was all very mercenary I didn't even know what I was doing, but they took my philosophy and my history from bible class and I thought this is what I'll do, I'll do this because I knew I couldn't go home. I knew if I couldn't take care of myself, you know, there wasn't a -- I wasn't in a situation where there was going to be a man in my life I could look to to say support me, and I couldn't go home to my family because they weren't able to support me, I actually was supporting them once I got a job. And so I thought I have to be able to support myself and I can do this in two years, I can get a scholarship, it's a great paying job and I actually liked it. I really loved working with the patients and I ultimately became an instructor and my job was to run the training programs in the hospital for all the students that came through from the colleges around the country and to train the clinicians how to deal with them and to work with them with patients. And I really loved that, that was one of the best parts of my career. MF:After college you go to New York City and you accept this first job, can you talk a little bit about your career in New York City with some more detail? PS:Well I wasn't actually in New York City, I was in Rockland County which is North and West of New York City, between West Point and New York City, it was about an hour drive. And that's where I was a physical therapist and then I became a clinical instructor and one point I was administrator and then I had been there close to twenty years and I applied to be the deputy director of the hospital which is like the second in command. And I got that position, it was a terrible position, and it was terrible because I'd been a clinician and people who are clinicians will tell you that when you get into administration it's really hard because they're only concerned about the bottom dollar and you're concerned about the patients, and that's really true. But I did that, it was sort of a career move, and the director of the hospital was never there so I ended up basically having to run the hospital, I was on call twenty-four hours a day and it was a very very stressful job. And then I had -- New York didn't have a non-discrimination policy yet, and I had a person on the staff who was creating problems for me by making people not want to deal with me because I was a lesbian. And he was doing this intentionally because he knew there were people that would be bothered by that. And I went to the director and asked the director to deal with it, and the director's response was, "Well the two of you have to get along and if you can't get along I'll just fire both of you." That was how he dealt with it. Well I couldn't go anywhere with my complaint because the person I had the complaint against was the personnel director and he was the head of the committee that reviewed discrimination complaints. So I was stuck, you know, so I thought I can't deal with it I'm going to -- you know I've got to get out of here. And I also had found out I had lupus and it was hard for me to do that job, it was very stressful because I would work all day and into the night and then on the weekends I would just be in bed because I was sick. And so I decided to leave the job, and that was when I met -- I had met Liz and we talked about it and the director was going to leave and a new director was coming in. And so I was really happy about that, I liked the new director and I negotiated with her to work part time and train her and then I would leave. And so while I was working part time I was moving here. MF:Well before we get to discussing your movement to the Lehigh Valley, I maybe have one more question about Rockland and your time in New York State which is what was your social life like? You have a career that's taking off, you're moving into administration, what was your life like after that work? PS:Well like I said there were a lot of people in my circle who were lesbians, but they were so closeted it drove me crazy, because once I knew I was a lesbian I wasn't closeted, I was never closeted about it once I really knew. And I couldn't get over why they were being so closeted because everybody knew they were lesbians and it was so frustrating to me, but they were good friends and you know, and I put up with it. And we would go into New York and we would go to the bars and we would have parties, and you know our whole staff in our department was very very social, and did a lot of social things together. But we used to go into New York City and at the time there weren't many bars, there was this horrible horrible bar, I'm making everything sound so horrible, but it was a horrible place called The Duchess. And it was at the basement of this building and it did have a sign out front, but you know you went in and you thought do I really want to go in here and people would say, "Only drink the beer they don't wash the glasses." You know and it wasn't much bigger than these two rooms, and the whole bar down one side it was dark and it was filled with every imaginable person you could imagine who could be a dyke you know was in there. And some of them were scary, particularly to people who were just coming out, but it was the only place to go, and you would go in there. And it was still in the days where you know they would do raids and you know they would tell you don't dance if you see the lights flash or if you see this thing happen don't -- separate yourself so that they won't bother you if the police come in and things like that. And they would tell you don't use your credit cards in these places because the FBI will track you and I mean they did, you know, they did that kind of thing. But you still went because it was the only place to go. I used to love to go to drag shows and things like that, and there were other places. There was a place in Rockland County where you could go to drag shows, but it was one of these bars that it was like one night they would have it and a lot of us would go there for that and just sit and drink and you know have something to eat and party. But there weren't bars like there are today in the city. It's a long time ago, it's before Stonewall. MF:Did you have your first sort of longer term relationship when you lived in Rockland County? PS:Yes, I did, and I learned a lot from those relationships. I learned that I always seemed to be interested in the wrong type of person for me. And it took me three of those relationships to realize that it wasn't the other person it was that I was choosing the wrong person. And so at the end of the third one I was doing graduate school, this was my doctorate work at Columbia. And so I didn't want to be in a relationship, I wanted to get my work done and I knew I couldn't do both. So I said I'm not going to worry about it, I'm not going to worry about dating or anything like that I'm just going to wait. And then Liz came along and so I couldn't let that go by, and that was the perfect one. MF:How did you meet Liz? PS:I met her through mutual friends, one of my former partners and her former partner were doing a workshop together on a special technique that used to treat children with cerebral palsy. And they were in this month long workshop and they got to know each other, and we all went out to dinner at a café and they introduced me to some other friends that knew Liz and then those friends decided we'd make a good couple and set us up to go into New York City to see a play and meet. And that's a really long story. MF:I'd love to hear it. PS:Liz tells it much better than I, but we went into New York City for this play and the play was interesting, but Liz had seen it before, and she wasn't that interested in it and I hadn't seen it and I was enjoying it. And then at the intermission this woman comes up to her and it was one of her former students, and she takes off with her former student to talk, I tell the story this way, she says that's not the way it happened. She takes off with the student and I think this is great, you know, here we're going to do this then she takes off with somebody, but it was someone that she had known for years in her program she had taught them. And so got to talk to them and then we left, and then we went to -- we were in the train station and we spent a lot time quizzing each other about relationships and what was good in a relationship and what wasn't and what our likes and dislikes were. And this went on for about two hours, and everything we were like really in agreement on because we had both been in situations where we'd been with people who were partially closeted, and we didn't like that. And, oh, there were all kinds of other things we talked about, I can't remember them all, it just went on, and on, and on. And so we find out we were very compatible and that was good, but you'll have to let Liz tell that story, she tells it so much better. MF:I love your version too. Okay, so then what happened, you meet Liz and your-- PS:Well, I was trying to leave my job and I had -- I couldn't really retire because -- I could vest my retirement, but I couldn't actually retire for about five more years. So, we spent a lot of time deciding how we would live, whether we would live in my house in New York, or in her house in Allentown. And we talked about which would be the best to rent as a rental property, we finally figured out the best thing would be to sell my house and buy rental properties here and so that's what we did, we sold my house and bought a couple of rental properties, in fact right across the street from your house (indicates the camera person). And we had those for about five years and while we were renting the properties we also started in the antiques business and sold antiques. And antiques is a really fun job because you learn about all kinds of things, but it's nothing anybody needs. So you know the -- but the great thing about the antiques business is the more you know the more money you make, because you have to be able to find things. You have to be able to find things cheap and sell them high. So we actually loved it because it meant spending a lot of time researching things and collecting things. So I left my job, I came here, we rented the buildings, we did the antiques, and then it wasn't enough for us because there was nothing about the community. We had trouble meeting people and finding people in the gay community, and they hadn't had a pride fest then. And so finally they did, there was a pride fest and so just said well we'll go to it. We went to the pride fest and we're thinking look there are all these groups we can volunteer with one, what'll we do, we need to do something. So, we found this political group which was a voters information group, and we really liked it because we really believed in getting people to vote and vote for the right reasons and so on and getting them information. So we volunteered to be a part of that organization and that we would do mailings for them. We would stuff envelopes and seal them and address them and do all that because we didn't have computers. And it grew until we were running the organization, and the first organization we were involved with we didn't -- we had some philosophical differences with the person who was running it. And our friend Steve Black, who was a part of the group, was just a political mastermind, just an incredible person said let's start our own organization and we'll call it PA-GALA and we'll provide the voter information, and we'll do it right, because this other organization was giving good information but they just weren't doing it in the right way, according to us. So we did this, and Steve ran it with Liz, and we continued to do the mailings and interviewed candidates for office, everything from school board right through to senator. And we made up a scale and we created a booklet which are in the archives, that would tell you how facts to place your vote on, how they voted on pieces of legislation. We interviewed then and we'd ask them questions and I remember interviewing Frank Concannon who was a city council candidate here and he said, I was asking him about gay issues, and he says, "No-one's ever told me they were a lesbian before." And he was so supportive, and you know, and he worked with us, he helped us do a lot of legislative work and he was -- but he said, "No-one's ever talked to us about this before." Because people were so afraid to and we didn't have that risk, we didn't have jobs to worry about, we didn't have family who weren't supportive so we could be out there. And so we took the risk because we could do it and Steve was just an amazing person, I'm so sorry he's not around to be doing this stuff now, because he knew every legislative district. He knew the addresses, he knew the people who were in them, he could negotiate with those people, he was just an absolute mastermind, and we learned so much from him. And we ran that organization and it created tremendous change because it made people vote, it let us get in legislators and city council people and mayors that supported our rights and would deal with our legislation and that had never happened before and it's a real loss to our community that we don't have an organization like that now that does that. Because people don't know who to vote for and they don't realize the value of voting in the primary election and voting for school board and those positions, and how it influences our community. So we did that and then at a later point we would produce the newspaper and I would do the mailings for that, a lot of us wrote articles for the newspaper but mainly I took care of all the paperwork surrounding it and Liz published the newspaper. And then we moved from that into the center, you know we met Adrian -- he was actually on our board, we met him first as a student, he came to Liz to ask Liz to help him deal with an issue at the college, and she was so impressed with him and so she asked him to be on the board. And then he said you know what I really want is to have a community center and we were at the stage where, you know, we couldn't do this forever and we needed someone with that kind of energy and expertise to come in, and it was time to pass it off to a younger person so to speak and he was just the perfect person and we said, "This is great." And so then we started on that journey to change one organization into another and he did a great job with that. MF:I want to go back to PA-GALA for a minute and just talk a little bit more about what that organization accomplished or what your sort of mission for that organization was. You focused on the voter guides as sort of a central mission for that organization. PS:Yes, it was a political organization and you know we provided information and we tried to change laws and educate people with respect to things like that. Like one of the things we did was the anti-discrimination laws we worked on all of those, we did the one in Allentown, and we had that terrible court fight over that. Because Liz had to sue to get the -- she would have to explain this, but we were trying to get the anti-discrimination laws and there was a referendum against us and we had to sue to fight the referendum. And we have the suit, it's in the archives. I wanted to go back a minute and just say something else about Steve Black. Steve, he was a lawyer, but he didn't really practice law, he ran his family's diner in Pen Argyl. And so we would go up to the diner and after the diner would close we'd sit in the booths and we'd process all these forms and do mailings sitting in the booths in the diner, all the computers were set up there, it was a very interesting system. And Steve didn't have a good mailing list we didn't think, and we found out he had this bag of papers that were like people's addresses and everything. So we met this woman here who was a lesbian and she worked, I don't know if she worked with a finance company or a cellular phone company or something, but she was really great with computers and she took that bag and she made a computerized mailing list for him and that was one of the things that really changed things early on because we had a computerized list. Then her name was Joan Todaro, she just did it like overnight she said, "Just give it to me." And then when we wanted to do the voter's guide, the voter's guide was very complicated and it used a very special program called Quark, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a publishing program and I don't think people use it anymore. But, we sent out the word that we needed some help and Steve sometimes didn't look at these things when they came through and I was going through the mail and I found this letter from someone who said she could help us with that. And she just lives, she's our neighbor, she just lives down the street here over on Eighth Street. And she works for a publishing company and that's all she does every day is publish books, and she created the book that allowed us to send out the book for the voters' guide. And that's what I mean about people who do one thing, but it has such impact, but no-one even knows they've done it and they're sort of in the background. And Gail did that for us, and she would come over here every voter's guide and we would sit and we'd plug in all this information and it came out in a really nice booklet and very hard to do, very hard to do. But when we wanted to pass the ordinance there was a referendum against it and they collected signatures. And there was a fanatic in town who worked at Muhlenberg College, and he actually -- his name was Frank McVeigh and he's no longer with us, but when he was at the college he said such outrageous things in his classes, he was a, not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, he taught psychology. And he said such outrageous things in his classes and students complained about him so much that they took him out of the classroom, and they couldn't fire him because he was tenured, so they just sat him in an office. And they hired Patty Kline to go in and replace him, and she taught gender studies, you know, she taught really good stuff, and he was just awful. Well he disliked gay people so much that he went around, and he collected thousands of signatures, but he lied to people. He would go in their yard and he would look at their cars and he would see they had a sticker for the environment or conservation or something and he would go in and he'd say, "This is a petition--" and he would say it was about that and he would get them to sign it. And they did, and we had a city councilperson, Hershman, who would go around and take these petitions to churches and at the churches they had nights where they did bingo sign-up sheets. And he'd walk around, and he'd say, "This is a bingo sign-up sheet, do you want to sign up?" And they would sign up, or it was a food giveaway thing and they would sign up. He was so bad, and he was so stupid about this that he actually on a bunch of the petitions accidentally signed his own name with his signature pen, which was a blue fountain pen, very easily to pick up. And we searched, we went through all of those, well now this was before we had cell phones. And so we turned the downstairs over there and the upstairs over there into a center to deal with this. And every day from early morning until after midnight those rooms were filled with people with computers and phone books taking the names of everybody who had signed one of these. And then we sent out a letter to them, because it was public record we could get their signature, we sent out a letter to them with a postpaid envelope in it saying, "Did you know that this is what is about, and did you really mean to sign it? And if you did would you be willing to take your name off?" And we got -- there was an attorney in Philadelphia named Dan Anders who had been a clerk for one of the judges here. And he worked for the major, major firm there and they paid him to be our lawyer, the firm gave him his salary so he could come here and work with us and fight that referendum. And he figured out that we could put a piece of paper in that envelope that was a legal declaration that you could take your name off. So we, you know, all of our friends came over and we had some friends that were really computer literate and their families came over and they would look up things and they would sit here with phones and call the people and say can we come over and get you to take your signature off of this, sign one of these and then we would send people out. And we did that, and we waited for these cards to come back and Liz and Steve went to the post office and the first day Steve comes out of the post office carrying a box like this and there were hundreds of retractions, and that was the first day. So then we started going to people's homes and getting them to sign off and we'd call them up and the stories we heard were unbelievable like I went to a person who lives behind the Jewish community center or he did then and he was a World War II veteran and he said the person who shared the foxhole with him was gay and he would never discriminate against gay people because that person saved his life. And there was this family Liz went to see this really, really Catholic family with like ten kids and this woman was just so upset that she had been hoodwinked into signing this. And you know she was going on and on about it and took her name off, people were just appalled that they had been lied to. And then we had to go to the city and present this data and so we called a press conference and we'd go to the city and the city thought we were going to bring in a little stack of things and we brought in this huge stack of papers. Well they couldn't not listen to us, but here's the funny thing, they didn't have a way of dealing with it, and so what they had to do was cross file those people with the petition and they didn't know how to do it. But we'd already done it and so they had to use our records because they had no system to determine who those people were and we were able to pull the things where Hershman signed more than one thing and we, in our archives, we have a list of everybody who collected those petitions, and you know. So every time there would be an election and we wanted to -- somebody was going to run we would cross file the list to see if they were one of the people who filed petitions against us so we could tell people not to vote for them. Information is good, really good, but we sued, and so Dan wrote the case and it was in Liz's name because they had to have somebody against these far right people who were doing this. And he threatened them with subpoenas, and they withdrew, so we won. But that was really exciting, the other exciting was that the anti-discrimination law that contained the information about the transgender community, the gender identity part of it and the definition of gender identity was written in our solarium by -- okay now why can't I think of her name, she's the head of the transgender equality group. MF:Corrine? PS:No, in Washington. Starts with an M, I'm going to say Myra, anyway really she's been there a long time and she came here, and she wrote the definition and now the laws that Liz and Steve wrote and that you know Adrian has been involved, and now they all have all the proper terminology. And ours was the first one and it's used all over the country now when people want to look at the terminology for what should be included they use that as the model. MF:For a city. PS:Mara Keisling, Mara Keisling. MF:So that's a model for a city or a county or a statewide-- PS:Right, the thing is that each one of them have different stipulations to how they're done, because like we're a third class city and it's a different sized city the terminology has to be a little bit different, but the definitions stay the same. And so all those were, you know, great models for people around the country, it's pretty cool. MF:So it sounds like this organization, I mean you're putting together the voting guide, you're working on anti-discrimination legislation at the city and at the county level? PS:Yes. MF:You're interviewing local politicians that will go in the voting guide, but also just keeping track of even how they're voting. PS:Right. MF:There's also a piece here that I think I want to ask a question about which is you're building political community through the organization, could you talk a little bit about that? PS:Well, that was what was so great about PA-GALA and that's why I say it's so sad we don't have it anymore, because we would send out those voter guides and we encouraged people to become super voters which means they voted in the general and the primary election every year, because those are the people that elected officials listened to, they know they vote. So, when you write a letter to your senator or your representative they give it to their staff, and they look in their file and see if you vote. If you don't vote they don't necessarily pay attention to it. But if you're a super voter not only will they write you a letter sometimes they call you because they know you're going to pay attention. So we wanted all our people to be super voters and we started this push to make them that way. And so what we would do is just before the election we would call them up, "Did you get your voter's guide? Are you going to vote tomorrow?" And they started expecting us to do that, and then they would go vote, and then they would call us. And today we still get people calling us and saying, "Who do we vote for? There's no voter's guide, tell us who should we vote for?" And it's very hard because of course we only know the people in our area, we aren't necessarily able to help people in some of the smaller elections because we don't know anymore. But it really built a big political community, and then when we were working with somebody at some point and they took out the -- it was a candidate for mayor or for some big office, and there's a list you can buy on a disk and you can plug it in the computer and it shows you the voting record of everybody that's registered to vote, not how they voted but did they vote in these elections, and politicians take those and they use them to build their voters. And we were sitting down with this person and we looked at it and for our area every time we went down the list there was somebody we knew that was a super voter that was gay, and we could find them. And Steve always used to say he had a system, he called it, find a gay or something like that. And he would take the phone book, or the voters records and he could go through it and he could say these people live at the same address, they voted in every single election for how many years they are the same sex, they're about the same age, gay and track them down. You know and he was able to do that, we built more lists figuring those things out, because you had to find people and then you'd give them information and then they would get involved. And people really valued that information, they wanted to -- it's not that people don't want to vote, they're afraid they're going to vote for the wrong thing, and you have to educate them. MF:Before PA-GALA there were a few other organization like Le-Hi-Ho-- PS:Right. MF:--but how do you think PA-GALA really changed what LGBT organizations were doing in the valley? PS:Well Le-Hi-Ho, those were organizations were a lot further back in time. I think when we were doing PA-GALA it was a Gay Men's Chorus and F.A.C.T. and Pride and there was ACCO which was a women's group, but it had a large lesbian group that participated in it, but it was a women's choral group, and there were a few other groups. But the thing we changed was getting people politically active and getting the laws changed, that was what our goal was to make fair laws. We did the photo project too which was to help people understand about marriage and the laws related to marriage and everything, and that was an interesting project because those people were so brave. Because when we did that we thought okay so we -- let's see if we can get fifty people, we can name at least twenty-five couples that would probably do it because they're our friends. But let's see if we can get fifty people and this was when there were no laws protecting anybody and you had parents, you had people who wrote right in that photograph I'm a parent, I work at this kind of job. I mean they put all this personal information out there on that and people just started coming to the door to do it. And it just grew and grew and every one of those people put themselves at risk to do it and they were so willing to do it because they were -- part of it was educating them about why it was important to do it. And we displayed that in the state capital, it was pretty cool to have it in the state capital. MF:Just to give some context to people that photo project that you started was prior to -- it was about sort of moving up to marriage equality. PS:Right. MF:I was actually in that -- you took our photo and that was an incredibly powerful experience to have those photos put in the state legislature, so you had to look at all of these couples that were denied the right to marry. PS:You know, and people would be critical and say well why do you have someone up there that says they've only been together two months? Well so what people have short relationships, we had people in there who divorced or remarried, and the saddest part were the people who died without getting their rights, you know, that was the really hard part and we had to use that to educate people too. Because that's part of life, but it was a very important project, this just popped into our head we have to do this, let's do this, let's put a face on it. And then other people around the country started doing it, but they did it differently, like she had this thing about -- make people stand and put their heads together and it makes them smile, and it did. And you look in those pictures and more people particularly non-LGBTQ people would say, "Everybody looks so happy." And it's because of the way she took the picture and she did it intentionally, and we would go around and give lectures about marriage equality and show those. And people in the audience would say, "What are you doing that we're not doing because our relationships aren't that good?" Because we would give the statistics of how long people stayed together and people assumed that gay men didn't stay together very long, they just made the assumption and the statistics didn't show that at all, it showed there were some very very long relationships among men in the community, they're different, it was a wonderful project. MF:And that was a PA-GALA project or that was the organization that put together the photo project? PS:It was PA-GALA. [correction: PA Diversity Network] MF:I want to ask a little bit about the publication you put together, but I'm curious about how PA-GALA came to an end, because you describe sort of sadness that it isn't here anymore. PS:Well, it's kind of sad -- it was that we had been doing this for a long time, we'd been doing it with Steve and Steve was very hard to work with, I mean he was a genius and I loved the work that Steve did, but I did not have a good relationship with him, I could not work well with him at all. Liz could work with him very well, but he just was difficult to work with and I finally reached the point I just couldn't do things the way he wanted them done and he wasn't -- I didn't feel he recognized the efforts that were going into all of this. And he was sort of tired of doing it and so we decided, we gave them about a year's notice, and we said you know we're not going to be able to continue to do this because it was just getting too hard to coordinate things. And we didn't want to stop but we just couldn't do it anymore. And we thought he would do something else with it, but he didn't, and then we sort of went off on our own with PA Diversity which was not a political organization, it was an educational organization and that's really where our background is in education. And he just -- other things were happening in his life and it just ended, you know, he wasn't able to do it alone, but he wasn't able to work with the people who had worked with him to do it. And it was very sad because I have such admiration for what he did and what a great politician he was in terms of managing this stuff, and he -- so much of this progress in our community is growth from what he did. You know he just can't be left out of that equation, it was just too important and it was tough. You know here he was this guy who went to law school, he was bright, he was successful, but he was one of those people who had a family that didn't accept him, and it played really hard on his life. And it was very sad to stop doing it and it was very sad to lose him from the community because he would still be doing great things if he were here. MF:So while you're getting involved in PA-GALA you also are at some point starting one of, to my mind, one of the most important publications in the Lehigh Valley that focused on-- PS:Oh the Valley Gay Press? MF:Yes, so could you talk a little bit about the origin of that and what your mission was? PS:Well Liz wanted to do a newspaper, Liz always wanted to do a newspaper and with her art background she could create it on -- and we started it at the time of the anti-discrimination law work. And we started it because there was going to be this referendum and we had to get information out. So our first paper was one page and it was all about that, and then it just grew. And then she started getting other people to write for it, to write little columns just that were part of the community, and we found that there were a lot of organizations in the community and they weren't talking to each other. And so for example F.A.C.T. would hold their major event on the same night that the Gay Men's Chorus was holding their major event, and there was no reason for that to happen. And we thought there should be a calendar, so we created a calendar and we did this out of our pocket, I mean PA-GALA didn't pay for it, we did it out of our pocket, and we sent it out to everybody. And we would tell every group you can give us information and we'll put it in, because we wanted people to get the information. And it worked, there were still a few conflicts but pretty much people could look at the calendar and say if they really were serious about it and say okay we're not going to plan and they got to know when people's regular times were for galas and things like that, not conflict with them. And those were the two big reasons for doing it was to get information out. And it also advertised and we did it, we got a grant and we also provided in Berks County, so we did a lot of work in Berks County to get them started and now they have a center and they have a pride fest and they didn't have that before. MF:So you're doing PA-GALA and the newsletter, newspaper everything at the same time, but they seemed to be a part of a larger political vision that you, Liz, and then others in that network had which was at least what I'm hearing from you getting information out on politicians, the kinds of legislation you were interested in passing and supporting. But also highlighting other organizations in your area that were doing the good work. PS:Right. MF:How did you do all of that and your antique business? PS:Oh well we worked all the time doing that. The paper took Liz about two weeks to produce, two solid weeks and then there was the mailing of it. I did the mailing and you know we at the time -- one of the nice things in our lives is we had opportunity to be nanas to four wonderful children of gay couples and two of them stayed here a lot, and so we would get the kids to sit with us and we'd say, "Let's see how fast we can do this. See who can do this fastest." And so the kids would stuff envelopes with us, and we would take them to rallies and Liz would carry them on her shoulders, she said, "You might have to tell these kids that they did this for their resumes, that they went to all these rights rallies." And then we'd come home and watch it on the news, but we got volunteers to come in and help us. And it was really important to do that. MF:How long did the newspaper last and was it the internet that sort of changed your desire to publish it or how did it close? PS:Well we created the center we changed from PA Diversity to the Center and we transferred our 501C3 to the Center and Adrian chose not to continue that as part of the Center that they would provide information other ways. And Liz couldn't -- it was a full time job I think she was ready to stop with it, and it was sort of like the voter's guide we really hoped someone would do it but many people tried to start gay periodicals during that time and nobody was successful, because they always tried to do something really glossy and expensive and they couldn't maintain it. And we just did it, we did it low cost, and it wasn't as fancy looking, but it got the information out and that to us was the important thing not that it had a glossy cover. But she couldn't do that and do her other work too. MF:You've mentioned the PA Diversity -- is it network on the end? How did that come to be, your participation in PA Diversity? PS:Well when we left the voters organization we created that, we had to write a 501C and create a new organization for us to run, because we didn't want a political organization, the rules are different for them. We wanted an educational organization and so Robert Roush who was in the community and had been one of the people who developed the Gay Men's Chorus wrote the 501C3 for us and we just created a new organization. And we did the Valley Gay Press under that, that was the main thing that was under it and then we did other, we still did education about -- we still did things that had to do with laws and ordinances, but we did it from an educational point of view rather than a political point of view. MF:Well we're right at about an hour and twenty minutes so I think this might be a good place to stop for the day. But as a way to close I want to ask you is there anyone off the top of your head that you think we really need to interview for this oral history project? PS:I mean the main people I know are the people that are your list. Do you have Dixie White? MF:Yes. PS:I know she would really love to be interviewed and she is one of the really old timers in terms of being around way before we were. And she was also the head of AIDS Services at one point I think, I don't know exactly what her title was, but she was involved with the AIDS Services Center. And I don't know, I'd talk to Liz about that and I think she gave you names, I can't think of anybody right off the top of my head. MF:If you think of anyone you can email me. Well I think I just want to sort of end by saying thank you so much, you know, for being with Carol [Moeller?] who did our camera work today, and with me, again my name is Mary Foltz, both Carol and I are on the LGBT Oral History Project for the Lehigh Valley and are really excited you volunteered to be our first interview. Thank you so much Trish. PS:Thank you for letting me do this. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:21:27
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Patricia Sullivan, July 19, 2019
Description
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Patricia Sullivan talks about her life growing up in Florida, her journey to creating crucial LGBT organizations, and it's impact on the LGBT community.
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LGBT-03
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2019-07-19
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Foltz, Mary
Interviewee
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Whelan, Frank
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-01.xml
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Le-Hi-Ho
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5.4 July 23, 2019 Frank Whelan, July 23, 2019 LGBT-01 01:20:48 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Le-Hi-Ho The Morning Call Lambda Center AIDS Whelan, Frank Foltz, Mary video/mov WhelanFrank_20190723_video.mov 1.0:|25(11)|54(5)|75(6)|98(18)|117(15)|142(10)|167(16)|196(2)|221(6)|244(2)|267(9)|294(8)|317(5)|340(13)|363(11)|386(8)|413(5)|440(7)|465(13)|494(9)|515(14)|546(4)|571(8)|592(13)|615(15)|640(2)|665(12)|690(16)|711(6)|736(16)|757(5)|784(6)|807(10)|830(8)|853(7)|876(5)|895(13)|918(17)|941(12)|964(9)|989(10)|1014(2)|1035(2)|1060(4)|1083(5)|1104(9)|1125(17)|1150(16)|1171(8)|1190(18)|1211(15)|1232(12)|1253(13)|1274(2)|1291(15)|1308(11)|1329(16)|1354(10)|1375(12)|1398(8)|1421(8)|1444(13)|1467(14)|1494(4)|1517(7)|1538(5)|1561(7)|1582(12)|1605(4)|1628(12)|1653(6)|1674(5)|1693(10)|1716(17)|1743(15)|1766(13)|1791(9)|1812(12)|1831(7)|1850(2)|1875(3) 0 YouTube video < ; iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ncxuqg6zLeY?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"> ; < ; /iframe> ; 26 Interview Introductions MF: I’m Mary Foltz, I’m here with Frank Whelan to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. And this project is sponsored by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and we are funded by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are here in Frank and Bob’s home in Allentown and today is July 23rd, 2019. 0 93 Childhood / Family MF: Thank you. So, to really just start our conversation, I’m going to ask if you’d share a little bit about your childhood with us.
 ; 
 ; FW: Okay, I’ll fill you in as I can. I was born in Orange, New Jersey and I lived there only briefly. My parents got a chance to move to a home in Livingston, New Jersey, and in Livingston is where I actually grew up and spent most of my childhood life till I went off to college in 1969. I had a interesting early life. My parents were interesting people in a lot of ways. They were city people. 0 678 First Gay Experience / Schooling FW: Well, it was about that time when I was in, I guess, I was in Catholic grade school that I first got my first inklings about possibly being gay or whatever it was. I didn’t know. This was in somewhere between, like, the fourth or fifth grade. I had a friend, Martin, who I knew fairly well. He had some health problems and just they used to call a blue baby, as my mother used to say. And that was something that he had some, when he was born, he’d had some problems or his mother had had some problems with the pregnancy. But he was the first person I ever actually had contact with sexually. 0 1570 Encountering Gay Liberation Front FW: And in 1978, I graduated, I had gotten my master’s degree. In that interim, something happened that changed my life, totally. There was a man there, a young man who was working with me in the sociology department. He was a computer guy. He was married but he had been in the Air Force Academy and had left it because of some sort of cheating scandal or something like that. But he knew about computers, so he was handling the computers for this particular professor whose project I was working on. Gay Liberation Front 0 2101 Moving to the Lehigh Valley / The Morning Call FW: Meanwhile, my friend Walt Harrington had gotten a job here in Allentown with The Morning Call. And he was working very hard and got involved with the owner of the paper, was trying to change the paper. Paper in those days, in the early ’80s was really beginning to make a move, it was out of its provincialism. And the owner’s son was taking over and he hired Walt and a bunch of other people and they were doing really groundbreaking journalism stuff. The Morning Call 0 2308 Introduction to Le-Hi-Ho FW: Walt and I had a -- interesting relationship. But so, I did. I began to look in back about this local, this organization, this Le-Hi-Ho. I heard talk of it and I went to find out that a lot of these articles about Le-Hi-Ho and about the gay community were written by Bob Wittman. And so, one day, I went over to Bob and he was sitting at his desk and I said to him, “I see you’ve written a lot of articles about this Le-Hi-Ho organization.” And he said, “Yes?” And I said, “I’d like to get to meet these people, get to know these people. Barbara Gittings ; Le-Hi-Ho ; Paul Kendall ; Paul Reeder 0 2640 Beginning of Lambda Center / AIDS Services Committee/Center FW: But we got really interested in the gay things from there and Paul Kendall began the process of bringing forward the concept of the Lambda Center, a gay community center. He actually went on local television. He went on Channel 39 and they used to have a “Manager’s Chat,” they called it. And he came on and explained what this was about. AIDS Services Center ; AIDS Services Committee ; Lambda Center 0 3090 Inception of Le-Hi-Ho FW: One of the things I had not mentioned which I probably should had to do with the inception of Le-Hi-Ho. Now, I only know this because several years ago, about two years ago, Ron Seeds, who founded the Le-Hi-Ho, told me, sent me a letter. A fellow in New York named Dick Leitsch who was with the Mattachine Society, and Leitsch was very influential. Dick Leitsch ; Le-Hi-Ho ; Mattachine Society ; Paul Kendall ; Paul Reeder ; Ron Seeds 0 3269 More on AIDS Epidemic / Impact on Lambda Center & ; Le-Hi-Ho FW: So, now, have that on the record. Well, fast forward to 1984, ’83, ’84, and, of course, AIDS is now popping up. And this is the time period when a lot of people, wealthy individuals in the community who had lost their family members, in particular Ardath Rodale of the Rodale Press, her son, David, had died of AIDS and he had been in New York awhile and was very active in New York. AIDS Services Center ; AIDS Services Committee ; Brian Foley ; David Rodale ; Lambda Center 0 3835 Continuing LGBT Advocacy / Local Politics MF: So, what happens for you after Le-Hi-Ho closes its doors? 
 ; You’ve secured a place for the archive.
 ; 
 ; FW: Right.
 ; 
 ; MF: How do you continue to be involved?
 ; 
 ; FW: Well, I continue to be involved with consultations with writing about things about gays. I’m a little bit skittish about some things because, first of all, the younger people, I don’t want them to look that I’m interfering with them. I want to share this with you. So, this is something that -- the transition with Liz and Trish taking over the movement and basically, you know, they did -- excellent people, fantastic, what they did to getting the gay rights ordinance in Allentown. Allentown Anti-discrimination Ordinance ; Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center ; Liz Bradbury ; Trish Sullivan 0 4200 Issues at The Morning Call Regarding Pride MF: Okay, I’m back with Frank and we just sort of talked about Le-Hi-Ho and some of the other political organizations in the Lehigh Valley that were working on LGBT issues and some of the tension between different people in the sort of broader Lehigh Valley LGBT movement. I wanted to sort of ask you if you could expand a bit on maybe the kind of Pride scene in the Lehigh Valley because Pride became a major -- you know, Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley became a major organization.
 ; 
 ; FW: Right.
 ; 
 ; MF: Could you share a little bit of your thoughts about that organization?
 ; 
 ; FW: Well, that organization was a great organization and I have no problem with it at all. It was great. You had those parades, we had those events that focused around Pride. We haven’t been to one in a while because, well, we just haven’t been. But we felt very much, well, this is the story, my story of Pride, what happened to me involved with Pride. Pride ; The Morning Call 0 MovingImage Frank Whelan recounts his life as a gay man, the LGBT organizations he was involved in, his work as a reporter for The Morning Call, and it's impact on the Lehigh Valley as well as his life. MARY FOLTZ: [It's gonna do just?] -- go ahead and press play. Or record, rather. FRANK WHELAN: Record, good. (laughter) MF: Okay. Oh, and I should just remind you, I'm going to ask you to say your name and spell your name. And it's Whelan? FW:Whelan, yes. MF:Whelan. And I'll ask for your birthday and then I'm going to just ask you to confirm that you -- all right, well, I'm Mary Foltz, I'm here with Frank Whelan to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. And this project is sponsored by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and we are funded by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are here in Frank and Bob's home in Allentown and today is July 23rd, 2019. Frank, thank you so much for your willingness to be here with us today to speak with me. I'm wondering if we could start? Could you please state your full name and spell it for me? FW: Certainly. My name is Frank Albert Whelan, W-H-E-L-A-N, Jr. MF: And could you please share your birth date? FW: My birthday is October 22nd, 1949. MF: And earlier, before we started recording, did we go over a consent form? Are you consenting to this interview today? FW: I am consenting to this interview, yes. MF: Thank you. So, to really just start our conversation, I'm going to ask if you'd share a little bit about your childhood with us. FW: Okay, I'll fill you in as I can. I was born in Orange, New Jersey and I lived there only briefly. My parents got a chance to move to a home in Livingston, New Jersey, and in Livingston is where I actually grew up and spent most of my childhood life till I went off to college in 1969. I had a interesting early life. My parents were interesting people in a lot of ways. They were city people. They were from the 1920s and '30s people, when they were born, and the culture of the '30s and '40s in the cities of northern New Jersey, New York, Newark, East Orange was something that they a part of. That's how they approached life. My father had -- was an interesting life, his background. His father was the son of a man named Charles A. Whelan. This would have been my grandfather, my great grandfather. Charles A. Whelan was the founder of the Whelan drugstore chain and he was also the founder, with his brother George, of the United Cigar Stores. They were extremely wealthy, very, very wealthy by just about anybody's estimate. It was estimated, in 1920, that they were, my grandfather, my great grandfather, who was Charles A. Whelan, was actually worth fifteen million dollars, which was quite a bit of money at the time. And he had a lot of money and they threw it around, and his family. And they bought a lot of homes and they toured a lot and they did a lot of things and then the stock market crash happened. And although they were not ever having to worry about where their next meal was coming from, believe me, they were not as wealthy as they had been. The '30s were tough times for them. My father had two brothers and my father's brothers were a little bit rough on him when he was growing up. He was the youngest one. And my grandmother, not intending to, of course, used to embarrass him constantly by referring to him as Baby Frank. So, my father grew up, he was Frank A. Whelan, Sr. So, my father grew up sort of with this complex about masculinity, which we could get into at some point. But he was -- it was an interesting household they had. My grandfather was a man who collected art. He collected rare books. He had the money. His father had plenty of money and so he did this kind of thing. One year in 1925, for example, my grandfather gave his father, my great grandfather, a copy of Joseph Conrad's manuscript of a novel Joseph Conrad had written. And so, this is the kind of thing that you're talking about here. And my grandfather knew a lot of painters in New York. He knew Edward Hopper, he knew several others who wouldn't -- John Sheehan, Sheehan,(John Sloan) think his name was, and these were the kind of people that he mixed with. And I got a lot of my information and background and interest in arts and things from him. I don't know whether he knew it or not but I think he suspected, as I was growing up, because of my interest in other things, that I was gay. My grandfather was a bisexual and I found this out one day. I was, like, sixteen years old and he and my grandmother used to come up to our home in Livingston on Sunday afternoons. And it was my job to take the lawn chair out of the back of the car and set it up so that he could sit there because he had a bad back. And one day, I'm doing this and -- (phone rings) MF: Okay, you were right out, setting up the chairs. FW: I was setting up the lawn chair that he always used because his back bothered him and he felt uncomfortable sitting in that kind of a harder chair. And while I was taking it out of the back of the car, he looked at me and he said, "Frank, I think you and I understand each other." And I said, "Yes, Pop, I think we do," because at that point I already had the feeling of where I was going with myself. And he didn't say any word. Nothing. We never spoke of it again but that's what was going on. Well, my father was of a different type than his father. My father, he was present when the family money was disappearing and he didn't have that kind of money. Grandfather and my grandmother still had enough money to make themselves comfortable. They had a summer home at the Jersey Shore, they had an apartment in East Orange, but they did not pass much of that on to my father. One of the things that they did do was buy homes. My grandmother bought a home for my father and his brothers out of her money that she had in Livingston for each one of them. So, that was something because none of them could afford it. My father never went to college. He got out of high school. He was in the Navy during World War II. He's in a ship in the Pacific, an ammunition ship, which he always likes to tell us was going to -- lucky there was not an atomic bomb attack. He was lucky there was atomic bomb attacks on Japan, otherwise, he would've been part of the invasion fleet of Japan. And he used to like to say to me, "And you would not be here." So, (laughter) anyway, I was aware from him different stories about his growing up that his parents, although my grandmother worked very hard to keep them together as a family, raise their boys properly, nobody ever urged them to go to college. Nobody ever urged them to have any kind of -- it was just sort of assumed that they would have money. Well, of course, they wouldn't have money, so they would of had to start out on their own. My father met my mother in East Orange, New Jersey in the late 1940s after he got home from the Navy. Oh, here's a story I'd like to share that I forgot about about my father in the Navy afterwards. In 1946, he was in San Francisco and he was with a bunch of other sailors and they went to this club in San Francisco and this person was playing piano. And he always liked the music of Eddie Heywood, who was a pianist, jazz pianist, popular in those days. And so, where he first heard him was in San Francisco. But they were in this club and he was with his friend, one of his little more older and more knowledgeable sailors. And he saw this good-looking woman and thought, boy, isn't she attractive? And so, you know, as we used to say in the Dark Ages, put the moves on her. And there was this other woman around and, like, giving my father dirty looks, you know? And, like, just looking at him, like, you know, "What are you doing?" Oh, and that kind of thing. And my father is twenty and naive about the world, asks the friend of his, he says, "Well, what's her problem? What's the matter with her?" And this friend of my father's said, "Well, you're trying to pick up her girlfriend, for one thing." (laughs) And my father said, "Her what?" (laughter) So, you can imagine. This is where my father's experiences with gay things begin. And he and my mother -- I should tell you, my mother was a wonderful mother, very good. She was a wonderful person. She had a -- from a family that was nowhere near the social class of my father. And her father sold Beechnut Baby Food out of the back of a big Packard car he drove around in, because he was this salesman for Beechnut baby food. And they lived in various parts of the Northeast. They lived in New York City for a while, where my mother was born, by the way, in Brooklyn, in 1927. But she had her mother, my grandmother, her mother was not a very nice person. She was an odd lady. Eventually, she would drink herself into oblivion. But she used to pick on my mother and was very unfair to my mother. And so, my mother grew up with sort of an inferiority complex about this whole thing. Well, I, you know, sort of got that impression from things that I'd sort of picked up over the years about the way they acted towards each other. It was a strange -- So, she had a strange relationship with her mother. My father couldn't stand her mother, just drove him crazy. And she -- it used to drive my father crazy. They mutually drove each other crazy. But eventually, my parents' marriage worked out to the point where they did have eight children, I being the first one. And my brothers and sisters, we all kind of developed very distinct personalities. None of us was really very much the same. So, as I was growing up, I knew what I wanted in life was a quiet place to read a book and be left alone and not bothered. And so, my brothers and sisters will tell you today it they were here, they would say something like, "Well, you were always in your room reading a book. You were never out with any of the rest of us." Well, I thought, well, yeah, well, why should I be, you know? What's wrong with that? And you have your life, I have mine, that's it. What's wrong with that? But they kind of knew I was sort of strange. Well, it was about that time when I was in, I guess, I was in Catholic grade school that I first got my first inklings about possibly being gay or whatever it was. I didn't know. This was in somewhere between, like, the fourth or fifth grade. I had a friend, Martin, who I knew fairly well. He had some health problems and just they used to call a blue baby, as my mother used to say. And that was something that he had some, when he was born, he'd had some problems or his mother had had some problems with the pregnancy. But he was the first person I ever actually had contact with sexually. And he was another boy. I mean, we were both boys, we were roughly the same age. We were both about thirteen, fourteen years old. And I knew at that point what I liked and I didn't know what it was. I didn't really know, you know? This is what I like doing with somebody else, with another boy, but I don't know whether, I mean, is this okay? And then, over the years, I met some other boys who I did this with off and on. This was not heavy duty. This is merely a lot of mutual touching and that kind of thing. But I tried to work that through but I didn't know, you know? It was so confusing. People today, people assume a lot. They think gay people assume that people are gay, you know, that you can be gay and it's just okay and that's fine and that's cool and RuPaul and hallelujah and everything else. But I got news for you: in those days, it wasn't, especially if you were fourteen, because I was supposed to be interested in girls and I wasn't. I tried dating. I dated one girl, Christine. Very nice girl. Rather big but nice and she was a friend. I liked her as a person. And then, there was another woman that I dated, Penny, Penny Way. I knew her through a church group that I belonged to. But, you know, it really became clear that, to me, at least I understand that these women wanted me to do something with them that I did not want to do and I didn't know why I did not want to do it. And that was the strangest thing to be involved with because you were going, like, between one thing and between another thing. So, I was, like, what does this mean? What does this mean? Why am I having these feelings towards these men, that I don't have any feelings towards these women. And, you know, then, well, at that time, I began to realize that I was having wet dreams and problems and masturbating myself thinking about men, not women. And I thought this is odd. What's wrong with me? And my father -- everybody knew I was odd, you know? My father knew I was odd. So, of all things, he sent me down into New York. This was 1966, into New York, to a priest there. There's a Franciscan monastery in New York, and to talk to this priest, to straighten out my life or whatever it was. And so, I did this and I talked to this priest and I finished speaking to him and he said to me, "Well, you realize, of course, you're a homosexual." I said, "What? (laughs) What?" (laughs) And I said, "Well, what does that mean?" And he said, "Well, you know, this is what you are. And, you know, you don't have to be. You can do things. You don't have to get involved with sex. You can do things that make you sexually, blah-blah, you have to recognize the fact that you're a homosexual." And he said, you know, this is what they said. "And you have to deal with it." And so, I came back home and I told my father. (inaudible) my father practically fell on the floor. But I think at least it gave my father an idea, a context of what I was going through. My high school years, I graduated from the Catholic grade school I was going to, St. Philomena's, in 1964. In 1964 to 1965, I was at Mount Pleasant Junior High School. Then, from 1965 to 1968, I was in the senior high school, Livingston High School. It was an interesting place to be for a lot of people. Many of my college students, fellow students were extremely bright people. They had a large interest in a lot of different things. They had parents who were pushing them towards college. They were taking the PSATs and the SATs and all these things. And all you heard about from them was, "I'm going to get a good college and my parents are going to kill me if I don't get in a good college. I've got to go to a good college." And one of my fellow classmates in this class was a young man named Roger Chen. And Roger Chen, in 2014, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry. So, gives you some idea of the kind of caliber of people. And not that everybody was at Roger's lev but it was that kind of environment. I was not, obviously, in that crowd. I was very bright in history but abysmal in math and science. I could not work my way through math. I could not do algebra, I could not -- you know, they said A plus B [adds up?] and I said, "Well, where's the numbers? And it's an addition, why do we have letters?" And so, my mind wasn't shaping its way around that. And then, I just was sort of out. I was not part of one group, I was not part of another group, I was not a brain, I wasn't a jock. When I was in grade school through high school, in gym class, when they picked classes, I was the last one picked and the guy would say, "You want Whelan?" "No, I don't want Whelan. Do you want a Whelan?" "No, I don't want a Whelan." So, you can imagine, (laughs) I was pathetic at the time period. But I went to high school, went through, got through high school, and then I graduated from high school. And then, bingo, I'm out of high school and then what do I do? What do I do? I want to go to college but my father doesn't know how to help me. He never went to college. My mother doesn't know how to help me. She never went to college. Oh, yes, she did, actually. My mother spent two years in a Catholic college, studying to be a kindergarten teacher. And then she met my father and they were married in 1948 and that was the end of that. But I was basically left on my own when I got out of high school. So, took this little job here, took this little job there. And finally, and so at Essex County Community College, was opening in Newark, And so, I went there. Had to see what it would be like. And while I was there, I met two very remarkable people, both of them African American professors. One of them was named Stephen Butler, he was a sociology professor, and the other one was named Clem Price, who died just several years ago. He was president of Rutgers, or Rutgers, Newark, at any rate, when he passed away. But the two of them saw that I had a lot more on the ball in their classes and finally one day, and I can still see it in my head, talking to Professor Butler, standing in the hallway, and he said to me, "You know, you're too bright for this place. You really ought to be in a real college." Turns out he had some connections. He had another job at something called the Upward Bound program for black students over in Queens Community College in New York area. He was from New York City originally. And he said, "I could, you know, let me look into things." So, I knew one thing I really want to do is I wanted to go away to school. All my friends in Livingston were going away to school. And so, that's what I really wanted to do. I also had, I mentioned earlier, that I was part of a church group. That church group was not a Catholic church group. It was a Presbyterian Church group. I had broken with the Catholic Church and joined the Presbyterians because they accepted me and they liked me. And my mother, of course, cried, naturally, being an Irish Catholic of her vintage. But I didn't know those people and those people were all going off to college. I wanted to go away?, so I said to Steve, "Well, I'd like to go away." And so, he came up with some colleges for me and then he said, "Oh, Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois. Why don't you try there? They have a work study program there, you can work there at college, and it's cheaper." And so, I could actually use the government funding that I got from the student loans for that. And so, I did, and I went off to college, Blackburn College. Well, Blackburn's, like, in the middle of nothing. But it was, a wonderful place for me to be, because I grew up there and I began to come out to myself and to come out to some people. People began to realize that I was gay or whatever that was. And by 1969, when Stonewall's happening in New York, I am on a train for central Illinois to my first year at Blackburn. And I met some very good people there. One of my closest friends, Walt Harrington, straight man, who was a very good friend. And also, I met a lot of people that didn't know the other Frank and that was terrific relief. And so, I could begin to carve myself, who I was. And I still was dealing with problems with my sexuality. It was just something that I was trying to ignore and I didn't do anything about it one way or the other, you know? They used to say, "Oh, is that Whelan? He's just weird," you know, that they just wrote me off. "He's just odd." But I was doing very well in classes. I was doing very well in things that were not science or math related. And so, I did well. They kept me on and I was a history major and gradually I got to know things and got to know the college well. And people knew and I knew and the boys knew, the other men knew, young men knew that I was. And this one guy I knew, very attractive young man, Michael [Stieglitz?], he was a Croatian background from someplace, from East Chicago, Indiana. And he and I would eventually end up sometimes ending up in the big shower together. (phone rings) And then -- MF: Can we pause? I'm sorry. FW: Sure. MF: Hold on one second. (break in video) In describing some of his experiences with other students at college, and I'll just let you continue. FW: Well, I was particularly attracted to this young man, Michael Stiglitz. He was from East Chicago, Indiana. His family were a steelworker background. Very nice looking young man. And I would end up in the shower. I mean, they were big gang showers at Blackburn. And I never would make an overt pass at anyone. That I did not do. That I would figure, as my old man used to say, be spittin' Chiclets, meaning that someone's going to punch me out if I try that. So, I didn't ever do it. But I sort of would look at him. I'd look at him and admire. He's a beautiful man, you know? Well, one day, I was standing in line for the cafeteria and everybody else was standing in line in the cafeteria. And I realized, you know, for a while, I was thinking, well, Mike's probably not liking this. I'd better not pay attention to him anymore. This is ridiculous. And so, I stopped doing it once or twice. And then, we're standing in line, getting ready to go into the cafeteria with all these other students around. And he says, "Frank, haven't seen you in the shower lately! What's wrong? You tired of looking?" Well, I could've found a place in the sidewalk and disappeared at that point but nothing came of it. Nobody ever harassed me, nobody ever complained. So, I guess they all knew but nobody was talking about it, I don't know. So, 1973, I graduated from Blackburn and I was having trouble because of my history degree, I couldn't find a lot, different jobs. I was working in a lot of places. But one thing I did know: I came home briefly, for about two, three weeks, and I decided I did not want to spend the rest of my life in Livingston, New Jersey with my parents. Whatever else happened to me, I did not want that. And so, what I did was my grandmother actually loaned me some money and she said, "Well, you go out to the Midwest, you find yourself a job." And so, I went back to Carlinville because I had known people there, and found a job. And was a laboring job. Wasn't much and I was not terribly good at it, to be honest, but I did it. And the fact that I could do it and do something for myself and did not feel dependent on people, that really helped me. And so, gradually, I evolved. And then, my friend, Walt Harrington, who I mentioned, he was at the University of Missouri and he was with the sociology department. And he said, "Well, you have to go to a big school. You can't be here." So, I went there, back to the University of Missouri at Columbia for about a year or so. And I took some graduate courses and I was doing fairly well. But it wasn't perfect. It just still wasn't working out exactly as I wanted. So, I ended up going back to the work life and I found an opening for a small magazine in Springfield, Illinois. And my friend, Walt, who had helped me get to the University of Missouri, I said -- and he was just graduating from the University of Missouri's journalism school. He has a combined degree of journalism and sociology and he said, "I'm looking for a job" and I said, "Okay, well, here's this small magazine. Maybe you'd like to start there." And so, he did and he and I worked together for a long time. And he got a little bit nervous with me but not because we were [at it?]. Never proposed anything sexual with him. But one time, he said to me, he says, like, blew up, he said, "We're living too close together here. Just, you know, like, you're eating off me and I can't deal with it." And I said, "Oh, okay, well, I didn't mean to do that." But so, the magazine finally failed and I went back to journalism, back to the University of Missouri and I got a part-time job with the sociology department. And also, I was a graduate student in history. And in 1978, I graduated, I had gotten my master's degree. In that interim, something happened that changed my life, totally. There was a man there, a young man who was working with me in the sociology department. He was a computer guy. He was married but he had been in the Air Force Academy and had left it because of some sort of cheating scandal or something like that. But he knew about computers, so he was handling the computers for this particular professor whose project I was working on. Well, I found this man very attractive and so went up to him and propositioned him, which isn't something -- I didn't do much. At this time, I was also -- the Columbia -- Missouri had a small adult bookstore and so I would go there on occasion. Not often, but on occasion. And Tom [Jokehurst?], this fellow I knew as the computer guy. I said to him, you know, I told him, expressed my interest and then he picked up a copy of the University of Missouri's newspaper and he pointed to an organization called the Gay Liberation Front. And he said, "Frank, I can't help you but maybe these people can." And so, I was, like, okay, I hadn't even thought of that. Why wasn't I thinking of that? So, I went to the meeting and I went to the door and I tried to open the door at the meeting. And a doorknob wouldn't open totally. And finally, I was pulling on it and finally a voice from inside said, "Come on, come on in!" And I did and I've been gay, officially, ever since. MF:That's a good place to pause for now. (break in video) MF:So, I'm back from break and he's just described encountering the Gay Liberation Front for the first time. So, Frank, I'm going to ask you: well, what happened after you encountered GLF? FW:Well, after I encountered these gay people, I suddenly realized that, you know, I don't have to try and pretend that I'm straight because I was trying to date with young women from the sociology department who I was working with. And it was clear to them and clear to me as it had been way back when I was in high school to the women involved that I was not there with them in their space, interested in them sexually or, you know, romantically. And so, I began to see these people there as who I was and a part of what I knew. And so, I began to mix with them and go to club meetings and I didn't really have heavy duty sex with anybody there in that group. But I did get to know what it was like to be a gay person and out and open. And this really changed me. It changed me because then I realized I don't have to try and be something that I'm not. And that was an earthquake for me. People talk about moments that changed their lives and this was the one that changed mine. So, I began to just, you know, go to the gay meetings and this kind of thing and identified myself as a gay person. And once I was sitting in this restaurant in Columbia where a lot of students gathered and I was with some friends of mine from the sociology department and I was talking about being gay, you know? Just a little -- casual, I mean, I'm gay, yes, I'm gay man, and that's what I am. And then, a friend of mine, one of the sociology people who knew all this, he said, "Frank, you know, there's people in this booth over here. They don't like what they're hearing you say, what you're talking about." So, I said, "Well, they're going to have to learn to live with it because I'm going to do it." And nobody came around the corner and smashed me in the face or anything like that, so I guess that was that. But, boy, I tell you, it was -- and I just blossomed as a person. That was just wonderful for me. And finally, I was not only good in history and other things but I was finding -- making a name for myself. And so, by 1970s, 1978, I had my master's degree. And I'd also, at that time, while I was at Missouri, year or two after I joined the Gay Liberation Front, I got a job as the assistant archivist to the University of Missouri. And Ralph Havener and he was, you know, worldly enough to deal with it, you know? It didn't bother him. He was seen with me, it didn't bother him at all. Was a married man and had children, you know, this kind of stuff. But very, very with it for that period of time and it just didn't bother him. And I was working with him and with a woman there, Cora. I can't think of her last name at the moment but she was very nice. And so, we all got along fairly well and I gradually began to read gay publications. I had a good friend who got The Village Voice, so I started reading The Village Voice, started thinking about New York and I'm thinking about, wow, what's all going on there? And then, I got a subscription to Christopher Street, which is a gay magazine at the time and I was reading that and began to see, you know, there's a larger world out here of gay people that you don't know anything about. See, I didn't understand, when Stonewall happened, I was way on the other side of the country. So, I had thought, I mean, it was, like, yeah, well, there was this thing that happened but it was only till years later that I began to realize what Stonewall was. And I think that was the case with a lot of people. I mean, Stonewall grew to be a legend but it grew to be a legend largely because of time, people talking about it and writing about it in the gay community. When we were talking the other day about some of these things, I said and I was thinking, you know, this is how the movement spread and it didn't happen overnight. (inaudible) caught fire about Stonewall and the entire gay world was aware of it, took quite a while to penetrate. So, I was doing this in Missouri and then graduated in 1978. And then, Ralph Havener is the archivist at the University of Missouri, put me in touch with the archivist for the State of Missouri, Gary Behan. And that was a shake-up in my life because I would have to move from Columbia, Missouri, which was relatively, by Missouri terms, enlightened, quote-unquote. But to Jefferson City. And Jefferson City was not enlightened at all. Has a population of thirty thousand people, which was smallest state capital in the country. And I could do my work and do my other stuff but I had to, you know, I had to try and find gay people. And I had, again, to do that and I found some bad -- some guy who was a little bit older than I was, but a gay man. And he clued me in on the scene in Jefferson City. And he was actually from Springfield, Missouri. And believe it or not, Springfield, Missouri had a gay bar. And so, he took me down there to that place once or twice. There was a gay bar in Columbia called the Wheel or the Cartwheel, I can't remember, but it was down there. And so, it was there in Columbia. So, I also went to that sometimes when I was in Columbia and met some men there. But I didn't really get into the Jefferson City scene. And then, there was all the talk, you know, as the gays in Jefferson City used to call it "Closeta City" because there were so many closeted gay men in Jefferson City, one of whom was a very prominent state legislator. And the rumors were circulating around in the gay community that he was doing it in the office, his sexual office -- yeah, sexual office -- his senatorial office with boys he picked up on the monument that overlooked the Missouri River, behind the state capital building. And Missouri had this huge state capital, beautiful building. But there's a monument there and you look over this huge area and his car would cruise, his Cadillac would cruise back and forth there, trolling for men. So, I guess I wasn't worth it, so nobody trolled for me. But anyway, so that was a part of what my life in Jefferson City was like. Meanwhile, my friend Walt Harrington had gotten a job here in Allentown with The Morning Call. And he was working very hard and got involved with the owner of the paper, was trying to change the paper. Paper in those days, in the early '80s was really beginning to make a move, it was out of its provincialism. And the owner's son was taking over and he hired Walt and a bunch of other people and they were doing really groundbreaking journalism stuff. And so, Walt remembered that I had helped him get a job at that magazine in Springfield years before. And so, he contacted me and said, "Hey, I think you really ought to look. [I will try and?] help you get a job here." And he did. And he did. And then, there were all kinds of problems at The Morning Call. Not with me directly but with the paper, the father of the son of the own-- the original family was father and son. The father was not quite ready to retire. The son was pushing. There were a lot of people at the paper at the time who were very disillusioned with all of these new people coming in from outside. And so, there I was in the middle of all this. But it worked out okay for me. A lot of them left. Walt left to go to The Washington Post, which was a dream. And I think if I had asked and tried hard enough, I would have, could have, might have been able to get a job at The Washington Post in the library or some capacity. But by then, I had met Bob and that was a little thing that changed somewhat in my life, my -- approaching it. But I was interested in just trying to find my way in this town of Allentown. And then, I knew that, I sort of suspected that Bob was gay. He didn't come and talk to me. And he will tell you this story, and so I can tell you a little bit about it: at the time, I'd had a problem. When I was in Jefferson City, I had fallen down some stairs in the home which I was and my neck went back like this. So, I had to wear a neck brace. Well, every once in a while, it would act up. So, I'd put the neck brace on. So, I was in the newsroom, walking around, carrying huge piles of books because I was supposed to be a researcher. And then, Bob looked over and saw me and said, "Who the hell is that?" to this woman who was sitting on his desk. And another reporter, "Oh, that's Frank Whelan. Don't you know Frank Whelan?" Said, "No, and I don't want to." Boom. That was the end of it. And so, I said to Walt, like, still contact with him, he was at the Post at this point and I said to him, "Are there any gay people here at The Morning Call?" And he said, "Yes, there are," because Bob was open at the paper, it was not a big deal for him at the time. And I said, "Oh, well, like, how can I meet them?" He said, "Well," he said, "if you people can find each other the way you tell me you can, you'll find him." Click. So, (laughs) okay. Walt and I had a -- interesting relationship. But so, I did. I began to look in back about this local, this organization, this Le-Hi-Ho. I heard talk of it and I went to find out that a lot of these articles about Le-Hi-Ho and about the gay community were written by Bob Wittman. And so, one day, I went over to Bob and he was sitting at his desk and I said to him, "I see you've written a lot of articles about this Le-Hi-Ho organization." And he said, "Yes?" And I said, "I'd like to get to meet these people, get to know these people. Could you tell me about them?" And then, he looked at me and said, "Okay. Let's go have a cup of coffee." (laughs) We went down to the cafeteria, had a cup of coffee, and that's really my first introduction both to Bob and the local Le-Hi-Ho scene. Now, Le-Hi-Ho in that day, in those days, was going through a kind of a transition. You have to understand, AIDS had not broken on the scene yet. I was still doing things with and picking up men at the adult bookstore and having tricks. But anyway, that's what I was doing. And I didn't think twice about those. Nobody thought twice about any of that in those days. And so, I just sort of figured, well, you know, and here's this guy Bob, he's nice, and he knows me, so we started to date a little bit and then go out. And he took me down to New Hope, which was the gay universe back then, you know? And I went down there with him a couple times and, you know, but about a year or so later, we moved into this apartment. It's up the street at 1036 Walnut, where we lived for ten years. So, at that point, Bob was telling me in the early '80s, because I came to The Morning Call in 1981. And so, this previous editor left, his father took over. There were all kinds of things happening. But I was asked to become a writer by the editor that took over. Said, "Can you write?" Said, "Yeah. I've done that." He said, "Well, go ahead and do some, we'll see what happens." So, I began to write local history stories and people seemed to like them. And so, that was the beginning of that. But with Le-Hi-Ho, Bob said to me -- I wanted to ask him questions about it. He said, "Well, I don't know. They're really kind of a strange organization. You know, they're okay, but the real movement that they were pushing is gone and now they have parties where they macramé and it's this kind of thing." And I'm, like, oh, wow, okay. I'll talk about macramé to people. But, you know, I want to meet people, I want to meet gay people. I wanted to meet gay people and I didn't just want to meet gay people at bars, men at bars. I did do that but, you know, it was not working for me because I had been out in Missouri and was not going back in the closet just because of -- I'm in Allentown, so I wanted to be with people. And so, I went to a few of these Le-Hi-Ho meetings and I could see what Bob was saying about it because it was just not happening here for me at those meetings. And then, I met, well, then we went, the new group of people had taken over the Le-Hi-Ho and they were the ones that invited Barbara Gittings to speak at Muhlenberg. And this would have been about 1982, '83. And Bob and I had been living together at that point, had already taken a trip to England. We'd gone to Europe once and so I said, "Let's try it. Let's go see what it's like." Well, then we met people there who were gay people who were out and were interested in gay politics and gay life and gay everything. Nothing to do with doing macramé. So, that's when Le-Hi-Ho began to fade out in the local scene. Never disappeared entirely but it wasn't the gay organization. Couple of other people who I met as a result of this meeting, older people, one a faculty member at Kutztown called Paul Kendall. Another one was Clint Miller, who was an organist at St. John's Lutheran Church over here. And these were people who had larger gay experiences far beyond anything that I'd had. And I became very good friends with some of them. And Paul Kendall and his partner, Paul Reeder, they had been living in the Village in New York. And Paul Kendall got a job at Kutztown, so then they bought a house out in rural Kutztown area, a nice property, ten acres of ground. It was on a mountaintop but they weren't farming, trust me. They did, like, new things. And we would go out to their house and have dinner. And Paul Kendall was a gourmet cook and he would cook these wonderful meals. And we'd sit there and Paul Reeder would make sidecars and I, like, after a while, Bob's driving, we're coming back from their house. And their house is way out in the country. It's, like -- (hums nervously) and I, you know, that, and I was sound asleep, so it didn't bother me. But we got really interested in the gay things from there and Paul Kendall began the process of bringing forward the concept of the Lambda Center, a gay community center. He actually went on local television. He went on Channel 39 and they used to have a "Manager's Chat," they called it. And he came on and explained what this was about. So, he was perfectly open. And he was a professor, you know, so these kind of people just really were the people that I got to know and I really, really liked them. And so, that was my kind of life. That's the life that I saw and I wanted to get involved with. And so, then, Le-Hi-Ho was, like I say, was there and we were part of it. But the Lambda Center begin to consume more and more of our time. And it was just at that point when the Lambda Center was starting to emerge that AIDS hit. I can remember clearly the first day that I knew there was something called HIV or "the gay plague". Or I didn't know what exactly they were calling it at -- that was a day in the summer, July, and I picked up a copy of The New York Times and there was an article by their medical writer, Lawrence K. Altman, about this strange illness that seemed to affect gay people and that the people were calling the gay plague and all kinds of other things. And I read this thing and at first I was just, like, I -- many gay people, you know, at the time, we'd always been hearing these people telling us about, oh, you know, this'll happen to you, you'll get cancer, you'll die, you know, for having sex, gay sex. And so, people were, like, what the hell is this? Who's cooking this up, the CIA, the FBI? What's behind this? At first, I was just not buying it. Just not buying it. And then, they said about it happening in New York and San Francisco and then I began to think, well, maybe it's a New York or San Francisco thing that they're doing. See, I had begun to get even more involved in the Lambda Center. I got on its board. We were doing all kinds of things having to do with being gay. Like, if your partner's involved in the hospital, how to get access to them. If you're doing a will, how to make sure your partner gets -- when you get out of the will, you can actually give to them. And that was something that, you know, I was interested in. All these things were happening. I was thrilled. And the Lambda Center, we had a lawyer come in and explain about wills. We had all kinds of -- or I gave a lecture on the rise of Nazi Germany, the anti-gay movement in Nazi Germany and what happened to the gay people in Germany. And, I mean, I was really moving, things were happening. And then suddenly, we felt the need, the organization felt the need, a number of people within the organization felt the need to create something, what they called the AIDS Services Committee. And then, the roof caved in as far as I was concerned. MF: That might be a good place to pause. (break in video) Record. Okay, this is Mary Foltz. I'm back with Frank. We were just talking a bit about the Lambda Center. And Frank, I'm wondering if you could tell us just a little bit more about what was the impetus to start the center, what was it like getting it up off the ground? FW: Well, the impetus for starting the center really did begin with this professor, Paul Kendall. He was saying and he did say quite a bit that we need an alternative to the bars. We need a place, an organization where gay people can deal with the political realities of life and that this doesn't have to be just someplace where you get to meet somebody. Now, Paul wasn't opposed to that but Paul said his attitude was that someplace, people should have some way to talk to each other besides a drink in their hands. And Paul was not opposed to drinking, I can tell you that right now. But he felt very strongly that a political slant had to be given to gay life. Okay, now we were trying to get -- gay people had begun to win some acceptance in the late '70s, early '80s. Now maybe this is time to have an organization to help, also, other gay people come out to deal with who they were, to give them an idea that, hey, gay is okay. It's normal. It's not odd, it's not weird. And just because you lived in a small town somewhere, you can feel isolated, but there's a place for you to go, a place for you to -- people will understand you. And that was really what attracted me to it and I think Bob to it, because we could remember quite clearly what it was like to feel like you were the only one and nobody else is going through what you're going through. Nobody ever had and nobody ever will again, you know? God or something, fate has dumped all this on you. So, I got together with Paul Kendall and various other people did, too. Paul Reeder, his partner, kind of got a little -- Paul Reeder was kind of a shy guy. He did the stuff but in the background. He did not take an active role in running the organization. There was another friend of theirs, interesting enough, also a Paul, Paul [Boutin?], who they knew from New Hope and who was also from New York, had been in New York. And they all got together and began to think about this organization and to talk to each other and to put a board together that would be the board of the Lambda Center. Paul Kendall very purposefully went on television on Channel 39, the "Manager's Chat," and this was a big moment for us all, too, because we did not -- you know, how would the public take this? Would there be outraged phone calls? Would there be, you know, threats to firebomb the place? What would happen? And Paul was very, you know, he was in a jacket and tie and he was pointing out that he was a professor at Kutztown and that what the Lambda Center was and what the explanation of Lambda was, and that was the beginning of the Lambda Center's birth, really. And when that program was on television, we began to get volunteers. People wanted to, willing to work on the hotline and people called. We began to get people contacting us. One of the things I had not mentioned which I probably should had to do with the inception of Le-Hi-Ho. Now, I only know this because several years ago, about two years ago, Ron Seeds, who founded the Le-Hi-Ho, told me, sent me a letter. A fellow in New York named Dick Leitsch who was with the Mattachine Society, and Leitsch was very influential. I mean, he was the driving force behind making it able for gay men to drink in New York bars without being accused of being gay, you know, and that kind of thing. Or saying, "Oh, you can't have and drink now, you're gay." So, he was involved with that. And so, when they were forming Le-Hi-Ho, this was created basically because Ron Seeds had met this young man, Rick [Balmer?]. And Rick Balmer was afraid of being drafted. This was still the Vietnam War era. The draft was still out there. That would have been 1968, '69. And, well, and Ron Seeds was acting as a draft counselor. And so, the two of them came to the conclusion that there have to be a lot of other gay people like us out there who need this kind of organization. So, they contacted Leitsch at the Mattachine Society in New York and they asked him, "Could you possibly give us a list of people from the Lehigh Valley who have contacted the Mattachine Society about gay issues?" And all they wanted to do with that was to send something out to people saying, "Hey, we're going to form this group. Do you think that there's a need for a group like this in the Lehigh Valley?" Just to these people because, clearly, these people had already contacted the Mattachine Society. And Leitsch did but he said, you know, "We don't want, you know, [you don't want to?]" -- they were a little uneasy about giving out names. So, I think they gave out, like, addresses or something like that instead of -- no names attached. And they sent those out across the Lehigh Valley. And from there, they got some responses, Ron and Rick did, and they began to write the people who responded positively about the creation of Le-Hi-Ho. So, that's how Le-Hi-Ho spread from the Mattachine Society and Dick Leitsch to the Lehigh Valley, because of Ron Seeds and Rick Balmer making the outreach to them, okay? So, that I wanted to clarify. So, now, have that on the record. Well, fast forward to 1984, '83, '84, and, of course, AIDS is now popping up. And this is the time period when a lot of people, wealthy individuals in the community who had lost their family members, in particular Ardath Rodale of the Rodale Press, her son, David, had died of AIDS and he had been in New York awhile and was very active in New York. And so, she came forward with some offer for money. But she refused to give it to an organization that advocated homosexuality. You know, it was, like, oh, oh! And I was, like, yeah, well, if she doesn't like us because we're gay, then why should we even think about this? But, of course, we live in America and money goes and money talks. And the idea of getting money for this AIDS Services Committee was too, too much. And so, they spun off and became the AIDS Services Center. And that was what really infuriated me. I was just livid. I thought to myself, my God, all we've tried to get to make this organization work and for all gays at all levels and the gay issues and now we're going to turn this into AIDS morning, noon, and night. And I didn't care for it. I mean, well, I guess I was being selfish to an extent and I grant you that. I didn't know anybody who had AIDS, I felt this was more like a New York and San Francisco kind of thing as many people in the Lehigh Valley did. And then, I was sort of distant from it. And it was at this point that Bob found or someone came forward to Bob, our friend Brian Foley, later our friend, who told us that he was HIV-positive. And told Bob and he wanted the story in the paper. And Bob wrote that story. I'll let Bob give you a lot of the details of that. That's his bailiwick. And he took that and wrote the first story about it. And except for one or two letters to the editor of The Morning Call, we didn't get a lot of reaction that was negative, any negative reaction. But I was fighting this other battle at the Lambda Center and I was watching what was happening. And it was all AIDS all the time and I was, like, okay, well, yeah, it's important. It's really important. It's really, really, really important. But I could see it was being eaten alive, Paul Kendall could see it was being eaten alive. Whole organization was being eaten alive by people who just weren't -- interested in AIDS. And so, eventually, the Lambda Center folded. But Le-Hi-Ho was still there. And Rick and Ron were gone from the area at that point, or I think they were thinking about leaving, or they sort of got out of their involvement with it because they had some rough periods in the '70s when locally things here were not too pleasant. But I was not personally involved with that, so I can't speak to all that. But I can speak to the fact that we sort of -- remnants of the Lambda Center sort of took control of what was left of Le-Hi-Ho. And we tried to have meetings and we tried [to have?] organizational things and we did a few things. And we had members who were happy but Le-Hi-Ho kind of fell into a group of friends working on gay issues and socializing. And that was what happened to Le-Hi-Ho. Meanwhile, the AIDS groups and these kind of things were moving forward with where they were going. And so, we kind of, well, that's it, you know? They've co-opted us. And I think Paul -- one of our good friends, Clint Miller, this organist from the church said, "We've been usurped." That was his word for it. "We've been usurped." And we were, basically. So, that ended the role of the Lambda Center. But we tried having, we did have some meetings, we had some things, various discussions and that kind of thing. We did attract some people to the meetings but it just was not the same after AIDS, the AIDS bulldozer came charging down on top of us. And so, I continued to go to these meetings. We continued to hold Le-Hi-Ho meetings till finally, Rick contacted us and contacted what was left of Le-Hi-Ho. He didn't know really what was going on, Rick Balmer. Rick, I'm sorry, Ron Seeds I should have said. Ron Seeds did not really know what was going on but he wanted some of the books that were down here, part of their collection and the gay novels and those kind of things, not the papers of Le-Hi-Ho. And so, at that point, as I'm remembering it, and you might want to clarify some of this with Bob because I'm sure he may remember parts differently than I do. But as I remember it, Ron, a lot of these books, he wanted to bring them back to Connecticut up there to use them for a gay community center up there that he was involved with. And so, we did that and then we decided, well, what do you want us to do with these papers and things? And he said, "Well, I don't have any use for them now." He said, "Why don't you keep them and see" -- and so, that was the consensus. Le-Hi-Ho's board, such as we were at that point, said, "Okay, fine, let's put these someplace." "Well, where are you going to put them?" "Well, I don't know. I don't have any space." "Well, I don't (inaudible)." Finally, they realized we had the space upstairs in our attic. And so, that's where they went, for years, (laughs) until, obviously, we decided, when Le-Hi-Ho was on the point of abandoning itself, to vote to go out of business, officially. And Bob and I said to the leaders, we got Paul Kendall and some of these other people. And so, "What do we do with the archives? What do we do with the records?" And Bob and I came up with the proposal and I'm pretty sure, you know, it was us, we came up with it, that we think they ought to be turned over to the Allentown Public Library. It's an Allentown institution, it concerns people involved in Allentown, primarily, and it was something that we felt, at that point, that this would be the best place for them. And we decided that, and we talked to Renee Harris over there, and she was very thrilled. She appeared to be very thrilled ; I assumed she was about it. And so, they came over here and we got the records out and brought them over there to the library. And there they sat till when Susan showed up. (laughs) But when I did this, we did this, when Bob and I did this, I sent a letter to George Chauncey up in Yale, and I said to him, "I know you're interested in these kind of things. I've read your book, Gay New York. I enjoyed it very much and I want you to know that this is where these records are." And I got a record back, I got a letter back from him saying, "Thank you very much. I wondered what had happened to them. I'm working on book on how gays, gay culture grew across the country after Stonewall. And so, thank you for telling me where they are," You know? That was the end of the conversation with George Chauncey. That's all he wanted to know, [as far as I can tell?]. But I was pleased with that and Bob was pleased with that. We wanted very much for those records to be preserved because it was important for us that the country know it wasn't just New York, it wasn't just San Francisco and a lot of things happening with a lot of people across the country. And Allentown had a gay organization six months before Stonewall, a gay political organization. So, if not the oldest, I -- we like to say we were the oldest gay political organization outside of New York and San Francisco, because we weren't the Mattachine Society, obviously. But so, that's what we did and that's where students of -- here you are. Any questions? MF: Well, I'm wondering, after Le-Hi-Ho closes its doors -- FW: Right. MF: -- you continue to be active in the LGBT community. FW: Yes. MF: So, what happens for you after Le-Hi-Ho closes its doors? You've secured a place for the archive. FW: Right. MF: How do you continue to be involved? FW: Well, I continue to be involved with consultations with writing about things about gays. I'm a little bit skittish about some things because, first of all, the younger people, I don't want them to look that I'm interfering with them. I want to share this with you. So, this is something that -- the transition with Liz and Trish taking over the movement and basically, you know, they did -- excellent people, fantastic, what they did to getting the gay rights ordinance in Allentown. That was something we both were involved in, Bob more than I was, and with her. But we felt that Trish, rather Liz was sort of dominating the whole thing. And she was kind of, I'm trying just to make this as, you know, because I don't want to discredit her at all. We think the world of her. But she got involved in local politics with the former mayor. And the former mayor was one of these hard knuckle guys. And so, she began to think that she should be hard knuckle, too. So, she, you know, she was following his lead and we felt that, you know, yes, your issue should be the gay community but why are we following this individual, you know? And there was all kinds of local politics involved. The mayor, Mayor Pawlowski, was involved in one thing and another, playing off one side and another. This was his modus operandi. And he did it, apparently, well enough to -- partly wasn't quite too honest but he did well enough for him. And the people in the gay community, Bob and I, we just felt like we were really shoved out. You know, Liz and Trish were going to run it and that's what they wanted. So, the Bradbury-Sullivan Center, we now appreciate it and we're glad that it's there but it took us a while to deal with that because, to be quite honest, Trish's -- right, Liz's attitude -- Trish is, like, just off there, she was always very nice, we said hi to her. But times were coming when we wouldn't speak to them. We'd see them in places like the farmer's market and just not talk to them because we felt that what they were doing was politicizing, small "P" politicizing it, turning this into something about politics and the mayor and doing whatever they could to boost up the mayor. And the center's creation, Bradbury-Sullivan Center was a payback to them for having supported the mayor. And that was, like, Bob had some problems with them. He can talk to you about those things if you want to talk to him about them and if he'll talk about them. He may not because he was very upset at the time. Bob was working with an organization called HADC. He still is on its board. He resigned but he was a grant writer for them and he was very active, very casually involved with their affordable housing agenda. Mayor Pawlowski had been head of another organization which had rivaled HADC. And so, therefore, Mayor Pawlowski did whatever he could to make HADC embarrassed. And Bob was furious at Pawlowski because of that. And then, of course, Liz Bradbury's [toading?] up with the mayor, you know, it just didn't synch or feel right to us. We thought this was some sort of a political payback. Okay, now Pawlowski's in prison, and so we're vindicated to that extent. But it was a lot of shit, to be quite honest, that we had to go through. And Liz was symbolically -- and, you know, we had such high hopes when she got the ordinance passed that this was going to be a different kind of thing. And it's amazing, when people got around Pawlowski, they became like him. And that was what they wanted to do because they figured they had to do that. These are amateurs playing at politics. And, you know, so they figured they have to be tougher than tough with the way they're playing politics. So, at any rate, so there was some disagreement, a lot of disagreement for a time with Liz, personally. Her personality, she has a very huge personality, and that kind of assumed a lot of things from a lot of people. And the people that had been involved in gay things for years who welcomed her, you know, wanted to see her involved, appreciated her involvement basically felt like we were used at that point. And Bob, you know, Bob got really furious one evening. His boss was up for an award for his work with the community and Liz was using all her influence to support somebody else. So, yeah, that's what was going on here. So, a lot of these things are happening and I know that's not really germane, necessarily, to what we're doing here. But that was the remnants of what happened after Le-Hi-Ho, and so -- MF: We just have to pause right now. (break in video) MF: Okay, I'm back with Frank and we just sort of talked about Le-Hi-Ho and some of the other political organizations in the Lehigh Valley that were working on LGBT issues and some of the tension between different people in the sort of broader Lehigh Valley LGBT movement. I wanted to sort of ask you if you could expand a bit on maybe the kind of Pride scene in the Lehigh Valley because Pride became a major -- you know, Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley became a major organization. FW: Right. MF: Could you share a little bit of your thoughts about that organization? FW:Well, that organization was a great organization and I have no problem with it at all. It was great. You had those parades, we had those events that focused around Pride. We haven't been to one in a while because, well, we just haven't been. But we felt very much, well, this is the story, my story of Pride, what happened to me involved with Pride. We were contacted by the Pride board one year, I think it was in 2006, that they wanted to have an event that focused, that honored the grand marshals of the parade. Our friends Paul and Paul had been the grand marshals one year and so they had selected us, Bob and I. And we were thrilled. We were just thrilled. And we appreciated it. Taking this into account, want to say that The Morning Call never -- knew we were out, knew we were gay. Never, ever, ever in the years that we had been there had any objections. Matter of fact, they would go to Bob, in particular -- not much me but to Bob, in particular, ask him who in the gay community should we talk to? Who do you think we should deal with? How do you think we should deal with these things? So, when Pride advertised it, we were pleased. Well, what also happened was this: an editor from The Los Angeles Times, a lady named Ardith Hilliard came here. And she had just been named executive editor of the Call. And she had her own notions about the role of journalism. And journalists, in her universe, were to be, like, policemen or nuns or priests. You took a vow of journalistic ethics which you did not sully yourself with having opinion. Your opinion was not to be countenanced or whatever you felt about a thing was not to be shared and you should not take a stand on any political issue of the public moment. Well, Bob and I didn't see what we were doing as taking an issue on a political scene. What we were doing is basically supporting this Pride organization and being grand marshalls. Well, I swear, it just, like, blew up. This Ardith Hilliard just began -- she [attached?], established an ethics policy and if you didn't follow her ethics policy, she was going to accuse you of being, you know, something less than an ethical journalist. Well, Bob wasn't at the paper at the time. He'd already left. I was there and I could tell there was a movement afoot to get rid of a lot of the older people, a movement that was coming out of Chicago, and that they were looking for ways to get rid of people who were not young, let's put it that way. And it would probably end up costing them money or something like that was going on. Well, so, I knew of this. And they had a meeting for us and they got us all together and they basically told us that we had to, we should accept a buyout from them. And I said, "I can't. I can't do that. I'm sorry, I can't do that." So, ever after that, my bosses tried to embarrass me, to belittle me, to do whatever they could to make sure that I quit. And I refused to do it. Well, I think they hooked into this ethics policy to use as something that they could work on me with. And so, when it was said I was going to be in the parade, she forbid it. She said, "No, you're not going to be in that parade. You're not going to be in that parade. You can't be in that parade. It's unethical, taking a stand on a public issue, stand on gay marriage," which was kind of crazy, first of all. This had nothing to do with gay marriage to us, it had -- being honored by the gay community for our relationship. That was all. As a matter of fact, as Bob will tell you, he and I were probably people who were skeptical of the idea of marriage as marriage. We would say things, we had long discussions with Paul and Paul at their dinner table about it. You know, gay people should have something. Straight people should have marriage and that's fine and it works for them, okay. But gay people should go beyond that and do something that's a separate kind of thing for gays, you know, that -- it reflects gay life differently than straight people's lives. And that's what we thought. Well, Ardith Hilliard had a certain view of the world and so she wasn't going to accept that. And so, bingo, she basically said, "You're not going to be in the parade. You're not going to be in the parade. You're not going to be in the parade." I said to her, "Ardith, this is about my rights, my rights as a person. Why can't you see this?" And I couldn't understand why she couldn't see this. I mean, she was supposedly an enlightened liberal person from Los Angeles. Oh, and so she just pressed and pressed and pressed. And finally, we just had to say, "That's it. I'm going to be in the parade." And she was yelling at me and browbeating me. Finally, one day, I left the Call. I left the Call. I packed up my things, I walked out, early in the morning, before anybody else was there, and I said, "Goodbye, Morning Call," and I walked out the door and brought my stuff home. And I said, "I'm going to be in the parade." This was a Friday, the parade was the next day. I'm lying on a massage table and the phone rings. And I think I left a number where I would be if she had any questions. Well, she exploded at me. "You're not going to that parade! You're not going to the parade! If you go in that parade, you're fired! You're fired! You're not going to be in that parade!" And I said, "Ardith, I think we're beyond it at this point." So, I ran out of that place and she was browbeating me and browbeating me. "You'll lose your job, you'll lose your job! If you're in that parade, you'll lose your job!" And it's, like, I was horrified. And so, finally, I thought, well, this is the first time I heard why they're doing this to me. So, I just was horrified by the whole thing. And so, that day, the next day, Bob and I got in the car and we drove off and I lost my job. But Ardith Hilliard ended up getting involved in a huge lawsuit. We sued her because she defamed me, which is one of the things that journalism, you're not supposed to do. She basically used an article to call me unethical. The article wasn't about the parade. Didn't mention parade. The article didn't come out about the parade. It came out about Frank Whelan's being unethical. And this is a no-no. You can't do this, you know? So, and they used to give libels -- and so, they libeled me. And the word got out about this and our attorney, Rick Orloski, went after them and eventually, after much carrying on, they were finally -- Rick said, "Okay, I want you, under oath, under oath, under oath and in court to explain what exactly you were doing to Frank Whelan. What exactly were you doing?" And then, they pulled off, away from it. Later on, a woman who was going through a similar thing, was not gay, who was a very, extremely straight woman, she sued the Call. And I was called in to give a deposition about her by my lawyer, who was Orloski, in front of The Morning Call's lawyer, a man named Malcolm Gross. And, yeah, his protégé at the time, a young woman lawyer who was handling this thing. And finally, at the end of this, Orloski pulls out and says, "I have here a document from Susan Hunt. Susan Hunt had been the editor before Ardith Hilliard and Susan Hunt says that this whole thing was cooked up in Chicago to get rid of people who were of a certain age, fifty-five and up. I've got the document." And I've got a document upstairs, too, by the way, and a copy, I got a copy of the deposition. And I just couldn't believe it. And this young lady who was a very talented lawyer, she was, like, (gasps) just crashed. She couldn't -- it really, you know, this whole world crashed that day. But I was so glad and so pleased that I was vindicated. And then, through this whole thing, people stopped me and asked me how I was doing, was everything okay? The community responded to me, not her, not to Ardith Hilliard. They responded to me. So, I ended up -- there on that table is the picture that got us into trouble, picture of Bob and I together. And that appeared in The Morning Call. And that was what caused all this brouhaha and me losing my job. MF: Yeah. FW: Okay? MF: Well, we're about ninety minutes, so -- FW: Okay. MF: -- I think this might be a good place to stop. FW: Cool. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
Duration
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01:20:49
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Frank Whelan, July 23, 2019
Description
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Frank Whelan recounts his life as a gay man, the LGBT organizations he was involved in, his work as a reporter for The Morning Call, and it's impact on the Lehigh Valley as well as his life.
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LGBT-01
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2019-07-23
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/dde74c471b59298b12382643b19f2581.png
083a25c93fe4dcc562a3bcda83000ef7
Dublin Core
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Title
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Mary Foltz
Interviewee
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Bob Wittman
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-02.xml
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The Morning Call
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5.4 August 23, 2019 Bob Wittman, August 23, 2019 LGBT-02 01:37:42 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg The Morning Call Le-Hi-Ho AIDS Bob Wittman Mary Foltz video/mov WittmanBob_20190823_video.mov 1.0:|25(2)|52(11)|71(9)|92(12)|115(3)|132(18)|163(12)|182(12)|199(12)|222(2)|239(14)|260(14)|279(13)|296(5)|315(7)|330(7)|353(3)|372(8)|389(12)|412(2)|431(10)|448(13)|465(17)|482(16)|501(5)|516(16)|533(17)|550(13)|567(16)|586(8)|605(9)|624(5)|641(6)|658(11)|679(2)|698(4)|715(15)|732(14)|749(11)|772(3)|787(15)|806(17)|823(17)|842(5)|861(13)|882(13)|901(15)|922(15)|945(9)|966(7)|991(3)|1010(13)|1033(3)|1054(6)|1077(11)|1098(9)|1113(11)|1132(7)|1151(3)|1170(2)|1189(10)|1212(19)|1231(8)|1254(7)|1273(6)|1294(13)|1313(6)|1332(11)|1351(8)|1372(14)|1393(2)|1414(7)|1435(18)|1450(10)|1473(11)|1492(5)|1511(11)|1528(10)|1551(2)|1570(9)|1591(5)|1610(8)|1629(10)|1648(9)|1665(5)|1682(13)|1697(6)|1716(15)|1737(6)|1752(8)|1771(4)|1788(11)|1807(6)|1818(14)|1837(17)|1860(8)|1877(16)|1896(5) 0 YouTube video < ; iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/USlSpmxUSIQ?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"> ; < ; /iframe> ; 0 Interview Introduction MARY FOLTZ: -- when you’re ready to go.
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 ; CAROL MOELLER: Okay, ready. 
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 ; MF: My name is Mary Foltz. I’m here today with Bob Wittman to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We’re here in Bob and his partner Frank’s home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on August 8, 2019. [Carol Moeller?] is our videographer today. Bob, I just want to thank you so much for your willingness to talk to us today. I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself by just stating your full name and then spelling it for us. 
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 ; ROBERT HENRY WITTMAN JR.: My full name is Robert Henry Wittman Jr. My last name is -- confounds everybody, and I’ve spent my whole life correcting people and it is W-I-T-T-M-A-N. No relationship to the poet or the candy company.
 ; 0 81 Childhood / Family MF: Right. To start our conversation today, I’m going to ask you to share a little bit about your childhood. Could you describe the early years of your life for me today? 
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 ; RHW: Well, I was born in Allentown, grew up here. I really spent my whole life here. As a matter of fact, the only time I had not lived in Allentown is the two years I spent attending Syracuse University from which I graduated in 1975. Other than that, I’ve been here all -- my whole life. And I was born in Allentown Hospital. I grew up in the South Side of Allentown, and my jobs have always kept me here. I always thought maybe I’d escape and move to a place that might be very different from Allentown, that was always kind of an attraction to find that, maybe move to the big city, but jobs always took precedence -- that and my relationship. 0 377 Growing Up in Allentown MF: So I’m Mary Foltz. I’m back with Bob Wittman, and we’ve just been talking about his -- some of his childhood experiences. I’m going to ask Bob, could you tell us a little bit more about what it was like to grow up in Allentown? 
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 ; RHW: Very different than it’s like growing up in Allentown today I suspect. There were three big, interesting department stores downtown, there were multiple movie theaters, there was some live theater. We still have some good restaurants but it was a very different place. A little of the old business activities may be coming back with some of the new development but -- so it’s beginning perhaps to look a little bit like it did in the old days. 0 1002 Life in Syracuse / Introduction to Gay Freedom League RHW: I went to Syracuse, and I discovered even before I arrived in some of the materials that came to my house over the course of the summer, kind of pre-registration materials or pre-arrival materials, and there was list of campus organizations, There must have been a hundred of them, ski club and chess club, debating club, you name it. But there was also something called the Gay Freedom League. So that was really my first introduction to gay people -- not just the gay movement but gay people. Gay Freedom League 0 1739 Coming Out to Family MF: This is Mary Foltz, and I’m back with Bob Wittman. He has just finished discussing his experiences at Syracuse University. And so I wanted to ask a question that kind of goes back a little bit about when you described coming out to your parents. Could you say a little bit more about how they responded when they found out that you were gay and living with another gay man while you were attending Syracuse University?
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 ; RHW: Well, their reaction to me and their -- the way they dealt with me and responded to me being gay has definitely evolved. I think they were just as uninformed about it really as I was, less so clearly. So none of us really had any framework to discuss it or much context to put it in. I can remember saying things I would never say now, but I’d say things like, “Why don’t you just view this like I have a drug addiction and it is part of me and it’s something you have to deal with?” 0 2175 Working at The Morning Call RHW: Actually, my plan was never to return to Allentown. I was a journalist, it was the era of Watergate, all of that had unfolded really while I was in college. There was the Washington Post and the New York Times and that’s where every young kid graduating from college with a journalism degree wanted to end up. So I was eager to get out into the world, and I didn’t really think Allentown was going to be a good stepping-stone. I had worked at the Allentown Morning Call really since the time I was in high school. I got a job, a part-time job there. And when I was a college student, I discovered that the Morning Call had an opening in the news department for what, in those days, they used to call a copyboy The Morning Call 0 3131 LGBT Reporting from The Morning Call MF: This is Mary Foltz. I’m back with Bob Wittman, and he has just described for us meeting who would become his partner Frank at the Morning Call offices. And he has also just described how Frank really knew about Bob from a series of articles and knowing that Bob was publishing about an organization called Le-Hi-Ho. Bob, I’d like to ask you about your coverage as a reporter of LGBT organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. How did that come to be a focus of your journalism or how involved were you on reporting on LGBT issues at the Morning Call? 
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 ; RHW: Well, I was a general assignment reporter, which meant that I covered a lot of municipal governments. Oh, God, I received almost just everyday a different assignment to do a different thing. However, you could do or you could suggest -- editors encourage you to suggest special projects, special stories that you wanted to work on, something you’ve heard about in the community and thought important to give it some coverage. I was pretty closeted at this point at the Morning Call. Le-Hi-Ho ; The Morning Call 0 3726 Meeting Liz and Trish / Local LGBT Politics RHW: So for instance, the Allentown -- so a group of people had been interested, including some people early, early on in Le-Hi-Ho had been interested in adding equal protection language to the city’s human relations ordinance dealing with gay and lesbian people. But Allentown City Council was just always, always, always really, really intransigent, until a young woman arrived on the scene here in Lehigh Valley, by the name of Liz Bradbury and her partner Trish Sullivan. Liz was not a person who was going to sit back and let things take their course. She really wanted to take things in hand and push the envelope. Allentown Anti-discrimination Ordinance ; Gail Hoover ; Liz Bradbury ; Trish Sullivan 0 4127 Reporting on AIDS Crisis RHW: And actually, I was the guy doing a lot of the reporting of the city hall debate while all this was going on. But another episode that happened during that time was the AIDS crisis was breaking. I can remember picking Frank up in his apartment before we were living together on a Saturday morning, I think it was, and we were about to head off to make a day trip to Philadelphia. This was among the first months of my relationship with Frank. We weren’t even really calling, I’m pretty sure, that we were even lovers. AIDS ; Brian Foley ; The Morning Call 0 4553 Work with Le-Hi-Ho MF: This is Mary Foltz, and I’m back with Bob Wittman. He was just telling us a little bit about his work with the Morning Call and some of the pieces that he has written that were focused on the LGBT community in the valley. Bob, I think this is a good segue to talk about your work with organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. So perhaps you could tell me, how did you get involved with Le-Hi-Ho, and what were the aims and goals of Le-Hi-Ho when you were involved with that organization? 
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 ; RHW: When I graduated from college and came back to the Lehigh Valley, the -- if you wanted to experience gay life, I mean go look for gay life, you had basically two options: You could go to a gay bar, and there weren’t many of those, two or three, or you could go to Le-Hi-Ho. Le-Hi-Ho used to kind of bill itself or least many of us thought of it as the alternative to the bars. Clint Miller ; Le-Hi-Ho ; Mattachine Society ; National Gay and Lesbian Task Force ; Paul Kendall ; Paul Reeder ; Ron Seeds 0 5100 Other LGBT Organizations RHW: Actually, the two Pauls I just mentioned, Paul Kendall as he was retiring as a geology professor from Kutztown University, decided to give himself a retirement project, and he pretty much single-handedly with the backing of Le-Hi-Ho, organized and opened a gay community center at Eighth and Hamilton. The Bradbury-Sullivan Center is a latter-day version of that. Sadly, it’s not a descendant of it. The community center didn’t become the gay -- the Bradbury-Sullivan Center. But for a few, brief glorious years, the Lambda Center at Eighth and Hamilton Street flourished. I’m trying to think what other organizations were founded, and I’m struggling a little bit to do so, but I think there were a couple of others. AIDS Services Center ; AIDS Services Committee ; Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center ; Lambda Center ; PFLAG 0 MovingImage Bob Wittman describes his life growing up gay in Allentown, reporting at The Morning Call, and the LGBT community within the Lehigh Valley. MARY FOLTZ: -- when you're ready to go. CAROL MOELLER: Okay, ready. MF: My name is Mary Foltz. I'm here today with Bob Wittman to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We're here in Bob and his partner Frank's home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on August 8, 2019. [Carol Moeller?] is our videographer today. Bob, I just want to thank you so much for your willingness to talk to us today. I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself by just stating your full name and then spelling it for us. ROBERT HENRY WITTMAN JR.: My full name is Robert Henry Wittman Jr. My last name is -- confounds everybody, and I've spent my whole life correcting people and it is W-I-T-T-M-A-N. No relationship to the poet or the candy company. MF: (laughs) Could you please share your birthdate with us? RHW:I was born on May 15th in the year 1953. MF:And prior to beginning this interview, you and I sat down, you read through a consent form, do you consent to this interview today? RHW:Yes, I absolutely do. MF:Right. To start our conversation today, I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about your childhood. Could you describe the early years of your life for me today? RHW:Well, I was born in Allentown, grew up here. I really spent my whole life here. As a matter of fact, the only time I had not lived in Allentown is the two years I spent attending Syracuse University from which I graduated in 1975. Other than that, I've been here all -- my whole life. And I was born in Allentown Hospital. I grew up in the South Side of Allentown, and my jobs have always kept me here. I always thought maybe I'd escape and move to a place that might be very different from Allentown, that was always kind of an attraction to find that, maybe move to the big city, but jobs always took precedence -- that and my relationship. But I had a very good childhood. You asked about my childhood ; I had a wonderful childhood. It was a pretty normal childhood. I was part of the great, big baby boom generation. My parents bought an almost brand-new house on the South Side of Allentown that was built right after World War II. My parents were the World War II generation. They moved into a neighborhood with people exactly like them, all working-class moms and dads with young children. There must have been about twenty of us who were all around the same age, and my backyard was their backyard and vice versa. We just ran from property to property on the South Side of -- on the North side of South Mountain. So we had connection to the woods and the South side Reservoir, Waldheim Park, eventually Mack Pool when they built it. So these were some of my landmarks of childhood. My family's somewhat small. I have no siblings, my father had none, my mother had two, so the immediate family was pretty small, but we were very, very close growing up. And I attribute whatever happiness I've found in life to the fact that I had a very, very strong family. You know particularly, these days, and the life I've led since, I've met people who didn't come from that kind of background. In fact, it seems it's hard to find people who have a childhood they can look back on and say, "Wow, it was really a good time." So I've really come to appreciate as an adult actually how really blessed I was. I had an aunt and uncle who had a summer home, a second home at Lake Wallenpaupack in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and it was just a wonderful place to spend time, and I spent my whole childhood conniving ways to get there. My aunt was very generous with allowing me to be a guest frequently. She gave me a week every summer that was Bob's week to come to the lake and be with my cousins and enjoy the lake. But to tell you the truth, every carload that was or every car that was going from the Lehigh Valley to Lake Wallenpaupack, I was always hoping I might get a call, "Hey, does Bobby want to go along?" because that was a place I really did a lot of growing up. There were sailboats and water -- motorboats and waterskiing, and it was just really a terrific background I have. CM: Okay, can we pause please? Sorry, I just have to check real quick. (inaudible) There's nothing going from the audio. MF: Oh, I see. CM: The mic to the... That's what was bothering me before. It wasn't quite right. But we can make up the audio you've done so far with the TASCAM mic or just the camera I think. MF: Yeah. CM:Not to worry. MF: Okay. CM: Much better. MF: Okay. CM: Okay. MF: All right. CM: Okay. MF:So I'm Mary Foltz. I'm back with Bob Wittman, and we've just been talking about his -- some of his childhood experiences. I'm going to ask Bob, could you tell us a little bit more about what it was like to grow up in Allentown? RHW:Very different than it's like growing up in Allentown today I suspect. There were three big, interesting department stores downtown, there were multiple movie theaters, there was some live theater. We still have some good restaurants but it was a very different place. A little of the old business activities may be coming back with some of the new development but -- so it's beginning perhaps to look a little bit like it did in the old days. But anybody from my generation can remember things like Hess's department store on a sale day when people hundreds deep were waiting in front of the front doors when the store opened in the morning. I lived on the South Side of Allentown sort of distant from the downtown but as a young boy, I learned to ride the city's public buses, the transit system. It was nothing at all for me to hop on a bus and run into town on the middle of the day and catch a movie or meet friends and just run around the department stores, getting into not too much trouble but really using that as almost a playground too. I still dream about it. I know some people who have maybe come later and they're a little impatient with some of us who can't get over the Hess's days. I confess, I still dream about it, you know it was really a marvelous, marvelous place. We've been talking about a childhood growing up, and I guess I'm making it sound quite idyllic. And in its background and in its foundation, it certainly was, but I was a young man who was trying to grow up and trying to develop. And so there were also a lot of challenges that were in the foreground during my experience. One was the fact that, actually, I wasn't a very good student, and this was a terrible problem for me. I was surrounded by bright people. My cousins, I have mentioned earlier from the Lake Wallenpaupack, were my best friends, and they were very, very good in school, all straight-A students both of them, and I wasn't. I was going to be the first person in my family to go to college, and some of my grades by the time I got to high school suggested that that might not work out that way. On top of that, there was the Vietnam War, which began when I was a little, little boy, and I can remember asking my father at some point, "Dad, am I ever going to have to get sent over there?" And he said, "Oh, this will be over long before you're of draft age." Well guess what, it wasn't. Although by the time I did reach draft age, truthfully, they weren't drafting many American boys anymore. They pretty much wound down the draft, and the next year, I got a very low draft number. But I didn't know that growing up and so a couple of things were working to really disturb my sense of well-being, and they were all interrelated. I mean there was Vietnam and kind of a consequence of not having good grades and not going to college was maybe going to Vietnam. So I felt I had to get good grades, so I would not have to go to Vietnam. So those two were definitely related to one another. And then increasingly, it dawned on me that I was different in another way as well. I didn't really know what that was at the time. I thought I was the only person in the world who felt the way I did. And it's hard to imagine that you could feel so lonely and isolated given the world that we have today. But it was a very difficult thing for me to deal with, with being gay. I mean actually, I like the idea of being gay. I just found that the world had no idea what I was feeling, and there was no context for it. I mean it simply was not in the paper ; it wasn't discussed. You might pick up a reference to gay people, to homos, to fags, that kind of thing in street conversation and family conversation but certainly not in any positive context. There were no role models. There was no media buzz about it ; there was just nothing. So it was my own feelings about friends I had and why wasn't I growing up and developing attraction for girls when they started to. So the growing up was a mixture of these very good times and when I felt I had good, strong support and then also wondering what would happen if some of these other things didn't work out. Like little Bobby didn't grow up to want a family and a wife and children. What if little Bobby didn't grow up and wasn't able to go to college, what would he do then? So those were some of the challenges I faced growing up. The fact is, in time, they all worked themselves out pretty much. I didn't have the good grades to get into a good college, but what I did was I marshalled my brain resources, and I enrolled in the community college, Lehigh Carbon Community College. I spent two years there, I got an associate's degree, and I grew up enough academically that I was prepared to go on to a big, four-year college. I had a really good experience at "L-Tri-C", as we call it here in the Lehigh Valley, Lehigh Carbon Community College, LCCC. I got good grades ; I made the dean's list. I joined an academic trip to the Soviet Union only a year or two after it opened up -- was opened up by Richard Nixon's -- President Nixon's trip there. I really had a good experience. I might also say during all this period of time at the community college, I also had a girlfriend, a very nice young woman I met through a mutual friend who's my age. I actually stole her, and we had a good time dating during the years of my -- kind of the final months of high school and my -- the first two years of college while I was at the community college. She was a student at Moravian College, so we were basically two home living -- still-at-home-living college students, so we shared that in common, and I think really enjoyed each other's company. I will confess, it took me months to kiss her for the first time. I think she knew that that signaled something. However, once I did kiss her, I kissed her a lot, and I found I enjoyed it. But I also found I really liked her brother who was a year or two younger. And after we separated to go to on with our education -- me after two years at the community college. I graduated from there, and I transferred my credits to Syracuse University from which I graduated in 1975 with degrees in journalism and political science. My girlfriend also had decided for her own reasons to transfer from Moravian, and she went on to Susquehanna University. In her case, I think it was mostly she wanted the experience of not being a home student, a student living at home and so she talked her parents into the transfer, so we're both transferring at the same time. After I was in Syracuse just a few weeks, she got a -- I received a letter that -- from her that said, "You know since we're not going to be seeing each other for months at a time now while we're both away from school, I hope you think it's okay if we date other people." And truthfully, I was very happy that she's made that suggestion because I was ready to start dating men. I went to Syracuse, and I discovered even before I arrived in some of the materials that came to my house over the course of the summer, kind of pre-registration materials or pre-arrival materials, and there was list of campus organizations, There must have been a hundred of them, ski club and chess club, debating club, you name it. But there was also something called the Gay Freedom League. So that was really my first introduction to gay people -- not just the gay movement but gay people. So I was mighty intrigued about this, and after I got the letter from my girlfriend, I decided I wanted to try to reach this organization. You know this is pre-computer days, so you did everything by mail, and the different campus organizations maybe had offices. This one actually did, and it also had an office address. So I sent a letter to the Gay Freedom League from my dorm room, and it was answered by the postal system. The letter came back to my dorm room from somebody who was sort of helping to coordinate the Gay Freedom League. I don't know that it had any one leader. It seemed to me it had sort of a collection of people that haphazardly ran this organization. So the man asked me if I would like to get together and talk, and that's exactly what I wanted to do. I think he gave me his telephone number, and I nervously placed a phone call to him, and we set a date to meet on campus. I wish I could remember the guy's name, but he was about as different from me as you could imagine. I mean I have short hair now -- I had short hair back in college then -- he had hair down to his waist. I mean this was the age when there still were hippies, and he would've easily been classified as a hippie. He was quite out, and of course, I'm very nervous about this whole project I'm embarking on. I think we met at the campus coffee shop. And we sat across from each other in a room crowded with other people, and he started saying, "Well, and there's nothing wrong with being gay and if you're gay and" dat, da, ra, and he's very loud. I just felt like everybody in the room was looking at us. He discovered my discomfort and so we walked to an academic building, actually the school of music, which had a great, big auditorium. And you could almost always go in there and sit with your books and study and listen to students rehearsing on the organ or the piano upfront. So that's what we did, and that's where we had a really good talk. He also detected that he was quite different from me, and he said, "You know there's somebody new that has come in that is new to Syracuse also like you, and he's actually not a student. He works for the university, but he's just a year away from being a student. He's a year out of college himself, and he's gay. He's much more straightlaced, more like you. I think you'd enjoy knowing him." So sure enough, he followed through, even before I had a chance to react or anything, and before I know it, this guy is knocking on my dorm room door. I was a little surprised at the forcefulness of this guy's entrée to me, but nonetheless, I came to appreciate it. His name was David. He had just been hired after giving up in graduate school at that point. He had been going to Columbia and left New York City because actually he was gay, and he had been having trouble dealing with that and academia and so he decided to go jump-start his career. He had planned to go into like college development work and so he secured a job at Syracuse in the publications office. I guess his plan was he was going to take some graduate courses at Syracuse and so forth. It wasn't long before he enlisted me in a college project, a campus project, a school project to update, which they did every year, the campus handbook. I was still a student in my first year at the college, and now suddenly, I'm being offered the editorship of the college handbook. I've been doing some house cleaning here recently, and I came to discover I actually saved -- I didn't now, I threw them out a week ago, but I saved my pay stubs. I forgot I got a little stipend of about fourteen dollars a week for working on the college handbook. But one thing led to another. David and I became pretty close. The guy who introduced us turned out to be dead right. We did have a lot in common we discovered or at least in our outlook in life, in our hopes and dreams and that sort of thing. So he became really my first serious gay mentor. Along about this time, now mind you, I'm, uh, a freshman, junior -- how does it go? Freshman, junior, sophomore, senior, is that correct? So I was a sophomore I was in my third year of college, but my first year at Syracuse. That first year at Syracuse, I lived in a dorm with another roommate who, over the course of our months together, realized all of a sudden he was living with a gay man. He didn't quite know how he felt about that. I mean we've stayed in touch, and we're friends to this day, but at first, it was a little bit of a shock. And it happened around the end of the school season, and he said, "You know I think I'd rather find another roommate for next season." And truthfully, I was headed in that direction anyway, but very quickly, what developed is the acquaintance I've made, David suggested that the two of us can find an apartment together off campus. And that at that point appealed to me greatly, so we did that. It was quite fun, my first time doing this, it almost felt like a little gay couple finding an apartment and sign the lease and so forth. And so I came home from the summer looking forward to the coming year. My action really sent alarms to my family at home. They were a little surprised that I was mo-- well first of all, wanted to move out of the dorm, and secondly, that I was moving in with someone who was not really a student but an employee. My father amazingly, who was a well-connected guy, went to the trouble of doing some background checks on David and managed to find out that he was gay and presented this to me that he had found this out and asked me if I was. So that brought everything to the fore. I, over the summer, have been trying to think of ways to tell them, and in fact, I kind of gave him maybe a reason to look into his past because I had broached the idea to everybody, my parents and to David, to maybe make a visit to Allentown over the summer, you know, "Come visit, stay overnight." It never happened, and we never even had gotten close enough to even talking about a date. But in the meanwhile, my father made this discovery and decided -- you know, it seemed at the time that he didn't really want to be very nice about this. Nonetheless, what was he going to do? I was going back to school in a few weeks, the lease was already signed, this was going to be my friend. I assured him that he was a man of enormous decency. And I guess they gave me the benefit of the doubt, and the year unfolded as I intended it should. Eventually, they met David, they took him out to dinner, they... You know he made some lovely pictures of us in the backyard of the building we lived that still are around in frames on coffee tables at home. But what they really didn't realize, what David was giving me. David worked for the university, and it turns out, David worked for a gay man, and that gay man reported directly to the chancellor. So all of a sudden, I had this perfect opportunity to be around, seeing their homes, socialize with some really rather accomplished gay people. This wasn't the hippie that took me into the loft of the music school for a private chat. This wasn't a guy who walked me through the cemetery and wanted to make love to me, I guess, amidst the tombstones. This was a guy who, you know, met his friends for cocktails and brunch on Sunday mornings and sat there together with his friends. And they read the New York Times and talked about big things, big topics, big things in the news, big things going on, on campus, campus politics, campus business for that matter. So I wound up having a really interesting, unique, and I think a really beneficial time at Syracuse just because of the way that all worked out. So why don't we end it there? (break in video) MF: This is Mary Foltz, and I'm back with Bob Wittman. He has just finished discussing his experiences at Syracuse University. And so I wanted to ask a question that kind of goes back a little bit about when you described coming out to your parents. Could you say a little bit more about how they responded when they found out that you were gay and living with another gay man while you were attending Syracuse University? RHW:Well, their reaction to me and their -- the way they dealt with me and responded to me being gay has definitely evolved. I think they were just as uninformed about it really as I was, less so clearly. So none of us really had any framework to discuss it or much context to put it in. I can remember saying things I would never say now, but I'd say things like, "Why don't you just view this like I have a drug addiction and it is part of me and it's something you have to deal with?" I imagine I used that negative concept in trying to reach them, so that's why I say none of us really had the words, the language because it wasn't discussed. I mean nobody did. Families weren't talking about this in these day-- in those days. My father in many ways was my best friend, but he was a difficult man. He was a marine. He was a little insecure about his own fabric as a person, his own composition. Not the sexuality I don't think, although maybe sometimes my mother speculated about how confident he was. I always thought my mother was kind of the more sympathetic of the two but in a way I found I couldn't really discuss with her. It hurt her. It hurt her feelings, you know something -- she might likely cry. My father on the other hand would run sort of hot and cold on it. He could be my best friend about it or a real obstacle to me trying to deal with it. I mean, at one point, he'd say, "You know I was in the marines, and when I was in the marines, it seemed to me everybody in the navy was gay. Maybe you should join the navy." And other times, we'd talk about things, and he would let me get very candid, and he could be very sympathetic and then other times, it was just... I don't know, it was just something he couldn't deal with. He was quite proud of the family tree and family traditions. He became a bit of an amateur genealogist, and suddenly, the family tree stopped with his son, so it would seem, and so it did as a matter of fact but... With him it was -- it never really resolved itself to a place where I'd say I was comfortable with it and he was comfortable with it. When I was a young man, he developed cancer. He was a heavy, heavy smoker and so this was maybe not a surprise. He eventually died of lung cancer, but he had lymphoma in the mouth and that from cigarette smoking. So he was dead by the time he was fifty-nine, and I was probably, at that point, how old would I have been? I guess I was in my thirties. I had already met Frank, my partner. We haven't talked about yet today, but I think we probably will. But while we're on this story, suffice to say that Frank came into my life, and I met him through the newspaper. He became a work colleague of mine as well as my lover and partner and eventually my husband. And my father really liked Frank. My father loved history, and Frank's background is in history. He's a historian by academic training and by profession. All of the work he did for the newspaper we worked for, for the Morning Call, were feature articles about local history. So this gave my father always something to talk to Frank about, and he loved Frank for that. So Frank really helped break down, I guess, some of the mystery of what it was like to be gay. They did tell me after I introduced Frank to my parents that I came walking through the door -- walking in the backyard I guess it was with Frank at my side, and I was apparently just beaming. I don't think they quite fully understood until that moment that this was somebody I really cared about. He wasn't just a friend I wanted them to meet. So he really did help bring a lot of clarity to my relationship. My father passed on, sad that that was, and then it was just my mother and me. And gradually over the years, she became completely accepting of it. In 2013 when we decided, for a lot of practical reasons mostly, that it made sense for Frank and I to get married. We did, and we asked my mother to be our witness. We did it in New York City in the marriage license hall of the city clerk's office. And my mom bought us both carnations for our lapels, and we said the vows, and she was very excited to be a part of all that. So that's why I say it really did evolve. But this all began at Syracuse, and I didn't know where it was going to go when I left Syracuse and returned home after I graduated. Actually, my plan was never to return to Allentown. I was a journalist, it was the era of Watergate, all of that had unfolded really while I was in college. There was the Washington Post and the New York Times and that's where every young kid graduating from college with a journalism degree wanted to end up. So I was eager to get out into the world, and I didn't really think Allentown was going to be a good stepping-stone. I had worked at the Allentown Morning Call really since the time I was in high school. I got a job, a part-time job there. And when I was a college student, I discovered that the Morning Call had an opening in the news department for what, in those days, they used to call a copyboy. It was just really kind of an office boy. Before you had computers, you had real paper that stories were written on, on typewriters, and those pieces of paper had to be carried physically to an editor who edited. After he was done editing that piece of paper, it had to go upstairs to the composing room to be set into type so that paper had to move around, and copyboys provided that motion. Eventually, I used that copyboy position to become a summer intern who wrote stories, kind of acted like a reporter and... So by the time I went away to Syracuse, I actually had -- to work on a journalism degree, I actually had real-life experience going out and covering a municipal meeting, like maybe the Coplay Borough Council or Upper Saucon Township Zoning Board. I mean it these were tiny, little meetings in the meeting hall sometimes so rural, they were hard to find. But nonetheless, it was real journalism. You know the stuff got printed in the newspaper the next day. So, obviously, I had to quit the Call to go to Syracuse. I couldn't continue to work there part time at nights and on weekends and summertime when I had to be four hours away and then in central New York attending classes. But I left in good terms, and fortunately, they arranged a summer internship between my junior and senior years. And then after I graduated, they still didn't know if they had an opening for me. They said, "Come back and be a summer intern yet again, and we'll see what happens by the fall." Fortunately by the fall, they had an opening and sort of, in a way, the rest is history. I remained there for most of the rest of my career. I certainly didn't intend to. I thought I was just going back there briefly. For a few years, I'll work there. It was going to be a good job. As I was graduating from college, I applied to a lot of places, and after I was working for the Morning Call for about a year, I got a call from UPI, United Press International, the wire service. It's now out of business. I mean it's a good idea I didn't link my career to its vessel but um... So I thought I might not -- no, I didn't think I might. My goal was always to not stay at the Morning Call. Although I liked the place, it was my hometown newspaper, I'd made friends there, my plan always had been to move on. My friend David that I mentioned who was so much of a mentor to me in college, the man who worked for the university and with whom I later enjoyed an apartment the final year of my time at Syracuse wound up in California, eventually in San Francisco, exactly where a gay person wanted to be at that time. So for a long time, a few years anyway, I thought I was going to end up working for San -- in California working for a newspaper. I did a lot of job hunting out there. Being gay helped actually. As it turns out, David had made a really good friend of the man who was no less than publisher of the Sacramento Bee and a couple of other papers in like Fresno -- they're all named Bee -- and guess what, he was gay. So David arranged for me to have an interview with the publisher of the Sacramento Bee. In San Francisco -- no, not in San Francisco, that's where he lived. So he took me out to dinner, we had wine. I mean how -- who gets to have an opportunity like this? And I probably, had I continued to press him and press that opportunity, I probably could've wound up working in Sacramento later that year or the next. But in the meanwhile, I'd met Frank, and that really kind of put the brakes on stuff. Actually, it was Frank who recommended that I take the train to San Francisco to kind of what turned out to be that last trip I made job hunting and then when I had the dinner with C. K. McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee. He said, "You had gone by airplane so often, why don't you take the train?" and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, I should've taken him along, then it would really have been a good experience. I did it alone. I had worked for the Morning Call after I graduated from college for about eight years before Frank arrived. And, um, his arrival was part of an effort that the publisher of the Morning Call, at the time, was making to really change and transform the newspaper. The Morning Call in those days was owned by a family. Now, it's owned by -- actually, I think it's owned by a hedge fund, but eventually it became owned by the Times-Mirror Corporation of California, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. And later, they sold, and it was purchased by the Chicago Tribune organization. But when I started there and when Frank joined the newspaper, it was still owned by a local family. They lived in the Parkway, they drove to work, they ate at the Pennsylvania restaurant, and it was a very folksy operation. The publisher, an older man, Donald Miller, Donald P. Miller, a real patriarch of both the newspaper, and his family had decided early on that his son would take over the news business, and the son was quite interested in doing so. He spent his academic career preparing for it, and his father fixed him up with some good training jobs at other places to sort of groom him to be publisher. And when Donald Miller got to be, I don't know, up in his sixties or seventy or something like that, he decided it was time for his son Eddie to take over and so he began giving more and more responsibility to Eddie. First, he gave him a position as executive editor, and eventually, he sort of said -- the publisher said he would step back and let his son Edward become -- the title he chose for himself -- editor and publisher. So it was during that period that Frank and a whole lot of other people were hired by the son. And he really wanted to transform the paper and make it something more than just a small, little, local, hometown newspaper. He wanted it to win awards, and he wanted it to have a top-notch staff, and he wanted it to have a national reputation. So he hired a lot of people including Frank. The problem was he spent a lot of money real quickly, and his father just didn't understand the program that the son was embarking on. And they had immediate and ongoing conflicts over the budget and over priorities and just how to run a newspaper. Eddie was not in an enviable position, that's for sure. I mean, his father (laughs) was an interesting man. I'm glad he wasn't my father even if he would've afforded me all the opportunities that Don Miller was able to afford his children. They didn't get along, and eventually Eddie quit. And as things were becoming unraveled, this sort of experiment of bringing in a whole lot of outsiders to beef up the paper and add some real editorial muscle to the staff was petering out. The young people he brought in, many of them said, "Wow, you know, this isn't going to work out in the long run, maybe we shouldn't be sticking around here as long as we thought." And so the Morning Call became during that period a real springboard for people to jump on for a year and jump out and go off to a place like maybe the Philadelphia Inquirer or the Washington Post, New York Times maybe, big-city newspapers. Those of us who watched this all come in and watched all these people leave, we gave the -- this crowd of newcomers who didn't stick around too long, gave them the epithet, the boat people. This was kind of a springboard off of what was happening in current events at the time. There were a whole lot of people trying to escape Cuba and were taking life rafts and leaky boats and unlicensed vessels just to be dumped near American shore, and they'd wade to shore and then... It was during the Carter administration, and they became known as the boat people. So we cynically called our colleagues the boat people who were sort of shipped in and came in and made a whole lot of noise and did some flashy things and then, boom, all of a sudden, they were gone. Well, Frank was one of the last people that Eddie hired before he came in one morning with a screwdriver and took his -- unscrewed the nameplate from his door and threw it on his father's desk and said, "I quit." Frank was actually hired not to be a reporter but to be a researcher. He came from a background of working in the state archive for the state of Missouri. He had trained for that in his -- in college. He had a degree in history and so he was good at looking at records and find his -- finding his way through piles of research. So he was going to be a researcher, and Ed Miller, the son of the publisher, eventually the publisher, had figured out he was going to put a team of people together that would be an investigative team. There was going to be kind of a permanent editor and so permanent copywriters. The reporters would move in and out as projects changed, and Frank would be a permanent researcher assigned to this unit. Well, it never got off the ground. Eddie quit right after Frank arrived, and suddenly, a whole bunch of new people were running the newsroom. And eventually, they came to Frank and said, "What do you do here?" By then, I guess I had met him. I was not one who liked necessarily the -- some of the drama that had attended -- you know, Ed Miller's attempts to transform the newsroom. Some of us who were there all along and hoping for these things felt a little bit left out. So some of it was personal, but some of it was just, wow, there's so much noise and so much coming and going, I just need to do my job, and I was focused in that way. So one day -- the story I like to tell -- I was sitting at my desk. I had some downtime. Another reporter was sitting literally on my desk, the corner of my desk, the two of us were talking. And suddenly, out of the periphery of my eye, I see this little guy walk across the newsroom carrying a great, big stack of books. And I said to Joyce, the other reporter, I said, "Now, who the hell is that?" And she said, "Well, that's Frank, that's Frank Whelan, you don't know Frank? He's been here about a month, Eddie hired him, he's going to be a researcher," and explained this whole thing. I said, "Well, I don't know. No, I haven't met him," and that was that. And I didn't want to meet him. But then one day, I'm sitting at my desk, early one morning just reading the paper waiting for the workday to begin in earnest, and I look up, and there's this guy, Frank, who's pointed out to me a few weeks before, standing in front of me. "Hello, I'm Frank Whelan, I work here at the Morning Call" and then he proceeds to say, "I see you've done some articles on an organization called Le-Hi-Ho. I would like to get to know some of those people." The way he said it, I knew exactly what he was saying, I'm gay. And I took a gulp, and I said, "Oh, you would? Let's go have some coffee." So we walked down to the company cafeteria, and we had coffee. We had dinner that night, and we kind of have been together ever since. There you go, a good place to end. (break in video) MF:This is Mary Foltz. I'm back with Bob Wittman, and he has just described for us meeting who would become his partner Frank at the Morning Call offices. And he has also just described how Frank really knew about Bob from a series of articles and knowing that Bob was publishing about an organization called Le-Hi-Ho. Bob, I'd like to ask you about your coverage as a reporter of LGBT organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. How did that come to be a focus of your journalism or how involved were you on reporting on LGBT issues at the Morning Call? RHW: Well, I was a general assignment reporter, which meant that I covered a lot of municipal governments. Oh, God, I received almost just everyday a different assignment to do a different thing. However, you could do or you could suggest -- editors encourage you to suggest special projects, special stories that you wanted to work on, something you've heard about in the community and thought important to give it some coverage. I was pretty closeted at this point at the Morning Call. I mentioned that Frank figured it out, but when I first started working there eight years before I met him, I was extremely nervous about it, about anybody finding out. I avoided the subjects and really tried to hide it. You know I'm human, and you want to be friends with people, and you don't want to keep everything away from everybody, at least I didn't, so I mean I did tell some of the reporters. There was another reporter, big, actually African American, utterly heterosexual, lover of women to the end of the day, I wound up being friends with and told him that I was gay. And it was John Clark who suggested, "Why don't we do a story on gay people in the Lehigh Valley?" And I guess my reaction was like, "Really, you mean there's more than one, there's more than me?" But I guess I knew that there were others.I knew about Le-Hi-Ho. I'd been to a few Le-Hi-Ho meetings. So we suggested it to the editors, and they said, "Yeah, go ahead, do it." You know, looking back on it, it was really poorly done compared to things that I did later, but this is what Frank found. I think it was probably like three to four stories. They were all very, very short. There was none of the kind of in-depth -- you know finding a person and creating a story of that person to tell a larger story. That's what we really should have done, but we didn't. It was kind of superficial reporting. Nonetheless, nonetheless, that is absolutely the first local reporting that was ever done on the gay community. There may have been references to homosexuals being arrested or even -- maybe even political activism in other communities in New York City, places like that, so these have been wire stories but a local story, no. One of the other reporters, an old guy, awfully nice guy, but he sort of heard this, what John and I were working on. In fact, he asked us and said, "So what are you two guys working on?" We told him, "We're working on a story on the local gay community." He kind of, hmm, sniffed and, "Well," he said, "I guess Allentown has always had its queers," and walked away, so... But that's the story Frank found. In subsequent years as gay people and the gay movement and then eventually AIDS became more and more a topic of people's conversations and more a topic of legislation, it therefore became more of a topic of local news. So, you know, a lot of that reporting fell to me just because one, two, three, four, who's available here today. But in time, as I came out more and more and editors understood that I was actually a resource on this subject, then it came to develop that I was actually assigned stories because I was gay. And I liked that. I mean, I was proud of that. The Morning Call, my editors were looking to me as somebody that they could trust, that here's somebody who understands the community. He's got some connections, he can get the interviews, he can get the information. So to that extent, I did wind up doing an awful lot of reporting especially on the gay community, on gay events and so forth. At the same time, I was being a little subversive. Reporters are not supposed to dabble in... Actually, reporters are not supposed to have private lives period. That's the way some editors and some editors that I worked for viewed the way things should be. I always had a little trouble with that. For one thing, I'm a restless guy and I'm impatient, and one of the reasons I got into the news business is because I wanted to change the world. And it was during the time of Watergate that I was going to college and so there was -- imbued throughout journalism was this idea that a good news story could effect change, so... But I wanted to take it a step further in terms of gay people. I just felt that they had been so underrepresented in the news in the past that I wanted to make sure that kind of the movement move forward. And if I could do anything as a journalist, I wasn't going to stand in the way. So I did a lot of things that my editors would have not approved of had they known. I just did it very quietly. I mean I was reporting on in some cases, but in other cases, I've befriended gay people, some people who wanted to be active. I mean some of these were Le-Hi-Ho. But that actually was not -- although it was the Lehigh Valley's first and really one of the nation's first and longest enduring gay organizations, it wasn't actually politically, politically active. I mean the very fact that it existed was political you might say. But it didn't try to get certain candidates elected and other candidates defeated. You know, it just didn't work in that way. The people who were involved in Le-Hi-Ho weren't involved in it because they were political people. However, other people came along later who did want to get involved in politics, who did want to see Allentown and the other local communities pass human rights ordinance that contained language about protections for gay people, equal treatment for gay people. And those people, of course, I wound up knowing as a newspaper reporter in part because they were people that we're reporting on and the things they wanted to do and accomplish, but at the same time, I gave assistance to. So I really blurred lines, but my bosses never really knew it, and the people that I was reporting on respected me more for it. So for that reason, I never thought it was a problem. Actually, I had a thirty year running debate with my editors about how involved a reporter could be. I always maintained that I could be as political as I wanted just so long everybody knew where I was coming from. So what difference does it make if Bob Wittman is a liberal Democrat reporting on a conservative Republican mayor for instance? As long as the conservative Republican mayor knows that Bob Wittman is a liberal Democrat, but he's going to give the Republican mayor a fair shot on everything he tells him, which I did. So to me it was -- I didn't really see myself as violating ethics policies in the way I behaved. I knew exactly how far I could push this and how far not to. And only a few times did I ever say, "Hmm, I probably went a little farther than I should, but hopefully, nobody will find out." So for instance, the Allentown -- so a group of people had been interested, including some people early, early on in Le-Hi-Ho had been interested in adding equal protection language to the city's human relations ordinance dealing with gay and lesbian people. But Allentown City Council was just always, always, always really, really intransigent, until a young woman arrived on the scene here in Lehigh Valley, by the name of Liz Bradbury and her partner Trish Sullivan. Liz was not a person who was going to sit back and let things take their course. She really wanted to take things in hand and push the envelope. Liz was a little naïve at first, but, boy, she was a quick learner, and I was one of her teachers. For instance, she thought it would just be an easy thing. It sounded logical to her. If you made a logical argument to logical people, they should see the logic and pass logical legislation. But Liz, this is emotional, it's not just logical. And so her idea that "Well, why don't we just go and propose this to city council in the right way, the proper way and in a becoming way?" and I said, "No, I think you need to do more. You need to get people on your side before you take that step, you know get the lawyers on your side, get the doctors on your side, get other organizations on your side, get neighborhood groups on your side." And you know what, she did that. She spent two years, three years, I don't know how many years doing exactly that. She published her own community newspaper for the gay community and right down the center of it on page one, was a growing list of organizations that supported Allentown -- the passage of Allentown -- of a human relations or human rights ordinance in Allentown. She's one step further. She enlisted an acquaintance, another woman, a lesbian to run for Allentown city council, and she won. She organized the, you know, local gay community, made sure people are registered to vote and got them to vote, made sure they voted on election day, and they elected Gail Hoover to be Allentown's first openly gay city councilwoman, city council person period. So now, they had at least one guaranteed vote on city council, so now it's a matter of persuading, what is it, six more I guess. Right now, Allentown City Council I think is completely Democrat, and I bet a human rights ordinance like this wouldn't have too much trouble passing. But in those days, the Democrats and the Republicans serving on city council were pretty even, evenly numbered. And even among the Democrats, these were pretty conservative people. But she began working on them kind of one by one, take -- meeting with them, going out for coffee, going out for breakfast, and that kind of thing. She finally got the council president. He's just passed away last week, David Howells, a former Allentown policeman. That's what his career was. Only in retirement did he get involved in politics. She convinced him. I thought it was a hard sell, but she convinced him. There's another guy in city council, David Bausch, never been married, always has a German exchange student living in the home, has a million-dollar, literally a million-dollar toy collection, antique collection in his house, rumored, always whispered about that "David Bausch must be gay." But believe it or not, he absolutely did not support the ordinance, so we knew that there was some uphill battles -- there was going to be opposition, there was going to be some support. So there are couple of key people right in the middle: One was a Republican by the name of Tom Burke, a bright guy, actually from Massachusetts, a retired Proctor & ; Gamble engineer whose big passion in life is golf. And that's really mostly what he cares about, but he does care about good government and good legislation. And he is one of these people that Liz was hoping everybody was, and that is somebody who could listen to a logical argument and make a logical conclusion and then embed that in legislation. So here's an instance when Frank and I probably stepped a little bit beyond the line of what we should've done as reporters. But we knew Tom was sort of sitting on the face on this issue. We invited him here to our house for a beer or coffee or something, kind of in the after-work time, time period. We sat outside on the back porch on a summer afternoon, and for a couple of hours talked Tom into voting, voting for it. I mean, he did leave here committed to doing it, and all during the open debate, nobody knew how Tom was going to vote until he voted. But in the end when it came time to vote, Tom voted yes. And it pushed it right over the edge. They only needed his vote, on more vote, he gave it, and there it happened. So it was pretty cool. You know that involves human or the human rights ordinance and kind of direct politics. And actually, I was the guy doing a lot of the reporting of the city hall debate while all this was going on. But another episode that happened during that time was the AIDS crisis was breaking. I can remember picking Frank up in his apartment before we were living together on a Saturday morning, I think it was, and we were about to head off to make a day trip to Philadelphia. This was among the first months of my relationship with Frank. We weren't even really calling, I'm pretty sure, that we were even lovers. We were just two men who worked together, and he was new to Pennsylvania, and I was enjoying taking -- spending weekends, taking him places and acting as tour guide. He got in the car that morning though all upset, and there's been a story in the New York Times about something they're calling a gay cancer. It's killing men in San Francisco and New York, and nobody has any idea why. So there was a wake-up call. But sometime later, you know, as we're watching this news unfold on two coasts, I got a call from an acquaintance, a gay man whom I knew slightly through like Le-Hi-Ho. And he said to me, "Would you be interested as a newspaper reporter doing an interview on a story with a local man who has AIDS?" Now you see, nobody knew that AIDS was anywhere but in New York and San Francisco. I'm sure people knew that there was evidence that it was elsewhere. But in people's minds, I'm pretty sure nobody thought it was really here or gave it much thought at all that it was something that the local community would be someday dealing with. But I, of course, was immediately interested in learning about this. I said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So it was arranged. They said, "The only condition is going to be that he wants to be anonymous," and I said, "Oh, it shouldn't be a problem. We do this a lot. The newspaper grants anonymity to people a lot when there's good reason and this is -- I'm pretty sure we can explain to editors that there's a good reason." In this case, the reason the man wanted to be anonymous is that he and his partner owned a sandwich shop on Hamilton Street, in the business district. And they were very worried because it was still a crazy, crazy time. Nobody knew, really knew what AIDS was. You know they... At this point, I don't think they even had the name HIV, had yet come into existence. They only knew there was this cluster of symptoms that people got, and they didn't know why. So there's an awful lot of fear. People may not realize it today, but I mean there were politicians, state legislators talking about maybe quarantine -- creating quarantine camps and the like the way they did for epidemics in previous centuries. So any rate, they owned a sandwich shop, their health care was all tied into their business that they had set up for themselves, and they really didn't want to upset any applecart. So that was their reason for wanting to be anonymous not really because they were timid or didn't want to be activists. They both turned out to be very much activists. So I agreed to the condition. I did the interview. My newspaper realized they had a good story and an important story, and they played it on the top of page one on the Sunday paper, which in those days, had a very, very impressive circulation. And it's the largest circulation of The Morning Call's newspapers on Sunday. I did the interview, I wrote the story, I turned it in. The young man that I interviewed for the story who had AIDS used -- chose his own made-up name, and that was Brad Edwards. So that's how it ran in the paper, Brad Edwards along with many follow-ups that came in days or not days but months and years later. I turned the story in ; my editor read it. I knew where it was running, but late in the game, my editor called me from across the room from his desk. I picked it up, and he said, "I don't mind that I don't know who your subject is that you interviewed, but I understand that you don't actually even know who Brad Edwards really is." He said, "I want you to know." He said, "You don't need to tell me, and we're certainly not going to publish it but I -- so I do want you to know who it is." So I said, "Well, okay," and I called up the subject. His name was Brian?, and I called up Brian. I didn't know who he was. I called up Brad (laughs) and said, "Brad, I'm afraid there's a problem. My editor thinks I need to know who you are. He doesn't need to know, we're not going to publish it." He said, "Well, you actually already know me. My name is Brian Foley," and of course immediately, I connected him with the sandwich shop and some of the other gay organizations that were beginning to blossom at that time. Brian became one of my very best friends. That's one of the only times in the news business that somebody became truly a personal friend, not just a good working acquaintance, somebody you'd bump into, maybe even go and have drinks with. I mean this was the guy that became my skiing partner, you know my -- or frequent dinner partner. One early or one weekend when there was snow falling and forecast of huge amounts, he came over with sleepers and spent a couple of days and just got snowed in with us. Just a wonderful, wonderful friendship developed out of that story completely unintended. (break in video) MF:This is Mary Foltz, and I'm back with Bob Wittman. He was just telling us a little bit about his work with the Morning Call and some of the pieces that he has written that were focused on the LGBT community in the valley. Bob, I think this is a good segue to talk about your work with organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. So perhaps you could tell me, how did you get involved with Le-Hi-Ho, and what were the aims and goals of Le-Hi-Ho when you were involved with that organization? RHW:When I graduated from college and came back to the Lehigh Valley, the -- if you wanted to experience gay life, I mean go look for gay life, you had basically two options: You could go to a gay bar, and there weren't many of those, two or three, or you could go to Le-Hi-Ho. Le-Hi-Ho used to kind of bill itself or least many of us thought of it as the alternative to the bars. Le-Hi-Ho, people who would say, "Well, what's Le-Hi-Ho?" Well, it's an alternative to the bars. It met once a month on a Sunday afternoon at the Unitarian Church then located in Fountain Hill at the end of a shady, tree-lined lane. I attended a few of the meetings after I graduated from college and I was living here alone and looking for that gay life, but I didn't find much that really attracted me. I'm trying to remember what some of the programs were that they had every week -- every month. When they had the Sunday afternoon event, there was usually a program speaker. The only one I do remember and remember myself being a little furious at even attending is -- was -- it was a kind of a macramé demonstration, how to do macramé. Everybody in those days were making macramé wall hangings and things like. Well, I couldn't have been -- could have cared less about macramé, and it seemed to me a rather stereotypical thing for a bunch of gay men to be doing on a Sunday afternoon and I just... Frankly, I didn't go back. The macramé event I think sealed it for me. Le-Hi-Ho was started by -- I think it had some greater purposes than macramé believe me. Ron Seeds, the guy who started it did so at the height of the Vietnam War. I was talking about it earlier how it affected me and my outlook on life growing up. Ron was looking at it really as a standpoint of a gay person, what do gay people do. So he really created Le-Hi-Ho to provide information -- what your options are if you're a gay person and you're about to be inducted into the United States Military, the US Army. By the time I became involved with Le-Hi-Ho, the war was pretty much over, and draft resistance was a thing of the past and so Le-Hi-Ho had kind of become just, I think, really largely a social organization. There was certainly no political aspect to it. They didn't bring in political speakers. There was no... Maybe they brought voting materials or I should say voter registration materials to meetings. They might have gone that far, but otherwise, it was not political at all. When Frank came to town, as I mentioned in our previous discussion a few minutes ago, he mentioned to me that he was interested in getting to meet some of those people. So I'm pretty sure we went to the following meeting the very next meeting that would've occurred that -- whatever month that was when he came out to me at work. And you know what, he discovered that it was kind of the same thing like I warned him. However, not long after that, we got a notice through the mail. Le-Hi-Ho put out a regular monthly newsletter, as I recall, and maybe even some meeting announcements in between times, I'm not sure. But at any rate, we heard about a speaker that Le-Hi-Ho was bringing to the Lehigh Valley an old activist, a female, a lesbian I think from The Mattachine Society days by the name of Barbara Gittings. They knew that this would be kind of a special, special event bringing in a speaker like this, so they secured a hall at Muhlenberg College instead of the hard-to-find Unitarian Church at the end of the tree-lined lane in Fountain Hill. And Frank and I attended, and to our surprise, to our amazement, it seemed like a whole new Le-Hi-Ho was taking over. The man who stood in front of the audience that day and introduced Barbara Gittings, introduced himself as the new president of Le-Hi-Ho, and he had identified himself as Clint Miller. He was standing there in a sharp, three-piece suit, and I was just completely blown away. Frank and I came back and said, "Wow, what a difference. You know, maybe this organization is really going somewhere." I'm not sure what would've happened next, but what did happen next is we bumped into Clint and of all places the ACME. And we all decided right then and there that we should be friends and so we did. And after that, Le-Hi-Ho and my friendship with Clint and some of the people that now were occupying Le-Hi-Ho kind of merged into just one. Le-Hi-Ho still didn't quite know what to do with itself, what it should be. Clint Miller and some other I'll mention... Clint is still alive, quite vigorously so, but two other people I'll mention who have passed away were Paul and Paul, Paul Kendall and Paul Reeder, two college professors near retirement age by the time we got to know them and then did retire. This and a couple of women, Susan Schellenberg and her partner eventually Catherine Ziel and a few other men, I could go on and on, but formed kind of a core of friendship and commitment to Le-Hi-Ho. As I started to say, we still didn't really do too much as an organization. We still didn't really get involved in politics, none of us. As a newspaper reporter, I was probably -- or I should say I was -- probably had more interest in politics than anybody but as a newspaper reporter, I was the one who was in the least position to be able to really act on getting -- pushing Le-Hi-Ho in the direction of politics, so. But, what -- one of the things it did do though is it left itself open and receptive to the aspirations of other people to create organizations and create community. So somebody came to us and wanted to form a local chapter of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Le-Hi-Ho decided that it would be a really great idea to help them. We didn't want to become the local chapter of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, but we figured the Lehigh Valley was plenty big enough to support Le-Hi-Ho and that group, and so why not? Actually, the two Pauls I just mentioned, Paul Kendall as he was retiring as a geology professor from Kutztown University, decided to give himself a retirement project, and he pretty much single-handedly with the backing of Le-Hi-Ho, organized and opened a gay community center at Eighth and Hamilton. The Bradbury-Sullivan Center is a latter-day version of that. Sadly, it's not a descendant of it. The community center didn't become the gay -- the Bradbury-Sullivan Center. But for a few, brief glorious years, the Lambda Center at Eighth and Hamilton Street flourished. I'm trying to think what other organizations were founded, and I'm struggling a little bit to do so, but I think there were a couple of others. I think PFLAG may have had a foot -- been given a boost up by Le-Hi-Ho, but certainly, the Lambda or the Lambda Center as the gay community center back in -- I guess this would have been the 1980s and early 1990s. One thing that the Lambda Center did give birth to and hence, Le-Hi-Ho also gave birth to was the AIDS Services Center. I'm not sure if that still exists as a freestanding entity. I think in its latest iterations, it sort of fell into the fold of Saint Luke's Hospital, which is a good thing. But it began right in the living room of the apartment where Frank and I lived. Frank was on the board of the Lambda Center. Although I was deeply interested in its activities, I felt as a newspaper reporter -- not that Frank wasn't a newspaper reporter -- but as a newspaper reporter reporting on the community, reporting on politics, reporting on gay affairs that maybe I shouldn't be on the board of the Lambda Center. But Frank didn't feel that restriction. He didn't really report on the gay community the way I did and so he served on the community center board from the time it was created. The community center only lasted a couple of years, and I'm about to tell you why and how it went out of business. Soon after or around the time that the Lambda Center was forming, so was AIDS becoming a real thing here. In fact, the story I mentioned a few minutes ago involving the anonymous Brad Edwards, who eventually emerged as Brian Foley, that happened exactly contemporaneous to the operation of the center. I can even remember when that -- the night that that story appeared, there was a big event at the center, and I can remember sitting in the midst of a big crowd of people, everybody looking at me and saying, "Who is it? Who is Brad Edwards really?" Because the story said Brad Edwards is a made-up name. And, of course, I didn't say. Brad Edwards, Brian Foley was not in the room that night. There were other nights he was in the room, that room, however, interestingly. So after AIDS, after the story about Brian and then there were some other examples of AIDS fronting the newspaper began starting to pay attention to it, began asking doctors if they have cases, and began reporting statistics to see if -- to see what -- to report on what was going on. And then a prominent young man by the name of David Rodale died. David was the son of Ardath and Bob Rodale of Rodale Press. He was a gay man who was interested in theater and might have had a wonderful career doing that, but AIDS caught up to him and killed him very early on in the epidemic. Of course, his parents were stricken, and his mother was approached by the Lambda Center about perhaps making a contribution, and she was kind of intrigued. She knew about her son, of course, that he was gay, she loved her son. At the same time, being gay killed him so, I think she viewed it and so it wasn't an easy sell. She finally did give some money. It wasn't a small amount either. It might have been like ten thousand dollars. For that organization, it was a ton. In fact, it was probably more money than anybody had ever given them. But she specified that the only thing she wanted it to be used for was AIDS. Well, Lambda Center already had kind of an AIDS committee. I think they called it the AIDS Services Committee. But now suddenly, the AIDS Services Committee had money. In fact, the AIDS Services Committee had more money than the rest of the Lambda Center, and it became the classic story of the tail wagging the dog. I mean, eventually, the people who were running the AIDS Services Center formed a revolt, literally said, "We've got the money, we've got the interest, we've got the crisis, we've got the agenda. We think we should take over the center." So they did, and not taking over the center but transforming the Lambda Center into the AIDS Services Center. We were quite upset about it, Frank and I personally, Le-Hi-Ho as an organization. We remember Lambda Center needing to move out of their space in a great big rush all in one evening. These other folks were playing for keeps, and they wanted the space, they wanted our stuff out of there. There were several hundred books that formed the library and several cartons of information that formed an archive that needed to go somewhere in a hurry. Frank and I had just bought this house. It was sitting here rather empty at that point, and was only a few blocks away from the Lambda Center. So all that stuff was rushed here in a few cars with not much thinking, and here the stuff remained for many, many years after. To tell you the truth, that is kind of the end of my gay activism when the Lambda Center disappeared and became the -- you know it's -- what was left of it became the AIDS Services Center. After that, Le-Hi-Ho just kind of settled into what-do-we-do-next frame of mind, and they never really answered that question. More and more, the events, our meetings turned out to be just really rather intimate, personal meetings, dinners at each other's homes. We'd discuss a little business, we'd make note of how much was in the checking account, and we would kind of lament that Eighth -- that Le-Hi-Ho's role had been usurped by the course of events. And that's the way it kind of just petered out over the years. Eventually, the money that was in the checking account was withdrawn, and I'm trying to remember where we gave it. We had a meeting. I'm pretty sure it was just dinner at somebody's house. We sat around over wine and said, "Well who should we give these several hundred dollars to?" We made a good choice at the time, and everything came to -- you know it just kind of drifted and drifted apart. So there's lots and lots and lots more I could talk about, about being gay and growing up in a very changing time. But I've enjoyed what we have talked about today, and I'm hoping it's -- people who stumble across this in years to come will find it interesting. MF:I know they will. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you today, but let me just have two final questions quickly. I'm just wondering if -- do you know any people in the region that you really think we should have a part at -- have -- invite to be a part of this project or to give an oral history rather? RHW:Well, I think you've already acquainted yourself with some of the people connected with the Bradbury-Sullivan Center. And so some of those people like Liz and Trish date back to some of the years I'm talking about and so they certainly would. Many of us are getting old, and memories are becoming sketchy, and our voices are beginning to crack and dissemble on us. But the Clint Miller I mentioned is still a guy. He's in his eighties, but he's still -- he's working, and he's out and about every day, and he might be able to share some memories. Ron Seeds and his partner are up in Connecticut now, so they're a little removed but are still around and kicking. And I think still have good memories, good enough to be doing what we're doing here today, so they would certainly, certainly be two. I wish that Paul and Paul were alive because they would be terrific to talk to, but they are -- but they both have passed away. I'm drawing a blank. MF:Well, those are great, great names for us to follow up on. And I think I'll go ahead and close our time together simply by saying, it has been such a pleasure to hear some of your stories today. I have learned a lot both about reportage in our region and also Le-Hi-Ho and certainly activist organizations here. But I also love the stories about your childhood and going to Syracuse University, so I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. RHW:You're very welcome. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:37:43
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Bob Wittman, August 23, 2019
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Bob Wittman describes his life growing up gay in Allentown, reporting at The Morning Call, and the LGBT community within the Lehigh Valley.
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LGBT-02
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2019-08-23
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
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This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Mary Foltz
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Joseph Burns
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5.4 October 13, 2019 Joseph Burns (Part 2), October 13, 2019 LGBT-08 01:53:05 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Joseph Burns Mary Foltz video BurnsJoseph_20191013_Video 1.0:|25(8)|50(9)|69(11)|92(2)|109(9)|122(3)|139(2)|156(2)|177(8)|196(7)|217(3)|238(15)|259(5)|280(5)|299(2)|324(11)|343(13)|364(5)|387(6)|406(10)|427(12)|448(8)|465(19)|482(3)|511(5)|532(6)|555(11)|578(16)|603(11)|626(13)|651(10)|672(16)|693(16)|714(17)|733(14)|754(5)|777(6)|788(12)|809(5)|830(3)|849(12)|870(4)|887(9)|906(12)|929(3)|944(12)|965(11)|986(3)|1005(9)|1026(11)|1043(7)|1066(6)|1087(11)|1110(14)|1131(16)|1158(5)|1183(7)|1208(5)|1229(10)|1250(10)|1271(3)|1294(2)|1317(5)|1338(6)|1359(2)|1384(6)|1405(7)|1430(3)|1455(4)|1474(7)|1501(5)|1520(12)|1543(3)|1566(13)|1587(4)|1604(17)|1623(5)|1646(17)|1669(13)|1694(8)|1715(14)|1734(3)|1751(7)|1772(5)|1789(8)|1814(11)|1837(6)|1856(9)|1875(9)|1898(2)|1917(4)|1934(11)|1959(7)|1978(8)|1999(13)|2020(10)|2039(3)|2060(11)|2083(13)|2104(6)|2119(10)|2144(5)|2169(5)|2188(3)|2209(11)|2232(5)|2255(2)|2276(8)|2303(8)|2328(17)|2351(2)|2378(9)|2399(8)|2402(14) 0 https://youtu.be/zEkvYyfuth8 YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz. I’m here with Joseph Burns to talk about his life and experiences in the Lehigh Valley. This is part of the LGBT community oral history project, which has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We’re in Joseph’s home in Boiling Springs today. It’s October 13th, 2019. Carol Moeller is our videographer. And Joseph, I just want to thank you once again for talking with us.
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 ; JOSEPH BURNS: Thank you. 0 32 Stories About Le-Hi-Ho MF: We’re so happy to be here, and we met with you yesterday, and we talked a lot about an organization called Le-Hi-Ho, which you had been really one of the earliest members of that organization, and we wanted to start our conversation today by asking, is there anything else that you wanted to tell us today about Le-Hi-Ho?
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 ; JB: Yes, probably. I was a founding member. I was the first to respond to Ron’s letter about forming the organization. Le-Hi-Ho 0 538 Founding Other LGBT Organizations JB: But they were not city -- Allentown was -- Le-Hi-Ho and the organization that we founded, which was called the Citizens’ Concern for a Better Community, CCBC -- did that because our friend Frank, a professor at Muhlenberg, created an organization as soon as he heard for it, Citizens Organized for Decency, COD. So I just needed a name to respond to that, so we came up with the Citizens Concern for a Better Community as the gay organization. 0 788 Demonstrations / Protests / Activism JB: Every week we would go and have some sort of demonstration. Sometimes there were no people around at all ; sometimes -- I think that person was -- noon-time, I believe, lots of people out looking at us, watching us do this publicity thing about coming out and opening the door on discrimination, never to close again, and so we got our free -- well, that wasn’t true. We had a parade at one point in connection with this, and I think there were twenty-seven people who actually marched that day, maybe a few more than that. Close enough. 0 4033 Relationship MF: Yeah, you met Ricky through Le-Hi-Ho, so how did you meet your second lover? How did that relationship begin?
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 ; JB: Well, I met him again at a New Year’s Eve party -- I think I -- I don’t remember. We might have had a drag party that night. We may have had a Le-Hi-Ho event, drag event on New Year’s Eve of 19-- going into 1970, and he insisted on taking me home, which was our first time together. And after that, we were -- I had him move down here by April, I think, after that. Moved away from his family. 0 5895 Elder Initiative MF: So we’re right at the end of our time, and so may I ask one more question before we end the interview? I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about the Elder Initiative that you’ve been involved in.
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 ; JB: Okay, I work with a group. I had these papers that I didn’t know what to do with. I had all these papers from forty years ago, forty, then, forty something years ago, forty-three or forty-four, from 1969 on, relating to all the organizations in Pennsylvania that I knew about, that were in existence at that time. 0 MovingImage Joseph Burns shares stories of Le-Hi-Ho, LGBT activism, and personal relationships. MARY FOLTZ:My name is Mary Foltz. I'm here with Joseph Burns to talk about his life and experiences in the Lehigh Valley. This is part of the LGBT community oral history project, which has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We're in Joseph's home in Boiling Springs today. It's October 13th, 2019. Carol Moeller is our videographer. And Joseph, I just want to thank you once again for talking with us. JOSEPH BURNS:Thank you. MF:We're so happy to be here, and we met with you yesterday, and we talked a lot about an organization called Le-Hi-Ho, which you had been really one of the earliest members of that organization, and we wanted to start our conversation today by asking, is there anything else that you wanted to tell us today about Le-Hi-Ho? JB:Yes, probably. I was a founding member. I was the first to respond to Ron's letter about forming the organization. You know, of course, we didn't have a name, we didn't have any place. So we met with several other people ; one of the men was a nurse by the name of Al Ravert, who became the vice president, and Al had a friend with a cabin in the woods somewhere, I think up in Lehighton, I believe, which was appropriate. We weren't sure -- there had been an arrest not very long before that about the Mafia. A group in the Poconos that had -- Mafia leaders had come out from New York, and they went up and raided them and arrested all these people. So we were a little bit paranoid. I thought -- we thought, is that why we're going to the woods, to be out where we can't be arrested? And I don't know who else felt that way, but thirty-one people who came to that first organization, thirteen of us formed the organization, what was -- decided to meet again. And that's how Le-Hi-Ho started, and that was -- it was in April or May of 1969. Now, the two stories I want to tell you about Le-Hi-Ho, while I was thinking of them: one was the first time we met, probably, was Dick Leitsch, we invited Dick Leitsch, we formed in April or May, invited Dick for February, I -- January or February, I'm not sure which ; February, I believe -- to be our speaker. Well, they had that -- a public meeting, we had that at the church. The Presbyterian church in Allentown sponsored us for that particular day. And so we had the day, Dick came, we had -- the gay community was seven people, seven men from our organization. And we were talking about, the first meeting, we were going to blend in to the crowd, okay, we'll just be anonymous. Four ministers and nobody else. Four ministers and us. Now, we're going to hide, right. (laughter) We're going to look anonymous. That's just -- it's just wonderful, as a matter of fact, our first public appearance being publicly identified as gay was certainly -- there was no hiding. And they were as curious about us as we were about them. At the meeting, Dick Leitsch did an excellent job for us. The next story involves Barbara Gittings, who we had I think in June, I believe -- true, it was June -- as a speaker, and that was the (inaudible) meeting at which we had a young minister there who was vociferously -- he was going to preach that night about the evils of homosexuality, and all of us knew all about this, and we were invited to come and hear all about the evils of homosexuality. And quite forthright, and several of the ministers, who I think were a little more open to the idea of us being there than he was. At any rate, we decided we were going to go, we were going to go, okay, and so we had the first public demonstration against homosexuals in 1970, and it consisted of Barbara Giddings, Ron Seeds, myself, and my lover, Paul Forrest -- stood outside the church and waited for these people to come. Nobody ever showed up, okay. So the hour comes, and I hear the music inside going on, so we went up to the door, looked inside, and there's the minister up in the pulpit, his wife, there with his son, and he's preaching all by himself. (laughter) That was the first demonstration in Allentown that we ever had, first public demonstration. Wonderful memory. I just want to get that story out before we get this -- there wasn't another one until we did coming out, and when we did -- the next organization in 1978, and it must have been prior to -- some time prior to the election, I don't know when, exactly. Dixie White, who was then the state president of NOW -- I don't know -- she hadn't been elected yet. This was before the convention, they elected her. It was '77 when Dixie started and we were going to have a convention at the Hotel Traylor, not the Hotel Traylor, Hotel America? Americana? It's on Fifth, is that right? Fifth and Hamilton, I believe. And it was owned by one person -- We wanted to have a convention there, we were going to have a gay convention, we wanted to have our first gay convention, and he says yes, to begin with, and then said no ; it went to the paper and [said it descriminated against us?]ot a lot of publicity about that, and got a lot of controversy, but that was a part of the conversation about discrimination after that, because they had, you know, that was a front-page story -- not a front-page story, but a story that got in the Morning Call and led to the Valley (inaudible). But that had started because the human relations commission, I think -- they may have approached us as we approached them, I'm not sure. But Dixie had wanted to include other causes in the human relations commission, which were gay, lesbian, trans, and bi having rights for anti-discrimination against housing, employment, and public spaces. And the commission was fine with that. There was a fellow by the name of Bob Prince, I believe, was in charge of the commission, very friendly. There was one commissioner who was not friendly at all. He was very forthright about it, too: a young man who had very strong feelings about -- very anti-homosexual. Didn't make a difference. He would've been overruled by the rest of the commission, because the rest of the commission was for us, whoever they were. But we went to City Council on the basis for the first time and talked about the need for gay rights, taking a bunch of us from -- Le-Hi-Ho was very supportive, and people [were?], then, multiple organizations, I mean, we could never represent five or six organizations, just because people were available and sometimes participated in those organizations, so there was a reason to do it ; we weren't just fooling around. But they were not city -- Allentown was -- Le-Hi-Ho and the organization that we founded, which was called the Citizens' Concern for a Better Community, CCBC -- did that because our friend Frank, a professor at Muhlenberg, created an organization as soon as he heard for it, Citizens Organized for Decency, COD. So I just needed a name to respond to that, so we came up with the Citizens Concern for a Better Community as the gay organization. Met at Confront - a number of people came ; I don't -- Carol Bloch was elected as co-chair with me of that organization, and we used to sit for several years ; (inaudible) for three years, actually, from '77, '78, through '80, and '80 -- on New Year's Day in '80, we started the Gay Alliance Service, which was what we did after we tried for gay rights. There were a number of events involved with that. We had public demonstrations at City Hall. One of the first ones was our coming out. I got a door -- my apartment had doors in the basement that they had taken off the building somewhere, and I got one of those, put it in a frame, took it down to City Hall, set it up, and then we came through the door as a way to "come out," come out of the closet symbolically. Made a speech about the history and the fact that we were so oppressed by history or unknown in history in the Dark Ages, we were kept in the Dark Ages unknowing and unable to reach out to each other. And that has been the key to it, the whole thing, I have always said that if you give them support, give them love, it makes all the difference in the world. It's what makes -- what gives them the chance to grow. It's from where they are, and become the people that they will become, and get -- change that unhappiness to joy of a relation -- I remember a young man who was married, I was confronted with them, personally with him, and his wife, and he was very unhappy in marriage. And I liked her a lot, so I was very unhappy, but he wanted to be gay, and I told him about the Stonewall, and what happens when you go in, people will look at you because you're new, and you have to pay a fee, it's a disco, you dance, just a -- and he did. He said, "I was happy. That was the beginning of my happiness." And I really felt bad that she was gorgeous. She was a very lovely woman, short, and he was also kind of short. They made a really attractive couple, but he got divorced, and happily went on with it. Now, I've had that a lot. When you're out like that, you get people come to you, and tell you that they're gay, and "I'll tell you, but don't tell anybody else," sorts of things. So he was one that did that, and that was historic. So Confront was friendly with me, and friendly enough to sponsor and be very open. We met there through the time that we were - the whole organization whole time we met there. We paid them maybe fifteen dollars for the room or something like that. But it was well worth it -- central place, and I lived beside it ; I was next door, literally, to it, at that time, so it was very easy for me to get there. So we had a -- I don't know -- three, or four, or five demonstrations at city hall. Every week we would go and have some sort of demonstration. Sometimes there were no people around at all ; sometimes -- I think that person was -- noon-time, I believe, lots of people out looking at us, watching us do this publicity thing about coming out and opening the door on discrimination, never to close again, and so we got our free -- well, that wasn't true. We had a parade at one point in connection with this, and I think there were twenty-seven people who actually marched that day, maybe a few more than that. Close enough. Not more than thirty-one, who actually marched down Hamilton Street that day. Met at the corner of Ninth and Hamilton, that was -- Rubes was -- I think still in existence then. And we met in front of there. We had a number of people from across the state -- Mary [Antero?] came from Harrisburg, people came from Williamsport, people came from Philadelphia. A friend of mine from Philadelphia brought his peace professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who I enjoyed meeting. I had talked with this person about it for a long time. We're part of a collective down there, a peace collective that he was a part of, and this peace professor was the leader of that collective. Very interesting man, obviously well-educated, and spoke to this -- was one of the speakers along with Mary, and myself, and Dixie White, president of NOW. There was a group protesting us. If you remember the Daddona Park, there's a map there of the Daddona Park down at the end of Walnut Street, and there is an amphitheater on the hill. We were down at the base of it, where we could have the audience in front of us. And there were a number of people there, I said that there were thirty-one -- now, there may have been more at the park, I don't remember that there were or were not. There was (inaudible) number of people -- bunch of protesters up in the top of the hill. A young man again -- oh, I told you about the -- I told you this story, okay. That was Thirteenth Street, that church was Thirteenth Street, and we went into boycott -- still there, still a very small, tiny little church -- you can see it there. Okay, and I don't know where the young man was from, I don't know where this guy was from that did the preaching. I allowed him to speak, and people were mad at me for that, because I figured, let them see that their word of God is not affecting us very much. But we gave them voice -- I gave them a couple minutes, and people were unhappy with that. I doubt -- I've never considered whether I was truly right or wrong with that. I resent them coming into my space, okay. When I find that straight people are appearing in gay movies, it makes me mad, because that's not fair, really. We need our own employment. It happens, and they're good, and I sort of like Frankie and -- Grace and Frankie very much, and I have appreciated actors who did it more now than I was before, but I still resent it, and when subjects are anti-gay, and that happens sometimes without knowing, unless you really look at it and really understand what they're saying -- the message is really anti-gay. And that's invading my space, and I get really, really angry about that. So I think I could understand people's anger when I allowed it to happen, and that particular occasion -- So we went to Sunday counsel a number of times. They ultimately made the decision that we couldn't speak. They'd had enough. After about three or four meetings, they were going to cut us off and not allow -- cut off that debate. So we went the next time with tape in our mouths to show that we were -- demonstrate the fact that we couldn't speak as clearly as we could. I had known that that was the tactic that had been used plenty of times before, but it was effective then. I remember the first time that I spoke to city hall, I was pretty paranoid. I didn't know what was going to happen. I was concerned about my own position ; I was in the telephone book, and I could be found easily, and I thought, I'm going to be the most hated man in the city. Next morning, I was at work, and I heard on the radio -- the radio was on, and I heard my own voice coming across the airway -- they had interviewed me after that night. And that was the first I had appeared that -- no, I think that may not be true. I was probably out on the radio programs. The first time I'd done it in my hometown. But that was also the first time we demonstrated in Allentown, was when we did that march, all twenty-seven of us, and I remember singing a wonderful Quaker hymn about -- the very famous one from Appalachian Spring. I can't remember -- simple, simple what. "Simple Gifts," it's called. Wonderful plain hymn, and the first time I heard it, singing that, and of course, "We Shall Overcome," and then marching up and down the street. We had a sign from -- my lover had made banners for four different organizations: Le-Hi-Ho, Pennsylvania Caucus, the Reading Group, and a group in Northumberland, little town across from Sunbury. We claimed -- Northumberland only four thousand people, so we claimed we had the biggest group in the smallest city, the other gay group was there. Not quite so. Most of the people came from Sunbury. And my good friend of mine was in charge of that. We were friends -- lifelong ; he had married a man before, and they lived together for thirty-six years before he died, and unfortunately not in -- a couple of years ago. Actually, it was more than that, it was more years than that, maybe forty-two or something like that. Now Le-Hi-Ho is fifty, fifty years old ; he met him in '76, so, what -- At any rate, long friendship. The other thing that happened that particular weekend: there was another demonstration in Williamsport. There was a county fair up there, and Anita Bryant was appearing. Now, we had demonstrated against Anita at several points. We went down through Redding one time, and she was appearing at the Masonic temple, and we protested outside there. She was easy to protest. We never saw her, of course, but we did protest, and I remember people came in costume to emphasize the fact that they had to hide their identity -- the first time that ever happened, that I ever saw it happen. And it was a nice demonstration, and that was the first thing we were able to demonstrate. She was there -- appeared then at the Williamsport fair, and I don't remember the county, unfortunately, right off the top of my head. She was to appear at the fair there. So Mary went up. I did not ; we had had our demonstration on Saturday. They were to go on Sunday to the fair, and they did go to the fair. They had a meeting beforehand, they demonstrated beforehand in a park close by. They had about fifty people, I think, or more at this demonstration. Not everybody elected to march. I think -- I'm not sure how many people elected to march, probably less than fifty, I believe. They actually elected to march at the fair itself. They did that, okay, and they went up there and bravely marched around -- frightening, frightening experience. Mary still is marked by it ; says that was the most frightening day she was ever through. When you've got ten thousand people who hate you, and you're marching in front of them. And I got a letter from the person who founded Homophiles of Williamsburg. Name was Gary. He was the -- he followed me in the co-chair. He was the co-chair of the caucus after me. Then he moved away to Williamsport and founded this group called HOW. The rest of the people -- a lot of people went up there from the state. Thank you. Tony Silvestri spoke there at that demonstration, Mary did, Dixie was there, I'm sure. My point about that demonstration was that following that, the -- fellow by the name of Dan Maneval was then chairman of HOW. It was chairman, leader, president, I'm not sure -- doesn't make any difference what his title was. He was the leader of it. And that was like Dan's second or third -- no, it was his first organization, I'm sorry, his first organization. He was interviewed that night ; following that -- it appeared on television, cable television for Wilkes-Barre. Following that, the neighbor kids began to harass him a little bit. We needed to respond to that. We responded several times. In that day, what happened with gay people when you were an activist, you did everything, okay, and you didn't need anybody's permission ; you simply went ahead and did it without -- doing whatever you could make up for a response. And we were often pretty weak about it ; we didn't know what we were doing. We had to invent these things -- effective answers. And I don't know -- I wanted to find out what were effective answers. I wanted to have a meeting to talk about, let's -- what was good about what we did, and what were the failure, so we could be instructive to the next generation. But the next generation doesn't need this anymore. They have the internet, and wonderful, wonderful means, you know -- when we did a newsletter at -- we used to pull the newsletters in our meetings for the aging group in 2000 newsletter -- hell, we had one hundred forty-seven -- we had a lot. We thought, back in those days, by keeping our -- all those people we had been in contact with would never come to the caucus, we sent newsletters as long as they didn't come back to us, and they frequently did, because everybody was young and in transit. But the difference between two-thousand and now -- they, of course, do it by -- they don't send the newsletters out anymore ; everything by email. And those kids take great advantage of that. They are so aware, and I went to a conference -- I'll have to talk about that later -- go back to Le-Hi-Ho, and back to how and why I was talking about it -- and Dan was interviewed, began to harass him -- we went up and went around to the neighbors and said, "Look, this fellow is being harassed in his own home, his parents' home" -- he had inherited it from his parents, who were then dead, and was living there all by himself. We talked to the neighbors, and they didn't -- the cops wouldn't do anything. The cops said, they don't know who it is, and Dan found out later, of course, that the cops had talked to these very people. They had talked to the neighbors and found out, well, yeah, they were talking to the kids. Didn't you know that? No, we didn't know it, and that was very ineffective, and stopped for a bit, started again, around Halloween especially, and it got so intense, so intense, that Dan got really, really scared, because they threw a cinder block through his front door, and attacked his windows, attacked him in his home at night, and it really frightened him to the degree that he actually left home and stayed in an apartment for some time. Ultimately, he sold his home. The cops never did a thing. Our mistake was not to talk to the cops, and not to create this incredible imbroglio over it. We really should have, but I'm not sure that Dan would've been able to stand it, because he was already in danger. He felt -- he was attacked once, but that was some years after that, as a matter of fact. But Dan is still an activist, okay, going on, like, his thirteenth organization right now in Williamsport. He is just incredible, and he's a little trooper. He also got stage three cancer, and he's waiting now to find out the results of his chemo. He'll know about four days, I think the sixteenth. But that was a terrible loss. He was the only one I knew suffered that great a loss, lost his family home over it. Stayed in hiding in a trailer court for a long time, moved back to the city, and lived at the same address for ever since, but thirteenth organization as far as I know. I really lost contact, and I don't know how many -- up to the modern day, keep re-founding it, and re-founding it, and re-founding it -- Howarth for three years did a terrific job, and then it -- I stayed with him until about two-thousand, he decided -- they had to come to me, now, I'm not going to do it again. Well, three or four years passed, and there were suddenly three organization or four organizations in Williamsport of various sorts, liberal organizations, grassroots, that really carried the banner of gay rights, and (inaudible) always been very difficult -- so the city hall, the city paper, would not publish the word "homosexual," would not advertise meetings for any of these groups for many years. I think they finally did, finally made it a change. It was a long time, a hard change. We interfered another time at Bloomsburg. These friends of ours -- the caucus, essentially -- so it was a multi -- people came from different organization -- met at Bloomsburg and talked to a dormitory. Went and talked to kids in the dormitory, and talked tough, and said, you know, again, we're going to -- we shouldn't have -- of course, we were totally nonviolent, as the gay movement has been, by the way, as everybody should be well aware, is that we haven't killed anybody. We had a few demonstrations in which police cars got turned, and that was Harvey Milk. I remember him being -- we were at Echo -- when there was a demonstration happening on the West Coast, I remember hearing about it, because we were very affected by it, cheering and that kind of thing, and Harvey Milk was there. But that's when they had a violent period, the only violence that I really remember outside of -- well, there's been very, very little violence, and no guns, nobody killed, a lot of people -- a lot of gays died, but not any result of our actions, or (inaudible) demonstrations, it didn't happen that way. Except this one occasion, and poor Dan lost his home, and it's so courageous, and I honor him so much. We'll miss him terribly. So there are a bunch of us who remain from those days as good friends, having bonded in that way, in that particular bond, which was deeply bonding, you know, when you're doing that kind of work, and you're -- There just wasn't enough time to talk to each other. We didn't have time to party. We didn't have time to know each other. We just talked, went and talked and talked and talked, because there was so much to say about what was going on, to talk about all the meetings, and all the events, and all -- everything we need to plan, and all that kind (inaudible), that we just had rare times. I think we got caught in a snowstorm at one time and stayed at somebody's cabin. Wonderful party. We all had pot, and if they arrested, they would have arrested the whole rural population ; all those groups would've been leaderless. That was the only time -- that was one of the few times that we ever had times to just be ourselves. Now, in the modern day, we've finally really been -- without the organizations we're getting to know each other again and enjoying it a lot. So back to the demonstrations and CCBC. When Frank organized his organizations, we quickly organized ourselves into this -- what we came to this Citizens Concerned for a Better Community, for lack of -- the first meeting we had, I think we got a committee, and said, "Name it," and that's what we came up with. Kind of a dumb name, really, honestly, but then, it was a dumb thing to do, calling it "cod." I can't think of any more demonstrations we did. We went to City Council ; there was one councilman who was opposed to us entirely, very vociferously, and he was the one who invited Anita Bryant to come to the city, stirred us up tremendously, stirred up quite a lot of controversially, fortunately, gave us -- there was a lot of back and forth in the letters to the editor. We spoke as often as we could, anywhere we could, went on the radio, went to -- churches wouldn't invite us ; several churches invited us, just to understand what we were doing and what we wanted, which was of course just the support for gay rights. Just allow us to have them, you know, say, "We are for it," instead of against us. And what we're looking for is to just be ourselves, not to bother you, not to be immoral, not do strange things to your children, just to be ourselves. And I really -- I am not a particularly good speaker. I would have preferred that other people had done it than me. But I did it anyway, and some other people did. Somewhere along the way, and this might have been later, we got a chance to talk to Presbyterians -- the Presbytery was meeting, you know. We went to a Presbytery meeting and talked to them. It was a relatively small meeting, because they were just them. It may have been a committee of the Presbytery, I'm not sure. But I did convince them to support gay rights. Now, there were churches -- the Moravian Church was one, the UCC, a number of denominations had actually endorsed gay rights on a national level, and we made a lot of hay with that, put that forward. Le-Hi-Ho was very supportive ; when we formed in Allentown, they came across and became memberships without being a part of leadership. That was what they did. They stayed pretty much with themselves, were very supported, wonderfully, and spoke -- City Hall meetings, organized a great packet of literature, better than I could have, because they had resources, they had the library and all the resources to do that, and organize the packet of information for the City Council. Ultimately, there was a mayoral election, and Joe Daddona was the mayor at that time, and Joe lost by seventeen votes. I couldn't help but say, "Look, you know, I didn't endorsed you -- I disendorsed you, and I want you to know that, so we were the seventeen votes." I'm sure that wasn't true, but it was a cruel thing to do, and a stupid trick to do, and that's no politics at all. That's my most stupid, stupid, stupid -- but I couldn't help it. I had to rub it in a little bit. Seventeen votes. But there never have been -- in that time, the Republicans and Democrats traded administrations every time, and it became a Frank somebody, or -- I don't remember Frank's name, and Joe Daddona was elected again another four years, and there's Joe Daddona Park now down there, and that amphitheater is now called Joe Daddona Park at the end of Walnut Street. When they finally got around to counting on it, to actually voting on it, we lost incredibly. The opposition was there. When we had the tape on our mouths, the opposition stood up to speak, and did speak. The City Council member who favored us said, "Let them speak," and City Council retook the vote then, and said, "Yes, you can speak." So the opposition did speak. We did not. But it was an important occasion that they did, and we applauded and all that kind of jazz, applauding our enemies because they were as fierce as we were as the ability to uphold the Constitution. I always felt that was terribly important. There's one more story I could tell you about that, an instant I thought was really important, that you uphold that right for everybody to do that, speak up, free speech. That was one case we did it. And that was pretty much the end of City Council, whenever they voted that in, and had a letter from the solicitor that they could not do city -- lights in the city, because it exceeded the state, and there was no authority for them to do it. They wouldn't take states that had -- the state commission had not announced -- went on with that and met -- was a nicely integrated group of people. We had some blacks, which was rare. We had men and women. Allentown NOW was founded by Dixie White, president, the state president, because she wanted more people to participate as leaders. You excite new leaders if you have a new organization, and she was very much in favor of that, so she created several. There was a group in Bethlehem, socialists, led by socialists, who were truly socialists. I think there were seven of them. And they didn't have a leadership. They did everything by consensus, no president. We didn't have a president either in the group in Reading, because I was the most eligible person. They didn't want me to do it. They wanted to have a local person do it, and they were right, and I refused -- I wouldn't take the leadership, because it was their organization. But they wanted me to do it. So we didn't have a leader ; it moved by a council that ruled the whole thing. And this socialist group was the same. They did everything by consensus, very difficult to do. And they got -- were very big on the business -- they wanted to be the -- on the discrimination issue at City Hall, and not allowing us to speak, that was a figurative issue that they really jumped on, and the governor's -- candidate for governor, socialist candidate for governor, spoke at that meeting, also, that demonstration we had in Allentown. I don't remember her name anymore, but she came to speak for us. Good people, they were. I like socialists. I wasn't one myself, and I wasn't really a lefty, but I really, certainly learned to respect them and to love them. E. E. Cummings said, "Communists have fine eyes." Great line, great line. Is there anything to say about the organization outside of the fact that it was -- I was not good about -- never good about really integrating organizations with people of color. I just wasn't successful at it. I don't know why. They just didn't respond to me, like the transsexual community's not responded well to me. And I regret that a lot. I can't bridge it, can't be different somehow and bridge that, and I always feel my distance from them. And I've known only a few over the years, until, now, the current -- I know a transvestite comes to the aging group -- no, I'm sorry, a transsexual comes to the aging group, our age. She's seventy, pushing seventy, I believe, and is a former teacher, and got me acquainted with the fact that now there is in Pennsylvania a group that has five-hundred people coming to their conferences, all transsexuals, and that's amazing to me. Not all transsexuals, by no means. Some of our people go. And we're very supportive of her, and she's a good friend of mine, and she and I work with the movies now. There have been other people, but she and I are left to do it. But that's -- I was never successful with it. I met a few over the years, but I was not able to make any breakthroughs with them in terms of really personal friendship. One exception was a transvestite who I knew well, who sang in her own voice. She was an entertainer, and we sponsored her several times for organizational meetings, and when we had an opportunity to present anybody, we presented her, because she sang in her own voice, quite good at that. Still living -- now lives in -- I haven't seen her in many -- since then. She was very forthright, works with women, is a hostess, and went to the police when she was discriminated against, and talked to the police, and said, "You discriminated against me." Very, very forthright. About that business with the CCBC, I was discriminated against once and I didn't even know it. My landlord came to me after I was in the newspaper, sometime after that, and said, "I want to use your apartment ; you have to move out. I'm going to be taking over it." At the time, I was ready to divorce my lover, and we did separate, as a matter of fact, then. I was moving out. I also did the separation. I was also going to Confront at that time for personal therapy. Went to that for several years, enormously, enormously helpful, group therapy was. And my landlord was going to have me move out. That day, we moved out everything except the piano, which I was donating to a woman whose daughter wanted to learn to play the piano. So I gave her the piano. The piano was very, very heavy, and we couldn't move it out the day before, it was the fifteenth, or whatever day I'd promised to get it out. So we went back to collect the panel the next day, and the landlord is there, and he says, "That's my piano." I had to pay one hundred dollars to give the damn piano away. He was such a mean bastard. He never moved in, also, and after that, then he re-rented the apartment. That's when I knew I'd been discriminated against, but I didn't understand it before. I didn't think about -- not realize -- connect the dots, because he didn't present it in any way, like, "You aren't welcome," but he wanted me out of there, and got me out of there as a result of that, right after I'd been in the paper. Rick and I separated after eight years, and he stayed in town ; I loaded him down with my dog and all the furniture, I loaded on him so he'd stay in town, not run home to mother -- he was from Milton, Pennsylvania. Bit of a momma's boy. So I made the choice, stayed in town, it was a big mistake. Ultimately, he -- I met him fifty years ago, yeah, fifty years ago, in '69. In 2007, 2008 -- 2007, in August two-thousand seven, in Allentown. I told you I was going out there to see him once a week. But he was married with this woman for thirty years -- he wasn't married. He lived with a woman for thirty years after that, which astonished me. I mean, clearly it wasn't a sexual relationship, but they grew to be interdependent, so interdependent that they really were pretty tight as a couple, not functioning terribly well, low-level functioning, but able to make it, and leaning together really worked for them. She got him to quit smoking. I never thought he would quit smoking, twenty, thirty years now, twenty, thirty, years before, twenty years -- they were together twenty-eight years, I believe, together, when he died. And that was extraordinary, to have him married to a woman, hard to explain, after he'd been gay entirely, and he continued to be gay. He also got beat up one time in a park, right across the street from where I was then living on Turner Street. If you remember, there's a cemetery there on Turner Street, Ninth and Turner, I believe. And that's where I lived in an apartment there, Dixie White's spouse at that time was Debbie Cedar, and Debbie later became another president of NOW, state president of NOW, I think -- I'm not sure when. Maybe after Bishop Whitley and -- I think after Mary. I'm not sure. That would've been the second (inaudible) of three lesbians, I believe, three or four lesbians in charge of the state organization, you know, in a row. But anyway, I lived in a little apartment there for, like, one hundred dollars a month. They were fixing up. Wonderful -- they gave me the lowest price they could, and I had the whole first floor. And just a good place to live. It had a sun porch on -- loved the sun porch. I could go out there -- it was in March, and I was laid off, go out there and just have my coffee in mornings, enjoy the mornings, warm (inaudible) because the sun was starting right in. A fellow used to go by every morning with his cat on a leash, thirty-foot leash. (Laughter) That cat was all over everybody's porch, went walking way ahead of him, it was the funniest thing I ever saw. I never saw it again, a cat like that. I saw a lot of people travelling with cats ; I never saw one on a leash like that, walking around town. But he was beat up in the park across the street from me. Changed his life. He really became very frightened after that, and all through his going-out pattern, he was never able to cruise the streets as he had. He would go to a bookstore, but he would do it at a building like that, and that's what he did, was adopt a bookstore, the Hamilton and Ninth, Hamilton and Tenth, I think it was. He lived on Hamilton and Eleventh, it was -- I don't remember. That was just a huge change for him, because he had been always promiscuous, even when I first knew him. I hadn't known that for a while, but he just liked anything in pants, he would go with it. He just had anal sex, in particular, once. Never had to have it again, but he had to have it once, with not everybody. You know, I thought it was an act of contempt ; I wasn't quite sure with him, why he did it. He was hard to communicate, difficult, an autistic person, I suspect, ultimately. I was very much in love with him. He was handsome to me. He had some sort of feminine tendencies, which I ignored. To me, he was a virile man ; I treated him as a -- I ignored whatever he might have been. Gorgeous legs ; he would've been a fantastic drag -- truly gorgeous legs to the end of his life. Very supportive of me. Took me everywhere, drove me all over the state. He had a car ; I didn't own a car until I was forty, so we had his. We bought cars together, but they were in his name. I took care of that. And we had a little Subaru, which was then a new car, little tiny thing, yellow. Ah! School bus yellow. We went all over the state. Again, intentionally, we went far distance places, we went out to Pittsburgh a lot, and out to my sister's, and went to the colleges around there, and gay bars where we could find them, just trying to keep contact with what was going on. The caucus itself had people from Pittsburgh come out, not anywhere else, but there was that mutual support among the organizations. They were very helpful to us in Allentown. Le-Hi-Ho was unusually helpful. At one point with the caucus, when we had a crisis of leadership -- as a matter of fact, when I was elected president, when I was elected co-chair, the co-chairs had gotten into trouble because they had done something unauthorized, and as a matter of fact, when we read the by-laws, they were authorized, because in the absence of membership meeting, and being authorized with the meeting, then the co-chairs were legal. But they had done something - I've forgotten what it was -- now, but the woman came by the name of Janet Cooper. I told you about Janet before. She was a professor at [Ship?], and she really was so against them, and really got us to oppose them, and I finally told her that there is an issue, there was a vote of confidence in the English Constitution -- the English use the vote of confidence is what the Parliament rises or falls on, is a vote of confidence, and you can vote them out of office. So she insisted on a vote of confidence after I finally explained to her what it was, and the current president and the current co-chairs lost the vote. Went to the next meeting and there was nobody there, we were there, and Mary and I were there, and a lot of their people, but the co-chairs never showed up, period. So we figured they've taken the vote seriously and they're not coming back. So we elected a new president that summer, and I got to be president, but in the interim I'd written it up in the newsletter. I said, we're at this point of crisis, we've done this thing, which is very controversial, and we need to address it in the next meeting. And Le-Hi-Ho wrote this letter, and said, "Look, if you're going to be this way, we're leaving. We are no longer supporting you at all. We're not giving you any money, we're not sending any people, we aren't allowing (inaudible)." Very important, because it really made the caucus look at the whole issue and get upset about losing the support of the main organization, of one that we really counted on, being as powerful as they were over that many years. They were very successful. And that was Ken Burke, another person that I have forgotten, another wonderful person, and [Lou Railer?] was his lover, and those two were students together, graduate students, I believe, and Ken was interested in politics. I think he might have gone into politics, ultimately. But at the time, he was president of Le-Hi-Ho, and a very good one, very strong, and very forthright, and very honest, and that was an important contribution of Le-Hi-Ho to that organization. And they came to the conferences, gave us a lot of staff for conferences, et cetera, and again, they did it without changing their position. They did not personally come to the caucus meetings, but they were -- supported us in every way. Something was key to support in Allentown, and that was the least we were trying for. The other thing that happened at that particular time that I want to talk about briefly was -- she formed the NOW chapter in Allentown. There were thirteen of us. We're all activists. There were two guys, and all the rest were women. We went everywhere. We went to women's conferences. I went to the women's state conferences. It was the year of the women, and they were having a conference in every city. I went to that conference. Wonderful, wonderful conference. A Quaker conference, I remember, great conference down in Philadelphia. I went to -- fell in love with Quaker meetings. Quaker meetings were unusual because you observe silence, and people are moved to speak. At a Quaker meeting, they have no -- there's no leadership. There were no ministers, no leaders. There are only weighty Quakers. Weighty Quakers are people who are known for their wisdom, and to be a weighty Quaker is a really wonderful thing, if you -- men or women are eligible for it, women can speak as well, because men -- although they do sit on separate sides of the church, women on this side, and men on this side. Long, long tradition, never changed, as far as I know. I don't know what happened in the modern church, in more recent days, but even then, in those days, it was still separated. Went to a Quaker meeting, at -- went on a Sunday that we were there for this Quaker conference, and my expectation was, you were going to get very inward, you're going to meditate, okay, you're going to go into this -- "You all flow out," (inaudible). Had that outflow, and your awareness of everyone else is so intense. For instance, like, there was never a consequence, when you're moved to speak -- I never heard two people try to speak at the same time. I don't know how that works, but collectively, so that you -- and you spoke when you had something to say. When the spirit moved you, then you spoke. And that was revelation, and I really loved that particular form of worship ever since. I think it's just superb, superior to everything I knew. But it's that outflow that you get, and which you're becoming such a part of the hole, and so moved by the whole, and listening, and open to -- we went to the Quakers once for a meeting, I think, at Reading, Reading, yes. We wanted to meet the Quaker church, so we went to the meeting, a Board meeting, I think, it was something, whatever -- wasn't the full -- we didn't go to a meeting ; we went to a -- for the meeting, that was the -- the people who wanted to speak on the issue, and they moved by consensus, and they had -- their whole congregation had to agree, or they couldn't do it. Well, there was one person who didn't agree, and he was pretty forthright, and told us why. I was there at the meeting, and spoke to us directly -- we spoke to him directly, and we didn't get it, but the Quakers and the Unitarians were very, very important to the movement. Unitarians sponsored Le-Hi-Ho membership. The Quakers were often spoken -- in support, were very supportive in terms of congregations and in terms of their actions, whether they -- they were very supportive. We happened to fail on that particular organization ; I'm sorry that we did, because the Quakers were wonderful people, always, and had been great. So NOW, the same thing, NOW had a meeting at that time -- local, state, or national, they talked about gay rights, right from the top, in the presence of any organization, and always talked about it in their meetings. What was happening locally was a part of their agenda. So Lehigh -- the Allentown NOW was a totally active organization. We went to -- we marched on Washington, we went to the '93, '83 march -- no -- We went to the march in, I think it was '79, was the first one, '78, '79, and then there was the first march on Washington. It was the second one in '93, which is also big, and people thought that was the first one, but no, it would've been in '79. Went to Chicago, when we were voting on the ERA, they had a demonstration in Chicago, one hundred-thousand people, as I recall, along the lakefront, enormous event. Washington, DC was an enormous event, the women's march in Washington, DC. NOW marched in the women's march in Washington, DC, was an enormous event ; over one hundred-thousand people marched in Washington that year, one of the largest demonstrations. The first and largest demonstration, I think, that had ever been, was back in -- was in San Francisco, gay pride, three hundred-thousand people, I think, at that time, and we had the record for the largest civil demonstration of anything, it happened to be gay rights. We were that kind of active. We were not -- and didn't spend any money in Chicago at all ; we crossed the border, never spent a cent in Illinois. Marched, wonderful march. First time I was in Chicago -- I moved there about two years later, very happily, happiest thing to be in with my lover. There were probably more conferences than that. I can't remember what they were, but they were always important and everything, well-informed. I was also a co-chair of NOW, and I was the only male that I knew of that held that job, and it was on their insistence ; they wanted to have equality. But there were only two of us available ; and the other was a student, at Kutztown again. It was a great organization, really. Dixie was such a mentor to me, and so politically oriented, and always, always involved, very feminist. My mother was about as strong a feminist as you can get for the forties and fifties, and certainly very aware and very supportive of what she knew -- she was anti-communist like crazy, she was terribly anti-communist. Ran for the state legislature, (inaudible) that she was anti-communist. We had to talk to him all over (inaudible), all over the state. It was really -- I learned to disrespect that. It was the time of the McCarthy era, and -- forty-seven, I think, I think when she was running for -- no, that was school board. I don't remember -- legislature, she ran after that and didn't win. Was (inaudible) anti-communist and talking, and watching McCarthy hearings on television. They were actually on television. House Un-American Commission was one of the first televised events from Congress ever, and Joe McCarthy was leading that pack, and talking about the pinkos, the pinko commies, the gay commies, and all that. I learned later that in political science, and obviously at home, and told my mother off, and said, you're totally wrong, and I do not believe in McCarthyism or anything about it, it's just terrible evil, evil, evil, evil the organization. She got over it, and was fine with me after I came out, and my family has been very supportive, very supportive. I did not have a wedding, however. I wanted to, right when I -- well, I fell in love with Doug, I really wanted to celebrate love with him and have a wedding, and get married, and we didn't ; my sister said that somebody might not come, and I didn't want to know who. I just thought that, I don't want to be hurt, I don't want my family to hurt me now. And I still don't know who might not have come. They've always been supportive to my face, and loved Doug. He was a different person than Ricky was, and they liked him a whole lot more. And Ricky was the kind of person who people did not like, and I had people who'd tell me, "Don't bring him. You come, but don't let me see him," or "keep him away from me." That was tough. But Ricky, as I said, was probably autistic, not autistic, what do you call them -- there's a form of autism -- Asperger's, probably had Asperger's. It was (inaudible) among other things. Had a high fever when he was very young, one hundred and six temperature, sustained for a while, and I think it affected his brain, and he was thereafter not as capable, not as bright as he could have been. Graduated high school at twenty-one, I think, but he finally graduated. His mother got him to do that, insisted, and he stayed in school that long, and participated, even though he was older. But he had his problems, and wasn't kind to people. He was wonderful to me, but he would turn down anybody else for a ride, for instance. He wouldn't take them, and other people, he did take. But friends of mine, he turned them down. And that kind of -- I didn't know about it until later on myself, and it was a problem. He had an intelligence in his hands that was wonderfully good. He could knit, or (inaudible), or anything to do with sewing and threads, great -- did a lot of macramé. My sister has several pieces of that. It was a great skill with them. He just had a mental ability with that. One time, he made a window -- seventy macramé things that he had touched so he could put his plants out there, seventy plants, suspended each one on a string, and he'd take -- lower them and water them. It was crazy. Couldn't see out. He liked the covers when it's three layers on the windows. Couldn't see out. And I love sunlight. I don't put covers on my windows at all, any more covers than are there. These were landlords' -- my landlord wants these because they match his, and so they're his curtains, effectively. But I won't cover them. I have to have the light, all the light I can get. Three covers, good Lord. He lived in a very dark hole. This place is dark enough, as you can tell. I can't tell -- in my bedroom, I don't know whether it's light or day, literally. I don't know whether it's dusk. I'm drawing late, so I don't know, when I get up in the morning, I have to figure, is this morning or evening? What is happening? Is it afternoon? I can't tell. three o'clock in the afternoon, if it's a cloudy day, it's dark as dusk in here, because of that porch. And there used to be a huge elm out there, one hundred and fifty year old elm, that had been there when (inaudible) founded, for God's sake, and -- elm? Maple. It was maple. Dirty old tree, but big. Limbs fell off it twice on my car. (Laughter) It was when they decided to cut the tree down the second time, not because it fell on my car, because they didn't want it happening anymore, and, you know, maple -- everything that falls off a maple tree. So they probably tore it down. They came in and tore it, even the tree, took it down to the roots and (inaudible) that up, so it's completely gone now. It was huge and wonderful, but it's very, very dark. Really made (inaudible). And -- MF:May I ask -- JB:Anything else I can tell you? MF:Yeah, you met Ricky through Le-Hi-Ho, so how did you meet your second lover? How did that relationship begin? JB:Well, I met him again at a New Year's Eve party -- I think I -- I don't remember. We might have had a drag party that night. We may have had a Le-Hi-Ho event, drag event on New Year's Eve of 19-- going into 1970, and he insisted on taking me home, which was our first time together. And after that, we were -- I had him move down here by April, I think, after that. Moved away from his family. He'd been going to Canada, Toronto, Canada, weekly, seven hundred miles, to be gay. Which was a little ridiculous, but he was that kind of person. He loved driving, loved driving. Terrible on cars, hard on cars. I didn't know. I thought he knew something about cars ; he didn't know a damn thing about that. I had to replace the clutch every six months because he was so hard on the clutches. I'll never forget that. I've never had a clutch since then. I thought they (inaudible). I thought clutches -- I thought that was a normal part of having a car, but no. Very expensive part of having a car. Blew out the two gaskets on the damn thing before we got rid of that particular car, and that's expensive. That was thousands of dollars. The whole car was only four thousand dollars. Subarus at that time were nothing. They were the cheapest cars in America. New import then. And Ricky was not a great contributor, but he was very, very supportive of me. He never said a word to me about taking me to all those meetings. Was there with me, and we had -- something (inaudible) supporter. He was also -- didn't have a great deal of integrity. He forged a check at least once or twice. We'd give him rent money, and found out later that the rent wasn't paid, or whatever I'd given the money for wasn't paid, and it wasn't gone. So I thought there was personally too much, and divorced him, sadly. He worked at the Shawnee Penn with me, the furniture factory. He was a sewer, I was the distributing supervisor, and he worked in the -- he didn't sew. He was in the layout room where they laid the clothes out and cut them, cutting room. And that was -- there were two guys, older men, American people, five or six or seven Americans in the place, white Americans -- white people. I'm sorry, I apologize. Puerto Ricans were certainly American, and I was very aware of that. They lived at the top of the hill. There was a -- in Allentown, Hellertown, there's an area up there where it was low-income housing, and they lived up there at the top of the hill, and you can walk down through Saucon Park, which is between Allentown and Bethlehem, and they could walk down the hill to go to work, and I, we used to take the bus out, and when Ricky and I separated, I would take the bus, walk down the hill myself, to that complex down -- They were all Puerto Ricans. Very nice people, wonderful people, but they were very short. I never -- I thought I was tall. I'm only five-eight, and I thought I was tall, because they were truly (inaudible). It took me a long time to figure out that I really wasn't. And I never learned to speak Spanish, either, which I regret. I did learn -- I took it in college, but I never learned -- I missed a great opportunity to speak it. I didn't know them better. And there were -- there was one Mexican that came and didn't like it very much. There was not happiness between the Mexican and the Puerto Rican peoples. They looked down on each other, quite frankly. And I think they -- there was a white guy that came there, young fellow, they told him, don't come back, and he quit in a couple days. They were protecting the jobs for themselves. Which was -- they didn't do that to me ; I was college-educated and was a different line of thing. I got to be a supervisor almost right away, because nobody else in the place was educated, either, and then I got the position. It didn't pay me anything ; it was -- like I said, we were poor as church mice. Ricky lived in Milton, was where he was from, and his grandmother went to see us often. She lived to be ninety-six. I had her cane here for a long time, and it broke, unfortunately ; I was very sad about that, because Ricky had given it to me a couple years ago, before he died. I had kept contact with him all those years ; we were good friends, and -- Doug and I were good friends. It's unique about gay people, that they tend to stay with -- good friends with their exes, and know them, whereas Anne said that's unusual for heterosexuality, that they would divorce, and separate, and not know each other, and stay away from each other, and that just wasn't true of gay people I knew of. We typically maintained our relationships. And I certainly did with Ricky for those forty years, saw him on and off, at least twice a year, once a year at the very least, twice a year if I could, and in the last couple years, when he got -- he got to be about three hundred and fourteen pounds at one time. I had him out here, and I took him to the Y, and I said, I want you to see this. I wanted to take you to The Y specifically so I could take you to see the exercise rooms, through all I do, and know that this is a familiar, friendly place, that you don't have to be embarrassed about being here at three hundred and fourteen pounds and so on. He got so that he couldn't walk down the stairs anymore, and stayed on the second floor for a whole year before he got sick, and then went to bed all by himself, just said, "I won't get out of bed," and he stayed in bed for a year, and I went to see him every weekly, and while he was in bed, feeling terrible for the fact that he had gotten to that bad of shape and he just couldn't get out of bed, lost the use of his legs, almost, could barely stand -- I only saw him standing one time after that, and that was in a nursing home, where they'd taken him out of bed, and they have those lifters that can get people up, and they had taken him for exercises to another place, and I went there and saw him actually standing up, leaning on somebody, practically pushing him over, because his legs could not handle it anymore. That was the last time I saw him stand at all, and that was -- then he fell out of bed on the third of January in 1978. She was out doing groceries, and he made enough of a fuss to get -- enough noise to get -- attract the neighbor, called the police, the emergency people went in, got him downstairs, took him to Bethlehem, which is where they had a mental hospital at St. Luke's in Bethlehem, and they diagnosed him with dementia, and from there he went to a nursing home, and he went to a second nursing home. The first nursing home, he went while it was free, while he could do it under the auspices of Medicare, and then, when he ran out of that, then they changed him to an Alzheimer's home, memory of care home, and that's where he died, got pneumonia, finally, and died. It was a long time -- he was a long time dying, had a long time in dementia. It was hard to deal with, dementia is a very difficult thing -- would go to see him, and he may or may not recognize me, and he got angry with me several times. I think one time -- when the limb fell on my car was the month I couldn't go -- he felt abandoned, terribly abandoned, and it was -- it echoed forty years ago for him, echoed his family (inaudible). So I've got this man who was seventy years old grieving about the abandonment, and the loss, and the separation for him of being the gay individual in a family of three brothers, who were all very male, and his dad, who was beating him up some regular basis. And I liked his father ; I didn't know this was true. She's told me that Ricky complained about having brothers beating up when he was younger, and I don't doubt that that was true. They were quite male, very strong, solid individuals. I remember when his dad died of cancer, going to see him, and we went regularly, just to see him when he had cancer, because he was dying, and the boys would stand around, and just be strong, silent, would never have -- no conversation. Didn't know what to say to him, didn't know how to love him, or say, "I love you, Dad," or whatever. That was very hard. His mother was a good person, a warm person, very pretty, but she also put him on a clothesline when he was a kid, and a harness -- I mean, this was typical in the fifties. They took the kids, and put a harness on them, and then attach it to the clothesline so they couldn't run around, they'd get lost. Now, we happened to live in a place which was a V, two roads, one on each side of the house, and his dog was killed there. He had a dog, a white German Shepherd, that was killed, that he mourned for the rest of his life, loved that dog. We had a dog together that I loved very personally, wonderful dog, that was given to us by a lesbian couple moving to a -- a Reading couple who were moving to Chicago. Now this was an interesting couple, too, talk about somebody else for a moment. They had liberated the mines, Bethlehem Steel mines, were the first women to work, to go down into the mines, because they had sued, and were a lesbian couple, and worked together, went down in the mines together every day until they went to Chicago, and then I lost contact with them, sadly, but they had a dog that I went to see one time, when -- she was away, I think, and the dog was there, put away in another part with another lesbian couple that was either living with them or taking care of the dog. I said, "If you ever want to get rid of the dog" -- so they moved to Chicago and gave me the dog -- wonderful, wonderful animal. Turned out to be a transsexual dog -- trans -- a hermaphrodite. Eight years old, she suddenly began to develop -- lose her hair and develop penile bone, and it turned out that I took her to the vet, and the vet said that they weren't sure what was going on here. Either she's not female, or she's -- honest to God, penile bone going on down here, and she's clearly -- I had known her for maybe her whole life, but she was a female who humped everything. (Laughter) Now I've told you, the dog's -- which must have confused the hell out of them, because she felt like a female, she was a female, genetically, but she had been spayed, or they had gone in to spare, and they didn't do anything ; they didn't take anything out, and the vet told me that, whenever he examined her, that she's been spayed, and whatever they did, they didn't remove anything, and so she began to develop this set of balls and penile bone, and eight years old. And she was a spiritual animal. She was a dog that -- you looked in her eyes, she never looked away. You looked into her -- it could look like you were going to her tail, you know, her eyes were that deep, just these liquid pools, she just looked through -- way, way deep into her soul. And I thought she was Buddha. She was my Buddha dog. Suffered in her own way, became nearly blind, and very deaf, and died at seventeen years old, died in my arms, which I wanted to do. I wanted to give her her last -- if this was her last trip through life, I wanted to be done that way, and she died naturally in my arms, which I was very grateful for. But she was -- we were -- she and I were so in love. It was really a special relationship. She was always at my feet, always right behind me, the whole time. She would just follow me around and be right there wherever I was. I had to watch, step over her all the time, as long as she lived with me. And Doug fell in love with her, but she was so much my dog. Special relationship. It just worked out, the first time I had her, I remember -- she came in the house, they gave us the dog, I went and took a bath, put a few pieces of candy up here -- they were cream drops, they were called, I think, they were just sugar -- melted -- fondant with chocolate on them, and she ate them. (Laughter) What a bad dog. That was the start. And then she'd lick me. She loved Irish Spring soap. Loved it. She would lick it off me. And I'd let her do it (inaudible) because it didn't hurt me, and she loved -- whatever she was, boy, she loved that stuff. It was crazy. Very, very special animal, but humped my leg a lot. And again, it was natural to her. I mean, I didn't know -- like I tell you, she got persistent -- great leaper, my God, she could leap eight or nine feet, and did it often. She used to love chewies, and would chew them and take them from her, and she would just leap to the bed, incredible leaper -- was a poodle mix that looked like an English sheepdog. She had her fur done over her eyes. I had a picture of her there somewhere, but it's not -- she was cut at that time. We had to cut her because she got such long hair that she was only comfortable -- we had to sheer her like a sheep, literally, because it got so thick and so tangled, there was just no way we could handle it, so she was -- every summer, we'd have to (inaudible). Wonderful having her. Really grateful. Doug came to me -- I was busy at being an activist at that point. '80, we were doing conferences and so on. We did four conferences with the caucus. So we were doing a series of conferences, did them in '78, '79, '80, and '83. '81, perhaps, and three, I don't remember, '80, I guess it was. And that -- in different places across the state -- we did central -- we did east, central, west, back to east again. I think it was my turn for east. I told you about the Americus turning us down. After they had said yes, they turned us down, over at the newspaper. A little place called Howard Johnson's up above the Poconos, in the Poconos, they called us, and said they would do the conference. They did the conference. Very, very successful. We had to have it twice. We had a snowstorm the first time. We were going to have it in January, thirty-six inches, it snowed that day. Guy called me in Pittsburgh and said, "Are you going to head to this conference with snow starting in Pittsburgh?" I said, "Of course we have the conference." thirty-six inches. Believe it or not, there's a protest group out there on the highway leaving the hotel. We weren't there. I mean, we called off the cops. We called everybody we knew that had bought tickets, and said, please don't come, but then there was this protest group out there doing their thing without us. (Laughter) So we didn't have that conference. We had it again in April. Very successful. There were several hundred people, people were crying all over the place, really good conference. Really special. It was the first -- lots of people came and said, "I never saw so many lesbians before." It was just a thrill to see fifty lesbians in a room. And it was just a good, good conference. We were well-organized, I thought we did a terrific job. We did good conferences, quite frankly, in those years, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and a place called Rainbow Resort up in the Poconos again. Near that place? Yeah. It was owned by two women ; there was a bar in -- Candida's, they originally owned Candida's, lesbian couple, created it for a gay bar, and then Candida was the waitress at that time, and bought the bar, and took over, and still owns it, as far as I know. Candida's, when I was there, I don't know, two or three years ago, maybe -- I (inaudible) visiting (inaudible) and we decided to go to Candida's. God, I feel like a stranger. I walked in in the middle of the afternoon, seventy-nine years, you know, I'm seventy-eight by that time, seventy-seven, and I was just so out of place. Walked in, (inaudible) looked at me and said, like, "Are you real? You're in my bar?" And I never told him that I had been a frequent consumer once upon a time, although I was always older than anybody else. In gay liberation, I was thirty-five ; everybody else was in their twenties or students. And they accepted me, there was no problem with that, and I was always very grateful that there wasn't a problem. I think I was the only one that thought there should be, but there might be ; never was. We got along extremely well. They were not objects of my affection. I had a lover as long as I was around, and -- so I wasn't concerned, as objects of affection -- that never became a thing. But Doug worked for an airline, and I couldn't get out for a date, so I got a dating service, called a dating service, and Doug responded (inaudible) from Chicago. He worked for an airline, so he flew out, worked for Pan-Am at that time, which was still in existence, and they flew out and saw me, and we were together after that. That was -- although it wasn't true. I told him the first time after about six months, I said, no, I'm sorry, I don't think we're going to be lovers. I proposed to him on New Year's Eve, 1981, and we got together after that, and stayed together for another, actually, eighteen years, altogether. He told me, unfortunately, on the anniversary of our first date, which was the one he met me -- that was one of our two anniversary dates -- the oldest one, because it's when we first met, and then when I proposed to him, was the second anniversary date -- one for each of us, essentially -- but that was important to him. It was quite a relationship. Doug had a -- and he was a warm, friendly, funny person that I needed. That really gave me a lot of space. And he was so supportive in terms of just being who you are, and I thought that that was love. I thought that's what love is all about, it's just being so accepting, and it's really, it's okay. We were fine with what we were. And Doug got a little bit impotent. He got to be diabetic. I got to be diabetic after, I don't know, about fifteen years ago, but it was long after he had, and he got to be impotent, and that was a bit of a barrier, a bit of a difficulty for us. But not enough to end the relationship. It didn't for many years. But I think I ultimately tired of it and our lack of sexuality. When I went to college then, I went to junior college in Texas, and enjoyed that thoroughly, so much that I just kept going, and going, and going. Ultimately ended up at Shippensburg University to graduate, which I hadn't done before. And I never told him I was in college the first time. I just saw -- had three years of Moravian, and never told anybody -- I never told the college that I had this education. And I'd gone to junior college in Northampton and in Lehigh County, both, I was going to schools at the same time at the same year, because my job was ending -- my job at Shawnee Penn was getting worse, and worse, and worse ; they were laying me off more and more times. And I knew that I needed educational background to back me up in terms of shipping, in terms of, what is, transportation, engineering. And they had a degree at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem. So I went there. Met Doug about that time. That was right after all that business with the eighties, when we started the gay line. And he came to me the end of that year, the first time. Happy life. He worked for airlines, he worked first for British airways -- I'm sorry, he worked for Pan Am, which is an international airline, very famous, very famous American, and Pan Am was famous for innovating travel routes for every country in the world, virtually. But they would go anywhere -- they had rights to fly everywhere, as the pioneering international travel agency, especially for the United States, and they just kept furthering on that basis. So it's a big company, but it was also -- when they deregulated the airline industry, it couldn't manage, because it had been regulated all those years, and they had union wages everywhere, and difficulties that they just couldn't overcome because they had been under such regulation, and couldn't make the shift to do it. So he started to work for British Airways, and an interesting story: he had gone there, and the first time, they didn't hire him, so the people -- all the Pan Am people that had gone over there went to the office and protested, and said, "We want to have this guy. He's really good." I mean, Doug was a good agent, was a good reservation agent. So they hired him, and then moved to Texas, then he had to go to Texas, then they moved his job, and ultimately outsourced the entire thing. That's when he retired in 2000 then, because they were getting rid of those reservation agents ; it was cheaper to do it by hiring people in India and so on. And so we were -- he retired after we had sold the house, moved to Plattsburgh, New York, to be with his lover in Canada, in Quebec, Canada, which is fifty miles away from Plattsburgh, and went weekly to see him. They traveled back and forth across the border, never lived together, but were often together, until they weren't anymore. They ceased being lovers per se, although there was still a lot of love between the two of them. And Doug made a very deliberate decision. He told me that, you know, "This is over. I'm sorry, but it's over, never to happen again." And I had to accept that, and did. But I stayed, then, another year and a half, to get the house ready to sell, et cetera. We painted everything, and, you know, did what we could for the house. When we went to Houston, there had been a large gas recession which hit Houston very, very hard. There were a lot of homes on sale ; a lot of homes were in foreclosure. So many people were underwater in terms of their mortgages. This was '80, and it had happened in '78. So they were still in depression, in '80, when -- in '87, and it still was affecting the Houston market heavily by the time we went there in '90, '91. And we finally -- we took a year to find the house. It wasn't foreclosure, but it was in a nice area, nice house, for a very cheap price. In Houston, they never had basements, okay, so everything was built on a slab, much less expensive. You didn't have to deal with winter, you didn't have to deal with cold, so houses were differently constructed ; they were a lot cheaper, since their construction -- And we bought a house, a nice house, for about eighty thousand dollars, four bedroom, in a nice area, which was -- they had sold it -- the house was -- they bought the house for that, thirteen years before, the people had bought the house for the same price that we paid for it, so they did nothing. We made better when we sold it. We sold for a hundred and three, I think, to a nice Hispanic couple. I remember that because the next-door neighbor was a white guy, was on the school board, and I told him I had sold the school to the Hispanics, and he said, "You sold to students? You sold people that have students coming to my school? You dared do that? Hispanic people?" I was incredulous. I really had no idea, but I've always known that they had a lot of -- that the people there in Houston were not very nice to Hispanics. San Jacinto was the main street, they called Jacinto, not Ya-cinto, no changing to Y, they wouldn't do that. It was called Jacinto. Which was just the attitude they had, that everybody was an entrepreneur, everybody -- they had a Spanish grocery store that was looked down upon like crazy, wonderful store. It was practically a Wal-Mart's in a grocery store, and they sold clothes and all kinds of items that would appeal to the Spanish community, and were heavily supported by the Hispanics. Boy, they just looked down on them terribly. Did not do that in San Antonio, where his brother lived, did not do it elsewhere in Texas. But there, they were. They were very, very prejudiced. We had a happy life in Texas. Good place to live for us. Suburban life, we adopted that entirely. Had to drive everywhere in Texas, anywhere you went. Six miles to the grocery store, six miles to everything, and Houston was sixty miles one way and seventy miles the other way. It was huge. Not my favorite place. MF:So we're right at the end of our time, and so may I ask one more question before we end the interview? I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the Elder Initiative that you've been involved in. JB:Okay, I work with a group. I had these papers that I didn't know what to do with. I had all these papers from forty years ago, forty, then, forty something years ago, forty-three or forty-four, from 1969 on, relating to all the organizations in Pennsylvania that I knew about, that were in existence at that time. And I did cover them as well as Ron could have, because he was -- I told you he was down at the mailbox, and he got all the mail. But I had a lot of papers relating to a lot of groups, and a lot of things to do with conferences, all of the papers, for instance, we had all the -- turned in -- all of the people that had gone to the conference. We knew everybody that had attended, and paid prior to and at the conference itself. We had that entire (inaudible) papers, all the workshops, anything we'd done in workshops, all the programs, all the meetings we'd had in connection with it, et cetera, and all these different groups, and all the caucus notes, often, sometimes the attendance sheets. It was five feet of space. Half of it was newspapers. The Philadelphia Gay News, Pittsburgh Gay News, and some (inaudible) -- Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were owned by Mark Siegel -- and both of them -- and were the same paper, pretty much, and I think he ultimately dropped the Pittsburgh paper, because it was most of the same news, with some local stuff. The group -- I wish -- now I can't think of -- the guy in Lancaster was the newspaper of the gay scene out of Lancaster started out, and one of the members of that group by the name of Dave -- oh, I forget -- took over the newspaper and renamed it. It became the rural newspaper, and it wasn't ours. We did our own newsletter, but he operated a rural newsletter, a rural base, for all of us to state. And it was like the necessary news, you wanted to know what was happening among all the groups, you wanted to know what was happening in the state and local and national news, and you could read this newspaper, because that's what he reported on and made a specialty out of reporting those -- having that knowledge of what was going on in activism. And I had all those from beginning to end -- no, I'm not sure I had them all. I had a few of them, the beginning ones, but I had all the later ones, and turned those over, and that was half the collection. What was also so mad, because (inaudible) way back in the sixties, when that was new, before the Stonewall, and before there was MCC, I had the first advertisements to that. Troy Perry had put in the newspaper and said, "I'm starting this church," and then when he founded the church, and as MCC grew, I was very interested in that. I'm an atheist, personally, but I've always had very strong supporting about people who had to answer that question ; I did, too. And my answer was atheism, but certainly the religious conflict was very strong with me. I thought about becoming a minister, with lack of anything else to do ; I didn't know what the hell I was going to do, if it was teaching, or a minister, or anything, and I was going to Moravian College, which had a seminary connected with it, Moravian Seminary, and I was very strongly tempted, but my answer -- and I had gone in high school to -- the two people I came out to, one was my minister at the Presbyterian church who was quite negative, and a supporter and an advisor to what was called MLA, which was Young Masons, essentially ; it was sponsored by the Masons. They said it was no connection outside of the sponsorship -- you did not automatically become a Mason, and in no way you had to apply the join the Masons ; you had to apply to join the MLA, too, 1421. And I went to an advisor there. I loved MLA, I was quite taken with the whole moral outlook thing about being a good person, a strong value system for me, and I believed in it very strongly. So that was the other first thing I went to, and he was neutral. He was a single man who was the advisor, [Levin's mother?], and I was good friends with another advisor ; I was good friends with his son, and went often with them to Allegheny River, and so on, in high school. Whatever. What was the question while I start this? Are we done? MF:I think we'll just close now, but let us close on tape ; we'll wait for Carol. So I just want to say thank you so much, Joseph, for speaking with us again, a second time, in two days. We're so grateful that you would share your stories. JB:Thank you. I really appreciate it. I wanted to -- I wish I remembered more -- the actual names of people. I just felt very -- I felt they were important in my life, and that supportiveness was important to me, okay, to be able to do what I could, and I knew that we were creating a miracle, and it was clear that we were during a unique time in history, when -- Pennsylvania was its own story. There were fifty stories in fifty states, and how we began to move out from the cities. It had only been in Philadelphia and in Pittsburgh originally. Philadelphia had the Jane's Society, and the Homosexual Law Reform Society. Pittsburgh had a Persad Center, which addressed the health issues, and Le-Hi-Ho, when it was first founded, was very strong on the draft. Vietnam was very important, and the question was, do you check the box. Ron took care of all that. That was his particular forte, do you check the box or do you not. And the organization was formed on, you know, (inaudible) that important issue, as a resource for it, and it was the resource with schools, because there wasn't anything else. We had a library that people were able to use, did a lot, which is, again, the impact of Le-Hi-Ho, that was part of the impact. We had a regular lending library that was very active. Every meeting, they took the books. I ended up with the books in my home before I left for Chicago. I had the books for about a year in my house. I don't remember how I inherited them, but there was nowhere else for them to be housed, and I handed them off to another member, ultimately, before I left. I don't know what happened. That was '83. I don't know when Ron left town. It wasn't then, because in '83, I was still going to Le-Hi-Ho, and he must have been there. He left town after that. (inaudible) why he no longer housed the library. They kept the non-book files. Maybe the books would be too much. There were boxes, and boxes, and boxes of books, about four-hundred or more, four-hundred or five-hundred books. I think there were five- hundred books, about that. I had grown considerably from when I had it, and a lot of people donated a lot of other funds, papers, academic works, I no longer had access for. And I didn't have those papers. MF:Thank you so much again. JB:Thank you, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate it, and again, I'm sorry that I didn't get to name more people, because they were the important -- they were why I wanted to do it, to remember -- their contributions were enormous. So many, so many, so many people, you know, organized and participated in those conference. So many people came to our meetings and did what they could for us in the lobby days when we lobbied the state capitol several times, supported us in every way, you know, gave us money while -- we were creating a miracle. We knew what we were creating, and I saw it when I went to that concert in Chicago. They were singing for us. (inaudible) people. (inaudible) us. MF:Well, I think part of what has made this project so important for us is that we want to honor -- JB:People have asked me, do you think we ever made a difference? Yes, absolutely, we made a difference, and I saw it when I went there. That was -- Chicago was everybody that moved to Chicago, okay, was not native, and I was non-native. But they formed these two -- there were two choirs in Pennsylvania. The one that I saw in the first concert was the show choir that had just started that year, and they did this wonderful theme of Yellow Brick Road. Going into the concert was really special. I wanted to do a choir way back when. I thought that was -- one of the first things I thought of -- Le-Hi-Ho, wouldn't it be wonderful to have this musical group that just got together -- that was (inaudible) days, that was folk song days, and people -- everybody sang folk songs, folk songs were very, very popular all over the airways, and everybody was singing, and playing, and learning songs, and learning those particular songs. So it would've been natural for us to do, but there was no -- I certainly didn't have the ability. But I loved choirs. I thought it would be great to have some sort of event and singers like that. Couldn't do it, so it was done for me, and I really -- that's been a great joy, to watch both the choirs -- Harrisburg fortunately has a men's and women's choir, not combined, separate, and Mary Antero was in charge -- the treasurer of that county, and her lover is the president of the organization. Wonderful choir. Have grown to about thirty, forty voices, and rejuvenated themselves in the last couple years, and have become the better choir, while the men's choir has been going down and now reforming itself into a new group. It had been the stronger for a long time ; now, the women's choir has come up powerfully. Very wonderful concert that I had -- an organization for -- they did -- interspersed people of color and refugees, all refugees from all over the world, and they sang the songs -- their country -- the way they combined, I thought, was genius. They did a combination of singing the songs of those countries first, and then -- in a foreign language -- and so that the chair had to work in a new language, very difficult music, and that they wouldn't have known anything about ; did a superb job. And then they interspersed them with the people who read their stories, who had written out the stories of the countries they had come from and their struggles to get to be refugees acclimating to America and that sort of thing. It was a wonderful program, really, really special, and the right way to do it, and I had no idea how are you going to combine this. It was splendid, really good concert. And so I just printed all the programs I could get and sent them north to everybody that I -- sent to everybody that I could get to, this is how you do this. This is the way to do this concert. Splendid. MF:Well, I think we've taken up enough of your time on a Sunday. JB:Oh, no, no, thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you for the bagel this morning. MF:Oh, thank you. JB:Enjoyed it thoroughly, and I've enjoyed our time together. Thank you. MF:So have we. JB:And I wish I had satisfied more for you in terms of personal -- I don't know if my personal was as interesting as what I wanted to talk about, which was the activities. We were a very active state, and an exciting state, and I was so lucky to be a part of that, inspired by it, totally inspired. My God, we used to go plugged in in New York, once a year ; the first time, there were eleven thousand people, the first march, in 1970. It grew to hundreds and hundreds of thousands. There were one of a million (inaudible) didn't get it for Stonewall Fifty. I don't think that -- I don't know what the population was, but they were going to try for a hundred, I knew. That would've been exciting. And we had -- Danny -- we had tickets to go, and he got sick. I couldn't go, so I sponsored a bus for him to take some people, you know, I had to sponsor a bus. I gave him money for two people, thirty-six or forty bucks, to Central Park. That was a great day, great day. That's when the movement really was born. They combined to one lane of traffic, and we just got longer, and longer, and longer, until it was 11 blocks long. More blocks than eight blocks. I don't remember. There were just blocks and blocks of people coming up this single lane of traffic. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:53:05
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Joseph Burns (Part 2), October 13, 2019
Description
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Joseph Burns shares stories of Le-Hi-Ho, LGBT activism, and personal relationships.
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LGBT-08
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2019-10-13
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Mary Foltz
Interviewee
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Joseph Burns
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-07.xml
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Le-Hi-Ho
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5.4 October 12, 2019 Joseph Burns (Part 1), October 12, 2019 LGBT-07 01:29:35 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Le-Hi-Ho Joseph Burns Mary Foltz video BurnsJoseph_20191012_Video 1.0:|27(4)|50(9)|71(6)|92(5)|109(13)|134(9)|155(7)|174(14)|191(7)|214(16)|235(10)|260(2)|281(18)|300(6)|319(15)|340(14)|363(3)|386(2)|415(2)|436(3)|459(4)|480(6)|501(13)|522(9)|541(5)|564(2)|583(11)|604(3)|627(14)|650(12)|675(4)|694(11)|711(9)|732(4)|751(10)|770(7)|791(10)|812(14)|835(9)|854(14)|879(3)|900(14)|919(2)|940(6)|961(6)|978(18)|995(7)|1016(4)|1037(2)|1054(13)|1071(3)|1090(2)|1123(7)|1142(5)|1165(10)|1184(6)|1209(3)|1232(3)|1245(10)|1274(10)|1301(10)|1334(3)|1353(13)|1374(6)|1395(9)|1420(7)|1437(13)|1458(3)|1477(9)|1496(5)|1519(17)|1546(12)|1563(8)|1586(11)|1605(10)|1626(4)|1649(4)|1672(3)|1697(7)|1720(5)|1737(14)|1762(13)|1789(7)|1812(3)|1833(10)|1850(7)|1875(7)|1892(7)|1913(2)|1926(5) 0 https://youtu.be/mrynu9OOewM YouTube video 4 Interview Introduction MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz and I’m here with Joseph Burns to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are here with Joseph in his home in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. It is October twelfth, two-thousand nineteen. Carol Moeller is our videographer today. Joseph, I want to thank you so much for agreeing to --
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 ; JOSEPH BURNS: Thank you.
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 ; MF: -- talk with us. And the first thing I want to ask is did you consent to this interview today? 0 63 Childhood / Early Life MF: And just to start our conversation today, could you tell us a little bit about your childhood?
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 ; JB: Okay. I was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is north of Pittsburgh, about thirty miles. And it’s a town of about thirty-thousand, I think. Maybe twenty three- thousand at that time. So, it’s a medium sized town and it was the county seat. And it was a great life. This was before the war. I was born before the war. Then, I began -- the war years, of course, started in forty-one and we spent our time, a large part of our time outside the city because they were polio summers, okay? So, when the summers came, we went outside the city. 0 738 Starting Le-Hi-Ho / About Le-Hi-Ho MF: I just am excited for you to keep going. You should feel like you can just keep talking in the direction that you want to go. And then, if you exhaust it, then I’ll ask a question. I mean, I have so many things that I’m curious about. Why? Why you started Le-Hi-Ho and how it kind of came together, who you were talking with? You know, how did you imagine this organization?
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 ; JB: Oh, I left town. When I left home, I was ready, I think. I was ready to go. I was ready to find what I knew was there, okay? I knew that there were, I knew such of a thing -- was gay bar. I had never been into one prior to that. I had had, I think, yeah, and twenty-three, I had another event, another time when I was with somebody. Le-Hi-Ho 0 3135 Le-Hi-Ho Newsletter MF: So, my questions are, you know, what in particular did you want to publish in the newsletter? Did you publish on politics or was it --
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 ; JB: Okay.
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 ; MF: -- more social?
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 ; JB: I did -- it was politics. I was [strong?] informational and, a matter of fact, got into trouble for it. I was writing as much -- I was doing all this scholarship on the side. And so, I was making what I called reviews of these books. They weren’t reviews of these books. They were really giving you -- since you aren’t going to read the book, this is what the book said. And these are important ideas, okay? Le-Hi-Ho 0 3598 Being Out in the Lehigh Valley MF: Can I ask, before you moved to the Lambda Center, what was it like for Le-Hi-Ho and just to be out in Bethlehem as a city. Like, what was it like at Bethlehem Steel --
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 ; JB: I didn’t have --
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 ; MF: -- to be out?
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 ; JB: -- any problem with it. I wasn’t extraordinarily social. I mean, I kept with some gay people. Remember, at that time, you had -- Friday night was your gay -- okay, Friday, Saturdays was your gay time. And so, that was, it was kind of what you did, okay? Le-Hi-Ho 0 4198 Contact with Other Organizations MF: May I ask -- there’s this really interesting way that in the stories that you’re telling, Le-Hi-Ho is moving all around the region. Members are going to Philadelphia, you’re going to New York City, you’re in contact with these major --
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 ; JB: I was.
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 ; MF: -- organizations, yeah.
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 ; JB: So, I was because I wanted to be, okay? And I wrote that. And, you know, I wrote about the Stonewall and the meeting and the conflict that was taking place between the old guard and the new guard, which is the homophile organizations and this new group that wants to be out and political and it wants to be very forward and right in your face, confronting. 0 4414 PA Council for Sexual Minorities / Gay Caucus JB: I just did it and the Le-Hi-Ho, two things happened. There was an organization that started in ‘75. This is five, this is six years later, in Reading, okay? Came to Le-Hi-Ho and said, “We’re starting, need your advice.” I went down and stayed with them, literally, for a long time. That organization that we started was called -- at that time, there was movement to start this Pennsylvania Council on Sexual Minorities. There was a group that met in Harrisburg, conceiving this idea, making it up with Governor Shapp’s approval. 0 4917 Impact of Le-Hi-Ho MF: So, I just want to ask that -- you know, for you, personally, what kind of impact do you think Le-Hi-Ho had on Bethlehem, on the Lehigh Valley, and just on the region, more broadly?
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 ; JB: Okay, ask me again.
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 ; MF: What kind of impact did Le-Hi-Ho have on Bethlehem, on the Lehigh Valley?
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 ; JB: Okay, I --
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 ; MF: What’s its legacy?
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 ; JB: -- said that the educational thing was very important. Okay, you’re reaching out to high school students, to college students, giving them good information on a regular basis. 0 5200 Citizens of Decency JB: I’ll tell you what: there’s another organization that founded in ‘87. We founded in Allentown with the Allentown -- so, we call ourselves Citizens (inaudible) for Better Community. The reason we did that, there was -- it was a professor at Lehigh, professor at Muhlenberg, Frank -- I’ll think of his name after awhile. It’s not important or anything but -- who, as soon as we announced that we were going to try for gay rights in Allentown -- organizing organization called Citizens -- COD, Citizens for Decency, something like that. 0 MovingImage Joseph Burns talks about his experience of being a gay man in Bethlehem, PA in the 1970s and '80s, namely his involvement with Le-Hi-Ho (Lehigh Valley Homophile Movement). MARY FOLTZ:My name is Mary Foltz and I'm here with Joseph Burns to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are here with Joseph in his home in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. It is October twelfth, two-thousand nineteen. Carol Moeller is our videographer today. Joseph, I want to thank you so much for agreeing to -- JOSEPH BURNS:Thank you. MF:-- talk with us. And the first thing I want to ask is did you consent to this interview today? JB:Yes, of course. I did, absolutely. MF:Wonderful. We're really grateful that you take the time to talk to us. And I want to start by asking you, could you please give me your birth date? JB:Eight-one-forty. August first, nineteen-forty. MF:And just to start our conversation today, could you tell us a little bit about your childhood? JB:Okay. I was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is north of Pittsburgh, about thirty miles. And it's a town of about thirty-thousand, I think. Maybe twenty three- thousand at that time. So, it's a medium sized town and it was the county seat. And it was a great life. This was before the war. I was born before the war. Then, I began -- the war years, of course, started in forty-one and we spent our time, a large part of our time outside the city because they were polio summers, okay? So, when the summers came, we went outside the city. We had a piece of property outside the city about eighteen or nineteen miles. We went there and spent our summers as children and took our friends along and really stayed out -- pretty much out of the summer polio season, which was devastating in terms of how many people would get sick. And we never did. But outside of that, it was very happy. That was an extraordinarily happy time to be -- my family was good. Well off enough to be able to afford to stay out there. My father came and went every day, for work. And my mother ultimately became a member of the school board, which kind of influenced my life a little bit, made me a little, you know, a little more cautious about who I was and what I could do. But really (inaudible) a whole lot but she -- I think my -- between the two of them, my father would be the more nurturing figure, okay, and the person that I really went to for more nurturing. And that was just true of the family. My mother was a good person and really -- but she had her feelings about things, very different, and was not as caring somehow, not able to communicate the same sort of warmth as my dad did. And so, we had a very special relationship (inaudible) and that was very warm and well-remembered. He lived until I was nineteen. Died in 1960. By that time, I was growing up enough -- I had come out -- I didn't come out, as a matter of fact. I was hesitant, lonely as a child (inaudible) a lot of my childhood, and especially as I became gay. At about thirteen, I think, was my first experience, with a friend. Another person in school, the same age, the same grade of school that I was. Happened in my home. In the basement, there were a pair of, set of bunk beds downstairs, and that's where we had our first encounter. And we went on for probably several months but not longer than that. He was an individual interesting to me because he had some effeminate characteristics more than I would have and more than typical for men. But he also -- and I saw him a gap of time, okay? Remember, I was thirteen then. We were probably -- I remember knowing him till we graduated school and he was a clerk in a men's store, which -- he was still a clerk in a men's store. That's what he did for his whole existence and retired from there. And I didn't see him again for fifty-five years when we came together for the high school reunion. Went to first high school reunion. I went back, it was fifty-five years. So, he's the same person. Exactly the same person. But he was married all these years, to a woman. Assume had children. Nobody talked about children at the reunion. Surprised the heck out of me. I thought that would be the whole conversation. Not at all. Nobody even talked a word about children. And people were so much the same as they were in high school. Like, the high school president was still in charge of this particular occasion and he -- very much the same. Looked the same, talked the same, was the same. Personality, the same. And it was true of so many people but it was also true of this boy, which I thought was most remarkable that he had not changed in all these years and yet had never probably been gay himself. I just find it absolutely remarkable that he remained -- maintained marriage and maintained his lifestyle. And after that, there was only one other person. Then, there was a long period of plight for a long time when I was too shy, too afraid, and too absorbed in the whole business of being gay to reach out. Probably fearful, probably not ever very heterosexual and could -- that was not something I even got to very much at all. I tried. Went out on a few dates. But there was not anything that I was really interested in doing, quite honestly. And that -- maintained myself, even through high school and college. I did not have another encounter with anybody. I knew I was gay. Certainly was dealing with the issue myself but I did not reach out to any other gay people and rarely knew any. When I left Butler, finally, at the age of twenty-seven, and this was years later, I still only knew two gay people in Butler. So, it was a lonely life for me there and was very willing to leave and went to Allentown, Bethlehem, really, in '67, and at twenty-seven. Partly, I had dropped out of college and I was going to go back to college. Well, I went back and I didn't go to college but I did stay in Bethlehem, very happily, and started to come out. And slowly, going to a bar called Rubes. I don't know what Rubes is -- was in existence then, on the corner of Ninth and Hamilton, as I recall. And there was another bar down -- the bus station was kind of gay, part-time, on weekends, especially. And as that happened, in '69, somebody bought the bar by the name of Larry Johns. Yes, Larry Johns is his name and he bought that particular bar, called the Rendezvous, then. And it was the bar that was associated with the bus station and it's just a very small bar. I don't think more than fifteen seats in it. And he put a dance floor in back, which was quite exciting for the time. And then, he founded Stonewall, later on. Sold the Rendezvous, although Rendezvous continued for a long time as a bar. And, let me see, so coming out was slow for me. I met a few people prior to Le-Hi-Ho who were -- in that day, there were queen bees, okay? And a queen bee would be a male homosexual who is -- usually a lot of personality and enough to hold other people. And he would create a social circle for himself. Now, in some times, and this was true almost in every town in America -- probably had a queen bee who was truly -- dominated that society. And not a very large circle. There might be just five or six people, it might be fifteen people. Might be a very large group depending on the person himself. But they were very -- they were leaders, they were social leaders. Commanded the social scene and really, there were specific people. They were funny, they were gregarious. They were also extraordinarily sarcastic, sarcasm being the coin of the realm, to a certain degree, because that passed for sophistication. I'm not sure quite what had happened. I always thought sarcasm hurt more than it was good. But it still was the coin of the realm and if you were sarcastic, then you got to be more popular and more -- dominating those people. So, I met a young man who was in his fifties, had a small coterie of two, three other people, I think, and a home in Bethlehem. A nice little home, quite comfortable. And that was my social set for a while. I met a few people at the bar, older men, specifically. By that time, I was twenty-seven going on thirty. And Le-Hi-Ho was founded when I was twenty-nine. So, my point was that I went -- being, feeling lonely. I was going to a psychiatrist for a period of time and I would talk to him about how do I get to know people? How do I be social? What do I do? Le-Hi-Ho started in, I think, in May or April of 1969, just right after the Stonewall -- and that's important. I'll talk about that. But that was the end of my psychiatry, yeah. I found what I needed, you know? I really kind of did not bloom but I certainly came out and was willing to come out. I had read in the paper, the Philadelphia -- no, wouldn't have been, 'cause that -- I'm not sure. Would have been the morning paper out of Philadelphia and I don't -- I'm not sure that I remember the name of it anymore. But Barbara Gittings was listed in there and she was my inspiration because I thought if Barbara Gittings could be out like that, and she (inaudible) she had been the editor of Ladder and was an activist in Philadelphia. A gay activist (inaudible) be an activist. And I thought, boy, if she could do it, I could do it, too. And so, my opportunity, then, came up pretty quickly after that and I was very, very happy and it was the first moment I knew I was going to be out. I was not going to be one of the closeted people. But that was the brief up to that point, okay, if there are any questions about that. Do you have anything to ask me about that? Any illuminations? MF:I just am excited for you to keep going. You should feel like you can just keep talking in the direction that you want to go. And then, if you exhaust it, then I'll ask a question. I mean, I have so many things that I'm curious about. Why? Why you started Le-Hi-Ho and how it kind of came together, who you were talking with? You know, how did you imagine this organization? JB:Oh, I left town. When I left home, I was ready, I think. I was ready to go. I was ready to find what I knew was there, okay? I knew that there were, I knew such of a thing -- was gay bar. I had never been into one prior to that. I had had, I think, yeah, and twenty-three, I had another event, another time when I was with somebody. And then, it became a little more natural and I met some more people. Individuals. Typically older. Oh, probably even older than I was and I was already twenty-seven. Now, that's interesting. I came out at that age, too. I decided I was coming out and so I wrote to my mother first and the rest of the family and said, "I'm gay" and was -- came out, literally, to them and to other people. So, I was working in Bethlehem still at that point. And I was able to come out in my work, which -- I was working as a laborer. And open-hearth furnaces and so on (inaudible) so, I knew people but it -- again, it was a lonely, lonely existence and I felt that keenly. And I felt very, very lonely. I called it my lonely years, twenty-seven to twenty-nine, between twenty-seven and twenty-nine, when I was able to come out, when I was able to really reach out to other people with Le-Hi-Ho and found my, you know, my niche for myself. Well, I was very, very happy about that afterwards. Became the first newsletter editor for them. And the first meeting, I think the -- well, we'll talk about that, too. I was -- Le-Hi-Ho was founded through the auspices of Mattachine, New York City. And approximately, I think, February. I don't know the date. And I have the letter and it's in the -- I sent that (inaudible) inviting people to -- person who was going to form a group through the auspices of Mattachine, New York. He was a local, Ron Seeds. And Ron Seeds was also working at Bethlehem Steel. He was more, he was in the office, and I don't know what he did. I think he was probably mid-management somewhere but it would be mid-staff management, I believe, not directly supervising anybody that I'd be aware of. He was approximately my age. I'm not sure where we were. At that time, I was twenty-nine when Le-Hi-Ho was formed. I met my lover that first meeting and I did not get together with him. But I knew I saw him, knew who he was. Met him again at Christmas time, at New Year's, New Year's Eve, at -- in 1970. New Year's Eve -- of [Grant?], the 1970s, '69 into '70. And we were a place called the Coral Reef in the Poconos. Now that's important because among other things, we -- Le-Hi-Ho had early fundraising was drag shows. And they were down at the Coral Reef, the Coral Reef being in the Poconos, some distance from where we were. And they were successful. We would have several hundred people and we made three or four hundred dollars out of them, which was a lot of money to us. I mean, we were shoestring budget the whole time, literally. We just never needed, we never lacked for money. If they ever did, they put in the newsletter, "We need money" and people would contribute and they went on. But it was still, it was not, never became a greatly funded organization. Just went along, published this newsletter for twenty-five years, there's been a continuous newsletter. Now, the fact that Le-Hi-Ho was founded -- this is important -- again, it was founded in 1969, April or May. It was through the Mattachine. There was a decision, first, that we had to make about whether we'd go with Mattachine, would become a Mattachine, or we'd become an independent organization. I argued for independent organization and I think that most of us were in favor of that, rather than sending our money away. A little money, it was. It would have cost us twenty-five dollars a year, I think, something like that. But was twenty-five dollars is twenty-five dollars back in that day. It was different. That was a sum of money that you didn't automatically have when you were young. So, we went to stay, but what happened with Le-Hi-Ho was it was formed, therefore, as a social educational organization, okay? And this was what early organizations were. And you talk about homophile organizations? Homophiles stayed in the closet. If you remember Mattachine, they had this structure -- was such that they had -- the leadership was supposed to be out and leading the organization to be there for the public presence, okay? And they could do all the public things and everybody else could remain in the closet and be spoken for. That did not preclude them being activist people but the Mattachine grew to about four-hundred people, which was, at that time, was quite enormous. Now, they had done that, of course, by maintaining all the names, never letting anybody go. We did the same thing with Le-Hi-Ho and with other organizations later on. We just kept them on the books for ourselves. Kept saying the newsletter's -- so, we claimed them as members, even if they were no longer active, which very typical that they weren't. Okay, but being social, educational was what Le-Hi-Ho did, okay? They had a social hour after every meeting. I think I talked about, well, I talked about it before we started. There were about thirty people, would go to a meeting. A number of them would be the activists who took the meeting. And then, they would follow it with a social hour, assigned coffee, assigned refreshments and coffee, and every month. And it was very, very popular. That was what people went for, they really -- that social hour was well attended and very important, I think, again because it was, at that time, probably the social alternative to the bars. There were virtually no others, and certainly none of that ilk, in which you can get to know people without [the bedding, coming off?], without that being the focus of conversation. You would talk about all kinds of other things. You would talk more as a normal conversation. I think it was a very important aspect and a very important difference that went down that made that such an important organization. And it waxed and waned. There were sometimes -- were fewer people, more people. At the beginning, would all connect the business together. Well, that was a three-hour meeting if they had to do that kind of thing. And then, we also learned that that was just not successful. That was not what people went for. So, we learned to -- they built a board, ultimately, that took care of the business. And there was a -- Ron made himself the -- I forget what it was called but the Mattachine, New York and there's actually the same executive. And I don't remember -- executive something or other. Thank you. Okay, so Ron was the executive, meaning that he was responsible for the organization. Once led a fight one time to get the key for the mailbox. Now, the reason I did it was I felt that there were things going to the mailbox that I wanted to know about. I was the newsletter editor and I was really wanting to know about other activities across the horizon, which we didn't -- which I was not informed of but Ron was because, at that time especially, when there are other organizations, you sent your newsletter out to everybody else and the other organizations to keep them reminded, as -- that you were both in existence, what you did. So, but Ron said, "Look, I'm --" faced down the board and said, "I'm going to keep the key. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be head of this organization and I will be here tomorrow and when you guys are all gone, I'll be here." He was almost right. Almost right. He left about '87, I think, somewhere in the late eighties, I'm thinking, like -- and I don't know what that story was. By that time, I was gone myself. To finish that story, okay, back with Ron. And so, he led the organization, did most of the business and conducted most of the meetings. We did get a president. We named ourselves Le-Hi-Ho ultimately. Was a while there -- we wrote some bylaws. Bylaws was -- piece of shit. Never do it. It just takes -- big waste of time because you never -- you don't pay -- little attention to the bylaws after they're written. And they can take up a great deal of time. But finally, they give us a name, which came out to be Le-Hi-Homophile Organization and we shortened that to Le-Hi-Ho. And I remember who did it. That's neither here nor there. There was a person involved with the organization who was a rare book seller. Interesting man. He served that and he was a person who did not like conflict at all, so he didn't even like the meetings. He felt the conflict was too strong for him. Was a very gentle man. Very gentle person. But he came up with the name, ultimately. Good friend and a good person. Older. Again, older than myself, even at that point. Le-Hi-Ho was distinguished by being a little bit older. Generally, the membership would be in their twenties to thirties. And that's a little unusual for gay organizations of any ilk, to not be much younger and much more college age or whatever. These were young men who were starting their careers, typically. And again, that's who came. And sometimes from a distance. We had people coming from Wilkes-Barre, people coming from that area, and around, around, around. There were a few interesting people that might have belonged at one point or another. There was a fellow name of Paul. What was the last name? Oo, can I -- forgive myself. (inaudible), he was a -- Phil Andros, which if you know Phil Andros was a pornographic writer. But he was, yeah, that's what it was. And he -- but by then, he'd been retired from that. He was no longer writing the books but he was (inaudible) with his lover and was one of the interesting characters we once knew at Le-Hi-Ho that were associated with -- and he died, I think, not very long after that, I believe of AIDS, but I'm not sure of that. There were no other famous people, particularly, that I can think of. And Phil was very modest. Paul was very modest. Told us that but he never claimed -- and I was probably -- I was one of the few who would recognize him from pornography. I used to go to New York City and pick up the stuff in Times Square. So, of course, yes, I knew what Paul -- Phil Andros. That was exciting and he was a major author. When I came out in Pennsylvania, I had been to college in Pennsylvania. I had been to college in Bethlehem. And I went thereforth to college, universities -- one university, Lehigh. And then, there are four colleges, I believe: Moravian, Muhlenberg, Lafayette, and -- three cities. And there was also a Catholic school, St. Catherine, St. Catherine, Saint Frances de Sales. And there was even, actually -- there was a Baptist school that nobody knows about -- was in existence. Not quite unknown but it was a college, probably a junior college, but I never knew which one. I used to know its location and I used to observe it. My point was that I went to the colleges, I went to the universities, and I went to the libraries, particularly, that I could find, okay? And I was not much, I was not a great, I was not at that point much of a scholar. But I could not find in any of those libraries anything in the card catalog under homosexuality. There was zero works, okay? And what I could find one time was a book I -- it's written by a psychiatrist, I believe, in association with, well, very famous Midwest -- doesn't matter now. At any rate, there was one blurb about homosexuality, short paragraph thing. Two paragraphs, perhaps. And there was a book in Le-Hi-Ho by Derek, Philip Derek? What was his name? He was one of the very few novelists at that time who was actually publishing books that were gay specific. His last name was Derek and now I can't remember his first name, most regrettably. There was supposedly a copy of that in Lehigh University. It was not on the shelves, I can tell you that. And that was typical. That's what I found is there was very, very little, and not in. I was actually, with a very good book shop because I'd been a student and liked the Moravian Bookshop a great deal. It was a wonderful resource. They thought I was a student. I had been there so often, been there for years. I don't know how they thought I was a student after I was there fifteen years I was associated with them. But they were -- I knew people there and they were my sources. And so, I got a lot of books. I developed a nice library for myself, about one-hundred and fifty books by the time Le-Hi-Ho opened up. And there were not very many books at that time. You have to remember that Psychopathia Homosexualis was still in existence, okay? Now, 1874, it was written. This was a textbook for gay people! Come on! I mean, this is bad stuff. And it was all case histories, that sort of thing, and very -- people like Berger -- Bieber were writing at that time. I don't know if you've ever read Bieber. Irving Bieber was, oh, he was -- terrible man. Wrote a book in 1952. I got a copy of it, was, like, the thirteenth edition. That's how bad it was. I mean, it was all that was available and it was -- he was the one who said, you know, he equated us with -- homosexuals are criminals, teachers were criminals, they all have the same personality. They're all psychopaths. It's all psychopaths. Well, that taught me, that's -- I wasn't. I mean, that was my beginning of my liberation, was knowing who I was not. I was not that person. Nobody I knew was that person. Nobody I knew was of that ilk. But he was just devastating and everything he had to say was very, very negative and he had all his cases and all this stuff and illustrations. But it was a paperback book and the thirteenth edition. And that's just sick when you think about it. Still makes me sick when I think about it because that was really -- that and Berger, Edmund Berger or was it Edmund Berger? [I think Renee?] -- was all I could find. And these were the books that were coming out then. These were the authorities -- were trying to find out why am I homosexual? Was a big question. Screw the question, you know? I learned quickly to forget that, that just that was irrelevant. I am. But it was -- intellectual journey through that. And then, I got, like, The Homosexual in America. Loved Donald Cory. I was just grossly a fan of this man who would -- in '50, I think, perhaps, in the time of the McCarthy era, wrote this book called Homosexual in America, which was probably the first apologist for homosexual -- and he himself was a married man. He was a member of Mattachine. And I wrote to Mattachine a fan letter, as a matter of fact, and said, "I really appreciate the fact that you've done this. This is extraordinary and what a brave and courageous and wonderful" -- they wrote back and said, "He's out of the organization. We kicked him out." (laughs) So, the story about him is, and I find this out later, he was a sociologist who wanted to use the organization for research and to make himself a famous researcher, to [promote?] himself. And Lehigh -- and they turned him down on it. They would not support that. And he tried to become leader of the organization, tried to become the executive director, and that's when they threw him out. His name was -- I want to know, 'cause this is important. He still wrote that -- hate senior moments like this. I'll think of it and I will add that back. But he believed that men were afraid of women, is why they became homosexual. And this was [Ralph Ellard Ellis?] if you remember the name, was a psychiatrist which was -- this was his whole thing. And he said that that was his -- it was his thesis, that people are homosexual because they're afraid of women. He spoke at Le-Hi-Ho one time, which was not a time I was -- by that time, I had acquired a lover and was not directly involved with Le-Hi-Ho, or not very much, so I didn't know he was there. And I was quite surprised because -- but he came and spoke to the organization. Matter of fact, it's in the newsletters. I was actually quite shocked because I wouldn't have had him. He was really -- and he had a major following. But he also wasn't as tough on it. He wasn't just condemning homosexuals as Bieber and Berger and the other people had been. So, I had a library. I did a lot, well, as much research as I could. I find out about Evelyn Hooker, obviously, Ford and Beach, who was the sociologist who made it clear -- the cross-cultural studies and cross species studies. John Money, his sexual studies. And began to learn that there was a whole modern view emerging. Now, I think that that's very important, intellectually, okay? The intellectual beginnings of this were interesting because there were very few authors prior to this who were doing anything on sex at all, okay? And especially when they were across studies or other cultures. For instance, Richard Burton, a very, very famous author, very famous traveler in the East who had written a lot of cross-cultural studies and a lot of cross-cultural things about the -- and that whole Eastern culture. You can think of -- who? Carpenter, John Carpenter. And it was John Carpenter in England, did that -- wonderful books. André Gide wrote a book called Corydon. Was very famous homosexual. He also happened to be a pedophile, regrettably. Went to Algiers. But he wrote about it. One of the books that I found for the library was his diaries, his journals. Journals they were called in that day and he'd written about -- they were continued in four volumes. And I had the slightly abbreviated paperback edition but it was good enough and certainly told me a lot about -- and he was world famous at that point and he was an authority -- if you remember, Leo Tolstoy, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, became such a famous author and became the voice of peace and this world known, world renowned moralist. And that's the role that Gide filled. He became in -- writing a book called The Immoralist, among other things. He became that kind of authority figure and was very much highly regarded despite being gay. Corydon was published and when he published it, he only did twelve copies, so that never did get out until after he was dead. Then [there were -- the number?] (inaudible) published. I happen to have, was fortunate enough to find a copy of it. His thesis talked about a male's beauty and how beautiful males were and they were dominant. And you find beautiful birds, okay? Cardinals, for instance, the cardinal family, the male is the red cardinal. The females are the brown cardinals. The females also lead. They go first, then the male follows when it's safe. But they also were in, (clears throat) I'm sorry, in nature, were very often the more beautiful of the species, the more resplendent of the species to get -- and they were the ones that the females were attracted to. Remember that they, you know, that they did perform the dances or whatever. They had the plumage, the right plumage and the right light and look to be -- [set their genes?], partly because of the (inaudible) and he -- so that's what he emphasized. Interesting thesis. Also, interesting to me, when you talk about early homosexuality, and this was back in -- the term was (inaudible) until eighteen-something, seventeen-something, eighteen, I think. At any rate, [it was?] not a term. And before that, they were called inverts, intermediates, third sex. All-important concepts. And they used to talk about the important contribution that these particular people made, okay, that they could make the society that I've always kind of believed in. I've always thought that homosexuals had a special mission, had a special something, that we understood differently than the dominant culture did, the dominant heterosexual culture did. We weren't as marriage-oriented, for instance. We were freer in our associations and -- but I think now, as we've gone on, I think that what we were looking for is what is now emerging, which is that wonderful fluidity, that you could be anything, okay? That you could be male, female, without limits, without labels, without anything to identify with, that -- and yet, that fluidity, this makes you go all over so that you are all of those things, happily. I was not. I was a male homosexual and I, at my point, when I came out, was binary choice, okay? You were gay or you were straight. I chose gay, absolutely. I wanted to be that and I also emphasized my maleness, as opposed to anything, and really was not happy with the social sets in which the guys would call each other Mary. That made me uncomfortable because I thought that's kind of denial of who we are. And it so often was biting and so often was a putdown or an insult and sarcasm, that sarcasm that I talked about, was so much part of the humor. And that was a part of the humor, too. You had parties, drag shows, and what you did, okay, you -- everybody -- where you went into drag. I never did again. And it just wasn't me. But I think, too, that I really feel that I should have had -- I already knew growing up, when I was asking myself these questions, that there's a large part, a large component of me is feminine as other people would understand it. Not a sports person. A person who liked more concerts, liked music, who liked more things that might be softer and less hard and less harsh. And my brothers were athletic, I always thought. And I felt that difference. So, I kind of still -- I wish I had developed that more and been more open to developing it, that I would be a different person. And now I don't understand, it's very difficult for me to understand young homosexuals because they are so fluid and they are so -- can make that change and identify with it in a way we couldn't. To me, bisexuality was almost an excuse. But again, it never was. There are true bisexuals. I have learned that over the years, too, and accept that. But now, there's something more than that. There's this wonderful fluidity of being whatever you want to be and expressing it all. And I think, especially, Adrian does a terrific job and the Lehigh Valley is doing a terrific job of emphasizing that particular aspect of things. I look at the programs and what I get are everything is very much oriented to the trans community, a lot of it is. You're doing a lot of trans (inaudible) so many of the programs emphasize that as opposed to, okay, a more strictly male homosexuality. Come back to Le-Hi-Ho again for one second. This was a very male organization. There were no women, okay? There was one woman who was directly involved in Le-Hi-Ho in the first 10 years. Her name was [Lou Augustine?]. Lou Augustine became a member of the governor of Pennsylvania, the Governor's Council on Sexual Minorities. She was appointed to that. She lived in Reading. And she [come up to?] groups. She came up to Le-Hi-Ho periodically through all those years. And she was almost the only one who did. And I used to fight Le-Hi-Ho because after -- and in those first ten years, I began to change. There were so many feminists, and met Dixie and so on, so I was really trying to get them to understand that they don't have women, that they need to look at this because -- for many, many reasons. I thought that, for instance, now was our model -- except that the feminist movement was so broad. And that's for many issues, from childcare to pay, to just everything was so different for them. And men didn't pay attention. They did not support that. They didn't support the abortion rights, which they wouldn't do -- they wouldn't come out and say, Le-Hi-Ho -- and I tried to get them to do this. Would not adopt a resolution in favor of abortion or anything else, anything to do with feminism. They just simply wouldn't do it. And I wasn't disappointed and I understood because -- but they were a conservative organization. Again, they were founded two months before the Stonewall, it made them very different. They were social, educational, homophile. No organizations after the Stonewall or after -- yes, after Stonewall, I went to a conference in October of that year, '69. It was last meeting of ECHO, East Coast Homophile Organizations. There were several organizations involved. Le-Hi-Ho was new but so were a whole lot of other things, like HI, Homophiles of -- where? I don't remember. There was a group in -- [Robert Biddings?] was in charge of a group in Philadelphia. Mark Segal had just founded Gay, I think -- the GAA, yes, thank you. And so, I think there were quite a number of organizations. I recall there were thirteen organizations, almost all of them new. Now, the question, of course, with the old guard was shall we seat these people? Can we believe them? You know, they're new, they're young, they're radical about -- and they were, for instance, Foster Gunnison was himself an organization. Foster Gunnison, his whole job and his whole organization was, himself, keeping all the archives of all the earlier groups. And so, he built up a tremendous library and a very important library in New England of all those early newsletters and whatever was new and all the records of those groups. He tried to maintain some semblance of it. But that was (inaudible) okay. Mattachine New York was Dick Leitsch, who I went to see one time. When I came out, I went to New York. I had been to see a program, I think, in '63 that talked about Mattachine and showed the door of the organization, which was somewhere in the Village at that point, as I recall, a glass door. I'll never forget that. And so, really, that was one of the first things with them, when I came out, and I couldn't go to school the next day. I went to the library and I looked up Mattachine. MF:Do you want to stop? JB:It was important to me. And I went there, went to see him in New York. Went to the Mattachine office and walked in and just introduced myself. I was so happy. Went to Philadelphia. At that time, Janus Society was in existence and one called the Homosexual Law Reform Society. Both happened to be the same address in what turned out to be Polak -- why can't I remember their first names? I can remember his last name but I can't remember his first name -- published the Janus Society newsletter called Drum. And he also ran a pornography shop -- is what he did. I think was easier as a business or whatever. When I went to the address, went upstairs to the second floor, met the secretary. He was not in. Dammit, his name just crossed my name again. I mean, he was not there but clearly there was pornography all over. You know, the shelves in back were -- and that was what he did was supply -- pornography supplier. I don't know if that was his main job. He was well known and he did -- Drum was unusual, a little bit pornographic in terms of the newsletter. And I had a copy for years and didn't realize that I -- and I probably turned it into the projects here at the Dickinson when I realized that it was, in fact, the newsletter of the organization. But it had pictures of -- posed pictures back in that day. It's what you did, the posing straps and that sort of thing were de rigueur. You do nothing naked. That wouldn't have been possible but as much naked -- as close you could get. Clark Polak, I believe. Clark Polak, I believe, was his name. Joined their West Coast organization. I would join ONE to me was (inaudible) which was -- I think one in San Francisco, one in Los Angeles. ONE was an educational organization, did meetings, did presentations constantly to the public. Le-Hi-Ho was distinguished for that. They had a wonderful speakers' bureau. I was not a member of it. I wasn't Ron's favorite person but [as their?] -- was really very much in charge of that. Did a wonderful job. Presentations all over the Valley, very, very active, and through all the schools, the high schools, the colleges. Was a very main function, as well as the social organization, which we talked about. They also were very supportive about other things but they didn't -- they were not supportive about women. They wouldn't do the women's rights. They weren't really big on women's rights, although ERA was becoming stronger and stronger through now and now is very, very powerful organization in Pennsylvania. And Ellie Smeal was president, national president, and come from here. Gloria -- not Steinem but Gloria -- what was her name? Sackman-Reed. Gloria Sackman-Reed was the president then, followed by Dixie after that. And Dixie held conference in Philadelphia. And, I'm sorry, in Allentown. And then, she became president that year, [but did?] the conference -- she was self-nominated or nominated (inaudible) president -- Pennsylvania NOW. And that was '87, I believe, '86, '87, because in '87, we're supposed to have a conference in '86, in '87, early '87. We never did. And I'll tell you, that's another story and a later administration. But stay with Le-Hi-Ho for the moment. So, Le-Hi-Ho was very definitely male, strongly male. And I think that later, they did change but it was not until after I had left. I left in '83 to go to Chicago to live with my lover. And lived with him for ten years there, then another ten years in Houston. And then, we got divorced. His choice. I came back here to live with my sister in two-thousand. Had been together, been with Doug for eighteen years at the time he wanted the divorce. We stayed together for another year and a half just in order to sell the house, prepare the house, and so on, for sale. And I wanted to celebrate the coming of the new century with him, the millennial -- I wanted to do that. And really, it was a little bit of an anti-climax in the end. Not sorry that I did it, though. He was a good man and I was very much in love at that point but it just didn't work out. And they were my feelings, not his. Okay, Le-Hi-Ho. MF:May I ask -- JB:And what else can I say about that I could, yeah, (inaudible) MF:Well, I'm curious about your role as the newsletter organizer for Le-Hi-Ho. JB:Okay. MF:So, my questions are, you know, what in particular did you want to publish in the newsletter? Did you publish on politics or was it -- JB:Okay. MF:-- more social? JB:I did -- it was politics. I was [strong?] informational and, a matter of fact, got into trouble for it. I was writing as much -- I was doing all this scholarship on the side. And so, I was making what I called reviews of these books. They weren't reviews of these books. They were really giving you -- since you aren't going to read the book, this is what the book said. And these are important ideas, okay? This man is representing, for instance -- the writer, one from a man by the name of Wainwright Churchill -- wrote a book on -- and it's one that's gotten lost that I very -- don't understand why it did -- on the pro-gay cultures in the past. And so, he emphasized Greece as homo-positive, positive as opposed to negative, and the Roman culture as being more positive than negative and other cultures being more positive than negative. And he talked about them quite specifically, in quite a great, celebrated depth. And so, I would write that in the newspaper, wanting you to know that this saves you. This is saving your ass, okay? Very, very important piece of writing, this thing is. And so, I did it that way. Barbara Gittings wrote a letter and said, you know, "That's not a review." And Ron Seed wrote a letter and said, "You aren't earning views?. You're fired." So, I was fired. And that was about a year and a half later, year and a half or two. There was a person who -- the gentleman who started the newsletter was a guy who owned -- the real bookseller was throwing an advertisement, I think, after the first reading. So, I say, "We're going to have a second meeting." So, he wrote a newsletter for it. Well, that was the beginning of the newsletter and I took over the next one as being the newsletter editor because I wanted to do that. I thought it was a good fit for me. And I did things my own way. There was a little bit of humor that I wrote. I'm not funny. Believe me, it was a terrible piece. It was a lousy idea. And it really was a kind of a bit of a campy persona, which I am not and couldn't really play well. But that was that. And so, my emphasis was trying to be on educational -- and telling them about what was going on, okay? And I think that at some -- what I thought was positive about newsletters that I liked was that, okay? And other newsletters were done -- for instance, there was -- when Gays United of Lancaster's college, U.L., was founded, they formed -- they did a newsletter that became the Pennsylvania -- not rural but what do they call it? Damn. I'll have to think of that again later, too, because it was an important contribution. It was to, like, by the Boston Gay News. Talks about all the other organizations. Talked about what was going on, what was important, what were the leading causes, what -- and so, politically, if you were an activist, that's what you read because it really gave it to you in a way that The Advocate was not doing and it was much more social, much broader, and a lot more advertising in terms -- and a lot of beautiful boys, that sort of thing. And kind of light on good material. Now, it had not always been that way. I remember The Advocate, [firstly?] when it started, and reading it -- I was subscribing at that point -- like, I was a member of those organizations remotely because I couldn't -- that was my way of participating. All I could do what there was to join and pay attention. And one was giving me good information, Advocate was giving good information. And much as I could participate, they were. So, I thought that was a very, very important part of it. I found -- I just donated, I think I've said that, all those books for the library of Le-Hi-Ho, to start the library at Le-Hi-Ho. Mattachine donated their extra books, okay? And if you went to Mattachine, the forepart of -- you walked in, there were stacks of books there. Not very many. It wasn't -- maybe four or five depths but that was the largest collection that I ever saw and knew of. And my one-hundred fifty books, I thought, was quite extraordinary for the time because there were so few still being written. You know, openly -- books that were not people who -- there were some English books. They were hard to find and I tried to find everything I could find. I mean, I would go to books on the margin, okay, that were being dumped onto the market because they weren't any good, going to a special seller. And you'd go there and find books by English authors about -- writing about people who were gay. Was wonderful to me (inaudible) and plays. Very little of that. Le-Hi-Ho often went to plays in New York. Went to see Puppy Dog Tails, went to see -- what was the, shit, Boys in the Band, was, of course, new then. The Homoerotic Opera. Thomas Mann, A Night in Venice? Is that -- I think it was called? Went to see that. And so, they went often. But that was the beginning. They were Off-Broadway. Very little mainstream stuff. We did show, incidentally -- one of the first mainstream movies was, damn, sorry, why can't I think of the name of it? We had a meeting and we're meeting at that point at the Unitarian Church in Bethlehem, which is up in Fountain Hill, way up in the hill. Yeah, that was -- went there. They were good friends of ours. And so, it was early when we were looking for a place to meet and they did, I think, about three or four or five months into the organization. And it was all those years until we left, which would have been -- I think '83, I think is when the center started that Le-Hi-Ho moved out of there and met at the center -- MF:The Lam-- JB:-- was also there. They have their meetings at the center, as well. MF:The Lambda Center. JB:And stopped going to the church. MF:Okay. JB:Okay? As far as I know. MF:Can I ask, before you moved to the Lambda Center, what was it like for Le-Hi-Ho and just to be out in Bethlehem as a city. Like, what was it like at Bethlehem Steel -- JB:I didn't have -- MF:-- to be out? JB:-- any problem with it. I wasn't extraordinarily social. I mean, I kept with some gay people. Remember, at that time, you had -- Friday night was your gay -- okay, Friday, Saturdays was your gay time. And so, that was, it was kind of what you did, okay? You'd live the much more limited life Monday through Friday. Weekends, then you went somewhere to be gay, maybe in town, maybe elsewhere. I went to a lot of gay bars elsewhere just to see what they were. And because (inaudible) and I wanted to know about them and I put that in the newsletters, too. It was a lot of that sort of thing -- you know?] gay guides were very important. Also, talking about the electoral development, I think that we don't realize how much Sexology magazine had to do with publishing the early arguments about gays -- were done in that particular medium before they were done elsewhere and before there were more academic studies by Money and Hooker and so on and Ford and Beach, before those books came out, they were largely arguing in Sexology over the fact that homosexuals -- how they were acceptable and a natural part of sexuality. MF:And that's a magazine? JB:That would be important. Sorry? MF:Was that a magazine or you just -- JB:Yes. MF:-- mean the discipline? JB:Short magazine. Small one. MF:Oh, really? JB:It was almost a 'zine size. And it was pretty informal. It certainly was not a rigorous journal by any means. Ladder was the first lesbian journal, ONE, for -- a publication called ONE, which was probably the first serious journal of any sort. Christopher Street came out, ultimately. That was a literary magazine, the first one. The New York -- Craig Rodwell opened Oscar Wilde Bookshop in the Village. I went to see that. That was interesting. I went, that was right after Stonewall. And Stonewall was very exciting for me. I knew about what had happened and within a month or so, I think I'd gotten to -- I think Craig opened this bookstore and I went to the bookstore. I'm now thirty years old and the kids in there -- and this is when kids -- if you were over thirty, you were not to be trusted anymore. You were over the hill. And so, the kids in there were looking at me very peculiarly and really making comments about Mattachine and how ill they were for being against -- not as out, okay, as we are. They aren't as free, they aren't doing this whole youth thing. And remember, when Stonewall happened, the first thing that happened was you got this wonderful GSG, Gay Liberation Front's organization. Very, very leftist. Very leftist. And, like, remember Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine was a communist. These guys were leftists of that ilk. Not into communism, particularly, but very leftist in New York, well known. Lots of books, you know (inaudible) sort of book. They were quite exciting people when we met them at that -- yeah, met them in Philadelphia at the ECHO meeting. They were -- exciting group of people. But there were three or four organizations that -- I remember there were -- Columbia University, there was New York City University, there was just every kind of school you could imagine. The state university as opposed to the city university. And they represented -- they bloomed. Like, Philadelphia one or several and Gay Liberation Front's were much more oriented to being political in a broad sense. You were supporting the lettuce -- the Chavez and the agriculturists and the leftists all over the world, were -- your concern -- the Chicago Seven, the, you know, the twelve, the elevens or whatever. Their protests -- were the kind of things that you were supposed to be active in. That was not pleasing to a lot of the membership, so that they started GAA as opposed to that -- Gay Activist Alliance, which said, "We are gay, we're going to pay attention to gay causes and not pay attention to these other causes or not support them." And that was a big thing at that ECHO meeting. There was a huge fight. Frank Cannaday was the president of the organization, president of that particular meeting at that time. And he presided over the meeting and when there was this old guard and the new guard, the old guard and the new people, these new radicals coming in. It was a kind of battle, a very big battle about getting seated in the first place and then the battle was over what to do about the Day of Remembrance. You have the Day of Remembrance -- was held at the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July and that was Frank Cannaday's, that was his -- "here's the deal." The first organization (inaudible) in '64 and marched in Washington with the picket line. Famous picture of Barbara Gittings -- is very prominent in that set and -- but he was in charge of that particular meeting and had presided over this battle royale. And again, the issue that they were fighting about was, well, among other things -- I remember that there was somebody in that organization that was talking about Barbara Gittings as a baby killer, you know? So, at that time, they were not as unified on abortion as we got to be, by no means. There was a terrible battle over that and horrible things happened as a result of this terrible argument going on between the baby killers and the right to lifers. And the other thing that happened was coming out, okay? This is when the GFL in New York was -- very important for -- they went over and took a firehouse, took over, literally, just -- and at that time, you could -- walked in and just took over, literally. And they -- an abandoned firehouse. They took it over and it became quite a major organization. They were doing dances of about five-hundred people and they were (inaudible) super, super exciting. And so, they really lit up New York, completely, and in a way -- but also, as these GSAs were -- GFLs founded on all kinds of campuses everywhere. Every campus would have a GFL. There was a group in Kutztown, as a matter of fact. A young fellow that came to Le-Hi-Ho, Frederick Reed. And Fred Reed was -- became vice president of Le-Hi-Ho. And he was also president of (inaudible) about five members, I think, in Kutztown University at that time. He was a student. And then, sadly, he went to the University of Pittsburgh as a graduate student and died -- I don't know how he died. I don't know the circumstances. I've always been suspicious because he fell off a tower. And one of the towers in Pittsburgh was famous for having these -- their first dormitories were twin towers, okay? Dormitory towers. And he died -- jumping, you know, falling off of that. And who knows? Fred would have been out, he would have been -- outspoken person. Very forthright. He also went to the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade and I got in there and he and I and my lover and a woman went in the first parade together. Very happy circumstance. Barry says that there are pictures of me there. No, I knew that there were. I was pictured -- the week, next week, I'm pictured in The Advocate -- my sign is pictured in The Advocate. I'm sitting there -- but the picture's taken with my back to the camera, so no way -- you can see my bald spot. That's how I can -- recognize my lover and you can recognize Fred Reed, who was standing there with me. Was an amazing time. That's a different story, and inspiring, inspiring, inspiring moment, that first march but -- and so, (inaudible) for years and found out from Ron that he had died (inaudible) -- at the university. MF:May I ask -- there's this really interesting way that in the stories that you're telling, Le-Hi-Ho is moving all around the region. Members are going to Philadelphia, you're going to New York City, you're in contact with these major -- JB:I was. MF:-- organizations, yeah. JB:So, I was because I wanted to be, okay? And I wrote that. And, you know, I wrote about the Stonewall and the meeting and the conflict that was taking place between the old guard and the new guard, which is the homophile organizations and this new group that wants to be out and political and it wants to be very forward and right in your face, confronting. And I wasn't sure. I really had to take a stand, oh, and my stand was I prefer to be out. That was clear. And Ron did not at that time. I remember I put his name in the first newsletter and he protested. Now, he didn't stay that way. I mean, Ron became much more public over this period of time, of necessity. And certain lover certainly did because (inaudible) speaking and so on. But at that time, he was protesting it and that would have been -- that more typically Mattachine -- as I said, Mattachine was supposed to be the leadership was out and everybody else wasn't. The only person ever (inaudible) that was Frank Cannaday and he would insist on it. The stories were funny because Frank always tells it that I was the only person who was out. They said, "We never knew that." It wasn't us. We always thought we were out, we always thought we were doing things under our own name. And Frank said, "No, we all had nicknames." (laughs) Wasn't true. Was true in Mattachine in New York. And the very famous person at Mattachine New York outside of Dick Leitch was the executive director, was a lawyer by the name of -- was great. Austin Wade. That just has marble halls behind it. Austin was, in fact -- and he was -- his name was Arthur Kennedy and he was a professor at Princeton Law. And he was the legal counsel for Mattachine Society but known as Austin Wade and he was more known widely through that. And I was a great admirer of Austin Wade because he was the only -- he was the most powerful figure anybody knew and there were no lawyers, no doctors, nobody of any name or of any profession out at that point. So, what was her name? Was a Puerto Rican woman who was the secretary and she was as famous as anybody else because she was such a mother to everybody and a wonderful person. I've forgotten her name now, unfortunately. But Austin Wade was one of those people -- was a big figure in my mind. And, as I said, I find out later what his name was and he was a member of the Pennsylvania Council on Sexual Minorities, from New Jersey. But he was an invited member of the organization. Very distinguished man. Now, you ask me, why did I do that? MF:Yeah. JB:I just did it and the Le-Hi-Ho, two things happened. There was an organization that started in '75. This is five, this is six years later, in Reading, okay? Came to Le-Hi-Ho and said, "We're starting, need your advice." I went down and stayed with them, literally, for a long time. That organization that we started was called -- at that time, there was movement to start this Pennsylvania Council on Sexual Minorities. There was a group that met in Harrisburg, conceiving this idea, making it up with Governor Shapp's approval. Governor Shapp was a wonderful, wonderful leader and a man of -- that's a whole chapter in itself. It's a very interesting story. As a part of that, well, they did a conference in Harrisburg to introduce the idea of the council and to generate with them on the community enthusiasm for it. And it got some people to -- members of the council. And that happened in '75. In '74, December '74, the Reading group was founded, on Christmas -- New Year's Day, matter of fact, of '75. I think that's correct. But they came to us and I went down and that's how I became involved. But through that conference, they started a group called the Caucus -- in order to get more representatives from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to equalize -- Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and then the rest of the state, okay, so that there were three bodies. Philadelphia has seven, Pittsburgh had five, I think, and we had three. Well, that was not enough for the rest of the state combined. So, we caucused to get more people and call ourselves (inaudible) Gay Caucus. This was interagency organization. So, we then founded -- we met the organization of Gays United of Lancaster, Reading was just beginning. Le-Hi-Ho was a major member and I went and represented Le-Hi-Ho at this new group called the Caucus and it became a separate organization, a state organization, worked for state causes, worked on the state level, wanted to be an interagency kind of thing. So, I was the liaison for that. And Le-Hi-Ho chose not to be involved. I could do the involvement but they were not directly involved. No, they did play a major part later on, a very important part, but they chose not to be active in it, okay, I'm just pointing it out. MF:Why not? JB:It's because they were a different organization. They were not politically oriented as such. Now, they didn't ignore it but they weren't about to invest in it, okay? Like, they wouldn't invest in women. They just wouldn't do it. That wasn't their thing. Was okay. I mean, I got along with them but I didn't feel that it would've been better had they done one of the things that -- Reading was very much oriented, was very open, about half and half. Was half men and half women. Five, six men, five or six women. Every meeting, okay? The Caucus had co-chairs in everything we did. We have co-chairs of the Caucus got there every meeting, every committee we had, push at everything because we wanted to be equal. Equality was very, very important to us and equality with men and women was very, very important. And then, again, the ERA was a major issue at that point, so -- Reading was famous that way, Lancaster was very much that way. Very much oriented to having as many women represented -- but female representation they could get and had generated. And most organizations were. Le-Hi-Ho was the exception, had always been the exception. Again, it was an older organization. They had it as a different substantiality. They were okay without -- didn't need to be something different. Very happy with what they were and did a wonderful job, I thought. I mean, they were so important in terms of the people's lives that were there, okay? And I always say that people come with agenda, okay? They come to your organization with an agenda, something that they need. And mostly, it's just to be known, just to tell you that I'm gay and be accepted. And that's the importance of the organization. If you could shine a love on somebody, that's liberation. That is, in fact, liberation. That's what it's all about, is just that little bit of love and they just bloom. They become these wonderful flowers. And it happened to me, it happens every -- to all those people. And, like, an organization -- let's take Homophiles of Williamsport. Three years they exist as two hundred people and six different counties came to that organization. The important thing was that they had a group talk afterwards, okay, that people came to be able to say -- express their concerns, have their questions, get their information, got their agenda taken care of. That was the important part of the group and outside of that, it probably didn't make a -- it did. It made some wonderful -- some contributions. And it tried to be political but it wasn't so much -- its real satisfaction, it was the same as Le-Hi-Ho. It was a homophile organization. It was founded as homophile organization they said. So, social education was what they thought they thought they were doing but they did much more than that. But there were younger members much more oriented to being out and active in a way that Le-Hi-Ho just wasn't. You could belong -- a very satisfactory life with Le-Hi-Ho, be an active member in Le-Hi-Ho. There were wonderful people involved with that, a whole board full of people and that -- oh, they, just -- Bob Steelman, Helmuth Baerwald, oh, [Ron?] and our first president was Al Ravert. Second was -- oh, the person from Wilkes-Barre. Came to the meeting, said -- again, Le-Hi-Ho had that kind of draw, okay? People would come from distance to be there because it was a working organization. Staying in existence gives you a good reputation, just -- people know when you're going to meet and you're going to meet next week or next month, too. Made a big difference. And so, a lot of people came from elsewhere to be at Le-Hi-Ho. Was true everywhere. All those organizations, -- homophile, as I said, there's homophile -- in that little group (inaudible) knew that they had two-hundred members and they had the membership list. I don't have the membership list. That wasn't my thing. That was Ron's thing. He was the one who was keeping track of all the members and who was involved and who wasn't and where they were from. Garth Watkins was the second president. MF:Well, we're about at an hour-and-a-half and that's when we like to stop. And so, maybe, can I ask one more question and then we'll -- JB:Sure. MF:So, I just want to ask that -- you know, for you, personally, what kind of impact do you think Le-Hi-Ho had on Bethlehem, on the Lehigh Valley, and just on the region, more broadly? JB:Okay, ask me again. MF:What kind of impact did Le-Hi-Ho have on Bethlehem, on the Lehigh Valley? JB:Okay, I -- MF:What's its legacy? JB:-- said that the educational thing was very important. Okay, you're reaching out to high school students, to college students, giving them good information on a regular basis. They were (inaudible) back to class after they started, then they would be invited back again the next year. That was a very, very important function. They were out to the degree that they advertised constantly in the newspaper. They were open to everybody that would come. There was one time -- there was a meeting in which they -- a person appeared with a fifteen-year-old. Scared the hell out of that meeting. You got very, really scared men who were suddenly sitting with a fifteen-year-old person, realizing that this guy can get us all in big, big, big doo-doo. The next meeting, they voted out, they voted the person who brought him out. You cannot be a member anymore and we will not support NAMBLA, okay? Not support the North American Boy Association , which is -- I supported -- I thought that that is dangerous to all of us. And, as an activist, I always limited myself to not being in the presence of young men, okay? Younger men that I knew weren't of any -- of a certain age or even they looked like they were a certain age because I was not going to risk what I would've risked. And my reputation was everybody's reputation. I was the leader. I would have been known -- if I had been arrested, it would have been bad news and I didn't want that. So, that -- one thing that happened, that they -- was another organization -- they were just conservative. There was an underground newspaper at that time. They would not support the underground newspaper but [Sweich that had?] the underground newspaper supported them quite openly in their publication. They wouldn't support them. Now, Dixie White spoke among other people. I was program chair for a while and so I invited a lot of people that I wanted them to know, to make this networking business. So, she knew what else is around and I invited a lot of women and, again, tried to make them more comfortable. And this organization did not work for me, okay? I was gone in '83, when I went, and by then, there'd only been one other woman who had ever really showed any interest and she was a radical and secretly not very interested in them. She was -- always thought they were not -- she was far more radical than that -- member of the women's commission, as well as the lesbian -- Governor's Council on Sexual Minorities. Professor out of Shippensburg. And [Mary Anne Caroll?] was my co-chair in the Caucus. We were Caucus co-chairs together and she became president of NOW, later on, after the ERA had -- after '83. I think '84 is when she became president. And the ERA, closest possibility in '83, as I recall. They had to have it ratified by then and there was no chance. I forget -- well, I lost my train of thought. Okay, but then, you asked was it very -- powerfully important to the Lehigh Valley because it was that represent-- it was that presence and really did a lot of things in support of that. MF:I want to say, on behalf of Carol and myself, we have been so delighted to talk with you today. Thank you so much! JB:My pleasure. MF:And maybe you'll give us -- opportunity to talk with you again sometime in the future. JB:I'll tell you what: there's another organization that founded in '87. We founded in Allentown with the Allentown -- so, we call ourselves Citizens (inaudible) for Better Community. The reason we did that, there was -- it was a professor at Lehigh, professor at Muhlenberg, Frank -- I'll think of his name after awhile. It's not important or anything but -- who, as soon as we announced that we were going to try for gay rights in Allentown -- organizing organization called Citizens -- COD, Citizens for Decency, something like that. COD, I don't remember how that worked. And he and I and -- so, I called, I wanted us to be the matching -- we found that since we knew he was -- founded -- and we founded right away. Is that right? I think we founded right away, when -- as soon as we knew about him. And then, we, he and I, were kind of competing. Got in the newsletter a lot and there was probably a monthly magazine published (inaudible) that was a different time, as well. And, again, it's Lehigh Valley. And it was unsuccessful. Ultimately, what happened with them, we went for two years. We became -- found the organization, ultimately we started the Gay Line, and I had a lot to do with that. [And mostly?] happened -- is in my apartment, as a matter of fact. I was the -- people came to my apartment and answered the -- and worked the telephone there. Started in '80. MF:Okay. JB:And that was '78 to '80. So, we stayed open till then, to found Le-Hi-Ho -- or to found Gay Line. And there were events involved. A good time. We had a lot of fun playing with that whole idea. And we knew we weren't going to be successful. And that was pretty much against -- and it was unfair because they simply claimed that homosexuality was on the books, was still illegal, and therefore you couldn't have rights and they couldn't go further than the state permitted, which the state organization -- didn't recognize gay rights. So, they wouldn't either. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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Joseph Burns (Part 1), October 12, 2019
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Joseph Burns talks about his experience of being a gay man in Bethlehem, PA in the 1970s and '80s, namely his involvement with Le-Hi-Ho (Lehigh Valley Homophile Movement).
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LGBT-07
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2019-10-12
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
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This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
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John Marquette
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Robert Kreider
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5.4 January 11, 2020 Roberta and Harold Kreider, January 11, 2020 LGBT-06 01:34:31 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Robert Kreider Harold Kreider John Marquette video/mp4 Kreider_20200111_FinalEdit_video.mp4 1.0:|21(6)|40(2)|61(18)|76(7)|91(12)|106(6)|119(9)|136(18)|149(3)|166(10)|181(16)|208(6)|233(8)|254(6)|267(5)|280(19)|295(10)|310(9)|327(12)|340(15)|363(17)|380(15)|391(3)|404(8)|423(11)|438(9)|447(15)|458(6)|471(8)|484(12)|507(10)|524(10)|539(15)|558(15)|579(4)|594(12)|611(14)|630(10)|643(17)|658(11)|675(16)|688(16)|699(15)|716(15)|743(2)|762(4)|785(12)|816(4)|837(14)|854(4)|875(10)|894(10)|913(2)|926(9)|941(14)|960(9)|977(15)|996(12)|1015(7)|1036(10)|1057(6)|1074(10)|1093(13)|1114(6)|1131(4)|1148(15)|1167(3)|1186(3)|1211(19)|1246(4)|1257(17)|1268(16)|1285(6)|1306(12)|1323(10)|1340(16)|1355(8)|1370(11)|1385(5)|1404(4)|1417(2)|1430(14)|1449(14)|1476(2)|1493(8)|1510(12)|1529(4)|1544(7)|1561(8)|1580(11)|1601(2)|1622(17)|1641(2)|1658(5) 0 https://youtu.be/czFWJgOiOL8 YouTube video 0 Introductions JOHN MARQUETTE: My name is John Marquette, and I’m here with Roberta Showalter Kreider and Harold Kreider to talk about their life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are in Sellersville, Pennsylvania and it’s January the 11th, 2020. Our videographers are [Danielle DelPriore?] and Mary Foltz. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me. And we’ll start with you Roberta.
 ; 0 126 Roberta's Early Life Let’s start with the very beginning. Roberta, would you tell me about the early years of your life. Describe your childhood.
 ; RK: Okay, but a-- part of it I’ll have to leave out because I had some abuse that I really don’t want to talk about. But I was born into a family of four brothers and me. I had three older brothers and then I had a baby brother. And I wanted a sister so bad. But it never seemed to work out that I could have a sister. And my father used to read the story of Baby Ray, how the tree gave him an apple, and the cow gave milk and all that sort of stuff. That was my favorite story. And the reason they were reading it that way was because we were all ours. 0 389 Early Church Experience And I remember the church that we went to would not accept my father’s -- in those days we had to have church letters to take from one church to another to recommend that we become members. And [00:07:00] they did not want to accept my father’s church letter because he wrote insurance -- he wrote out the papers for insurance. He didn’t do life insurance, which would have been a complete no-no, but he did other kinds of insurance. But I remember that one of my mother’s first cousins -- that they would invite us into their home and we would eat with them and things like that. 0 541 Experiences with Westboro Baptist Church And I think I said that we traveled on a bus down to Philadelphia to be part of Witness Our Welcome, which was a welcome for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the neighborhood. And this professor -- I wish I could think of his name right now -- we ate in their home and were good friends of theirs. And he came to the bus door and he said, “Roberta, Fred Phelps’ crew is over here protesting and saying their terrible, hateful things about fags.” He said, “But you don’t pay one bit of attention to them.” He said, “Do you see this line of gay and lesbian people?” And they were just lined shoulder-to-shoulder all the way from the bus into the building. 0 862 Getting Involved in the LGBTQ+ Community Well, my brother died with AIDS. Have I said that before? I’m not sure. And that’s a long story of how I learned that he was a gay man. Like I said, I knew that people called him a sissy but at that age I didn’t understand [00:15:00] what that was all about. And I remember -- like a vision coming to me when I was debating what to do, I felt these stories needed to be told because we had been going to Laurelville, where our church had a campground. And we were in groups of people where the stories of these people were told. It was called Connecting Families. 0 1137 Harold's Early Life That’s never been a problem for me. And I can’t explain why except I’m convinced that God’s love reaches out to everyone and with God there’s no respecter of persons. And so that’s been part of my life. And the community that I was born in was Northeast Missouri -- near Hannibal, Missouri. And my grandfather was a bishop and a minister and my dad was a deacon in a very small family congregation in Northeast Missouri. And I also grew up with a great fear of God and was never sure that I would ever make it to heaven. 0 1447 The Mennonite Denomination JM: Tell us about your denomination. 
 ; HK: Oh, it’s Mennonite. 
 ; JM: And because we’re recording this conversation for the future what are the basic tenets of the Mennonite faith?
 ; 0 1542 Harold's Early Views on the LGBTQ+ Community What were your feelings when you were a young man about the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality?
 ; HK: I don’t know. As a young man I -- well, homosexuality was unacceptable from any angle you wanted to think about it. And people that I knew, if they knew of anybody that was completely negative. And I never -- well I don’t know when -- I guess homosexuality didn’t become a real part of my life until we were a part of PFLAG in Allentown. 0 1674 PFLAG Tell us what PFLAG is.
 ; HK: You could probably tell better.
 ; RK: Well PFLAG is an organization of parents -- let’s see -- of lesbians, bisexual. Let me start again. PFLAG stands for parents of gay, bisexual, transgender, and what’s the other one -- and families who love them. That’s the way I titled the first book I wrote on that. But the reason we wanted to go to PFLAG goes back to how we became interested in the needs of gay and lesbian people. And that goes way back to when we found out that my brother was gay. 0 1741 Experience Having a Gay Sibling with AIDS And that goes way back to when we found out that my brother was gay. And that was really a blow to find out that he was gay. We knew that he was sick with something. We didn’t know what. And my family thought, oh my, Roberta won’t be able to take it. Anyhow I would say, “What’s wrong with Ray. Please tell me.” And they wouldn’t tell me anything. And finally somebody said, “You’ll know when you get there.” And I thought what am I going to know when I get there. And I really wasn’t acquainted with any gay and bisexual, transgender people. And so when we got to the hospital my brother just older than I and his wife came from Kansas where they lived near Hutchinson.
 ; 0 2278 Accepting the LGBTQ+ Community into the Church nd that was hard too because after he died and we went back to our home church for the memorial service -- this very judgmental place -- no that was the one we were at at -- well, anyhow, there we had to sit and hear the message about Ray among these people. And yet I knew that God was a God of forgiveness and I wanted to be that kind of a person. And right now I’m kind of drawing a blank. Oh, I told you about how I told God, “You know, I can’t do this.” 0 2759 Connecting Families JM: Can you tell me a little bit more about the meeting that you went to? Where was that meeting?
 ; RK: The Witness Our Welcome?
 ; JM: The one where you first had contact with LGBT people.
 ; RK: Yeah. Well, would that have been when we went to Connecting Families, the first time?
 ; HK: Probably. 0 2838 Moving in With Daughter RK: It was in Laurelville. Because we had moved back here. Our daughter upstairs had worked in a retirement home. And she had said to us when we were still living in Indiana -- she said, “Mom and Dad, I don’t want you to go to a retirement home.” She said, “They don’t get good care there always.” She said, “When you’re ready to retire I want you to come and we’ll buy a house together and you help us raise our kids and then we’ll take care of you when you get older.” And so that was the agreement that we had then. And it’s a long story that I don’t really want told online. This is just for you. Because I don’t want them involved in this story in any way that’s going to come out in the media.
 ; 0 3219 Accepting the LGBTQ+ Community Into the Church cont. And back to church acceptance. At Perkasie they did not want to accept them. But then as time went on they finally became more open and welcoming. But we still weren’t able to really share our stories too much. But then we were a part of this group that was trying to be a welcoming group and starting to investigate letting them be a part of the church. And then the pastor -- we had two women pastors -- and she called us, asked if we’d come in to the library during the week she wanted to visit with us. 0 4194 Early Years of Relationship MF: How did the two of you meet?
 ; HK: We met at our church college in Kansas. I can remember so vividly. Our dining hall was in the basement of the girls’ dormitory and it was morning breakfast and she came down the stairs from the -- where students lived for the breakfast -- men and women both. 0 4425 Witnessing in Mixed-Faith Audiences Okay. As we continued over the years to support gay and lesbian people and this community of faith we had many opportunities to share in mixed audiences. And I was asked to speak quite a few places. And I remember especially the time -- I believe it was a Reading, Pennsylvania where we were speaking at a church. And all of a sudden I realized that there were going to be atheist people in that community. 0 4612 Interacting with Atheists JM: You spoke, Roberta, about atheists wanting to tell their stories to you at the table. What common features did they have in their dinner conversation with you?
 ; RK: Well, I guess they just told me of how they were raised. And it was just their stories. 0 4797 Growing Together HK: Well, I’ll give Roberta this praise. I’m just so fortunate that she’s my wife and that we’ve been able to share this journey together. And it’s hard for me to believe that I’ve come from where I was born to where I am now and to feel so different about people different from ourselves. And I think the statement in the scriptures where it says God is love. Well if God is love then I can’t do anything else or less. 0 4908 Recommendations for Further Stories who can you think of that we might want to talk with that has a story like yours about being allies, advocates for people who are LGBT?
 ; RK: Well, do you see those pictures over there? That’s our gay gallery. And our granddaughter over there --
 ; HK: And the only granddaughter we have.
 ; RK: Well, the -- yeah, the only one by birth. When she was a little girl, twelve years old, she would bring her laptop down to sit at our table to tell grandpa and I how wrong we were in our welcome of gay and lesbian people. 0 5375 Final Thoughts JM: We are so grateful to have this time to talk with you today and to hear your story and to preserve your story for generations to come. The material will be stored professionally at Muhlenberg College. It will be available for academic research. And I believe there will be people in the future who will sit and watch this conversation with you. And I think their hearts will be gladdened. So thank you so much for the time today.
 ; 0 MovingImage Roberta and Harold Krieder discuss their activism and work as allies to LGBTQ+ communities. They describe how the death of Roberta’s beloved brother due to HIV started them on the path toward advocacy for LGBTQ+ people. They go on to discuss their work within the Mennonite Church to make their congregation inclusive of LGBTQ+ people, their work with Witness our Welcome, and their public advocacy for LGBTQ+ communities in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Roberta Krieder also discusses her published books, which sought to document religious trauma for LGBTQ+ people and to encourage religious organizations to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ members.
 ; Kreider_20200111_transcript JOHN MARQUETTE: My name is John Marquette, and I'm here with Roberta Showalter Kreider and Harold Kreider to talk about their life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are in Sellersville, Pennsylvania and it's January the 11th, 2020. Our videographers are Danielle Del Priore and Mary Foltz. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me. And we'll start with you Roberta. ROBERTA KREIDER: Okay. It's Roberta Hope Showalter Kreider. JM: And can you spell that? RK: R-O-B-E-R-T-A, H-O-P-E, S-H-O-W-A-L-T-E-R, K-R-E-I-D-E-R. JM: And now you Harold. HAROLD KREIDER: Okay, it's H-A-R-O-L-D. And my middle name is Glen -- G-L-E-N. And last name is Kreider -- K-R-E-I-D-E-R. JM: Roberta, will you please share your birth date with us? RK: Yes, it's April the 3rd of 1926. HK: And mine is May 3, 1924. JM: Thank you both. Will you both confirm that you've signed a consent form for this interview? RK: I did. HK: And I do. JM: Thank you. Let's start with the very beginning. Roberta, would you tell me about the early years of your life. Describe your childhood. RK: Okay, but a-- part of it I'll have to leave out because I had some abuse that I really don't want to talk about. But I was born into a family of four brothers and me. I had three older brothers and then I had a baby brother. And I wanted a sister so bad. But it never seemed to work out that I could have a sister. And my father used to read the story of Baby Ray, how the tree gave him an apple, and the cow gave milk and all that sort of stuff. That was my favorite story. And the reason they were reading it that way was because we were all ours. My oldest brother Robert, and then Richard, and Russell and me and then Ray. And when Ray was ready to be born they read -- my dad used to read to me a lot that book about Baby Ray. And so they were preparing me to be disappointed because all we seemed to have was boys. And so I remember so well sitting on the end of my mother's hospital bed. And they put this little baby in my arms and they said, "This is your baby brother and you can name him." And I said, "I want to name him Baby Ray." And so they said, "Okay." And, so, on the birth certificate it says Baby Ray Edward Showalter. Edward was after my mother's youngest brother. And they were quite sure that I would pick the name that they wanted for this [video?]. And I remember once, I wanted a sister so bad that I dressed him up in my clothes and I went around the neighborhood and I kept introducing him as my baby sister. And, of course, people could just smile at that because they could see what was evident. So, we grew up together and my father had been a bridge-builder and a farmer. I don't know what all he had done. But when I was born they lived on a farm that was just about a mile south of West Liberty Mennonite Church, which was near Inman, Kansas. And -- I'm drawing a blank here for a minute. Anyhow, whenever I was interviewed I'd always say that my father had been a farmer and all of this. But then he was president of a small-town bank at Yoder, Kansas. And we used to laugh and say that Yoder, Kansas was like a wide space in the road because it didn't have many people in it. And a lot of them were related to us. But there was a depot and a railroad track that went through the town. And I remember being -- going over there to see a friend of mine and playing with her. And I remember the church that we went to would not accept my father's -- in those days we had to have church letters to take from one church to another to recommend that we become members. And they did not want to accept my father's church letter because he wrote insurance -- he wrote out the papers for insurance. He didn't do life insurance, which would have been a complete no-no, but he did other kinds of insurance. But I remember that one of my mother's first cousins -- that they would invite us into their home and we would eat with them and things like that. But the other church members wanted to shun because he wrote insurance. And this church was a church made up of Amish Mennonites. They came from the Amish and they had become Mennonite. And they were a very judgmental group. And it's hard to know how to describe them other than I grew up in this church of judging other people by the things they did and said that didn't correspond with what I thought the bible said. And so I regret that kind of a childhood that I grew up in. But I'm thankful that in the years that have followed that God has shown me that God is no respecter -- or what do I want to say? -- he treats us all alike. We are all part of God's creation and we're all sacred to him as his children. And that's what I believe now and I have believed through most of my life. And I think I said that we traveled on a bus down to Philadelphia to be part of Witness Our Welcome, which was a welcome for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the neighborhood. And this professor -- I wish I could think of his name right now -- we ate in their home and were good friends of theirs. And he came to the bus door and he said, "Roberta, Fred Phelps' crew is over here protesting and saying their terrible, hateful things about fags." He said, "But you don't pay one bit of attention to them." He said, "Do you see this line of gay and lesbian people?" And they were just lined shoulder-to-shoulder all the way from the bus into the building. He said, "We're here to make sure that he cannot get to you and you just walk down that path and we'll keep you safe." And that's what they did. JM: Can you describe a little bit more about the Fred Phelps Church and how they felt in regard to the work that you intended to do? RK: I also have a book in my kindle that's written by Megan Phelps-Roper. And she is a daughter of Fred Phelps -- no a granddaughter. And her story is told in that book. And I was so glad that I could read her story. It's very descriptive of the way that church acted and hated people so bad. But I thought it was really significant that our gay and lesbian friends were willing to take the brunt and to see that we were safe all the way into there. JM: Where was this church located? RK: Do you know where it was located? I don't know. HK: You mean in Philadelphia? RK: Yeah. HK: It was on the Western edge of Philadelphia. Wayne, I believe, was the name of the suburb. Wayne, Pennsylvania. RK: Yeah. And it was a Baptist church there. HK: Central Baptist. RK: And I had -- after I did stories and books I had stories from people there too. But it was just so touching how they wanted to be sure that if any hatred coming from this Phelps group or any violence of any kind that they were going to be sure that we were safe. And that was very touching to me to know that these friends cared so much about whether or not we were safe. And this book -- Unfollow -- was written by Phelps' granddaughter who came to know that their attitude was completely wrong. JM: The name of this church is on the tip of my tongue and I can't quite pinpoint what it is. RK: You mean where we had the wo-- JM: No, the Phelps church. RK: In Topeka, Kansas. JM: What is the name of that church? RK: Oh, what's the name of it Harold? HK: [Not sure?]. JM: West-- RK: Westside. JM: Westboro? RK: Westboro Baptist Church. And it was mainly their purpose to just spew out hate of every kind toward lesbian and gay, bisexual, transgender people. And they called the people fags. And the people who were of that orientation, they called them fags. And if you go to -- I mean you can find this book -- Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper. And she is the granddaughter telling the story about this church. JM: How did you and Harold develop a response to that kind of hatred that you experienced? HK: (laughs) Boy. I guess it was because we began to learn to know gay and lesbian people. RK: Well, my brother died with AIDS. Have I said that before? I'm not sure. And that's a long story of how I learned that he was a gay man. Like I said, I knew that people called him a sissy but at that age I didn't understand what that was all about. And I remember -- like a vision coming to me when I was debating what to do, I felt these stories needed to be told because we had been going to Laurelville, where our church had a campground. And we were in groups of people where the stories of these people were told. It was called Connecting Families. And I remember so well that as I was thinking about all this and I stood in here in the bedroom and I had hold of that treadmill and he was in the bathroom -- I was in there alone. And I said, "Oh God, if I try to tell these stories -- I've never written a book and I don't have a computer -- but if I try to tell these stories," I said, "my friends are going to hate me." And it was just like I had a vision at that time and I heard God's voice say to me, "Roberta, you are just as important to me as the greatest preacher that ever lived." And I thought, oh. I thought about it a little bit. And then he said, "And now look out there. You see that man lying out there in the gutter?" He said, "That drunk man lying in the gutter is just as important to me as you are." And I thought, oh, that's something to think about. And I remember thinking I don't even have a computer, how on Earth am I going to do this. And I was part of a -- well -- no, that -- I couldn't have had that in the computer. But we had attended these Connecting Families weekends. And we heard them telling their stories there. And the very first one I attended was the one that Peggy Campolo went to. And she is a very adamant supporter of gay and lesbians. And, of course, that was many years ago. We moved back here in '83 and we still lived in Indiana then. And so anyhow I tried to think what to do about all this. And finally, I remember saying, "Well, God, if you will lead me I will go." And yet that still wasn't enough. I know we continued to go to these Connecting Families weekends. We went every Spring when they were held for, oh, I don't know how many years. And then, that very first one I told my story about how I found out that I had a gay brother. And I need to stop for a little bit. Okay? JM: Sure, that's fine. I would've-- (break in audio) HK: [Before?] she's out. That's never been a problem for me. And I can't explain why except I'm convinced that God's love reaches out to everyone and with God there's no respecter of persons. And so that's been part of my life. And the community that I was born in was Northeast Missouri -- near Hannibal, Missouri. And my grandfather was a bishop and a minister and my dad was a deacon in a very small family congregation in Northeast Missouri. And I also grew up with a great fear of God and was never sure that I would ever make it to heaven. And then I -- JM: Do I -- HK: -- went through Goshen College and also seminary. And I was ordained minister by that time. JM: I think I hear Roberta coming back and if (break in audio) JM: -- our interview with Harold Kreider and Roberta Kreider on January the 11th, 2020 at their home in Sellersville. And my name is John Marquette and the videographers are Danielle DelPriore and Mary Foltz. Roberta, I'd like to ask if we can hold your portion of the story for a moment and then talk with Harold about his childhood and how he became involved with you. And then I'd like to see how we can bring both of these stories together and bring us to the current moment. So Harold, tell us about your childhood. HK: What was the question? JM: Tell us about your early years and your childhood? HK: I'm the oldest of ten children in our family. And my father tried to teach me this bedtime prayer -- now lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to take -- or when I die I pray the Lord my soul to take. And he would spank me and I was only four or five years old then -- spank me because I had a hard time learning that prayer to be able to repeat it back to him. And from that day on I had a fear of my dad and I never got over that all our lives. And so I never did experience a really happy home. In fact, my father gave my mother a silent treatment for several days -- wouldn't speak to her. And she finally suffered a nervous breakdown because of that kind of conduct. So I made up my mind that my home would never be that way. And I met Robert at our church college in Hesston, Kansas near Wichita. And there I fell in love with her (laughs) and I've been in love with her ever since. But anyway that's part of my experience. And I'm also a graduate of Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana. And also Goshen College Biblical Seminary. I'm also a graduate of that and have a been a ordained minister since 1950. So my experience has been varied. I've been a pastor of three congregations and interim pastor of our home congregation here in Perkasie. Of course I'm completely retired now. That's been my experience for most of my life. JM: Tell us about your denomination. HK: Oh, it's Mennonite. JM: And because we're recording this conversation for the future what are the basic tenets of the Mennonite faith? HK: The basic? JM: Tenets. RK: What do they believe? HK: Well, the bible has been our main textbook. And tried to -- at least for myself -- I made that my standard of life. And I tried to live what I believed. And also made it a point to accept people for who they were and what they were and not be a judge. [But?] I think there's a scripture in Matthew where Jesus says "Judge not that you be not judged." And so I've made that a guide for my life too. JM: What were your feelings when you were a young man about the Bible's teaching on homosexuality? HK: I don't know. As a young man I -- well, homosexuality was unacceptable from any angle you wanted to think about it. And people that I knew, if they knew of anybody that was completely negative. And I never -- well I don't know when -- I guess homosexuality didn't become a real part of my life until we were a part of PFLAG in Allentown. (inaudible) And her brother dying of AIDS. And he was a homosexual. And it took -- and that happened in 1948 -- or 1984 when he died. And it took ten years after that before we became advocates of persons of that nature. JM: In the process of selecting people for this project we have been looking for people who have been allies of and advocates for the LGBT community in the Lehigh Valley. And you mentioned PFLAG in the Lehigh Valley. Tell us what PFLAG is. HK: You could probably tell better. RK: Well PFLAG is an organization of parents -- let's see -- of lesbians, bisexual. Let me start again. PFLAG stands for parents of gay, bisexual, transgender, and what's the other one -- and families who love them. That's the way I titled the first book I wrote on that. But the reason we wanted to go to PFLAG goes back to how we became interested in the needs of gay and lesbian people. And that goes way back to when we found out that my brother was gay. And that was really a blow to find out that he was gay. We knew that he was sick with something. We didn't know what. And my family thought, oh my, Roberta won't be able to take it. Anyhow I would say, "What's wrong with Ray. Please tell me." And they wouldn't tell me anything. And finally somebody said, "You'll know when you get there." And I thought what am I going to know when I get there. And I really wasn't acquainted with any gay and bisexual, transgender people. And so when we got to the hospital my brother just older than I and his wife came from Kansas where they lived near Hutchinson. HK: We went to there. RK: Where I grew up. No, they came. We met together at Ray and Ann's house. HK: Yeah. What I meant to say that we were living here and we went to Chicago. RK: Yes. But we hadn't gone. I mean, we went to Chicago because we knew that Ray was dying and we wanted to see him before he died. And I wanted to know what he was dying from. And people would just say, "Well you'll know when you get there." And I thought, well what am I going to know when I get there and what's all this about. And so when we met at the hospital they gave us gowns to put on and masks. And I thought, well what does he have that I'm going to get or they're afraid I'm going to get. And I was so dumb for all this. And then when we went up to his bedside to say hello to him, he said, "I have a sad story to tell you." And I thought, oh, okay. I guess I did know about lesbian and gay people because I know when he said that I thought, oh, okay, he's a nurse so somehow he's contracted AIDS. And I said -- I went up and took his hand to listen to him and he said, "And I have no one to blame but myself." And when he said that my hopes went way down. I thought, what's he talking about. And then he said, "And I don't want you to tell anyone." And I said, "Well, Ray, our daughters are intelligent people." And I said, "If we go back and tell them we don't know they're going to figure out something. I said we'll have to tell them the truth because I can't do less than tell them the truth." And he said, "Well, okay." And you could tell he was very ashamed of all this. And so -- to make a long story short -- he was in a hospital way up North of Chicago. And the church they had been part of was Community Mennonite and that was down in kind of the center of Chicago. And we had been there for church with them and things like that before too. And on the way up there that was when I said to his wife who was driving the car. She turned her head and we were sitting in the back seat I guess. And she said, "Roberta, what did you want to know about Ray?" And I said, "Well, Ann. Nobody will tell me anything." I said, "Is he dying?" And she said, "Yes, Roberta, he's dying." And I said, "Well, why? What's he dying from?" And that was when she said "Well you'll know when you get there." And so we bounced along and drove up to the hospital and met my brother and his wife. And he didn't tell me what he thought he was suspecting either. And so they gave us these gowns and everything to put on and went into the room. And when Ray said, "I have a sad story to tell you." And I thought, oh, yeah, he's a nurse so something's happened here. And he said, "I have AIDS. And I have no one to blame but myself." And then my hopes went way down because I thought, well, there's some story here that I've not been told. I don't know what this is. And so I went up to his bedside and took hold of his hand. And I said, "Ray, God is a God of forgiveness." I said, "This whole week I've been working on a talk that I was supposed to give at church. And we went to Perkasie Mennonite at that time. And I said, "I've been working on a talk that I was supposed to give to church in the park on forgiveness." And I said, "I had to ask a friend to read it today because I couldn't be there." But I said, "You know, God is a God of forgiveness." And, yes, he agreed with that. But anyhow, can I digress just a little bit back to when Ray -- we were talking about his birth certificate and I said that when they let me name him I said I wanted to name him Baby Ray Edward Showalter. And he spoke up and he said, "Yeah. I have you to blame for that. It's on my birth certificate." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yes. It's written that way on my birth certificate -- Baby Ray Edward Showalter." And had to deal with that always. Well, anyhow, I wanted to talk to him alone because I wanted to ask him some questions and things. And finally I said to his wife Ann, "Do you mind if Harold and I can be alone with Ray for a little while?" And she looked at me sort of strange and then she said, "Okay." So she walked out of the room and that was when I tried to talk to him about God forgiving and he said -- see, how was that -- oh I told you that he said he didn't want us to tell anyone. And that was when I said, "Well I have to tell them because they are intelligent people and they know we came up here because you're dying. And they have to have a reason for why you're dying." So anyhow. Then, the more I talked to him he said, "Oh" -- when we were alone with him -- he said, "Oh, Roberta. I'm so glad you came." He said, "You know, as a nurse I used to think that visitors got in the way. And I didn't have time for them when I was taking care of patients." He said, "But it means so much to me that you drove all the way up here to be with me when I'm dying. And you didn't even know what was wrong." And so we just had a really good heart-to-heart chat with each other there that day. And then we came back home and waited for the call to come that he had died and that we were to go for a memorial service. And that was hard too because after he died and we went back to our home church for the memorial service -- this very judgmental place -- no that was the one we were at at -- well, anyhow, there we had to sit and hear the message about Ray among these people. And yet I knew that God was a God of forgiveness and I wanted to be that kind of a person. And right now I'm kind of drawing a blank. Oh, I told you about how I told God, "You know, I can't do this." And then what God said to me about the people. So I've often wondered if I wouldn't have had a gay brother, would I have been able to open my mind and to accept them into the church. At that time the church at Perkasie where we were members then -- we go to Salford now with our grandson and his family. But I've wondered if I would have been able to accept him. But the people at Perkasie Mennonite they didn't want to hear anything about gays and lesbians. There was no place for them to tell their story, no place for them to share in any meaningful way or give their testimony. And finally I said to Harold after we had been to some meeting that we went to like Witness Our Welcome or something. And I said, "Harold, you and I don't have any children at home anymore that can be affected by hatred." So I said, "I know that we're not welcome any longer at Perkasie Mennonite Church. They don't want us there. And they -- by all means -- have let us know that we're not to share in sharing time." And I said, "But you know what, I really feel that every time we walk in that door we're making a statement. And I really feel that God wants you and I to just walk in there each Sunday and we don't have to say anything. We'll just be there." And so that's what we agreed that we were going to do. And I remember that we came back from a Witness Our Welcome thing and we just wanted to share so bad the things that we had heard there about being a welcoming church and how we need to welcome all people and let God be the judge. And, yeah, we weren't supposed to say anything. And we agreed together that we were going to continue to go even if we weren't welcome there. And so that's what we did. And then our grandson, Luke who -- he and his partner have many apartments in Indiana University up at Indiana, Pennsylvania and in Bloomsburg. And they have rented these apartments to students. They will be giving those up pretty soon but that's not part of the story. So anyhow I often wondered if I wouldn't have had a gay brother would I have been able to accept people. And after he told his story I waited for quite a while. And we kept going to Connecting Families once a year and listened to the stories. And I remember so well the morning that I was sitting in the front row on the right-hand side and after people would tell their stories and they would be affirmed. And I heard God speaking to me and finally I said, "Okay, God. I'll go if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart." And then how was I going to do this because I didn't have a computer -- didn't even know how to use one. I had a good typewriter. And so his boss -- he worked part time after he moved back here and he was retired for a contractor from our church at that time. And he and his wife had taken us to some gay and lesbian meeting. And we knew that they were on that side. And he said, "Roberta, you go down to this address in Souderton Shopping Center and he -- HK: (inaudible) RK: Huh? HK: Was it? RK: Yeah it was. And he said, "You go to this man -- this young man and you tell him I sent you and I want him to find a good computer for you to use." And so I said, "Okay." So I went down -- we both did. And I went into there and I told him that John had sent me and he said that you would help me find a good computer and show me how to use it because I have never used a computer. I've only used a typewriter. And he said, "Sure. I'd be glad to." And so he showed me. And when I told him what it was for -- because I wanted to be able to write stories that these people would send me so we could put them together in a book of stories so people could hear from their own lips what it was like to be born that way -- and he looked at me and he said, "I'll be glad to help you in any way I can." And I came to believe then that he was a gay man and that he was very happy to help me to get a computer and to get going in this work that I felt was so important -- that their stories needed to be told. But like I said before I wondered, could I, would I have been accepting if I didn't have a brother who died with AIDS. But I hope that I would have been and that by now with all the stories around that I would have been able to accept them. And I think maybe I would have. I don't know. JM: Can you tell me a little bit more about the meeting that you went to? Where was that meeting? RK: The Witness Our Welcome? JM: The one where you first had contact with LGBT people. RK: Yeah. Well, would that have been when we went to Connecting Families, the first time? HK: Probably. RK: Well Harold and I wanted to learn to know more about these people after my brother died with AIDS. And so we decided we would go to one of these weekends. And so we drove and I remember that when we came up to the place where you register somebody parked our car for us. Anyhow, they were very warm and welcoming to us. And that was when we actually heard the stories of these people and what it was like to be born a gay person. And, like I said, I've wondered. It took me ten years before I was ready to write their stories. JM: What state was this in? RK: Pennsylvania. JM: This was in Pennsylvania. RK: It was in Laurelville. Because we had moved back here. Our daughter upstairs had worked in a retirement home. And she had said to us when we were still living in Indiana -- she said, "Mom and Dad, I don't want you to go to a retirement home." She said, "They don't get good care there always." She said, "When you're ready to retire I want you to come and we'll buy a house together and you help us raise our kids and then we'll take care of you when you get older." And so that was the agreement that we had then. JM: If this is something that you would prefer not be a part of the work that we're doing today it may be better that we leave that portion to one side and maybe talk about it later. And think more about the contributions that you made in the Lehigh Valley. And how -- RK: Well -- HK: (inaudible) JM: This is about the time -- because we have to change the camera -- this is a good time to take a break. Would you mind we take a break now? RK: Okay. JM: Okay we're going to conclude for a moment and we'll be back sh-- (break in audio) JM: the interview with Roberta Kreider and Harold Kreider in Sellersville, Pennsylvania on January the 11th, 2020. And where we let off was you're talking about your relocation to Sellersville in the home of your daughter and your agreement with your daughter that you would live together and you would help them raise their children and they would help you when you needed to live in the latter part of your life not in a nursing home or in a retirement facility. Does that help you? Does that give you a position? RK: Yeah. And they didn't have money to buy a house and we had a house to sell in Indiana. And so we sold our house in Pennsylvania and used it to help buy this house. But this house was a real dump. The person who had lived here had been a roofer and he just dumped all his trash out there in the backyard. And so it was full of trash. And -- let's see -- was it? -- the stone wasn't pointed was it? HK: No. RK: No, it was just kind of crumbling stone and -- HK: Well plaster. It was covered with plaster but a lot of it had fallen off. It was all (inaudible). RK: So, anyhow, we needed to do something to make this house respectable. We have a book -- it must be upstairs -- of the before and after pictures of what it looked like before and what it looks like today. And we had a fairly nice house out in Pennsylvania -- I mean in Indiana. And I remember when I was jumping on the bouncer -- what do you call it? What do you call those round--HK: Trampoline. RK: -- yeah. On a small trampoline that we had. And I used to use that for exercise in Indiana before we came back here. And I would think about how I had seen this house -- or, no, they sent us drawings of what the rooms were like. And so I had figured out where furniture was going to go and all that. And it was so much different when I actually saw it I could hardly believe it. But anyhow, when we first moved -- well, I came back to help them with their first baby. And we lived in the room above our bedroom -- or I did -- for that month that I was here to help them. And so when I was here when the baby came first -- or, anyhow -- I had figured out how we were going to arrange that room. No, that was when the second child came. And Luke, the little guy, he had come into the room where I had my stuff and he said, "Oh, Grandma, it's just getting cozier and cozier in here." And he was so tickled that we were going to move back here to live with them. And they had a big sign made and he was dancing up and down when the truck came in and when we drove in behind it. And it had a big sign, "Welcome home Ma and Pa." And so they really made us feel very welcome. But that's another whole story that I don't want told on the video here. But anyhow, growing up, all of the children are gone now and married and in homes of their own. And I tell Luke -- who has our power of attorney, our oldest grandson. And I tell him that he's the in-between family now like we used to be in between the grandparents and the grandchildren. And back to church acceptance. At Perkasie they did not want to accept them. But then as time went on they finally became more open and welcoming. But we still weren't able to really share our stories too much. But then we were a part of this group that was trying to be a welcoming group and starting to investigate letting them be a part of the church. And then the pastor -- we had two women pastors -- and she called us, asked if we'd come in to the library during the week she wanted to visit with us. And what she wanted to tell us was that there were people in the church that were very unhappy that we were advocating letting these people be a part of the church just like everybody else. And that they didn't like that. And I -- oh I know -- we just came back from one of those big meetings of Witness Our Welcome and had been really urged there to share. And I can't remember the statement of what they would say. But anyhow -- oh, if one isn't welcome, none are welcome and that we need to welcome everybody. And so that's what I wanted to do. And then when a friend of ours who was gay and we knew she was a lesbian and she had a partner and she had been asked to bring the morning message. And they didn't know that she was a lesbian. And so I had prayed and said, "God, if I am to share in sharing time then please help me to know for sure that you want me to do it. Because I don't want to make dissension here in the church." And sure enough, when got -- after she had brought her message and we got to sharing time and the leader said, "We have extra time this morning, so there's plenty of time to share." And I thought, oh, okay, I guess that's what that means. And so I finally stood and asked for the mic and I shared what we had heard in this Witness Our Welcome meeting. And that week then she called us into the library because she wanted to talk with us. And she said people were very unhappy with the things you shared on Sunday in sharing time. And I said, "Yes. How many?" And she said four people had been unhappy and had complained to her that we were able to share this in sharing time at church. And I said, well that's interesting. I said, "I had prayed about whether or not I was to share and when the leader got up and said we have extra time this morning I took it to mean that God was saying to me go ahead and share what you learned this week. And so that's why I shared." And I said, "And tell me," I said, "Those people that complained. Why didn't they come to us? Why did they come to you and complain? Why didn't they tell us?" I said, "Would you please when anybody complains to you about what we're doing will you please ask them to come and tell us directly so we can tell them why we're doing what we're doing?" And so we kind of left it that way. But it's interesting that when they finally -- this committee decided okay, we're ready to welcome gay and lesbian people. Now we'll make it known. We'll put it on our website that we're welcoming them to come. So we had a meeting later on of this group that was taking the initiative to start welcoming them. And she said, "Well, nobody's come. We've said they're welcome. We've put it on our website. And nobody comes." And I said, "Oh, can't you see?" I said, "These people were here while we dickered and dockered about whether or not they could be members, what we were going to do with them, whether they could sit together in church, and all that stuff we went through. And then they got discouraged and they went away and up to the Lehigh Valley and they found churches that were welcoming. And they've become members of those churches. And do you think that now when we say the doors are open that they're going to come flocking back here to be members?" I said, "No, it'll have to be people that have never been members before if they're going to welcome them back." And then she said, "But Roberta, we thought you were going to bring them." (laughs) And I guess that's when I said, "Do you think they would come flocking back like that?" So that was a long story but they finally became an open and welcoming church. And about that time our grandson who had gone with us to a meeting over at one of the other Mennonite churches -- another branch of our Mennonite churches. And he had been there for this meeting and anyhow, we were sitting about three rows back from the front and I had to sit at the end because there wasn't any place for my walker and I had to have a walker at that time. And I looked up in the row in front and there was a lesbian couple. And they turned around and the woman said to me, "Roberta, do you remember us?" And I looked at her and I said, "I remember your faces but I can't say your names." And then they said their names and what church they were going to and said that they were there to welcome the man who was speaking to invite him to their church to share their story so that they could become a welcoming congregation where they were. And I remember that night as this man shared the story of being gay and what all. And it was just so real of what we had gone through and I just burst out crying. And I just couldn't hold the tears back. And I just sobbed and sobbed. And my grandson sitting there didn't know what to make of me sobbing like that. And so when we went out and we sat in the car a little bit before we went home and he had the car idling. And he looked at me and he said, "Grandma," he said, "I don't know what to do." And I said, "Well Luke, God will show you if there's something that you're supposed to do." I said, "You just keep an open mind and heart and God will show you." And so then we had been having a group that met in our home for gay and lesbian people. Because when one set of books came out one of the gay men came and helped unload it and he and I talked about what can we do to get Mennonites to welcome these people. And to get Mennonite gay and lesbian people to not be afraid to come and tell their stories. And so that's when we decided to send out a welcome to have people meet in our home. And for -- oh I don't know how many years -- we had gay and lesbian groups meeting in our homes. And they would tell their stories and we would share together. And we couldn't -- well, different people would bring refreshments and it was just a good time together. And then after oh I don't know how many years I said to Harold one time, "You know, I think that maybe it's time that this group has served its purpose." I said, "I think that these people -- a lot of them -- are just coming out of welcome to us because we've always welcomed them. And they're afraid to move on. But I think that they need to move on in their lives." And I said, "We need to free them to do that. Don't you think?" And so we agreed. And so at the next meeting I said something to them about we don't want you to feel that you're tied to this group in any way. And if God is calling you in some other way we want you to know that we will release you gladly. And so they talked about it and they said, "Yes, it's time that we move on, but we would like to meet twice a year to keep in touch with one another and what's going on. And so that's how that went about. But I remember that Luke had said, "What shall I do." And so the time came that they decided they were going to come to Perkasie Mennonite Church and be a part of our group because we were welcoming. And so they came on a Sunday and shared during sharing time that they would like to be a part of our group because they wanted to welcome gay and lesbian people. And then that week I got an email from Luke and he said, "Grandma, what do you know about Salford Mennonite Church?" And so I wrote back and said, "Luke, if you want to know if I think it would be a better fit for you and your family than Perkasie, even though it pains me greatly to let you go I feel that I have to say yes because your kids go to school with kids from these different schools and they'll have a lot more friends to meet with them here and make them welcome than they ever would have at Perkasie." And so, I say, "Yes, we release you to go there." And so they started going. And then there was a special meeting and this fella who had a gay son and he had married his son and his partner and had raised a ruckus in the church he was in. But he and I had stories in a booklet together. And I wanted so bad to meet him. But then I realized why they protected us from him that none of us could meet him, he could only tell his story at the front of the church. But on that Sunday we were sitting in the handicapped section. And the minute church was out a gay man came up to me and he said, "Roberta, I want to meet you." He said, "I'm a gay man and I am so thankful for what you've done" or something like that. So that was interesting. And we've had occasion to meet others. And because of the acoustics in that church we have discovered that when we sit clear at the back that we can hear without any devices in our ears or anything. And so that's what we started doing is sitting back there. And Luke and his wife Mandy take turns sitting behind us. And if I have to go out I just have to motion and they will see that I get to go out. But I usually manage to stay until the end. But we've been made to feel very welcome there and they want to also hear my story and there are people there praying for us today because I told them that we had friends coming from PFLAG and they would be asking for our story and making a video of it. And I said, "I feel very inadequate for this." And I wanted them to pray. And it's very interesting that this morning the woman who supports us there in trying to get the church periodical to us, she had come to the door. She hadn't been there and heard what I said last Sunday and so she didn't realize that we were going to be doing this this morning. And so she was very pleased to hear that you were going to be here to interview us today. So, that's the way things are happening and I have to feel that just like that morning when I was debating if it was -- I knew somebody needed to write these stories -- MF: Pause. RK: And I didn't -- (break in audio) RK: I remember sitting in that front row and they were singing, "Here I am Lord. Is it I Lord. I've heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart." And from then on it was my responsibility. And it's amazing how people latched on and helped and gave me stories. And just that I knew that it wasn't my project but it was parents and families and friends -- all of us doing this together. JM: Roberta, we need to take a pause right now and when we come back I'd like to ask a couple more questions about the work that you've done. So we're going to take a break right here. RK: Okay. (break in audio) HK: Married a woman like she is. (laughs) JM: She's a pistol. HK: Yeah. (laughs) (inaudible) JM: She really, really is a pistol. HK: Yeah. MF: Did you tell them how -- how did the two of you meet? HK: Pardon? MF: How did the two of you meet? HK: We met at our church college in Kansas. I can remember so vividly. Our dining hall was in the basement of the girls' dormitory and it was morning breakfast and she came down the stairs from the -- where students lived for the breakfast -- men and women both. And she had her head all bandaged up for some reason or other. And I thought to myself, there's a person I'd like to take care of. (laughter) And what had happened is they had a class outing and she's up to bat and when she swung the bat her kneecap slid over to the side and she went to the ground. And so she had to be on crutches for a month or more. And I really didn't learn or know her until I was a student myself and the draft was on for World War II. And I'd gotten a notice from the draft board that I had a choice to make. One was my dad had enough units on the farm that I could be deferred. And so I went home and was home three years but finally had to go to camp after that for a year and half. So that's the way that went. And before I was out of camp we -- I had a furlough coming up -- ten-day furlough -- and that's when we got married in '46. Then she went to camp with me. That was Gulfport, Mississippi. And that was quite a change going from Colorado Springs -- I was there a year before we were married and got married on the way to this transfer to Gulfport. And that was a real change. I'd gained nearly fifty pounds in Colorado. And down there I lost it all and I've never gotten it back since. And it was really hot down there. No air conditioning. Sheets would be wet in the morning from sweating. MF: How long were you in Gulfport? HK: Pardon? MF: How long were you in Gulfport? (inaudible) HK: Oh about seven months. Until I was released. The war was over and I was released then. JM: And Harold Kreider. It is Sellersville, Pennsylvania and it is the 11th of January, 2020. And go ahead. RK: Okay. As we continued over the years to support gay and lesbian people and this community of faith we had many opportunities to share in mixed audiences. And I was asked to speak quite a few places. And I remember especially the time -- I believe it was a Reading, Pennsylvania where we were speaking at a church. And all of a sudden I realized that there were going to be atheist people in that community. And I thought, oh God, what am I going to do. And I didn't know how to include them. And then God gave me an answer. And so when I got up to speak I said, "I've been asked to tell my story today. And because it is my story I'll have to tell it the way I lived it. But I want you to know, whoever you are, that I would welcome hearing your stories also. And if there just was enough time I would be glad if I could hear your stories too." And do you know that every time after that one I always prefaced my speeches that way. And every time the very first people to come up to me and welcome me were atheists. And they would say, "Roberta, I really appreciated hearing your story. I'm an atheist." But I think they said first, "I'm an atheist, but I really appreciated hearing your story today. May we eat with you?" And so they would come and sit at the table and eat with us so that we could hear their stories too, because they were gay or lesbian. And so that was a really meaningful part of our journey, I felt. And Harold was able to share then too. But I think I said before that I was always his secretary because he didn't use electronic devices of any kind. HK: Well the reason because I was raised on a farm and my parents were not encouraging my education because it was just too busy. We were dairy farmers and I was up early in the morning and early to bed. And busy in between. JM: You spoke, Roberta, about atheists wanting to tell their stories to you at the table. What common features did they have in their dinner conversation with you? RK: Well, I guess they just told me of how they were raised. And it was just their stories. I don't know how else to tell you. And -- but I thought it was something that I felt God answered my prayer in saying this is a way you can handle it and include them too. And what amazed me was that every time the very first people that came up were always people who said, "Roberta, I'm an atheist, but I was glad to hear your story today." And then wanted to eat with us so that they could share part of their story. So it's just been a really exciting journey. And, like I said, I've wondered if I wouldn't have had a gay brother would I have been able to welcome them. And I hope that by now I could have welcomed them with open arms because I know that our creator has created us all and it's not his will or his purpose that anybody should go to hell. And I don't think there is a literal hell. Although I know that there are people who love to hold that over other people's heads. But I don't do that any longer. HK: Well, I think if there's any hell, people make it for themselves here in this life. And that in the end they're in God's hands and they're not destroyed. God, I don't think, destroys what he creates. So, that's where I'm at. JM: This is a wonderful opportunity here, your story. And I believe I would like to ask you as you think about what the two of you spoke about today if there's anything that maybe you missed that you'd like to share with us now. RK: Do you have anything else that -- HK: What? RK: -- do you have anything else that you want to add? HK: Well, I'll give Roberta this praise. I'm just so fortunate that she's my wife and that we've been able to share this journey together. And it's hard for me to believe that I've come from where I was born to where I am now and to feel so different about people different from ourselves. And I think the statement in the scriptures where it says God is love. Well if God is love then I can't do anything else or less. And I can relate to people of any kind without being judgmental about them. It's just not my business to judge people. Judge not that you be not judged the scriptures also says, and so I've never been happier in my life than I am right now. And I feel so fortunate to have married a woman that is what she is and she has certainly made a better person of myself. JM: When we conclude an interview because this is an ongoing process we always like to say -- before we thank you -- can you think -- who can you think of that we might want to talk with that has a story like yours about being allies, advocates for people who are LGBT? RK: Well, do you see those pictures over there? That's our gay gallery. And our granddaughter over there -- HK: And the only granddaughter we have. RK: Well, the -- yeah, the only one by birth. When she was a little girl, twelve years old, she would bring her laptop down to sit at our table to tell grandpa and I how wrong we were in our welcome of gay and lesbian people. And we just let her [rile?] and then we just answered her as good as we could and let it go. And do you know the time came that we were asked -- or I was asked to come to the Church of the Open Door in Arkansas -- forget the name of the Arkansas. And the purpose was to receive the Peggy Campolo award for -- oh what does it say on there? -- for anyhow, working with the gay and lesbian people or whatever. And by that time we weren't traveling anymore. But they said that she would take care of all travel. She would go with us. And we just follow her. And so that's the way we went down to that church. And I had the story of the pastor and his partner in one of the books. And so when I shared with our granddaughter who is also a counselor and she and I have shared deeply about the things in my background and the abuse that I had and all of that. And at that time she said grandma, that wasn't your fault and you don't feel like it was. And she really had talked to me. But anyhow, one day as I was sitting at the computer getting ready for stories to come, here came this email from her and I said, "Oh Grandpa, oh Harold, come here." I said, "I can't read this out loud without crying." I said, "You'll just have to come and sit here and read it -- what [Anika?] has to say." And she said, "Grandma and Grandpa, do you remember when I was a little girl and I brought my laptop down to convince you how wrong you were?" She said, "I'm so ashamed of that." She said, "Can you ever forgive me?" And so after he read it we [went out?] and I wrote back and I said, "Oh, Anika. We remember that time very well and we always hoped that someday you would be able to see it differently. And so we're so thankful that God has answered our prayers." And then she sent pictures of that time in Arkansas, and of that speaking engagement. And she said, "Grandma, now I know you have my family pictures over on the front side of your refrigerator with the rest of the family pictures. And that's where I want them." But she said, "These pictures I want you to put over on the other side in your gay gallery as a testimony to what I feel and believe today." And so there's a whole row over there of pictures of that time in Arkansas and of her speaking and all of us together. And how the people welcomed us and heard our stories and it was just an amazing time together and I thank God that we were able to make that trip. B ut our daughter in Oregon has always supported us and she knew that I had trouble with my eyes and she's the one who sent me a Kindle and said, "Mom, I'm going to give you this Kindle because I think it will help you with your eyes and so you can be able to read and do the work that you do." And she has worked for years in a school that welcomes high school dropouts. They would be dropouts entirely to the system and everything if she and her team did not welcome them. And she has one more year to go and then she will be retiring. And they're retiring to a home out in the country. But anyhow, she has always supported us. It's really been good to know that she has cared that much about me and my eyes because she knows that my grandmother went blind before she died and it's a trait that runs in my family. So. And also that story about the Indians and massacring a cellar full of settlers. And I discovered from another person who searched out my background that that's my fifth generation from me. And that I was part of that group that was rescued by some good Indians. And that's quite a story too. So I just feel that I did what I did because God had his hand on me and I said yes. That's all I can say. That it's been a marvelous journey and one that I'm so glad I didn't have to miss. And I still keep up with, I mean, different ones of those still text me at times. And the guy clear up on the -- is that on the front -- well, anyhow, he followed me almost anyplace I went to hear me talk. And he wanted a partner so bad. And I hadn't been able to find one for him. But God gave him a partner. And now there's another story brewing right now of a guy that he was supposed to come for Christmas dinner at Luke and Mandy's house where we were invited. And that's another whole long story. And I had said, "I missed you there." And then he wrote back and said, "You missed me because I found a life partner. And he's sick and I'm trying to help him. And I'm not sure what the sickness is yet." But, anyhow, we still have people that we're in contact with as much as I'm able. And I read so many good books on Kindle. JM: We are so grateful to have this time to talk with you today and to hear your story and to preserve your story for generations to come. The material will be stored professionally at Muhlenberg College. It will be available for academic research. And I believe there will be people in the future who will sit and watch this conversation with you. And I think their hearts will be gladdened. So thank you so much for the time today. RK: Well, thank you for giving us the opportunity. Because I really am glad to share my story as far and wide as we can. Because I know that was because God showed me that he is no respecter of persons but that he loves everybody. And years ago we were part of a group that was an inter-faith group. And we met in the home of [Barry and Janet Hartsaw?]. And I think they still have the group meeting in their home. But we had to drop out as we got older because we couldn't drive anymore and all of that. But we met wonderful people in there. We met Muslims who shared their story and discovered how God loves us all. And that I don't want to be a judge of anybody. I just want to welcome everybody. And I wish that you would include the sign on our front door somehow in your video. JM: We will make sure that we have a photograph of the sign, and -- with your permission -- your award, and a photograph of the two of you sitting together. So, again, I believe our videographer Danielle is aware that we're reaching our 90-minute point. So, again, thank you so much for your time. And this has been a wonderful opportunity for me to learn. Thank you. RK: Well the people in our Sunday school class at church, we share very deeply. And I had told them about this. And they said they would be praying for us today too. So we had a lot of friends praying for us today that we could be strong and be able to do it. So I'm thankful that you can before God calls us home. And I don't know. We have donated our bodies to science. And so when that time comes we won't have time for much of a goodbye together because they'll have to come and take them while they're viable. So, but isn't that -- I mean, why just dig a hole and put us in. So (inaudible). JM: Harold, could I ask you to offer a benediction for us. HK: Sure. Lord we thank you for the presence of our friends to be with us today. And we thank you for the opportunity to share with them our experience along life's journey. And we pray your blessing upon them. Will you give them much courage and much wisdom as they share this information with them that has been given to them today. Thank you for their presence and their grace. Amen. JM: Amen. RK: I'm sorry he couldn't share more of his story. But usually we -- HK: Well, it's been very involved with your story. So. RK: Well, I know that we've been in it together. But -- HK: I just feel so fortunate that she's my wife. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:33:43
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Roberta and Harold Kreider, January 11, 2020
Description
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Roberta and Harold Krieder discuss their activism and work as allies to LGBTQ+ communities. They describe how the death of Roberta’s beloved brother due to HIV started them on the path toward advocacy for LGBTQ+ people. They go on to discuss their work within the Mennonite Church to make their congregation inclusive of LGBTQ+ people, their work with Witness our Welcome, and their public advocacy for LGBTQ+ communities in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Roberta Krieder also discusses her published books, which sought to document religious trauma for LGBTQ+ people and to encourage religious organizations to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ members.
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LGBT-06
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2020-01-11
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/73e989999007b94d1372c4013af5aed3.png
7c33c07be0c05cc1996b27411d1bee3f
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Mary Foltz
Interviewee
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Don Kohn
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-09.xml
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PFLAG
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5.4 May 11, 2020 Don Kohn, May 11, 2020 LGBT-09 01:37:24 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg PFLAG GLAAD MCCLV Don Kohn Mary Foltz video/mp4 KohnDon_20200511_Final_video.mp4 1.0:|19(6)|52(8)|83(10)|104(3)|123(9)|140(7)|155(2)|170(16)|189(10)|210(9)|225(3)|242(14)|261(2)|278(7)|295(17)|310(10)|333(14)|350(11)|371(2)|390(4)|411(4)|432(5)|453(7)|472(2)|489(8)|510(2)|529(15)|552(10)|569(14)|588(11)|609(4)|628(6)|647(11)|664(13)|685(10)|706(6)|725(17)|744(10)|765(2)|782(13)|803(8)|820(17)|839(9)|860(11)|881(7)|900(3)|921(3)|942(9)|963(7)|982(3)|999(7)|1018(10)|1039(10)|1058(15)|1077(12)|1096(5)|1113(7)|1132(7)|1151(16)|1168(15)|1185(13)|1208(3)|1227(9)|1252(3)|1271(8)|1286(5)|1305(9)|1322(6)|1343(13)|1362(6)|1381(13)|1400(9)|1419(9)|1442(3)|1459(12)|1476(11)|1493(5)|1512(8)|1531(13)|1548(8)|1571(3)|1588(12)|1609(8)|1626(10)|1647(8)|1664(17)|1683(15)|1698(15)|1717(3)|1734(7)|1757(15)|1776(2)|1797(3)|1828(2)|1861(4)|1888(5)|1921(2)|1930(17) 0 YouTube video < ; iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XrrqqvV0Eco?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"> ; < ; /iframe> ; 8 Interview Introduction MARY FOLTZ: So my name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with Don Kohn to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. This is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on May 11th, 2020, and we’re conducting this interview via Zoom. So Don, thank you so much for your willingness to speak to me today. I’m just so thrilled that you’re willing to share your story. And to start, before we jump into the interview, would you be willing to state your full name and spell it for me?
 ; 0 169 Early Years / Family MF: Oh sure, I’d be happy to. Would you tell me a little bit about the early years of your life?
 ; 
 ; DK: I was raised in Omaha, Nebraska. I had two brothers, a mother and father. I left high school and came out to Lehigh University, where I graduated, and later on raised a daughter -- not a whole family, just that. Melinda was raised in New Jersey, went to Trenton State, until the end of our junior year, where we got married, and she transferred to Moravian. Okay. 0 403 Developed Understanding of Diversity MF: When did you develop your understanding of embracing diversity?
 ; 
 ; DK: I don’t know. I went -- my high school was very diverse. When I entered into the realm of GLBT people, and that I know I went back and questioned, what did I think, and how did I treat people? Gee, was that person that I knew -- I had a friend at work, and was he gay? And did I greet him right? It evolved. It evolved from a belief probably that people were all the same. As far as GLBT people, I probably didn’t know much about it. Again, it evolved. So -- that’s right, there was someone in my adult life before we had our daughter, we had a friend who had a child. And the child’s nanny was a gay man. 0 682 Moving to the Lehigh Valley / Schooling / Job MF: Well, I will be curious about, if we move on a little bit, what it was like for you to move to the Lehigh Valley and to attend Lehigh University. What was that move like for you?
 ; 
 ; DK: Again, it’s so long ago. I can remember I was -- on the football team, I was one of the helpers, I don’t think (inaudible) it called. Standing in the middle of the field, at that time Lehigh’s Goodman Field was nothing except one building and a practice field. There was nothing else out there (inaudible) and saying, how did I get this far away from home? I don’t know. I guess I never looked back that much. I was back two summers, and that was it. Again, the world here is different, and the people were more -- I don’t know. I can’t remember back that far to give you a good answer. 0 1307 Daughter Coming Out / Joining PFLAG MF: So I know that one of the impetus for joining PFLAG was your daughter. So could you describe a little bit about how she came out to you, and how you felt about the coming out process?
 ; 
 ; DK: This is interesting, because if Melinda was here, you’d get two different answers. Sally had a best friend, who they did everything together, whatever. And they were in a play together, where her friend and her brother had the leads, and Sally had a supporting role. And I was backstage afterwards. GLAAD ; Liz Bradbury ; PFLAG ; Trish Sullivan 0 2075 How PFLAG Helps Families MF: Maybe we could talk a little bit about, what kinds of activities did PFLAG organize for families? And what kinds of events were you organizing in the early years of your presidency?
 ; 
 ; DK: Let me say this, I think it’s important to note, right now in the Lehigh Valley, there’s a lot of acceptance. We really are out of business, PFLAG is, because -- you could tell in the early days, we get a phone call -- Melinda and I had the help line. That was another thing we did when this woman transitioned out and went to California. While I wasn’t president, we took on the help line. And we just stopped that last year. Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center ; MCCLV ; PFLAG 0 2745 PFLAG's Strategies for Parents / Advocacy 
 ; MF: Well, I’m curious, you described -- you said, “We got them through it.” And I’m wondering if you could describe how. What strategies did PFLAG use to help parents that were really struggling to accept their children? How did you help people work through their fears?
 ; 
 ; DK: Melinda was better at that than I am. Although when she was still working and I was here consulting, I’d get the phone calls, or at the meetings. And I think the meetings -- the phone calls, it was just talking through it, and inviting them to the meeting. Reassuring them that they didn’t do anything wrong. Reassuring that their child was still the same person they knew before. PFLAG 0 3340 PFLAG's Involvement w/ Freedom to Marry MF: Well, so I’m wondering if maybe -- you’ve mentioned the Freedom to Marry events a few times. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about PFLAG’s work on that particular political issue. How was PFLAG involved with the Freedom to Marry movement?
 ; 
 ; DK: Well, PFLAG nationally was certainly involved. Locally, again, we, as all other organizations in the area, supported that. Again, we went to the Freedom to Marry evening event. It wasn’t necessarily PFLAG support, but on the Friday before the event, there was a march on the Lehigh County Courthouse, where people went in to try to get marriage licenses, unsuccessfully. They took their money, though. Anti-Discrimination Law ; Freedom to Marry ; The Morning Call 0 3742 How LGBT Organizations Work Together in the Lehigh Valley MF: Well, so I have two different sort of ideas for moving forward. But I want to ask the sort of larger question. Looking back on all of your work in PFLAG, how do you think PFLAG as an organization has impacted the Lehigh Valley?
 ; 
 ; DK: Let me just say, not everything was PFLAG, okay? You know, my support of Renaissance wasn’t necessarily PFLAG, some of it was personal. I’m looking at something else we have in front of us. When MCC had their Christmas party and they needed a Santa Claus, guess who volunteered? You know, was that PFLAG? No. MCCLV ; PFLAG 0 4410 How LGBT Organizations Changed the Lehigh Valley MF: Well, we’re getting towards the end of our ninety minutes, and I have two questions that I’m thinking of. One is one I asked earlier, but I didn’t ask it well. This is sort of a historical question. What do you think PFLAG -- but then the other organizations, MCCLV, Lehigh Valley, Renaissance -- what kind of impact do you feel those organizations have made on the Lehigh Valley in their early years, when we’re thinking historically about your early work in PFLAG? How did those organizations together change the Lehigh Valley?
 ; 
 ; DK: Well, like I said, the Lehigh Valley over the twenty years has changed from not as accepting to a pretty accepting community. 0 4706 PFLAG's Attendance Decreasing MF: Okay. I want to return to something that you talked about sort of briefly before. But you talk about a sort of change in the need for PFLAG, that the shift in Lehigh Valley has decreased the membership and attendance at meetings for PFLAG. I’m wondering if you could reflect a little bit on that transition. From a really active organization to our current sort of moment, why do you think PFLAG’s attendance sort of declined and the interest in the organization kind of declined a bit?
 ; 
 ; DK: Well, there obviously -- again, there’s much more acceptance today than there was then. Why? I don’t know. You know, I’m an engineer, I don’t know why. 0 4967 Personal Reflection on PFLAG MF: How has being involved in PFLAG mattered to you personally, or mattered to you as a father and as a spouse? How have you personally been impacted by your years of work in multiple organizations, you know, centrally with PFLAG?
 ; 
 ; DK: I mean, my daughter thinks we’re more gay than she is, because we’re more involved. Yeah. Let me put it this way. No offense to the Jewish religion or Jewish people, but we were involved with the synagogue for many years -- not a lot, we started late, when my daughter was Sunday school age. 0 MovingImage Don Kohn talks about his involvement with the Eastern PA chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). MARY FOLTZ:So my name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here with Don Kohn to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. This is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on May 11th, 2020, and we're conducting this interview via Zoom. So Don, thank you so much for your willingness to speak to me today. I'm just so thrilled that you're willing to share your story. And to start, before we jump into the interview, would you be willing to state your full name and spell it for me? DON KOHN:Full name, Donald Jerry Kohn, K-O-H-N. I think Donald and Jerry don't need to be spelled, but Kohn, K-O-H-N. MF:Thank you. Could you please share your birth date? DK:June 4th, 1947. MF:And we had a phone conversation about consent for this interview, but I'll just ask you a few questions here now for verbal consent. Do you consent to this interview today? DK:Yes. MF:Do you consent to this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? DK:Yes. MF:Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats that might appear in the future? DK:Yes. MF:And do you understand that you'll have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview and identify parts that you'd want to delete or withdraw from the project? DK:Yes. MF:Wonderful. Okay. Now let's move into the interview part. Today I want to start with a question about your childhood. Would you tell me about your early years -- DK:I just want to add something that we discussed earlier. MF:Go ahead. DK:My wife and I did most of -- my wife, Melinda, did most of this together. Most of the stories I tell of that are for both of us, but I did want to give a little background and answer some of your questions and some of the discussion from her point of view also. Okay? MF:Wonderful. I'll be happy to hear about the work that you've done together. DK:You wanted to know her -- starting with my -- ask your question again. MF:Oh sure, I'd be happy to. Would you tell me a little bit about the early years of your life? DK:I was raised in Omaha, Nebraska. I had two brothers, a mother and father. I left high school and came out to Lehigh University, where I graduated, and later on raised a daughter -- not a whole family, just that. Melinda was raised in New Jersey, went to Trenton State, until the end of our junior year, where we got married, and she transferred to Moravian. Okay. MF:What was it like to grow up in Omaha, Nebraska? DK:You know, I don't know that it was any different. I mean, as a youth, you just know what's around you. You don't know there's a difference between Nebraska, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. You don't know that. In high school, you probably still don't know it. When I moved from, at the advice of my older brothers, and came out East, I realized, yes, there's a big difference. Midwestern towns, particularly Omaha at the time, was a one-horse town. There were only Italian or steak houses for restaurants. There wasn't a lot of cultures. There wasn't a lot of interests like there is here. There's no shore, there's no Poconos. You know, it's a different world. It's changed somewhat, I'm sure, in the fifty-some years. But at that time, it was different. MF:Could you talk a little bit about your family and the family dynamic? What was it like growing up in your family? DK:My older brothers were much older. They always treated me as the little brother. My parents were -- my dad was very forceful. Not abusive, but forceful. And I have to look back and probably think that my father was not accepting of diversity, we'll say it that nice way. Okay? MF:I have a question about that, but when you say not accepting of diversity, what, in particular, are you thinking about? Was he sort of like a small-town guy, sort of concerned about outsiders in your community? DK:I'm not sure I can even categorize it. It's just the way he spoke, the way he commented about different people, the way people's color, people of different nationalities, et cetera, over the years. And some of that may have been tainted, or an impression I got later on when I was older and recognized and my own feelings about diversity versus theirs, were different from theirs. He wasn't an overt racist person, it's just the kind of person that you run into who is quiet, but you can tell sometimes they're not appreciating other people. MF:When did you develop your understanding of embracing diversity? DK:I don't know. I went -- my high school was very diverse. When I entered into the realm of GLBT people, and that I know I went back and questioned, what did I think, and how did I treat people? Gee, was that person that I knew -- I had a friend at work, and was he gay? And did I greet him right? It evolved. It evolved from a belief probably that people were all the same. As far as GLBT people, I probably didn't know much about it. Again, it evolved. So -- that's right, there was someone in my adult life before we had our daughter, we had a friend who had a child. And the child's nanny was a gay man. And I guess at that point, I made a decision to treat that person as a person. I won't say norm, but not be concerned with his sexual orientation. Like I said, that all evolved. So the best way to describe my journey, if you call it a journey, is my acceptance of diversity has gotten far beyond just people of color, skin colors or religion, but just in the general accepting of people who are different, and who have different concepts of what I think of, or what I was taught, or what I grew up as. By the way, I think my father was very, this is how he thinks, and therefore, the world around him should think the same way, okay? So maybe that's coming back. So it's a journey. And I'll also say this ; if -- my wife was one of the early people who work in industry, and they did not like to be called, "Girl." My dad's attitude was, "I'm going to call them 'girl,' it doesn't bother me." My attitude's always been, if I put my foot in my mouth and say the wrong thing and someone corrects me, and there was someone who was very good at correcting me on those issues with GLBT people, then the difference is not that I said it in the first place, but that I ever say it again. That I learn from it. So yeah, it's a journey, and I won't say that. I'm not still on it. I still wonder whether, sometimes thoughts creep up from the old days, that I'm, gee, that's wrong, I shouldn't think that. It's repressed. So, yeah, okay. MF:You describe this kind of evolution of your thinking about diversity. I'm wondering, did that occur in part with your move East and out to Lehigh University? DK:I don't know. You know, it's a long time ago. Like I said, my high school was very diverse, from both skin color, religion, ethnic background, financial. We had some very poor people, and we had some very wealthy people at the school. I guess I don't know if it ever started, like I said, so I can't put a thing and say, this is the day that somebody hit me over the head and said, "Diversity's good." All right? Maybe it was in something inherent in me that I just definitely don't see, striking differences in people, okay? Maybe it's a want to -- like the Freedom to Marry, to say, gee, that's wrong thinking. I know I should change it. I don't know. I don't know. MF:Well, I will be curious about, if we move on a little bit, what it was like for you to move to the Lehigh Valley and to attend Lehigh University. What was that move like for you? DK:Again, it's so long ago. I can remember I was -- on the football team, I was one of the helpers, I don't think (inaudible) it called. Standing in the middle of the field, at that time Lehigh's Goodman Field was nothing except one building and a practice field. There was nothing else out there (inaudible) and saying, how did I get this far away from home? I don't know. I guess I never looked back that much. I was back two summers, and that was it. Again, the world here is different, and the people were more -- I don't know. I can't remember back that far to give you a good answer. MF:Describe for me a little bit about your course of study at Lehigh, and the early years of your career here in The Valley. DK:I graduated in chemical engineering. My grades started bad, worked progressively up to the senior year. I didn't do all that bad at the end. I went to work for an insurance company as a fire protection engineer, did that for about three years, and then I went to work for Pennsylvania Power and Light, in the design area of fire protection, office buildings, power plants. And then about '95, I went on private consulting. I go with my wife, she graduated from Muhlenberg with a degree in mathematics. Went to work for -- Burroughs, we were down in Philadelphia, she went to work for the Burroughs Company, in computers. When I moved up here, she went to work for Bell Labs and became one of their computer experts, had supervised people. And the last ten years -- she retired many years ago -- last few years ago, she was an omnibus person, taking care of people's problems. So that helped with our diversity concept also. MF:Well, since you talked a little bit about Melinda, how did the two of you meet? DK:Oh, yes. Remember, because you said you went to Lehigh -- Lehigh was all men back in the sixties. So we had a mixer one day at the Jewish Community Center/Synagogue, which was off the corner of the campus, which is now a campus-owned building, all right. Packer Avenue and the street that goes up towards the alumni, the main street that comes from town -- it's right there. Okay. So interestingly enough, I saw this gal I wanted to ask to dance. I walked up to her, and two seconds before I got to her, somebody else took her away. (laughs) And who was behind her, but Melinda. And it progressed from there. MF:What did you like about Melinda in the first years that you were dating? DK:Same thing I still do, how about that? It's been fifty-two years, at the end of the month. I'd have several steady girlfriends, and, you know, every time each one of them had a quality I liked, but obviously didn't have all the qualities I liked, Melinda seemed to have all the qualities I liked. As far as her point of view, I was a tall Jewish boy. (laughs) Melinda's tall. Okay. MF:Do you want to describe what some of those qualities were? DK:No, just let's go on. MF:Okay. DK:You know, it's so ingrained in me, I'm not sure I could pick them out anymore. You know, I guess many couples split apart and then divorce, we've gotten sort of together. And there are some things she's better at than I am, things I'm better at than she is. Basically, yeah, I just -- there's too -- you know, we only have a certain amount of time. You don't want me to start listing all of her good qualities. We won't get on to the other things. Okay? MF:That makes sense. She sounds wonderful. Why don't we talk a little bit about -- DK:That was the one or two prejudices that I do have, and that's (inaudible). MF:Why don't we talk a little bit about the early years of your marriage, because I know we'll be working up to your work with PFLAG. But what were the early years of your marriage like working and living in the Lehigh Valley? DK:Well, first of all, we spent three and a half years in Philadelphia. Then we came to Lehigh Valley, and I guess it was work. We had a house, and did things around the house, and remodeled a house or two. It's nothing out of the ordinary, nothing different, yeah. Centered around work. MF:Talk to me a little bit about building your family. DK:I guess we made a decision, as many people do right now, saying, do we really want to bring a kid into this world, with all the things going on? We both had our careers, we were both working, we were both happy. And whatever, it's hard to go back -- you're asking me to go back so far in time. But we finally decided that when one of us wanted a child, we would have one, and we did. So about nine years after we were married, we had a baby. And that was Sally. I'm sorry if you hear the geese in the background. I live in the country. MF:That's fine. The geese aren't bothering the sound at all. DK:Good. MF:Describe for me what it was like your first years as a father for Sally. DK:It's interesting. Melinda had a friend who had six kids. And we went through a lot of -- because Melinda worked -- we went through a lot of childcare concepts. And I think when we -- we had a full-time person taking care of her. And when the person couldn't make it, we defaulted to taking her over to this other woman, okay? And she only liked babies, although she had six kids. She loved taking care of babies. And she ultimately had to -- and so I worried that I would only like Sally as a baby. I also worried that having a full-time housekeeper, I'd miss the important things. Well, let me say other than the teenage years, I enjoyed all the years. For things like, you know, learning to crawl ; she was crawling -- or standing up, that's right. I was laying on the floor, and she came to me, crawled over to me, and started to crawl over the top of me, and then stood up. So I got to see her stand up first. We had a family Thanksgiving, I think it was, and she was crawling around from family member to family member, when she stood up and walked across the room. And we all said, "Did you just do that?" So it was an exciting time. While both Melinda and I worked, we came to not work a lot of overtime, so that we were home with Sally. And we did a lot of things on the weekends that you do with kids, and stuff like that. So it was an enjoyable time. MF:What was Sally like as a child? DK:A lot of fun. Like I said, teenagers -- I don't even know if I want to talk about those. And go on the record. But as a child, she was a lot of fun. She was cute, you know, I can remember her -- try to take a picture of her, you know, she had to walk up and see the camera, things like that. And probably around -- now, understand Melinda was into computers, and that was her business. So we got the personal computer very early. So Sally really grew up on computers. When she was in high school, she was teaching the teachers about computers, that same thing, so-- MF:So I know that one of the impetus for joining PFLAG was your daughter. So could you describe a little bit about how she came out to you, and how you felt about the coming out process? DK:This is interesting, because if Melinda was here, you'd get two different answers. Sally had a best friend, who they did everything together, whatever. And they were in a play together, where her friend and her brother had the leads, and Sally had a supporting role. And I was backstage afterwards. And it was something about the way that she looked at this partner -- and I want to leave the partner's name out, because I'm not sure where her parents -- they're -- that was Sally's first partner. And up to the time they split, her parents weren't supportive, very supportive. So I won't mention names. I said, there must be something more to this. Well, they were graduating high school, and as a graduation present, we were going to send them to New York to see a play. The other gal's parents asked a question, and they thought it wouldn't be a problem, and they told them. And the other parents slammed down and said, "You're not going anywhere without a chaperone," da da da da da da, okay. Now here's where the difference comes. I believe she waited until she got home. Melinda thinks she called on her cell phone and told us, thinking we wouldn't have a problem, and we didn't. Melinda thought she had a target on her back, okay, and was very concerned from that standpoint. And now here comes Liz and Trish, and PFLAG, somewhere in there, it might have been a year afterwards. But I accepted my daughter fully, and my wife accepted her fully. But here comes the education part of it is -- what did I accept? Technically I knew what a lesbian was, but I didn't know a lot of the details. I didn't know -- it was easy for me to -- and speaking to an English teacher here -- you -- understand I'm an engineer, my ability to talk and communicate isn't as good, and certainly not as good as my daughter's is today. I needed to know what to say and what not to say, and have some education. And that's -- PFLAG's one of the places I got that. So yeah, we were fine with her and that. And frankly, through her college years, dating and interfacing with her first partner, we got to see that budding romance. You know, as a parent, what do you want from your child? You want to see -- when you give up on the fact that you're not going to have a husband and wife, and two point three kids and a picket fence and two dogs, you really want to see that your daughter has someone who wants to take care of her and loves her. We got to watch that. We got to see that happen, because we spent several times with both of them. They would spend a lot of times on breaks at our house, okay, so we got to see all that. So it was, like I said, yeah. So we accepted her. It wasn't a big, traumatic event for our family. MF:Your daughter comes out, your family's very accepting. But you just described, you wanted education. You wanted to know what to say, when to say it. Could you describe how you found PFLAG, or how you found Liz and Trish? DK:Well, let's see, I don't know. Why I did it, I can tell you. Besides the education, Sally was a teenager, she was about eighteen at the time. And as I either knew then instinctively, or wanted to know -- I clearly know now, because that's how I counsel parents at PFLAG -- if your teenager comes out to you and you say, "Okay, that's fine," and walk away, they think you don't accept them. So you've got to do a little more than just say, "It's okay," and walk away. If you start asking too many questions to a teenager, then you're prying, and they don't like that, either. So what do you do? In our case, joining PFLAG sent my daughter a very clear message that we were accepting and willing to learn more and do something. I might add in here, a couple of things happened when she was in college. First year, which I think was a year before we actually got really involved with PFLAG, mainly because of Sally's partner, who was local, and didn't want it to be known and that. So we were sort of asked to be in the closet for a year, okay? Sally, during college, interned first for the GLAAD, the Gay, Lesbian -- no, GLAAD isn't -- I'm starting to use a different acronym. And so we went down for -- instead of parents' weekend, we went down the weekend before. You said you, when we previously talked, that you were down there then. We had the AIDS quilt in the mall. Sally ran a booth at GLAAD, at the AIDS quilt. Then afterwards, at night we went to a party, with Sally, again, being the intern, had to be at the door to greet everybody. But talking about diversity, and I always tell people, sometimes us white males who are in the majority, ought to find ourselves in the minority sometimes, see how it feels. Here we were at a party, there may have been one other heterosexual couple. You know, I had to be careful. I couldn't tell any of my jokes, which I was just beginning to realize I couldn't, you know? We had dinner afterwards, and I found it very interesting, some of the directors Sally was -- I found this gal was talking about going out to bars and finding girls. I wasn't that far out of (inaudible), I'm thinking, boy, we have some things in common, okay? But that was another event that I like to say comes -- Sally also interned for the National Gay-Lesbian Task Force, both in Washington, D.C., and New York, and became, and to this day, is still friends with some of the leaders (inaudible). In fact, I guess she was still in college when we went to the National Gay-Lesbian Task Force Greeting Change Conference, and we paid for her partner to also go, so all four of us were there. I might point out that somewhere in here, Sally's attitude was, she's got a couple of terrible parents, teenagers going up to where we are today, "I got a couple of terrible parents, what the heck are they all about?" It's, like, okay. At the conference, I kept telling her -- because Sally knew, she was an intern, she knew people, people knew her. And I referred people to her as, "I'm Sally's dad." "Hey dad, you're embarrassing me." "Well, that's my job. I'm a father. I'm supposed to embarrass you." Where, somewhere in the middle of this, people kept coming up to Sally and saying, "Your parents are fantastic! I wish my parents would have come to this. I wish my parents cared enough." Sally started to realize that maybe we weren't so bad, okay? So that PFLAG, all this stuff was our way of letting our daughter know, it's okay. (inaudible), it's okay if you're gay, you know. And being supportive, being supportive of her and her partner. And PFLAG just sort of fell into that. That again, the educa-- I'm not sure if we did it for the education, or we did it because the typical parents that want to go to PFLAG to learn more about it, I don't remember that transition. I do know that once we got, we got hooked. And of course, Liz and Trish were regulars at the meetings. MF:Tell me a little bit about why you got hooked. What was so moving about being a part of PFLAG for you? DK:Well, I'm not quite even sure. But that I remember doing it, I just don't remember the whys. We joined PFLAG, and at the times -- and I can't remember the names, I probably can look them up, but there were three families -- yeah, three families, we'd say, that started the local PFLAG chapter ; one of them had already gotten older and tired and stepped away, maybe they went to Florida. One remained -- Helen Early remained for a long time, even after we were there. Helen, she just passed away last year, I think. Then there was a woman in there, I can't remember, but she was the president at the time, and her husband was dying of cancer. She knew that when he did pass, she would be moving to California to be with her kids, okay? So it was sort of, like, "gee, Don, you seem like a right person. Would you like to be president?" Okay, and that was, like, a year or two. And that was, like, you know, I'm one who likes to get involved with an organization, but learn a little bit about it before I start getting heavily involved. So there was a woman called Elsa [Stohl?], who worked at Bell Labs, who was, again, an ally. Very diversity-oriented. They had a diversity group at Bell Labs, and she was head of it, as I remember. As it was explained to me, Elsa likes to get into a group, give it energy, and then move on. Okay, get it setting right, get it going well. So she stepped in to be president. But she wasn't always available. She was traveling enough that it defaulted to me. And so Melinda was, of course, we were there always together and doing things. And it just defaulted to, gee, I might as well step in to be president, because Elsa's going to move on, and Elsa's doing it all anyhow. Again, those were the early -- I don't remember that part of it as much as I remember the different events and things that we did, and the people and things like that. MF:Maybe we could talk a little bit about, what kinds of activities did PFLAG organize for families? And what kinds of events were you organizing in the early years of your presidency? DK:Let me say this, I think it's important to note, right now in the Lehigh Valley, there's a lot of acceptance. We really are out of business, PFLAG is, because -- you could tell in the early days, we get a phone call -- Melinda and I had the help line. That was another thing we did when this woman transitioned out and went to California. While I wasn't president, we took on the help line. And we just stopped that last year. In the early days, we'd pick up the phone and hear (gasps) -- and then we knew that was a parent that was in trouble, you know? As one of my friends said, because I used her as an example in meetings, you know, with everybody -- I can't -- I don't know what to do. I said, "Go turn to so-and-so, look what she did. What was your first reaction?" "I was going to jump off a cliff." Okay? Now she's a person who's one of our active members, or was. Today, in the last few years, we've got nobody coming to our meetings. If we did get someone coming to the meetings or calling us, it was, "How do I help my child? My child's being abused at school. I want to go stick up for his rights," things like that. So the whole complexion change, that's number one. Number two, right now we have the Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center. There are a zillion different programs. We have GSAs, we have all sorts of activities. Back twenty years ago, we had PFLAG, we had MCC Church, and that was just about it. Liz and Trish had a newsletter, had some friends, had some things, but there was no real organization of activities. So if you, for instance, needed to come out and you needed to get to your parents, you might come to PFLAG. If you were a forty-year-old who had been married and then realized your sexual orientation, where do you come for information? PFLAG. So it was a whole different situation back then. So what did we do? First of all, we had monthly meetings. You know, they were held at the same place. They did switch around different places, but generally you knew where they were, so you could come. They were confidential. You could call us -- you could come and talk and meet with people who had been there before and learn, that's why Liz and Trish came. Somewhere in there, really in the early days, because we went to one of the first PRIDE meetings, back in those days, it was GLBT, right? Well, the gays knew who they were. The lesbians knew who they were. There was some question about what a bi was, okay. Transgender -- that just didn't fit their image. That just didn't -- again, people shall remain nameless, but someone in GLBT in the Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual group was, like, "I don't understand why these men are getting dressed -- I just don't understand it." So I'm going to try to guess here for a minute that I said -- first of all, I made an early on decision to go and find out about transgender, because that's part of our mission. I attended some Renaissance meetings. I became friends with some people from Renaissance. Then because of this person, they said, "We need to set up." So we had an event one Saturday afternoon where we invited some of the leaders of the community to learn about transgender. I believe I can explain transgender and what it's all about as well as anyone now. Okay? By the way, fast forward to a couple of years ago, that same person was talking to someone, and this someone said to that person, "I don't understand this." "You don't have to. Just accept them." Okay. So we had the meetings. We had a few special things like that. We attended PRIDE, we had a booth at PRIDE. We supported different activities, like the Freedom to Marry. I can't remember if we did any other special -- you know, there were certain events where -- convening events where we had to set up a table. I do remember one time setting them up a table on Sunday, some event, and this woman comes up. I said, "Take all the literature." She said, "I already got it. I was at the meeting Tuesday." And it's, like, "Well, it's supposed to be confidential." Okay. Mostly we tried to have our meetings and be a presence, so that I suspect if you went to the -- the younger people don't know who we are, because we weren't as important. But if you go back to the people who were in the community twenty years ago, that age group, I think you'll find there's a whole bunch of people that know more than I, and we don't know them. Because they knew that there was this group out there, led by Don and Melinda, who supported them, even if their parents didn't. Okay? So that's what we did. And we did what PFLAG typically does, and that's the national thing of PFLAG. MF:I want to talk a little bit about the monthly meetings. You really describe people sort of calling the help line, or being panicked. For people in our community today, I think they'd be interested why people were so panicked, or the kinds of concerns that people that called the help line, or people that showed up at the meeting, what kinds of concerns were they bringing to those early PFLAG meetings when it was so essential for people in our community? DK:For the GLBT people, it was -- again, it seems to me we had a lot of people who would have been married and in relationships, whether they were forced or whether they thought that would change their -- I don't know. But they did realize that we were a source of support. We also had just GLBT who came to the meetings because there was no other form of support. Where are you going to go, okay take you as an example, you're gay, where are you going to go back then? To a bar? Where are you going to go for support? We were that support. Then there was the parents who were -- I looked at, and Melinda, GLBT parents, families and friends. Friends. So that doesn't mean you have to -- we're everything, okay, everybody's included. But from the parents' standpoint, this was a time when parents in Lehigh Valley were, God help me if my kid's gay. I must have done something wrong, what do I do? You know, it was the whole gamut. I mean, we had parents who were just absolutely shocked, we don't know where we're going. I think we had a few who just came because -- remember one, got to tell a funny story. My daughter's in junior high, and she wants to have this boy over to do a project. And it's, like, "No, mom and I aren't here, you can't have a boy over to the house." Fast forward a bunch of years, the parents, the boy and his brother come to the meeting, and that boy is gay. I guess I didn't need to worry, okay? But so we had -- it was a big difference -- different people came for different reasons. But by and large, parents were, at the time, it was, "What am I going to do? I'm going to jump off the cliff. How do I handle this? What do I do? Have I done something wrong? Get me through this." And we got them through it, you know? We could turn around and say -- and use members who were in the meeting, or whatever, to say they were in the same position you were, look at me now. Okay? And by the way, when I said I reached out transgender and I had that meeting, that person who ran that meeting is today one of my best friends. She is. She transitioned somewhere in there, did part of that transition at my house. And she would come to the meetings for anyone who was a transgender person, to help. So we were there, again, in the early days it was the parents who were just -- they were ready to do whatever. And they needed some semblance of how to cope with it, all right. You know, Melinda and I did fine. But that's not what everybody else did. Today we see more on TV, we've got more interaction. There's more acceptable -- we've come to grips with it, I guess. Not to say everyone, but some. It's a changed world. MF:Well, I'm curious, you described -- you said, "We got them through it." And I'm wondering if you could describe how. What strategies did PFLAG use to help parents that were really struggling to accept their children? How did you help people work through their fears? DK:Melinda was better at that than I am. Although when she was still working and I was here consulting, I'd get the phone calls, or at the meetings. And I think the meetings -- the phone calls, it was just talking through it, and inviting them to the meeting. Reassuring them that they didn't do anything wrong. Reassuring that their child was still the same person they knew before. I think that we had a few rare -- where people came to a meeting and they were just irate. They weren't going to accept -- I mean, as you know, there's just a group of people who are never going to accept the diversity, or GLBT people. But those people in the middle, and they're just lost souls, if you will, we need to take care of them. When we stopped having meetings, we did have one on one, and there's only one couple that we had that's, like, they were just obnoxious. And we wanted to throw them out. I couldn't believe how they were treating us and their son in our house. But in general, I think we just tried to show people that their children were the same child they were before. They knew more about that child than they did, and that things would be all right. Things would get better. Things that they would find out, and some of the things we talked about, it's, like, gee, you don't want to miss that when your son finds a partner. You don't want to miss that relationship, watching that. You don't want to be in a situation where you don't see your son. You know? And there's a few horror stories, and we used to not deploy those. But there are cases where parents didn't talk to the kid, didn't talk to the kid, and then there was no kid to talk to because of suicide. But generally, no. It's just a basic of talking them through, and the meetings, meeting other parents. We would tend to have sometimes Liz and Trish -- well, they were always there, but sometimes we'd have GLBT people who were (inaudible), oh my God, she's gay, what am I going to do? She won't amount to anything. Well, no. Then we'd bring in someone who was -- you know, go to the community, or whatever accomplished, and say, you know, "Come on. Your child has no future? It's not going to be any different," you know? So I guess that's basically what -- we also -- and that brought us back, we also advocated for, and I think we can talk about that, is going to government things and talking, and standing up in front. I had a great one with politicians of saying, you know, "Yeah, only ten percent is gay." Yeah, but every one of them, every one of those gay and lesbian people have a mother, father, an aunt and uncle, et cetera, et cetera." I said, "Maybe they're going to say it in public. Well, when they go in that voting booth, are they going to vote for someone who's against their child? I don't think so." We can come back to that later, too, another example. But go ahead. MF:Well, you just mentioned advocacy. What you describe is this real commitment to helping people work through fears about their children and their friends, to helping LGBT people feel connected, be leaders or pillars in the community. Now you're introducing this advocacy piece. Can you describe some of the major works of advocacy that PFLAG, during your time in PFLAG, really undertook? The major advocacy issues that you put at the forefront of your PFLAG group? DK:Let's see. I can remember meeting with a state senator, who said, "We really don't think gays should be married. They're not ready for it". And they've been divorced a couple of times." I can remember somewhat involved, Melinda more so than I was, when we had the -- well, in Allentown, we started with the Equal Rights Amendment, add gay, sexual orientation, gender identity to the anti-discrimination law. And as I remember, there were two times ; the first time didn't go anywhere, and the second time did. And I will share with you, part of the project was the Kreiders are also in this project. Kreiders didn't know Allentown very well, and they were older. And they used to come to our meetings regularly, okay? So that's a real thing, when you're a parent and you're emotional, and you think, and here's this former Mennonite minister and his wife who are little tiny old people saying, "It's okay." All right? Anyway, we had dinner with them and then took them to the meeting. And we walked in, and some people standing next to Liz and Trish said, "The other side's stacking on the deck." Liz said, "No, they're on our side." (laughs) So we went to those meetings, we spoke. I spoke, usually. Bethlehem had some more things, we spoke there. Melinda and I were honored by the Allentown Human Relations Commission for some of our work. And that's where I can tell the story. There's a couple of times where I tried to speak to groups and colleges, high schools and that. I wasn't real successful. Liz was more successful getting in than I was. But the first time I did it, I went with a lesbian, and she taught me something. And I use it every time I speak to a group. And at the Human Relations Commission is a good example. Someone I know tried to get the politicians to give her money for -- she was going on a walk for some charity, GLBT, probably, oriented. And it never happened. Okay. So in my talk, because I had to give an acceptance speech, and Liz said, "Make it count." So I start off as I do mostly, I say, "How many people in this audience are GLBT? I don't want anybody to come out," but, you know, a few people raise their hand. And I go on, I talked for a while. And then I say, "How many in this audience have a relative, a brother, sister, family member, uncle, or a friend who's GLBT?" At Lehigh, with the Gryphon Society, I did that talk, and I had seven percent, from one or two in the first place. Well, in this case, I had a large percentage, maybe twenty, thirty percent. And the reason I do that is to show that, you know, you walk into a thing and you say, oh, I can discriminate, there can only be one or two in here. Then you realize you're treading on unsafe water with a lot of people. At the end of the event, those politicians fell over each other to try to give this person a donation, okay? I'm sure there's a lot of other things we did as far as advocacy and speaking, and things like that. A lot of what we did, what I did, again, was indirect. Like I said, there's a lot of people who I'm sure -- and there's a lot of things we did just to show support, you know? Why did we go to the Freedom to Marry events, you know, the marriage type events? To show our support. You know, we were a presence. We were someone who was there, someone who was to show the community that there are two adults, or more, who do care, even if their parents don't. And again, back 20 years ago, a lot of GLB people did not have supporting parents. So here came two people who they care about, okay? So I don't know if you call that advocacy, okay. MF:Well, so I'm wondering if maybe -- you've mentioned the Freedom to Marry events a few times. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about PFLAG's work on that particular political issue. How was PFLAG involved with the Freedom to Marry movement? DK:Well, PFLAG nationally was certainly involved. Locally, again, we, as all other organizations in the area, supported that. Again, we went to the Freedom to Marry evening event. It wasn't necessarily PFLAG support, but on the Friday before the event, there was a march on the Lehigh County Courthouse, where people went in to try to get marriage licenses, unsuccessfully. They took their money, though. I always thought that was interesting. You know, they'd take the money, but they wouldn't give them a license, you know? Anyway, that was February, and it was cold. So we had to do something for the -- so Melinda made -- I don't know how many years when it started, and I don't know how many years, but obviously it stopped, but she made scarves every year. Something like sixty, seventy scarves. And she was a machine knitter, she had a machine that did it. But nevertheless. And of course, each year was a different color of the rainbow flag, okay? And there are people who -- probably Liz and Trish still have every one of them. But again, that was -- I guess we probably held banners sometimes. I can remember I don't remember what it was, I can remember being out in the cold, some banner and some things, whether that was Freedom to Marry or some other rights event. There was a -- with the adding orientation and gender identity to the Allentown Relations Commission Anti-Discrimination law, there was a challenge to that. I was not that involved, Melinda might have been more involved, where we were calling and checking and telling people not to, and stuff like that. You know, asking to rescind their -- a lot of people signed up to oppose it. We were calling and making -- because a lot of that was almost fraudulent the way they did it, at least in my opinion. But I can remember being a little bit involved. I can remember there being a court case, and we went there again in support. Understand, it wasn't as much that we actively did stuff, as much as just being there and saying, look at how many people there are. Or, look, there's some -- there was a case where, I think it was during that time, the Allentown Morning Call had an insert that was Spanish language. And this Spanish language one wrote a scathing article. And I don't remember the details right now, but a scathing article, anti-gay. And we had some real good supporters in the Spanish community, the GLBT activities. And of course, I'm sure Liz and Trish were there. So we had GLBT representation. And I went, maybe Melinda too, I don't remember. Well, you know, the Morning Call is, like, oh well, you know, this and that, and everything else, and you know, at one point, they said, "We use that newspaper because that's where we get our press people." Now somebody taught me this in industry. There's a time when someone could say something that someone can't, okay? As a straight male, I can say things in that kind of a situation that maybe a gay or a lesbian couldn't say, or a Hispanic couldn't say. And I turned to think and said, "You know, there's some very intelligent Hispanic people. Maybe you could get a few columnists and editorial people, rather than just" -- okay? So, you know, I guess Melinda and I interjected ourselves, where we could, in support, in just numbers, in just saying, there's straight people who are supportive in this. The Civil Rights Movement, and you know, that was in my childhood, as I knew it, got its real strength when white people started supporting it. They could no longer just ignore them, the group. And so that was a little bit of where my thought process came is, you know, this is going to take off more, the more of us that can support it. When we get the parents enraged -- which we did. I think through PFLAG that said, "You can't do that to my child!" You know? "I'm sorry, that's my child. What do you mean, my child can't have this, or can't have that?" We actually, I can remember this thing with fighting the people who signed off, and, you know, my wife called up a friend of ours and said, "What do you mean, your daughter" -- maybe she didn't quite say it to the daughter, but her attitude was, "What do you mean, you think your daughters are better than mine?" Okay? So it's, I guess, to say, as an engineer, I'm a problem-solver, and anywhere I could see that I could help solve the problem, I jumped in. And some of it was quiet, some of it was -- I'm not an in-your-face person, but, you know. Where else should we go here? MF:Well, so I have two different sort of ideas for moving forward. But I want to ask the sort of larger question. Looking back on all of your work in PFLAG, how do you think PFLAG as an organization has impacted the Lehigh Valley? DK:Let me just say, not everything was PFLAG, okay? You know, my support of Renaissance wasn't necessarily PFLAG, some of it was personal. I'm looking at something else we have in front of us. When MCC had their Christmas party and they needed a Santa Claus, guess who volunteered? You know, was that PFLAG? No. That's just me, all right? And that's me supporting the community, all right? So go ahead, what were you going to ask about PFLAG? MF:Well, this actually makes me think about a different question, because I think what you're describing is -- and you'll just have to tell me if I'm right -- but it sounds like the Lehigh Valley LGBT organizations were kind of inter-webbed, in a way, or connected importantly, so that you were drawing on each other for support for different kinds of events or for where you're dressing up as Santa Claus, you know, that you were really sort of working in tandem with each other. Maybe could you describe a little bit of how organizations worked together in the Lehigh Valley? DK:Well, I think you may have used the word "was," and I'd like to change that to "are," because I think we still are. Renaissance had a presence in our meetings at PFLAG. MCC, we had a presence at theirs. And in fact, they would end up having -- some of them, I can't remember if it was Freedom to Marry, or something, it was on a night with Renaissance, and so -- and Renaissance used their facility at the time. I think they still do. You know, there is that inter-mixing. I don't know that we ever made the distinction when we went to do something as a group, like fighting for rights, or Freedom to Marry, that it was PFLAG or MCC, or this or that or the other. You know, occasionally we'd have to go and explain to somebody, I can remember -- oh, we need to talk about Reading and Monroe County a little bit. But someone, one of those, it's, like, didn't quite understand why gender identity was important. And yet this particular lesbian always is mistaken for a man. Her voice is low. And I tried to tell her, when you go out in public -- this sounds prejudice, it's not, it's not meant to be -- but there are certain stereotypical things that people look at and say, she's a lesbian, okay? She's gay. If you don't fit that stereotype, they don't know. And believe me, I've convinced myself over and over and over again that they're not typical, not stereotyped people. But they don't know who she's sleeping with. And in fact, I'm pretty sure she's not sleeping with anyone. It's the gender identity that they see that they are tagging her. And so if you get gender identity on the books, then it's protection, okay? So and today, it's still interweaved. Here I am, PFLAG's essentially not -- you know, the only thing I claim is that I used to be involved with PFLAG ; we used to have a PFLAG. But I moved on. I'm now involved with the Community Center. I am their head of design. You don't know about the first one, but that was a hefty design project. But this one, there hasn't been that much design, but there's a little bit. So I'm still helping the community. I'm still involved, or I can be. I'm a little older, so I'm slowed down a little bit. So I like to think that we all have our little bit of the pie, and we all have a segment that is different than the other. There are times when I felt they overlapped too much, maybe, and it's, like, why are you doing that? That's what we're supposed to be doing. But it's all good. And the pie is us. And so I have never felt like if Renaissance needed something that I wouldn't be there to help them. If MCC needed a Santa Claus, I'd be there. If the community needed scarves for Freedom to Marry, Melinda was there. And it's still that way. It's just you've got so much more going on today, that it's -- yeah. MF:My previous question I'll return to, but I'll make it broader now. DK:Can I just bring up one thing? MF:Oh yes, please do. DK:You know, because we're talking historical here, too. At some point in time we were doing things, and Reading was starting up. And we said, gee, we have a newsletter, why should we have two? Why don't we bring them in? So we started doing things. Then later on, around 9-11, somebody came to our meeting and wanted to start a group up in Monroe County. So we ultimately put those three groups together and called it Eastern PFLAG. It used to be Lehigh Valley, I think. But now it's Eastern PA. I'm not sure we ever fully operated as one group ; each had their leaders, and each did the leaders slightly different and there wasn't a lot of back and forth. Although I can remember taking a group of transgender people to Reading and also to Monroe County to help a situation, and that. So I just wanted to bring that in, that we did formulate and bring -- and right now, Reading has also ceased to have meetings, for the same reason. Monroe County's slowed down and stopped, and we're not sure what's going on up there. We want to separate functionally because -- but I'm not sure what's going on. Yep, and then we've got all the people. But anyway, I wanted to bring that in, that we -- okay. MF:I have a question about that. How did you support Monroe County and Reading in developing their PFLAG groups? What was that process like? DK:Well, first of all, we had, at the time, was running a newsletter. So we extended that newsletter to them so that they're members. Then we kept membership lists. We had a rather large membership list, which was confidential. Everything went out as blind copies, but we'd keep people informed and keep them connected, if you will. I would often go to the Reading meetings. We had a picnic often, and we would have the people together. And sometimes when Reading PRIDE and that, we would set up a table. Again, the personalities were such -- Reading and Allentown -- we never really intermixed much, if you're new to The Valley. But somehow the Lehigh Valley is here, and when you cross that border into Berks County, you're not in Lehigh Valley, according to Berks County people. You're in Berks County, and it's heavens to Betsy that you, you know, it's an (inaudible) -- and by the way, I'm a quarter of a mile from Berks County, okay? But Monroe County was just -- and I had gone up to their meetings a couple of times, just to interface with. It was when we had one Treasurer. We made donations to different -- and that's something else we did -- we made donations to different groups and activities. And I can't remember where we made donations. But we collected some money, and we tried to spread it around a little bit, and somewhat evenly between the different groups. Reading did have a -- I can't remember, it's down here -- they had a funding organization, community funding, and they set up on to do stuff for GLBT. They got additional money from somewhere, matching funds. And I was on that board for a while, to try to figure out where to spend the money. I don't remember where we ended up spending money. But that was an interesting activity, too. The problem is, you tend to do -- if you were writing a resume that you wanted to get another job, or as my consultant, you would write down all these things you did so that you could say, "Hey folks, here's what I did." When you do it just because you want to do it and you think it's the right thing to do, you don't always write it down. You don't always remember what you did, and how you did it. MF:Well, we're getting towards the end of our ninety minutes, and I have two questions that I'm thinking of. One is one I asked earlier, but I didn't ask it well. This is sort of a historical question. What do you think PFLAG -- but then the other organizations, MCCLV, Lehigh Valley, Renaissance -- what kind of impact do you feel those organizations have made on the Lehigh Valley in their early years, when we're thinking historically about your early work in PFLAG? How did those organizations together change the Lehigh Valley? DK:Well, like I said, the Lehigh Valley over the twenty years has changed from not as accepting to a pretty accepting community. And yes, some of that is watching TV and more GLBT people on TV, et cetera. And some of it is just, you know, what's going on the world. I think that the other part of that equation has to be the different groups in the Lehigh Valley. When you get up and you put signs up and say, "We want equal rights" -- I just realized, yeah, I didn't go to those things. It's cold. But I made the signs for them, okay? That's another thing I forgot I did. You know, it's calling attention to what's going on. When you go to city council and you fight for equal rights, and all that gets press, and everything else. So it's those groups. We didn't get where we are today without struggles and without people's efforts. Those different groups, each in their own way, helped do that. The early days of PRIDE. In the PRIDE Festival, we need a bigger -- having a par-- we used to have a parade down Main Street. People see that, you know? There's another one, we participated as a group, PRIDE, with my old truck in the Puerto Rican parade, okay? And -- trying to think now, it was something else -- so those different things and those different activities are what, I think, painted a picture to the community of who we were. And there were allies. The few times I spoke at organizations or to schools, Liz is speaking, all that has caused a different thing. Probably it helps that we've got people in responsible positions at different companies. You know, I'm not -- no offense to Mr. PP & ; L where I used to work, PPL now, there's no & ; in there, they took it out when I left -- but I used to kid and laugh. Says, you know, it's too bad there's some bigot in there. It's terrible to be a bigot. You have to remember who you hate. As a Jewish person, I'm not sure I feel totally comfortable at times. I probably knew of some gay people who I didn't, you know, (inaudible), but I wasn't necessarily friendly -- I am friendly with those people now. Try and take care of my sins, if you will. But when I got caught up and found out that they have a gay association, I was flabbergasted, okay? So, you know, that all helps with -- it's hard to say why we got where we are, okay? A friend of mine transitioned while at Mack Truck. Mack Truck supported her. You know, what was that all about? Some of the colleges we have were not supportive. Again, I don't want to go into one of them, but they weren't supportive, and others were, okay? So it's not -- I don't know. All right? Don't know how it all came about, and glad it did. MF:Okay. I want to return to something that you talked about sort of briefly before. But you talk about a sort of change in the need for PFLAG, that the shift in Lehigh Valley has decreased the membership and attendance at meetings for PFLAG. I'm wondering if you could reflect a little bit on that transition. From a really active organization to our current sort of moment, why do you think PFLAG's attendance sort of declined and the interest in the organization kind of declined a bit? DK:Well, there obviously -- again, there's much more acceptance today than there was then. Why? I don't know. You know, I'm an engineer, I don't know why. It's a social economical, whatever, change. And how much we had impact on that -- I can guess, like I just said, you asked what the groups did. I can guess. But the effect is that people are more tolerant, and learned tolerance in Lehigh Valley. Is that because of the effects we did? Is that effect of watching more things on TV -- I mean, I watch these home shows where the couples are looking for a home, and it seems like a larger and larger percentage are same sex couples. That's got to be a positive thing, when people see it and say -- you know, their children, and say, "Gee, I just watched that show the other day, and these two guys could afford this really expensive house. You know, I guess my son's going to do all right." Or, "My daughter's going to do all right." You know, all that has an effect. As to which one, or what, I don't know. Maybe PFLAG didn't have a big effect on that. Maybe we're just seeing the effect, you know? Affect, effect, whatever. But we kept seeing a big decrease in the people coming to our meetings. We held on for quite a while, and finally it was like we didn't even stay the whole hour. We were just, like, nobody's here. You know, we talked about changing our format to being just -- because we like getting together once a month, okay, in the early days. And maybe even towards the end. We would get together for dinner before or after the meetings, because we got to be real good friends. So I don't know why it changed. I just know it absolutely did change, again. Now I've had a few people say, "You should keep doing it." I say, "Why?" You don't keep selling tacos when nobody wants tacos, you know? All right? I'm not sure how much the meetings and all that helped, as much as Melinda and I and all the other PFLAG parents being there. And understand, I mean, PFLAG wasn't just Melinda and I. There were people in Reading, two or three people that were involved with the Reading group. They kept Reading going, and kept influence and a presence in Reading. We have still people, friends here who were in our board and our involvement who also, you know, came to those meetings and came to those events and things like that. So, yeah. MF:I'll ask one final question, and then we'll move towards the conclusion. We talked a lot about sort of community impact and the shift in PFLAG, and I kind of want to move towards ending with a more of a personal reflection. DK:Okay. MF:How has being involved in PFLAG mattered to you personally, or mattered to you as a father and as a spouse? How have you personally been impacted by your years of work in multiple organizations, you know, centrally with PFLAG? DK:I mean, my daughter thinks we're more gay than she is, because we're more involved. Yeah. Let me put it this way. No offense to the Jewish religion or Jewish people, but we were involved with the synagogue for many years -- not a lot, we started late, when my daughter was Sunday school age. And when she was about ten, eleven or so, we moved to the country. It became very hard to get her there midweek for Hebrew school. On weekends I would drive her there, it took me a half an hour to get there, class was an hour, then I had to wait around, do something for an hour and then take her home. That was a pain in the neck. During the week was hard, because we both work. And subsequently, we made the decision based on her and her feelings, and everything else, to drop out. The best I can say is, the synagogue was a clique. We never quite got into the clique. We have friends who were involved with the synagogue who were our friends before, and they're still our friends. And yeah, we made a couple. Right around that time was the Matthew Shepard event, and we had well, there's another example. We went to the Matthew Shepard events, and there was candles and stuff. We did the same thing with the event in Florida. So, you know, that's where we show our presence, if you will. Anyway, I'm standing there, and I'm looking around at the GLBT board. And understand, that was relatively early in our involvement with the community. And I said, I have more friends right now in the GLBT community than I did in the synagogue. I'm going to put, I guess, a pat on my back a little bit -- about five years ago, I guess it was 2015 at the Bradbury-Sullivan gala, we were honored, Melinda and I. The Kreiders were honored before us, and we really love the Kreiders. Roberta refers to me as "son," I refer to her as "mother," and that's pretty odd when you have a Mennonite and a Jewish couple that were that close. And we still see them every few weeks. So we thought that was a big deal. We thought, man, we didn't do much -- by the way, Sally was keynote speaker. And we got a standing ovation. This is my community now, right? And I don't feel I do a lot for it. Other people think I might. But to me, it's my community, and I do things for my family, my community, all right? So does that answer your question? MF:Yeah, thank you so much. Well, before we close, I just want to give you the opportunity, is there anything else that you really want to share today that we haven't yet talked about? DK:You know, there's so many things over those twenty years that I'm sure I did that might be interesting to the community, I don't know. But like I said, it's been a great time, it still is a great time. You know, it's always -- a stereotypical comment is, "Some of my best friends are GLBT." Well, it's not -- that's true. It's not a fake comment, okay? The Kreiders are our best friends. Liz and Trish are our best friends. Some of their friends are now our best friends. Again, I've got a couple of friends who are transgender. I'm going to leave you with this: In the early days, I was concerned of who was gay, and who wasn't, all right? I don't have gaydar, and so I don't know. My biggest concern at some point in time, in certain times, is to know what gender or -- no gender, sexual orientation or gender identity people are, because I want to be able to say to someone, "I'm on your side. I'm a supporter. I'm an ally." You say that to a gay man, and he's not, you might get beat up, okay, and insulted. You know? It could be an insult. Transgender are even harder because someone who's either crossdressing or transgender wants to be accepted, and doesn't want to be identified, okay? So if I can pick them out and identify them, they just lost. So how do you tell someone GLBT, you're on their side? Okay, so two stories with that ; one, we were at the Creating Change conference in Pittsburgh that year. And the events were either at the basement or the top floor. And everybody was riding up and down in elevators. Now I won't begin stereotyping, but most lesbians don't dress very fancy, okay? Melinda gets on the elevator, and from the back of the elevator is, "Hi, mom," which I believe is a euphemism for someone -- a member of the community. "No, that really is my mom." It was Sally, okay? That's one story. The other is, I have ceased to care what somebody's orientation is. I am at events at Bradbury-Sullivan, or whatever, where I can pretty much guess that probably somebody is or isn't. In my early days at PFLAG, and I wanted to be able to prove to myself and be able to say this -- we'd go around and tell who we were. And I have to admit, I tried to pick out who was gay and who wasn't. One time, there was a man with a younger guy, who I knew was gay, and was sitting there like this. And I said, "Oh, that's dad. He's not happy." No, it was the partner. MF:Mmm. DK:Another time it was a woman, who I said, oh, she's gay. No, she was there because of her son. Okay? I don't care anymore. It doesn't matter to me. You know, if somebody tells me, fine. I know a little more about them, you know? I'm not interviewing you, so I don't know a lot about your background ; we should have talked. But it doesn't matter to me anymore. Maybe that goes a little step beyond acceptance, a step beyond where we're at, whatever. But, you know, if somebody wants to share with me what they are or who they are, or whatever, that's fine. It doesn't matter to me anymore. I don't -- it's not that I don't care. It's just that you're a person, I like this person, and I'm not going to make a judgment based on their sexual orientation or their gender ID, and they're fine with me regardless. So that's probably what -- I said it started with getting more and more acceptance and diversity. Now I have to give one more piece of Don Kohn philosophy here. There are those people of a religion belief who believe that we're being tested on earth, and we won't go to heaven if we fail that test. Those people who believe that way have a different idea of what that test is than I do. My belief -- (inaudible), this is a great forum for this -- my belief for this is, what is universal throughout the planet? Diversity. And maybe it's our approach to diversity that's our real test. And a lot of people are failing it. Okay? MF:Don, thank you so much for talking with me today. It truly is -- it's just been a real pleasure and an honor to hear some of your stories. DK:I enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking with you also. And I'm glad -- you know, you talk about what I've done, I think what you're doing, and the rest of the people with this oral history, is also doing something for the community. So we'll have to come when you get honored. I'll have to put the bug in Adrian's ear, that should be one of the honorees, that's the group who's doing this. Okay? MF:Thank you so much. DK:He does listen to me sometimes. MF:Well, again, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. I will just conclude the interview there by letting you know that we'll reach out with a transcript, probably within the next three months, if that's all right. DK:Okay. MF:Great. DK:All right. MF:All right, that will be where we'll stop the interview, but I wanted to stay on the line with you and just check in. How did that go for you? DK:Well, well, I think that there's areas that I was surprised we didn't get to, and there's probably more. But I threw in a few things that I thought were important. Yeah. I thought it went well. MF:I thought it was fabulous. Look, I was tearing up there a little bit. I had to -- fortunately I had Kleenex here, but I didn't want to have that on camera, so -- DK:Oh, okay. MF:I had to dab my eyes there a bit. Yeah, I thought that was wonderful. Well, if there were things that we missed today that you were surprised about, we could always reschedule a second interview if you feel like you're-- DK:I don't know that they were that important. I think I got the important stuff in. MF:Okay. All right. Well, then I will be in touch when we have a transcript for you, and I'll send that via email. And in the meantime, if you have any questions for me, or any concerns for me, anything you want to talk about, just reach out. DK:I'm fine. I just -- we'll see each other, I'm sure, at the Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center sometime and say hello. I'm terrible at remembering people, so it's not a strongpoint. Whereas as a professor, I'm sure you know who all your students are, and so-- MF:Yes, but then sometimes, like a year later, I'll know the face, but I'll forget the name, so-- DK:Politicians are very good at remembering me. I'm terrible. As I'm getting older, I'll remember someone and it's, like, but I can't remember the name. Then it'll hit me. MF:Well, just poke me and say, "I know you. Remind me where from." DK:Well, I'm saying if you see me, poke me, and -- let me put it this way. There's not as many gray-haired old men who show up -- (laughter) with their wives, you know? It reminds me of one time, somehow we got tickets to a GLBT event. I don't even remember how we got it. I mean, they sent it to PFLAG. So Melinda and I said, "We'll go." And there we are. It's, like, "What are you doing here? You're not gay!" You know? "Well, okay." So again, sometimes it's interesting to be in a -- to find out what it's like to be in a minority, when you get to be there. It's not the same. I can't say that I know what it's like to be a lesbian or a gay man. But I understand. And so it's -- yeah. MF:Well, I will say "hi" to you when I see you at the Bradbury-Sullivan, then. DK:I'm looking forward to meeting your partner, I assume, so-- MF:We would be delighted to meet you. DK:Yes. MF:Well, I will be in touch really soon, Don. I hope you have a wonderful day, and thanks again. DK:Good. Thank you. It was enjoyable. MF:Bye, now. DK:Bye-bye. How do I get out of this? MF:I'll just end it for both of us. DK:Okay. MF:When I click this button, I'll disappear. DK:You know, always when I've done Zoom for other things, like a friend of Liz and Trish's had a Zoom birthday party, Melinda always set it up. And my granddaughters had cello concerts with a bunch of kids, and she set it up. So this is the only time I've ever been on Zoom. Now Facebook, I do my yoga class on Facebook. Not on Facebook, on Skype. So that I'm familiar with. But -- okay. MF:You did wonderful for Zoom. Okay, I'll turn it off right now. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:37:24
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Don Kohn, May 11, 2020
Description
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Don Kohn talks about his involvement with the Eastern PA chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
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LGBT-09
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2020-05-11
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
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This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Mary Foltz
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Nadine Anderson
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-04.xml
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5.4 May 12, 2020 Nadine Anderson, May 12, 2020 LGBT-04 01:39:12 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Nadine Anderson Mary Foltz video/mp4 AndersonNadine_20200512_video.mp4 1.0:|19(3)|50(9)|73(10)|92(5)|107(16)|126(10)|143(11)|160(4)|175(4)|194(6)|211(9)|230(14)|245(15)|260(13)|281(3)|298(12)|317(4)|336(13)|353(7)|372(2)|391(6)|408(17)|423(16)|440(9)|461(3)|478(15)|501(8)|520(12)|535(9)|550(5)|571(3)|588(10)|607(13)|622(15)|641(8)|656(4)|671(9)|684(12)|701(14)|716(16)|733(14)|750(5)|763(6)|778(16)|799(8)|810(13)|825(13)|840(9)|851(17)|866(13)|883(4)|900(9)|915(3)|928(16)|941(6)|954(7)|969(8)|986(2)|1001(14)|1012(13)|1023(10)|1036(15)|1049(9)|1068(5)|1083(16)|1098(8)|1115(8)|1134(2)|1149(9)|1166(5)|1185(10)|1206(2)|1219(8)|1236(13)|1253(2)|1268(4)|1285(2)|1300(3)|1315(2)|1328(8)|1341(12)|1354(13)|1371(2)|1386(6)|1403(15)|1420(12)|1441(8)|1456(16)|1471(6)|1488(14)|1503(8)|1516(13)|1533(12)|1550(10)|1565(14)|1580(5)|1595(6)|1610(6)|1629(18)|1634(6) 0 YouTube video < ; iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TkYzM0zBkGE?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"> ; < ; /iframe> ; 0 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz. And I’m here today with Nadine Anderson to talk about her life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on Zoom today because there is a pandemic. And the date is May 12, 2020. So Nadine, thank you so much for joining me today for this conversation about your life.
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 ; NADINE ANDERSON: My pleasure.
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 ; MF: And to start, could you please state your full name and spell it for me? 0 126 Childhood & ; Family MF: Thank you so much, Nadine. So I’m going to go ahead and get started. And I’ll ask, would you begin today by telling me a little bit about the early years of your life? Could you describe your childhood?
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 ; NA: Well, a long time ago, I was born in Southern California. But even as an infant, I knew to get out of there. Though when we moved out, I was two years old, so I don’t remember it real well. Dad was teaching flying for the Army Air Corps. That was before the Air Force existed. And we left there, went back up to Washington State, where mother was from. And turned out, dad was a 
 ; better pilot than businessman. And he had an awful lot of pilots coming back, trying to work at that. And he 
 ; had trouble getting a flying business going so he went back to logging, which he’d done before. 0 1119 Leaving California / Moving out East MF: Well, so you had described a movement out East. Will you tell me a little bit more about that? How did you come to move out East and leave California?
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 ; NA: Actually, I was moving West when I came to Pennsylvania. I went my first year of college to U of Oregon. They then tripled the out-of-state tuition, so I went to Berkeley. Anyone from California who refers to Berkeley as a school means University of California Berkeley. I was there two years. The summer after my second year, I went out to New York City, because I’d met some people there. And I went out and saw them for the summer. 0 1334 Getting Involved w/ NOW & ; ERA NA: While I was in Louisiana, I got involved with NOW. I was about an hour outside of New Orleans and people would say things like, why would I want to go to the city? I’ve got everything I need here on the bayou. And I talked to people and it didn’t seem like we were agreeing but it didn’t seem like we meant the same thing. Some students wanted to start a chapter of NOW and I became their faculty advisor. They were the people that, we seemed to mean the same things by what we were saying, and I then got involved with state NOW. I became the state VP of NOW and I was in charge of the Equal Rights Amendment effort there. Equal Rights Amendment ; NOW 0 1712 Work in Counseling/Psychology NA: I did a respecialization. My doctorate originally was, well, my doctorate’s in social psychology. Every week, at least one person, students or staff, ended up in my office asking for counseling. So I finally decided to get some training there so that I could do that appropriately and I did that at Hahnemann Hospital, there was a program there. Well, I was used to the students being rebellious. But while we were there, the faculty resigned, en masse, and moved to Widener University down in Chester. 0 2028 MCCLV & ; Lutheran Church NA: So when I was up here, actually, I attended both the Lutheran church and MCCLV, Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley, when I first came. The MCCLV had a morning and an evening service and so I went to the evening service there. If you want to meet people in the gay community, you can go to bars. I don’t really want to meet people that are drinking too much and besides, they tend to be very smoky and I don’t like that. You can be involved with sports. I played on the softball team one year and it was weird how they expected me to play catcher. MCCLV 0 2514 Work w/ PA Diversity Network NA: I was involved with the Pennsylvania Diversity Network when it was working on getting the -- added to the list of those you shall not discriminate against, LGBT people. And we got a lot of people supporting that and it was passed by the Allentown City Council. Pennsylvania still does not have that as part of a “thou shalt not discriminate against” listing. When that was passed, there were some people who didn’t like it and they started getting petitions signed by people to ask for it to be undone. Put on the poll, put on the ballot and get it voted down, was their thought. Liz Bradbury ; PA Diversity Network ; Patricia Sullivan 0 2748 First Encounters w/ the LGBT Community / Relationship / Advocacy Work MF: So I’m curious about, you described being really active in the gay community when you lived in Easton. And I’m wondering if you could just go back a bit and talk about when you first encountered gay community, and what those communities were like when you first encountered gay community.
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 ; NA: A lot more hidden. Yeah. When I was down in Philadelphia, I was involved with the gay community primarily through the softball league. Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center ; MCCLV ; PA Diversity Network ; Pride ; Same-Sex Marriage 0 3755 Evolution of Church's View of the LGBT Community MF: Well, I have a question that is about the Lutheran church. And I’m wondering, as someone who’s been an active leader and a changemaker in your churches and also with your work with MCCLV, have you noticed an evolution from your childhood to your adulthood in how the church thinks about LGBT people? Could you talk a little bit about maybe some changes that you’ve seen across your lifetime, within the churches that you’ve been a part of? 
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 ; NA: When I was growing up, I never heard anything about LGBT people. If someone had told those initials to me, I would have had no idea what they were talking about. If they mentioned “lesbian,” I would not necessarily have known what that meant. Lutheran Church ; MCCLV 0 4199 Faith Journey / Personal Acceptance MF: Well, I think you’re doing great. The stories you’re sharing are wonderful. I have a question about your own faith journey, because this is... You’re really describing so much work in the church to build inclusivity. Was that a struggle to you, to work through some homophobia within the church in your own personal faith journey? Or did you always feel that God accepted you just as you are?
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 ; NA: Oh, I always felt God accepted me. My supportive family expressed that in different ways. No, you can’t tell mother about this at Marilyn’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Then she’ll have these negative associations with it. No, you can’t tell mother about this at Carol Jean’s graduation and marriage. Then she’ll have these negative... This is from my supportive sisters. 0 4549 First Realization of Being Gay MF: You described you sending a letter to your mom to tell her about your sexuality. I’m curious, when did you know that you were gay?
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 ; NA: I think I was in my forties when I realized, very explicitly. I knew, at a young age, there was no way I was going to end up married to some guy and supporting him going through college when I hadn’t gone through college. I did date guys for quite a while. There were some very nice guys. 0 5356 LGBT Acceptance in the Field of Psychology MF: Well, we’re getting towards the end of our interview time. And I have one more question. And then we’ll move towards closing the interview. We’ve talked about the evolution of the church. And we’ve talked about your different work with various organizations. But I’m curious about being someone who’s in the field of psychology, how have you seen that field change around LGBT acceptance throughout your career? Because that is a field that really has undergone a major sea change. So I’m curious about your thoughts on, your reflections about being a gay person in that field, and what you’ve seen change across your career.
 ; 
 ; NA: Okay, well, my original field was social psychology and there were concerns with how people interact with each other, the social kinds of things. And there had not been a whole lot of looking at LGBT things in that field when I got my degree. It’s shocking to me. 0 MovingImage Nadine Anderson recounts her time as an LGBT individual in church, her career in psychology, and how the fields have developed over the years. MARY FOLTZ:My name is Mary Foltz. And I'm here today with Nadine Anderson to talk about her life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on Zoom today because there is a pandemic. And the date is May 12, 2020. So Nadine, thank you so much for joining me today for this conversation about your life. NADINE ANDERSON:My pleasure. MF:And to start, could you please state your full name and spell it for me? NA:Nadine Ruth Anderson. N-a-d-i-n-e. I go by my middle initial "R." Anderson, A-n-d-e-r-s-o-n. MF:Thank you. And will you share your birthdate, please? NA:Fifteenth August, 1943. MF:Thank you. So we had a phone conversation before the interview, where we talked a little bit about consent. And so I'll just do a verbal consent now. Do you consent today to this interview? NA:Yes, I do. MF:Do you consent to having this interview transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online? NA:Yes, I do. MF:Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, or other formats that might become available? NA:Yes, I do. MF:And do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview and identify parts that you might want to delete or withdraw the interview entirely from the project? NA:Yes, I understand that. MF:Thank you so much, Nadine. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. And I'll ask, would you begin today by telling me a little bit about the early years of your life? Could you describe your childhood? NA:Well, a long time ago, I was born in Southern California. But even as an infant, I knew to get out of there. Though when we moved out, I was two years old, so I don't remember it real well. Dad was teaching flying for the Army Air Corps. That was before the Air Force existed. And we left there, went back up to Washington State, where mother was from. And turned out, dad was a better pilot than businessman. And he had an awful lot of pilots coming back, trying to work at that. And he had trouble getting a flying business going so he went back to logging, which he'd done before. And that took us over to the Olympics of Washington State I went back there when I was in graduate school and it was amazing how much smaller everything was than what I remembered. I lived there when I was six and seven. It was huge then. We then left from there to another place in Washington, which was very close to Tacoma, which is where mother spent most of her growing-up years. And one thing I remember from then, this was not very long after World War II and people were not real fond of the Japanese. And in talking about something about that once, I referred to them as Japs. Mother informed me that we do not refer to any group disrespectfully and that I would not do that. I was, at most, eight at the time and I have remembered that. Mother clearly had a strong influence on helping me develop values of, valuing people, of looking at everyone positively. We went from there down to Crescent City, California, which is in the northwest corner of California and it's where we lived then. Well, I went from there to college and so haven't lived there since then. But mother continued to live there for quite a while. I was in the third grade when we went there and when I was in fourth grade, we moved into a house that father had built. And he built the back half of it and then we moved in, and then he built the front half. By then, he'd gone from logging back to flying and he was at the airport, managing the airport and doing a flight service. So he ran out of time to finish it. He eventually got someone else to do it. But then I spent fourth and fifth grade with this open beam built house in the front half of where I lived and I learned an awful lot about how to do that. Dad would put the siding on with two nails. And my brother and I would put the rest of them in. It took us forever but it didn't take him any time. My older sister and my next-younger sister weren't interested. Actually, I'm not sure that Lois was old enough to do so. And Carol Jean, I'm not sure whether she was born or not. But Gary and I were the ones that did that a lot. And I did pick up a lot about woodworking and have spent a lot of time building things, particularly bookcases. I think what I learned most during my childhood, though, was that effort, that message that mother gave, that you must always be respectful of people. It still floors me how I never heard anyone refer to the Japanese other than as Japs during that period. But not my mother. That was not acceptable. Actually earlier, when we were still up in Washington, I loved to play baseball. During recess, the boys would play baseball, but the girls wouldn't. I convinced the boys to let me play baseball with them by agreeing to be catcher all the time and not taking my turn at bat. So I became a very good catcher, had lots of practice at that and I did do a little bit more. But this was before the time when girls had anything but intramural sports. And while I played in intramural sports, there were no opportunities for other things. So I was very good at basketball and at softball. But then again, that was just a local thing. I do remember, at that time, we had six on a basketball team for girls. We were so delicate, we couldn't run back and forth the whole length of the court. So I became able to hit the backboard every time from the center circle There and one in three went in, which meant whoever we were playing had to cover me. And if I missed, then my teammates got the rebound and put it in. Last time I tried that, the ball rolled under the basket. My aim is still good, but my strength is a lot less. I did play softball a lot down in Philadelphia. There were several leagues, primarily lesbian leagues that I knew about, I don't know if there were others. And I played in that probably for five years. I'm very good at hitting. And I can direct where it goes pretty well. I still play catcher. Well, I don't know, but I did then. And I would always hit it to left field if there was someone on first base. Usually, the weakest player was put in left field, because most people hit to right field. And that would ensure that the person on first base got to second base. I may or may not get to first base, because I was not a very fast runner. But I would at least advance the other person. Apparently, I did that very often because the last game I played in down there, I noticed that the outfield shifted where they were at, appropriately for where I was going to hit. If there was no one on first, I'd hit it to left field so that... Did I say left before? You hit it to left field if you're going to get it far away and get there. You hit it to right field if someone is on first base. So apparently, I did that a lot, because they shifted appropriately for where I was going to hit it. When I came up here to the Lehigh Valley, I discovered the difference between the modified slow pitch and slow pitch game. We had modified slow pitch down in Philly. Up here, they do slow pitch. And I played catcher, like I've always done. Stood where I've always done. And was told I was too close to the batter. If I got hit, it was my fault. I've never gotten hit. I'm not that close to them. Furthermore, if I caught the ball rather than letting it bounce and then getting it, they didn't know whether to call it a strike or not. I only played one year up here. I couldn't do that. But growing up down in California, it was very close to, well, it's on the ocean. I grew up six blocks from the ocean in two directions. And I spent a lot of time wandering along the beach, playing there, climbing over the rocks, and things like that. We had a lighthouse down there. And you could get out to it when the tide was out. But you had to get back in pretty soon, or else you'd have to wade back in. That wouldn't be a good thing to do. It was a good childhood. I enjoyed a close family, a lot of support, and a fair amount of activity to do things. One thing that was interesting, in recollection, we went to church all the time. And the person, we had a supply minister, someone who was filling in. He had retired. He had been ordained in the 1890s and he had some very old viewpoints. So instead of having two years of confirmation, we got three years of confirmation. So I learned a lot of stuff about the Bible very well. At that point, when you're confirmed, before that, the class would sit in front of the congregation and we would be given questions to answer. I knew the answers to almost all of them. But there was one that I couldn't answer. No one else could, either. As I got older, though, and was very much into science, I started having some strong questions about Christianity. How do we know Christianity is right? Because the Bible says so. That's kind of circular reasoning and when I was eighteen, graduating from high school and about to go off to college, I let my parents know that I wasn't sure I believed this stuff at all. That was very upsetting, especially to mother. Father kind of took it as, eh, she'll get over it. But mother took it very strongly at that point. I did eventually come back, but that was quite along further. Any other specific questions you want to ask about my growing up? MF:Well, I have so many questions about how you moved from California out East. But I guess maybe I'll begin with a question about, did you know about LGBT people in your childhood? Was that just discussed in your family at all? NA:No. Knew nothing about it. I don't know that I ever heard such a term, ever. I probably began to know a little bit about it when I was in high school. But it was not something you ever asked anyone about. If you wanted to know about it, you had to find the information out for yourself. It was not something anyone talked about. That was the dark ages, you have to understand. This did not happen. Everyone grew up, got married to someone of the opposite sex, had a family, and did traditional-role kinds of things. Actually, my parents had a somewhat unusual marriage in that my mother was a teacher. At that point, you needed three years of college to be a teacher and that's what she had. And it's when she was doing that that she met dad. Dad, on the other hand, flunked out of high school. He was in Northern Minnesota, Effie. It's not too far from International Falls. People who know Minnesota know where International Falls is. But I've never met anyone who knew where Effie is. So he had to go to Duluth to go to high school. And his mother was saying, why don't you come home and run the farm? Which does not tend to increase the desire of a high school boy to study. He did eventually come home and found out he had not passed ninth grade. He did not go back. Somewhere along there, his mother passed away. and probably later than that, though. I never knew her, she passed away well before I was around. So I don't have the dates down well. But he eventually went out to the state of Washington, where his older brother had already gone out and was logging. Dad did not want to keep the farm and farm it. He was not interested in farming. When he was out there, he discovered that he had to learn a lot of things to become the pilot he wanted to be. So he took correspondence courses to be able to pass the test on navigation. So when you have one parent who has college and one parent who doesn't have high school, you have a somewhat unusual family system. He was very good at math, though. I probably got my math skills from him more than from mother. Yeah, with this unusual family situation, it was not hard to teach us that you have to treat everyone with respect. And you can't be negative towards people because they don't have some of the supposedly required accomplishments, such as high school. Yeah. MF:Well, so you had described a movement out East. Will you tell me a little bit more about that? How did you come to move out East and leave California? NA:Actually, I was moving West when I came to Pennsylvania. I went my first year of college to U of Oregon. They then tripled the out-of-state tuition, so I went to Berkeley. Anyone from California who refers to Berkeley as a school means University of California Berkeley. I was there two years. The summer after my second year, I went out to New York City, because I'd met some people there. And I went out and saw them for the summer. While there, I ended up -- was in the hospital with an operation. Twenty-first birthday was in New York, which was very distressing. It meant I was now responsible for those hospital bills, not my father. And I couldn't go to the Top of the Mark, because that's in San Francisco. And furthermore, the drinking age in New York was eighteen. Very bad twenty-first birthday. I came back from there. And I couldn't go back to college on time, because I just wasn't feeling up to it. So I worked for a while. When I was ready to go back to school, it was January, February. I'm not sure exactly when but I could get into the third quarter of the year. I couldn't get into the second semester of the year. So I went to Cal State Hayward, finished up there. From there, I went to graduate school in U of Washington, Seattle. After I finished that, my first job was in London, Ontario, at the University of Western Ontario College of Education. And while I was there, I discovered the University of Maryland had these interesting programs, where they taught on US military bases overseas and I applied for that and I was hired to go to Europe. So I taught in Europe for three years on US military bases. I was there for three years and I lived in twenty-five different places while there. I saw a lot of Europe, but when I came back, I was ready to settle down a bit. There, you could go wherever they told you to go and teach whatever they told you to teach and get paid well. Or you could decide whether or not to teach a course and get paid poorly. Obviously, I did the former. Then, when I came back, I came back to Seattle for a short time and then ended up down in Louisiana, where I taught at Nicholls State University. I then left there and went up to Pennsylvania. While I was in Louisiana, I got involved with NOW. I was about an hour outside of New Orleans and people would say things like, why would I want to go to the city? I've got everything I need here on the bayou. And I talked to people and it didn't seem like we were agreeing but it didn't seem like we meant the same thing. Some students wanted to start a chapter of NOW and I became their faculty advisor. They were the people that, we seemed to mean the same things by what we were saying, and I then got involved with state NOW. I became the state VP of NOW and I was in charge of the Equal Rights Amendment effort there. Well, we got enough people in the state legislature to say they would vote for it if it came up for a vote. They probably knew it was highly unlikely to come up for a vote, and it did not. But I became known as the ERA lady and I would get phone calls from people saying, "My husband says if I leave him, he'll only pay me a hundred a month. Can he do that?" Actually, probably not. But you have to get a good lawyer. So I was very involved with the ERA there. But it just didn't feel like a comfortable place. I came up to Pennsylvania. Then I quit working and for a year, I worked full time on the Equal Rights Amendment. Five or six months of that was going into Manhattan for a phone bank. That was in the early days of answering machines and we would call people up and if we got an answering machine, it was an affluent family. And we'd leave a message along the lines of, this is NOW calling. Would you call us back? We're trying to raise money for the ERA. Every day, at least one person called back and the first time we left that message, someone called back and gave us a hundred dollars and a hundred dollars back then was more than it is now. I was then down in South Carolina. Again, we got a lot of information and we had a lot of people saying they'd vote for it. But again, it never came up for passage there. At that time, there was a time limit on the ERA. We were three states short of getting that passed when we got through that time limit. Well, guess what? It's been passed by three more states now. So now, the effort is to get the congress to pass something saying that the time limit is removed. Did you know that there was a constitutional amendment passed two hundred years after it was proposed? After the Constitution was first put forward, people said, ah, no no no no no. There's not enough of our rights protected. And a lot of amendments were suggested. Ten of them passed and are known as the Bill of Rights. Well, this eleventh one was passed two hundred years later. But it was proposed as part of that group. It says you can't increase the pay of anyone in congress until there's been another election, i.e., you can't get voted into congress and then go in and double your pay. Anyway, so while I was working on the ERA, I ended up back in DC and I taught a course with U of Maryland there again. And I went in to talk to them once and they said, would you like to go to Bermuda? Well no, actually, I wouldn't, because I've lived in too many different places. But it was late on a Friday afternoon. They weren't going to get any more people to offer it to until the next day. So I said, sure and thought about it over the weekend and decided, yeah, I should go there. And I did. I spent three years in Bermuda. That was interesting. That was fun. But it also -- I found out why Bermudians are very friendly (audio cuts out) involved with -- my microphone is muted? MF:I can still hear you fine, Nadine. NA:Okay. It just said something about muted. Okay, sorry. Okay, I got to know a lot of people in Bermuda. But every year, the person I was closest to left and I discovered then why Bermudians did not get real close to people who were there on a short contract. Because at the end of your three-year contract, if a Bermudian was qualified for your job, they got it. It wasn't a matter of who was best for it. If the Bermudian was qualified, they got it. And that's reasonable. They have to protect jobs for their people. So I left there after four years and came back to the US then and that's when I came back to Pennsylvania. I did a respecialization. My doctorate originally was, well, my doctorate's in social psychology. Every week, at least one person, students or staff, ended up in my office asking for counseling. So I finally decided to get some training there so that I could do that appropriately and I did that at Hahnemann Hospital, there was a program there. Well, I was used to the students being rebellious. But while we were there, the faculty resigned, en masse, and moved to Widener University down in Chester. Well, there had been a head of the psychiatry department who had a degree in psychiatry and psychology, and he understood how psychology fit in. He retired and the person they got in really saw psychology as irrelevant and was treating the faculty very poorly. So they all found another place to go, too, and resigned en masse, and went there. And students, for the most part, went with them. Well, I had taught a couple of courses down there, because I still liked money, even though I was going to school. It was good to have money to pay one's expenses. So I knew a little bit about it. I was okay with that move. But I did finish up my respecialization in clinical and child psychology. Spent three years after that working in an inpatient child and adolescent hospital in Cherry Hill, which I enjoyed, but it's very intense. The psychiatrists, for the most part, had a third of their time in the inpatient unit, a third of their time teaching, and a third of their patients in outpatient therapy. That would have worked okay, but being full-time inpatient, very very intense and I decided that was too much. So I went from there to working as a school psychologist in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, right across the river from where I lived in Easton. And so that brought me to this area. I was basically moving west when I came from Bermuda to Pennsylvania and moving north when I came from Philadelphia up to the Easton area. Actually, meantime, when I was down in Louisiana and working on the Equal Rights Amendment, that's when I came back to the church. In that, the only place I've ever been where everyone presumed you were involved in church,and when I was setting up meetings pro-ERA, we were starting and ending them with prayer to show this was not anti-family. Well, I wasn't going to lead prayer in public when I wasn't praying in private. So I looked for every woman, religious person I could find and there was a Presbyterian minister. We kept missing each other on the phone and so I finally went to her service on a Sunday morning, with the thought that, well, she'll be there. I can find her there, and I did and she agreed to participate in the meeting I asked her to. Then the next Sunday, when I woke up, I was reading a book. I said, eh, should I get up now and go to church? And, nah. So I continued reading. And then I had an experience, I had an emotion I'd never had before. I was sorry I had not gone to church. So I went back to church at her church after that, and that led to some changes. The Louisiana State Board of NOW met Sunday mornings and they had to meet a little later, because I said I can't get there until noon or 11:30 or something. The service was fairly early. So that's when I got back involved in the church and I have found that a positive thing since then. So when I was up here, actually, I attended both the Lutheran church and MCCLV, Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley, when I first came. The MCCLV had a morning and an evening service and so I went to the evening service there. If you want to meet people in the gay community, you can go to bars. I don't really want to meet people that are drinking too much and besides, they tend to be very smoky and I don't like that. You can be involved with sports. I played on the softball team one year and it was weird how they expected me to play catcher. So I found, through MCCLV, a real good way of getting involved in the gay community and met a lot of people there and continued that until they stopped the evening service. Because in the meantime, I had been involved at St John's Lutheran Church in Easton and was on the council and was treasurer for a long time. So I was very involved there. I wasn't going to give that up. That actually became kind of an overlap of the things in that we started having St Johns have a booth at the local PRIDE festival. They started the PRIDE festival after I was up here. I don't remember exactly when it was. I think we had a booth there in the second or third year that they had that. Pastor Grace Olson was our minister at that time. And she had led us into becoming RIC, Reconciling in Christ. Lutherans are very good at coming up with a description of someone that no one else is going to know what it means. Somewhere in, I think it's in Acts, Paul says we need to be reconciled in each other and be accepting of and supporting of each other. And so the organization had been Lutherans Concerned North America. It included both US and Canada. But then in '09, 2009, we got something passed nationally that said you could be ordained if you were in a committed LGBT relationship. Before that, if you were not married, you had to agree to be celibate to be a minister. And since you couldn't get married if you were gay, that was kind of restrictive for a lot of people. So we then became RIC. Well actually, we'd become RIC before that. We became RIC in '02, which meant St Johns publicly stated that LGBT people should be fully involved within the church. And we then worked on supporting people doing that. We went to the Pride every year, had a booth there. And that was always fun and interesting. Met a lot of people. Of course, there was always the assumption if you met someone there, they were probably gay. So you learned a lot of things about people that you hadn't known. That was actually before people started being open about being gay. Since it still can get you fired in most places, it's usually wise not to be open about that. Being that I'm retired, I don't have to worry about it anymore. However, we worked at supporting people in all sorts of different ways. I became a member of the synod -- that's the regional organization of Lutheran churches here -- that had a task force on LGBT ministry, and actually, I'm still a part of that. And so we work with congregations that are considering doing this. We try and provide information at the synod assemblies, at the regional meetings, helping people to understand that this is very supported by God and the Bible is not really against it. If you look at the negative things in the Bible about the homosexuality, they tended to have other reasons than anti-homosexuality. The one in the Old Testament that most people quote, Israel is a small nation. They needed to get lots of kids so they could grow, so they could hold their own. You don't get a whole lot of kids out of a same-gender relationship so they were against it. And while people are quite willing to talk about "It's an abomination to lay with a man as you would with a woman", they forget that it also says "it's an abomination if you curse your parents and if you do that, you should be killed". Somehow, they don't find both of those equally important from the Old Testament. And if you look at the various things that are said in the Bible, they usually have other kinds of explanations than anti-LGBT. If some of the New Testament ones, yeah, if you get involved in a same-gender relationship when, in fact, you are not gay or lesbian, then that probably is not appropriate for you. And that seems to be the viewpoint behind most of the things in the New Testament. So anyway, I have worked with them, with the group and various Lutheran congregations, to help them decide to become publicly supportive of gay people. Since the Supreme Court said it was okay to have gay marriage, people have been much more accepting of it since then. The Supreme Court was probably influenced by the public view, but the public view is also influenced by the Supreme Court. I was involved with the Pennsylvania Diversity Network when it was working on getting the -- added to the list of those you shall not discriminate against, LGBT people. And we got a lot of people supporting that and it was passed by the Allentown City Council. Pennsylvania still does not have that as part of a "thou shalt not discriminate against" listing. When that was passed, there were some people who didn't like it and they started getting petitions signed by people to ask for it to be undone. Put on the poll, put on the ballot and get it voted down, was their thought. Well actually, they did a lot of lying to get people to sign their petition. One councilwoman said she signed that, they told her it was pro-LGBT people. So what we started doing then was getting people to sign letters saying they take their signature back. Liz Bradbury and Trish Sullivan were very efficient in setting up a database where we put in the petition number and the lines on which everyone signed. And then, when we got someone to sign a letter saying, I take my signature back, and we gave it to the city, they said, how do we pull that? We had to tell them what petition number and what line number the signature was on. Well, when this was going on, some of us would go out on a Sunday morning to the churches where they were trying to get signatures. And I could engage them in a long discussion of this, with all sorts of references to the Bible that I was quite knowledgeable about and that would take up their time, so they couldn't go get signatures from other people. This was when they were trying to get signatures to get on the ballot something to oppose the lack of discrimination against LGBT people. And this kind of impressed Liz a lot. She was pretty good at engaging them in a long discussion of this. If they're talking to me, they're not getting someone else to sign it. That was the thing that I did a lot there. And then we would do specific things. If we found someone having problems, we'd try to help them out in some way and I guess I became known as someone in the church community who was very involved with LGBT groups and very accepting of that. MF:So I'm curious about, you described being really active in the gay community when you lived in Easton. And I'm wondering if you could just go back a bit and talk about when you first encountered gay community, and what those communities were like when you first encountered gay community. NA:A lot more hidden. Yeah. When I was down in Philadelphia, I was involved with the gay community primarily through the softball league. And when I came up here, I joined the softball league up here. But I also both found a Lutheran church I wanted to be involved with and found MCCLV and I attended MCC regularly, oh, I don't know, for ten years at least. And was involved in doing the various kinds of things we did to be supportive of the community there. And as I mentioned, I was involved with the softball league for one year. I had decided not to go for another year, because I didn't like the way it was played. I think they basically didn't invite me back the next year, either, so we seemed to be in agreement on that. But that was okay, because how can you be a catcher and not catch the ball? I've never understood that. One of the things, well, the community tended to be pretty private then and you would be careful who you admitted anything to. I find that difficult. I tend to be fairly open about what I'm doing and to have to keep it quiet is difficult. But when you look at the possibility of being fired, you work at it. And I was up here in December of '93, so basically '94 on that I have been up here and it was probably not until ten years after I'd been here that I began to feel comfortable letting it be known. Yeah. At that time, I met Jan. And we were, well, when I met her, she had been given a one-year prognosis. She outlived it by three years. But she outlived several others. We got together after knowing each other for a little less than a year. We had a wedding in the church. It was not possible to have a wedding in -- the state-recognized wedding at that point. But we did our own through the church. She didn't want to do it at my Lutheran church, because I knew everyone there and she didn't know hardly anyone. So we did it at MCCLV, but my Lutheran minister also participated, and that was good. The area, the part of the service when it says, who gives this woman? I've always thought that was dumb. No one's ever giving me away. So I substituted for that, my family welcomed her to the family and her family welcomed me. So her father read that. My sister, I wanted one of my sisters to play, for Marilyn to be my attendant and Carol to play the organ. Carol has the degree in sacred music. Both of them were church organists for forty years. Carol Jean still is, but then she's a whole lot younger than Marilyn and I. And Marilyn finally retired from it. She would not be my attendant. But it was very strange. Anyway, very good friend, Dyan, was my attendant and Marilyn was playing the organ. And so I asked Carol Jean to read the welcome her to the family thing. Carol Jean gets very emotional and she got emotional through it, so Marilyn took over and read the rest of it. So both my sisters welcomed her to the family. I really liked that a whole lot better than, who gives this woman. Bah, humbug. Who can give? That goes back to the days when women didn't have any rights at all. They were, in essence, owned by the males in their life and I do not accept that. So we did have that. And we essentially showed that you could have a same-gender relationship approved by the church, before it was approved by the society. That was ten years, more than that, before the Supreme Court said it was okay. And we met in '98 and got married in '99. After church, after school was over. I was not going to have a wedding during the Spring of school, which is the busiest time in the life of a school psychologist. We moved in together, got the house and moved in in March of '99. And have been here. She passed away in '01. So she outlived their predictions. Her son was twenty-five at the time and she had been told she would never live to see him graduate from high school. So she lived a bit longer than that. But all her medical problems did catch up with her. That was unfortunate but not unexpected. And I do still miss her. So yeah. I was kind of giving a relatively public witness that it's okay to be LGBT and it was okay to do this in the church. And I was very involved in MCC, which was quite a strong, well, clearly the strongest advocate for LGBT folks in the area. Well, equally with the Pennsylvania Diversity Network, which then became the Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center now. I was quite involved with doing the Pride. St Johns has had a booth at Pride for quite a long time. I think by the second or third year it was existing, we have had a booth there virtually every year. I also, through my membership on the synod, the regional task force of the Lutheran church, we've also gone to the Reading pride and had a booth there. And well, the Lutheran synod, fairly early, I'm not sure when, '02 or '01, told people that, told the congregations that they should be more accepting of LGBT people. And the synod became RIC, passed something saying that they think LGBT people should be fully involved in the church. And so as a member of that task force, I did a booth at the Reading pride every year. I'm not sure if it was the first year or the second year that they had one, that we started going there. A few years, three or four years, we had a church service, asking people from all the different congregations and all the different religions to come and have a worship service the night before Pride and that was fun. I organized that for a few years and then keeping going with it became difficult. So it didn't continue, partially because I had some medical problems. And if I'm the one that's supposed to be doing this, and then I can't do it, it didn't keep going. But I overcame all those medical problems and I'm still here and I plan to be around for another thirty years. MF:So I have a question about -- you worked with PA Diversity Network on the anti-discrimination ordinance. You were a major leader in the Lutheran church in advocacy for LGBT Lutherans. And then through MCCLV, LGBT Christians more broadly. I'm curious what other kinds of advocacy work you might have done. You did mention marriage equality a bit. Was that something that you were involved in in the Lehigh Valley? And if so, how did you get involved in that? NA:Not a whole lot. Basically, sometimes people would go to a national gathering, if there was something. We would write letters to the editor and write congress people supportive of this. We would try to be supportive of individuals who were having problems. It's still the case, however, in an awful lot of the country, that you can get married on Sunday and be fired on Monday. Since getting married is usually a reasonably public event, people are likely to find out about that. You hear lots that didn't know you were gay before that. Could find that out and say goodbye. We did various activities where we would hold some kind of a demonstration, pro-LGBT marriage, supportive of LGBT people. Usually, they were relatively low-level things. But there was a lot of contacting congress people and pressuring them. And I still contact congress people a lot. Even though I think two of my three congress people are very pro-LGBT issues, they need to hear from us to counter whatever they are hearing from the anti-folks. And so I will likely sign off on an awful lot of emails that come saying, support this. Golly, I'd have to think about it. I do remember doing different things where we would demonstrate in front of the courthouse or something for this. That was all a while ago. It led to what we were after, which was the national acceptance thereof. And it's good to be public as much as possible. But it is sometimes dangerous to the livelihood of people getting out there. So we try to be working on it in ways that won't get the people doing it in trouble. And we talk to people in the various churches where they are willing to hear us. And we talk to people in other organizations, if they're interested in hearing from us. And at this point, it feels fairly positive, fairly supportive in the community. Everyone doesn't support us, but there's enough that do. And the law is supportive enough that we stay with that. Okay. MF:Well, I have a question that is about the Lutheran church. And I'm wondering, as someone who's been an active leader and a changemaker in your churches and also with your work with MCCLV, have you noticed an evolution from your childhood to your adulthood in how the church thinks about LGBT people? Could you talk a little bit about maybe some changes that you've seen across your lifetime, within the churches that you've been a part of? NA:When I was growing up, I never heard anything about LGBT people. If someone had told those initials to me, I would have had no idea what they were talking about. If they mentioned "lesbian," I would not necessarily have known what that meant. The message in the church was very clear, that you had to behave yourself, behave appropriately. Remain pure until you got married and remaining pure meant restraining from any kind of sexual involvement. And there was never anything mentioned, that I recall, about same-gender sexual involvement. That was just presumed not to exist. And then we had Lutherans Concerned North America develop. That was kind of independent from the church, but it consisted of Lutherans and I think they developed in the eighties, though I'm not totally sure about that, and started pestering the church about it. And then more of us got involved with it and we started working on our local congregations. And there would be a lot of ministers. In fact, I think if all the ministers who think it's a good idea to be reconciling Christ, RIC, to be supportive of gay, if all their churches were, we'd probably double or triple the number of churches who do that. But a lot of them do not want to cause a big commotion in their church. They think it works better to quietly work on getting that kind of support. But now, I don't think any congregation cannot look at that. I don't think kids growing up without any understanding of LGBT exist anymore. I remember, oh, it was probably fifteen years ago. We were talking about support for LGBT people and the "we" that was talking about it was a group of adults and some students. And the kids basically said, why would anyone object to that? They didn't see any reason. So they had clearly changed their viewpoint from that that was prevalent when I was a kid. They don't seem to think it's an insult to be considered that you might be gay. It's just accurate or inaccurate. While when I was growing up, well, I wouldn't have known what it was because we didn't talk about it. But it would have been considered an insult by a lot of people. The church has come a long way, though not all branches of the church. There are three major Lutheran denominations in the US, and the ELCA, the one I'm a part of, is very accepting. Missouri Synod is not accepting. It doesn't even accept ordaining women and the Wisconsin Synod is even worse, much more restrictive. So there's still a long way to go to get everyone to accept what Jesus said. Love your neighbor doesn't have an exception. Unless, of course, they're gay. Then you don't have to. I don't think it says that anywhere in what Jesus said. So the effort has been one to have this recognized. We usually have some kind of a program at the synod assembly, which is where we encounter a lot of people from a lot of different churches. We did one on marriage. Do you know how many different kinds of marriage there are in the Bible? It's unbelievable. There's examples of when the Israelis conquered some group, then they were to kill everyone except the virgins and they could marry them if they wanted. I don't think the virgins had any choice as to whether or not they'd be involved in these. Someone put together a listing I think there's about ten different kinds of marriage in the Bible, only one of which is where both parties agree to it. So we have done a lot of talking to people about these different kinds of things and what is consistent with Jesus' message of loving your neighbor. Love God, love your neighbor. And these are two major aspects of what Jesus says to do. And when we have these programs, we usually get a lot of people at them. Because they're all interested in what's going on here. How can I explain this to other people? Can you give me some information that I can use to argue about it? And we have done that. Okay. My memory of all the specifics that have happened is not coming through real well. I'd have to go back and look through materials to see what else we've done. MF:Well, I think you're doing great. The stories you're sharing are wonderful. I have a question about your own faith journey, because this is... You're really describing so much work in the church to build inclusivity. Was that a struggle to you, to work through some homophobia within the church in your own personal faith journey? Or did you always feel that God accepted you just as you are? NA:Oh, I always felt God accepted me. My supportive family expressed that in different ways. No, you can't tell mother about this at Marilyn's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Then she'll have these negative associations with it. No, you can't tell mother about this at Carol Jean's graduation and marriage. Then she'll have these negative... This is from my supportive sisters. So I finally wrote mother a letter and her response was, well, you young people certainly look at things differently than we did. And by the way, do you remember so and so, who was a third cousin of so and so? The rest of it was a letter like she usually wrote, mentioning someone and what their relationship was to everyone that I might know, and did I know about this happening? And mother was going to come to my wedding but she had a medical problem. Found out at that point she had a heart problem and was unable to travel at that time. But Jan and I went back for Christmas the next year. And was quite accepting. Mother was fine with that. And the rest of the family was okay with that. So I have felt fully accepted by my family all the time and therefore, if others in the church were not so accepting of it, well, that was their problem. And I would like to change their viewpoints, because it's clearly a stupid viewpoint. But I didn't feel put down by it. I guess I do find, as a minority, fighting for our minority rights. Yeah. And my family did come to Jan's funeral at that point, including Carol Jean brought her daughter. It's one thing, as an adult, to accept what this stupid thing your sister is doing. It's another thing to bring your kid to it. So I was impressed that she brought her daughter with her to that. They're in Nebraska. And the rest of the family was in California. So it was quite a trip for them to come for Jan's funeral. But they did come. And yeah, I have never felt negatively, negative devaluations from the family. We don't always agree with what the other's doing. But that's a different... They're still a positive member of the family. I don't know what one could do to have that change. So I've been very lucky in having a strong family with strong support for the various members. And I suppose that comes, at least in part, from the fact that my parents were different in some ways. And while a lot of people consider education level has to be similar for a marriage to work, it didn't for them. And so they could see beyond other kinds of things. And see to the positiveness. And they clearly taught that to all of us, because it seems all my siblings and their spouses have the same kind of view. Yeah. We don't discuss religion a lot, though. Two of my sisters have married men who became second-career Missouri Synod Lutheran pastors and they have different views than I have about the acceptability of LGBT. They've never had that interfere with their relationship with me. But it works better if we don't discuss our different views of religion. We know what the other ones believe, and we know why and we know where we differ. So we don't have to talk about that. We can focus on the family factors that are positive. MF:You described you sending a letter to your mom to tell her about your sexuality. I'm curious, when did you know that you were gay? NA:I think I was in my forties when I realized, very explicitly. I knew, at a young age, there was no way I was going to end up married to some guy and supporting him going through college when I hadn't gone through college. I did date guys for quite a while. There were some very nice guys. But I wasn't real interested in a lifelong relationship with them, for the most part. I was, well, if you go back... I got my degree in '72. So if you go back to the sixties and seventies, it was very difficult to be involved in any kind of a social life without having some level of dating going on. Things were done in pairs a lot. I did a lot of activities that were more athletic. I did a lot of cross-country skiing when I was in graduate school. We went out backpacking every weekend, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was home for those. But every other weekend, we'd be out backpacking. And in the winter, we would be cross-country skiing. I usually went downhill skiing a couple of times a year to work on techniques. But mostly, I did cross-country skiing. When I was working up in Canada at University of Western Ontario, there was a cross-country marathon from Ottawa. It started at Ottawa. I don't remember exactly where it went now. But it was basically a hundred miles. There were ten sections of ten miles. Maybe it was less than that. Something like that. And you'd go on one or two of them each day. And whichever ones you want. Well, basically I managed to trip and break my leg on one of those and that got me into the hospital. I did discover the Canadian medical system is much better than the American. The only thing I had to pay for was flying home from Ottawa back to where I was going to, where I lived. But all of the medical stuff was paid for by the system. And we hear about how bad the Canadian system is. Not at all. So I was very involved in these kinds of athletic things. We kept our skis in our office and went out and skied around the campus after five o'clock. That was a lot of fun. And I wasn't dating a lot at that time. But there was not a sense of, it was okay to be looking into same-gender relationships. You had a lot of close friends that were women. Just didn't become sexual a lot. And then, oh, probably starting in about the eighties, I started admitting that these strong attractions I had for women was more than a friendship. That I wanted a lot more from those relationships. I can be a pretty independent person and can get along by myself quite a lot. So I did eventually begin to realize that I wanted more from these relationships than just friendship. And that's when I started acknowledging that I'm lesbian and that that's a positive thing. That's okay. I never felt really negative about that. There's a lot of variety in life. And I have no problem with being one of those minority people, even though, in a lot of ways, I am not. As a white Christian with a high degree of education, that's not exactly a minority, as most people see it in our country. And I guess I was accepted by the important people in my life. And if they weren't accepting, I probably quit being involved with them much. But family, I have not gotten any real strong negatives from family. I've gotten some "well, we don't agree with that, but that's you" kind of statements. But I haven't gotten any "you're bad because of" kinds of statements. So there is that strong sense of family support there. I have been involved with some people. The relationship with Jan is the only one that became strong enough that we were married and together. Actually, she was in the process of changing her will when she passed away. Her son had come up, and we were going over it and he knew what she wanted to change it to but it hadn't gotten actually done. But he followed what she was trying to change it to, as closely as he could after that. So he didn't give me any problem. The house was set up that, if anything happened to either of us, the other one inherited it. And her will also said that any inheritance taxes would be paid out of her money. So I don't even know how much the inheritance taxes were. They paid that. We've kept in touch somewhat since then, though not a lot, over the years. He's up in Michigan. And that's kind of a long ways from here. I don't get up there real often. And since, well, before that and since then, there have been some relationships. But they've been fun while they lasted but they were clearly not going to last forever. I wouldn't mind getting into another relationship but at this point, it's kind of hard to start a relationship with all that's going on now. So just surviving everything is going to be the goal at this point. Also, I plan to live to be one hundred and seven and I suspect that when I'm in my nineties, I'll probably need more family support than I can get from being here. I was not able to go home for Christmas three years ago. I had, well, I had a broken hip in '16. I had uterine cancer in '17 and I had an insufficiency fracture of the spine in '18 and I've overcome them all. And I'm still here. But I couldn't sit up long enough to fly across the country in December of '18. So I guess it was two years ago, not three. So I didn't go home there and that made me realize I really need to be closer to family. I miss seeing them. I did go out in May to my great-nephew's high school graduation. And there were a few more people there, because of his graduation, than would have been there otherwise. But not as many as would have been there at Christmas. So I'm aiming to head back to California probably sometime next year. Meantime, I have an awful lot of stuff here that needs to be sorted through and gotten rid of. And you can't really do that now. I lost a lot of weight and gave away all those clothing, luckily early. But then I bought a lot more clothing very quickly. You've got to have clothing. Your tops, you can wear. But the bottoms start falling off when you lose a lot. So I have some that I bought because I need something and I don't like them and I need to get rid of them. But I can't do that now. I also went to the PEA [Phillipsburg Ed Association] representative assembly every year for ten years. And I got a lot of bags from those so I probably have fifty bags I'd like to get rid of but I can't give them away now. So I am hoping to get through this soon enough that we can start, people will accept things and I'll get rid of all of this. And I will move to California to be closer to family. I will probably look for both a Lutheran and an MCC congregation out there. The Lutheran churches are more likely to be involved in LGBT things, so that I can get to know that community through them. But MCC is the gay community. So I will be looking to both of them to get involved in the gay community when I'm out in California. I think that having someone my age being very supportive is a positive for a lot of the younger folks, who may or may not have family support for that. But when they know someone who knows a lot about the Bible and can quote the various things, and is very supportive of it, that is positive to the people who have felt dumped on by the church. So I try to do that as much as possible. Though I probably don't encounter them a lot, because I tend not to go to the churches that are likely to be negative. But you encounter people constantly that have some negative experiences. MF:Well, we're getting towards the end of our interview time. And I have one more question. And then we'll move towards closing the interview. We've talked about the evolution of the church. And we've talked about your different work with various organizations. But I'm curious about being someone who's in the field of psychology, how have you seen that field change around LGBT acceptance throughout your career? Because that is a field that really has undergone a major sea change. So I'm curious about your thoughts on, your reflections about being a gay person in that field, and what you've seen change across your career. NA:Okay, well, my original field was social psychology and there were concerns with how people interact with each other, the social kinds of things. And there had not been a whole lot of looking at LGBT things in that field when I got my degree. It's shocking to me. It was forty-eight years ago that I got that degree. That's a long time ago. There has been more looking at it since then. When I re-specialized in clinical and child psych, what was amazing to me later is I actually did a course on counseling LGBT people and there was never any mention of some of the problem. The transsexual was not there. If someone was born one thing and they said they were something else, that was never mentioned in those courses. I hope it is now, but it wasn't then. I followed up on it a lot and found out what I could about it. But it's been a, you've got to look into it on your own, kind of thing. I don't think psychology is against it so much as it has never been a major focus in the field. So I would say that it's much more likely to be something that people talk about, people ask about now. It was never mentioned. I don't recall it ever being mentioned when I was going through my doctoral studies. I wasn't doing a lot of clinical then. We had one course thereon you had to take, whatever your field was. You had to get courses in all the different aspects of it. But when I did the re-specialization in there, it was still pretty narrow in what was looked at. I think at this point, I would feel quite comfortable that I have never felt any kind of negative force from the field. When I was at Phillipsburg working as a school psychologist, I was also on the New Jersey Education Association task force on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. And at one point, an article came out in The American Psychologist about the different aspects. You know, some people say you're either this or that. Well actually, there's a lot of psychology that shows that there's a much wider range of things there. And so this one article talked about five different aspects of your sexual identity and I made that available to the other members of the task force. Some of it was pretty detailed, but there were nice summaries of each of the five sections that they could all understand, whether they wanted to understand the rest of it or not. So the field psychology has been more accepting in the sense of saying positive things about the diversity of sexual identity. It wasn't that I ever experienced anyone saying, you're A or B before, you're male or female. It's more that there is an emphasis on the wide variety of things that equal sexual identity since then. When I was teaching at the University level, I would go to the American Psychological Association conferences, which tend to be in August each year. When I started working in the school district, the K12 system, I was less likely to go to those. I still do try to read a fair amount of the stuff, but not nearly the wide range of journals that I used to read. I think the changes I've experienced, it has been more doing research in areas that weren't researched much before. So while there are some psychologists who will tell you that you're A or B, the majority of the field says, that's ridiculous. There's a much wider range of views there. And so I have not felt any problems in psychology. And I have found a lot of support for whatever your identity is. The field focuses more on how you should be supportive of an individual, in whatever their sense of identity is, than in figuring out whether it's a good identity or an accurate identity for the person or not. It's more like the field feels that individuals know what their identity is. Our job, as psychologists, is to help them negotiate how they express that in the world. You probably are better off not being explicit and open about it in a setting where there's a lot of people who disagree with you. You will get into a big fight about it and you won't gain anything. So how can you negotiate that if that place where you get into a big fight is your family? That would be more the kinds of things that psychologists would look at in counseling, than trying to convince someone they are or are not. Now, there has been a lot of effort of some people to change individuals from same-gender to opposite-gender attractions. It's pretty clear that doesn't work. It's pretty clear that that is a useless effort and you cannot get any support, as a legitimate psychologist, in trying to do that. The American Psychological Association has position papers that say, no, no, people know what their identity is and you don't try and change that. MF:Well, thank you so much. Before we close the interview, I want to ask you, Nadine, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you really want to discuss today? NA:I don't think so. I'll think about it. If I come up with something, I'll let you know. But no, I don't think so. I think we've covered a lot of things here. MF:Well, I am so appreciative of your time. Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with me today. I'm so grateful. Thank you. NA:You're welcome. I've enjoyed it. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:39:13
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Nadine Anderson, May 12, 2020
Description
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Nadine Anderson recounts her time as an LGBT individual in church, her career in psychology, and how the fields have developed over the years.
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LGBT-04
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2020-05-12
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
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This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Jane Land
Interviewee
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Mary Foltz
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-10.xml
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5.4 May 29, 2020 Jane Land, May 29, 2020 LGBT-10 02:01:53 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Mary Foltz Jane Land video/mp4 LandJane_20200529_video.mp4 1.0:|27(10)|62(3)|77(18)|92(14)|111(13)|128(18)|147(6)|168(16)|187(2)|204(7)|221(17)|240(17)|259(7)|280(11)|301(14)|322(4)|343(12)|368(7)|391(13)|412(12)|437(3)|454(8)|479(10)|500(7)|521(8)|546(5)|563(16)|580(12)|597(15)|616(16)|639(7)|658(10)|675(10)|694(9)|713(14)|730(12)|751(15)|776(18)|797(17)|816(19)|833(14)|852(18)|871(11)|892(3)|915(12)|934(12)|953(8)|976(13)|995(9)|1010(6)|1027(9)|1040(15)|1059(8)|1072(15)|1097(9)|1114(3)|1135(11)|1152(11)|1175(6)|1196(7)|1219(4)|1240(15)|1257(14)|1280(15)|1299(4)|1324(9)|1349(5)|1364(12)|1387(11)|1408(3)|1431(12)|1452(5)|1473(9)|1492(3)|1515(4)|1536(13)|1559(6)|1580(8)|1595(2)|1614(4)|1635(7)|1656(14)|1683(2)|1704(10)|1725(5)|1748(2)|1771(5)|1792(8)|1815(8)|1834(7)|1853(6)|1870(11)|1887(2)|1906(11)|1927(7)|1944(5)|1961(3)|1978(16)|1999(8)|2016(9)|2035(7)|2054(14)|2073(9)|2088(16)|2109(12)|2128(11)|2149(18)|2168(14)|2189(12)|2208(10)|2229(10)|2250(10)|2269(6)|2292(9)|2313(11)|2336(2)|2359(15)|2382(12)|2405(8)|2426(11)|2447(14)|2468(6) 0 https://youtu.be/vTO9qsDg640 YouTube video 4 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: All right. My name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with Jane Land to talk about her life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. And this is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. Jane and I are meeting on Zoom because there’s a pandemic going on, and today’s date is May 29, 2020. So, Jane, just first, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me today.
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 ; JANE LAND: Oh, sure.
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 ; MF: And to start, could you please state your full name and spell it for me? 0 125 Early Life/Family
 ; MF: Okay, great. Thank you, Jane. So to start our discussion today, I’m wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your childhood?
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 ; JL: My childhood, it was a long time ago, -- I’ll be seventy next month -- and I grew up in the country. My father was a chemist. He had a PhD in chemistry, and he worked for a large pharmaceutical company. And my mother had a library degree, a master’s in library science, but she was a homemaker until I was in seventh grade. I had only one other sibling, my sister, an older sister. She was six years older. She passed away a few years back. So I grew up in the country, and it was a great place to grow up, and I think it had a bearing on who I am. I spent a lot of time outdoors, playing outdoors, and my friends that I played with, my playmates, -- there weren’t too many kids around -- they were all boys. 0 518 College Pressure MF: So you described wonderful adventures as a child in the outdoors and making rafts on the river. And you described a kind of self-sufficiency, a kind of self-knowledge earlier -- early on in your life. What kinds of things were you interested in beyond the outdoors as you were going through middle and high school?
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 ; JL: Well, you had asked about -- just mentioned something about education and I... There was a lot of unspoken pressure I think to get a college degree. Everyone in the family was educated. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I struggled with that. I really was not keen on going to college because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I have a lot of college credits, but I never got a degree in anything. [laughs] So I did start out by going to college after I graduated. I went to Bucks County Community College for a year and learned... I signed up for data processing. I had degrees in data processing, which was the old punch card system, ones and twos on the punch cards, and that was really boring to me. But as part of that, one of the courses I had signed up for at Bucks County Community College was accounting, and I learned that I liked accounting very much, so I changed majors to accounting. 0 755 Looking Towards the Future JL: So after I got divorced from my husband, I started searching for -- thinking about going back to college. I did attend some college, some more college. I was in Minnesota with my sister-in-law who had gone there for her master’s degree. I took some courses there, I came back to Muhlenberg, took some courses there. Eventually ended up living in Bethlehem and attending Moravian College, and I was getting a degree in social work. And then, one semester before I was due to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in social work, I realized that that was not what I wanted to do. I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to be when I grew up, what I really wanted to do. 
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 ; I was talking with one of my psychology professors at Moravian, and when you asked me to do this oral history with you, I did spend some time thinking about what were the people and the things that influenced my life the most. And that college professor, he -- a psychology professor, his name was Tony LoGiudice. And I was talking with him about so actually getting depressed thinking about spending the rest of my life being a social worker. Social work is a fine profession, but it just was not going to be my thing. And he said, “Well, you know I can give you some -- a battery of tests, and they’ll show what you have an aptitude for. I’ll send them away, and they score them, and then when I get them back, get the results back, we can sit and talk about what you might do when it showed your strengths were.” 0 1112 Schooling & ; Career
 ; MF: This is a wonderful story that you’re sharing now. I’m curious if you could just talk a little bit about why you felt compelled to explore social work and accounting prior to thinking about other things like mechanics like -- and auto mechanic courses in particular. And I guess what I’m trying to ask is like during that time period of the ’70s, what seemed possible to you as a woman laborer? Did you feel that there were specific careers like social work that were open to women and others that were closed? So I’m just curious why you were -- you thought social work in the beginning even though you weren’t really enjoying the classes. So could you talk a little bit about that, the logic that you had for the courses you were choosing prior to really finding this field that felt really compelling to you? 
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 ; JL: Sure. Well, accounting was simply by accident. It was a course requirement that I was taking. It fulfilled some liberal arts requirement for a degree, and I just discovered that I really liked it. I really liked working with numbers. I’m not a mathematician, that’s an entirely different thing than -- accounting was just basically arithmetic, but I really excelled at that. And it’s funny that fellow Doug, that boy that used to come over to play, we would often play bank. We would play banker in the -- in my room, and we would do things with money, and it was funny. But to this day, I still do volunteer work as a bookkeeper for the church and have for several churches. So it wasn’t really anything conscious there. It was just something I found I really had a knack for. 0 1659 Being a Woman in a Male Dominated Workplace MF: So you described finding this career in -- entering Northampton Community College. I’m curious, what was it like to be the only woman in that -- in the classes for mechanics at Northampton? 
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 ; JL: Well, the first thing I did was I didn’t tell my family what I was doing. I stopped going to Moravian College and enrolled at NCCC -- in Northampton County Community College, and in that program. I went to the classes for several months pretty much the first semester before I was in a situation where I had to admit to a family member that I was no longer going to Moravian College, [laughs] so... And there were several family members -- and this is beyond my immediate family. I can remember my uncle in particular sending me -- as he lived in Illinois, him and my aunt, and my uncle sent me this scathing letter about what a big mistake I was making not finishing my college degree in social work and that the idea of being a mechanic was a really bad idea, and that I should really reconsider what I was doing with my life. 0 2351 Social Life in Bethlehem/NOW
 ; MF: At this point, you were divorced. What was happening in your social life during the -- that time in Bethlehem and then while you’re moving into this new career? 
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 ; JL: At that time, I got involved with NOW, became a member of a chapter in Bethlehem. I was just a member but trying to get plugged into women’s rights and find some support there, that kind of thing. So I belonged to that for a while, and eventually, there was another chapter in Allentown. I don’t remember if it was called -- I think it was called Lehigh Valley rather than Allentown NOW. I’m pretty sure that’s Lehigh Valley NOW, and that’s where I met Dixie White who was an activist that I’m sure you probably know about. I know that ; Liz Bradbury had talked to me about that connection and finding my name in some of Dixie’s memorabilia once Dixie passed away. 0 2415 International Women's Conference 1977 JL: [...] I got the job in August of 1977, and I took the job with the stipulation that even though I wouldn’t have been entitled to any kind of vacation after just joining the company, that I be given time off to go to the international women’s conference that was held in Texas in 1977. I’ve been chosen as a delegate for that. 
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 ; MF: What was that conference like when you went to Texas? 
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 ; JL: That was pretty amazing. I was young though. I was twenty-seven at the time, I wish that I had -- and just newly plugged into NOW and women’s rights, and I wish I had -- I could’ve appreciated it more because the women that attended that... I got in as a delegate. Dixie White said, “Why don’t you apply to be a delegate for this?” and I said, “Okay.” 0 3018 Experiences with the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community MF: It’s 1977 or ’78, around there, you got a great job at PPL. Are you dating at this time? Are you in the LGBT community at this time, and if so, what was that like? 
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 ; JL: Dixie and her partner [Carol?] were always on the lookout to find someone for me to match up with, and I did eventually. I’m trying to remember how we exactly met. Oh, I know. So I was working at Dave & ; Wayne’s, and for the moment, I can’t remember exactly how I met Diane, but -- or maybe it was actually another woman. But this woman had a house on Carlton Avenue in Bethlehem where she was -- and I got to know her and [Diane?], my first lover. [Annie?] had a room on the third floor of this house that wasn’t in use. It was actually the attic. 
 ; 
 ; I needed a cheaper place to live to meet my expenses and so I talked Annie into letting me make the attic a livable space and letting me live there. So I insulated it and did some other work to it and ended up living there, and that’s where I met Diane. She lived there also. She had rented another room. So there were four women living there, Annie, Diane, me, and a woman from -- who was a professor, a visiting professor at Lehigh University. 0 3388 Coming into Lesbian Identity MF: Good. I don’t think we talked about -- how did you come into a lesbian identity? When did you start to get a sense of your sexual identity? Was it in the ’70s, was it earlier? How did that happen for you? 
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 ; JL: I came out to myself in 1977. I realized looking backward that I’ve been in love with my camp counselor, [laughs] in love with a girl that I met at Girl Scout camp also, and just realized that, wow, I’m not heterosexual. Those relationships aren’t working out. Even when I was going to mechanic school and working at Dave & ; Wayne’s and also working at Paul’s Garage, I still dated men, but it wasn’t doing it for me. And I realized when I got involved with NOW and were around all these women that it was incredibly exciting because I realized that this is who I was, that I was a lesbian. 
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 ; MF: What was it like to live with in Diane in Catasauqua together when you built that, that home together? 0 3618 Life in the 1980s MF: So you’re living in Catasauqua, you’re working at PPL, what -- how -- what changes in your life in the ’80 s are you -- how do you sort of enter into the ’80s? What are the big things that are happening for you in those early years? 
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 ; JL: Well, once I got a job with PPL in the garage, you start out as a handyman. In garage is basically you’re a gofer, you run for parts, you jockey cars around. Pretty much that’s what you’re doing. You don’t really get to do any mechanical work. So I had gone from doing pretty much -- doing a lot of mechanical work at Paul’s Garage to being a gofer. 0 4253 Being a Lesbian at Pennsylvania Power & ; Light MF: Well, I mean, that has -- that kind of leads me to wonder about what it was like to be a lesbian working at PPL during that time period. I’m curious, was there homophobia in the workplace? What was it like to be at PPL as a lesbian person? 
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 ; JL: Yeah, that was really tough. It was hard enough being a woman in a nontraditional job, and then to be lesbian on top of it was really hard. The whole time I worked in the garage, I was closeted, I was not out but every-- virtually everybody knew it. [laughs] Well, I don’t know ; it’s kind of weird. The guys who gave me a hard time, they seem to know it, they seem to pick up on it. They guys who were my friends didn’t exactly seem to pick up on it because actually several of those friends along the way expressed that they had a romantic interest in me in one form or another -- two of them did. 
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 ; We managed to weather through that and not go in that direction without me saying I am not interested in relationship with a man other than a friend. And we managed to maintain our friendships. Eventually after I left the garage, I ended up in -- I was a mechanic for a number of years and then a job came along as the parts person. They called it the transportation material handler. And the fellow who was in that job, they needed to have a second person, and his name was [Dave?]. He came to me and asked me, “Would you please apply for this job?” I said, “Why?” He said, “Well, the pay is about the same, and I’m not a mechanic, and you’re really good at what you do. And there’s some men that are applying for the job -- going to apply for the job that I do not want to work with, so would you please apply for the job?” 0 4612 Fighting for LGBT Benefits at PPL
 ; MF: So PPL today has an LGBT staff group. At that time, were -- did you know other people at PPL that were lesbian or gay, or was it mostly like people knew but didn’t know or was it -- 
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 ; JL: No, you knew, you knew who the gay people were there. Your gaydar told you who they were. You gingerly approach them and then they acknowledge they were gay also. So in ’95, they started cutting back on services, and they went through the transportation department. Because of the union, I was -- the fellow Dave who asked me to take that job as the parts person, he was there first, so they cut back to one material handler in every garage, so I lost my job in 1995. I went up to the service center, which was also on the same property and became a dispatcher for -- a power dispatcher for repairs of electrical -- sending people to repair electrical equipment for storms and that kind of thing. And that’s when I became out. I was actually outed by a lesbian up there who was not a very nice person and decided she would do that for me whether I liked it or not. 0 5347 Work with Other LGBT Organizations in the Lehigh Valley/AIDS Outreach MF: So while you were working with GLOW at PPL, were you aware of other LGBT organizations in the valley that were working on similar issues? Or did you have connections with other activist organizations in the valley? 
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 ; JL: We did. Air Products was one we often -- that we were connected to, and we would often talk with, maybe meet with here and there. They were ahead of us in trying to get benefits, but in the end -- I’m not sure if they ever got benefits in the end. The people at Air Products were -- all the people we worked with were professional people, people with degrees, so they were considered management employees at Air Products. So I think because of that, Air Products acknowledged them earlier than PPL acknowledged our gay and lesbian workers. But I think because of maybe financial issues, the company was -- I’m not sure why that Air Products seemed to struggle. You would have thought they would get all the benefits before we did. 0 6077 Spirituality MF: Well, we’re nearing the end of the interview, and there two sort of areas that I’d like to explore just a little bit further. I’m interested, you’ve mentioned a few times about being a Quaker in the ’70s. I’m wondering if we could talk a little bit about your spirituality? I’m wondering if you could just discuss a little bit about your emergence into the Quaker church and maybe the evolution of your faith? 
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 ; JL: Okay. Well, I started going to Quaker Meeting in the early ’70s I guess. And I mentioned my psychology professor, Tony LoGiudice went there, and that’s how I ended up attending a Quaker Meeting. He said that I might like this place. Maybe he recognized I was a lesbian -- that was years before I knew I was a lesbian -- I don’t know. But maybe just because I was in a nontraditional -- looking to get into a nontraditional job or probably because Quaker Meeting was a place that allowed people to -- it was not dogmatic, a dogmatic type of religion. 
 ; 0 6363 Connection Between Faith and Lesbian Identity
 ; MF: It sounds to me like your faith -- the faith communities that you’ve been involved in, the Quakers and now the Unitarian Universalist, have been really affirming of both women and LGBT people. Like the MCCLV church in Bethlehem has been -- in Bethlehem and Allentown has been really supportive of LGBT people. Would you say that you ever struggled as an lesbian with your faith? Or would you say that your faith always confirmed the value of your identity, of your sexual identity? 
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 ; JL: I didn’t have a religious faith until I was a young adult and did a bunch of searching at different churches to try to find where I fit in. I did that for a good number of years. So it wasn’t until maybe like 1972 -- I would have been twenty-two at the time, twenty-three, around there -- that I found Quaker Meeting. So it’s probably to my advantage that I didn’t have much of a religious upbringing because even not having a religious upbringing, I still struggle with -- that I was a gay person and that this was wrong in society’s eyes. 0 6463 Meeting Michele MF: That certainly was the case for me being raised Catholic ; it was a little bit of a challenge. Okay. So since we’re nearing the end of the interview, I’m wondering if you could share the Michele story? Like how did you meet Michele, if you could talk a little bit about this primary partnership in your life?
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 ; JL: Well, it’s pretty bizarre. [laughs] Before Michele, before I met Michele, I had two other lovers. The first one was Diane, and the second one was Janice. And Janice was with me a couple of years and maybe four I guess it was, and she had two children. We all lived together, and Janice had been a straight woman and then she decided that being a gay woman was what she wanted. And she did that for four years and then decided she wanted to be straight again. So she left me and I had the house still in Catasauqua, the town house. 0 6869 Effect of Marriage Equality on Relationship with Michele MF: What did marriage equality do for you and Michele? 
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 ; JL: Oh my God, it was huge. It was huge, just huge, and I’m surprised. We were so shocked that we got the right to get married in Pennsylvania, the state of Pennsylvania. It was 2014, May of 2014 when they passed that, and my brother-in-law who lived in Texas -- my sister had passed at that -- by that time -- my brother-in-law who never speaks to me called me. He’s an extremely quiet guy, extremely quiet -- called me and said, “I just heard this on the news.” He was the one who told me that it had been passed in Pennsylvania. 
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 ; Later that day, I got -- the phone rang, and I picked it up and it was -- I didn’t understand what I was listening to at first, but it was a conference call with the gay... I can’t even remember at the moment which gay group it was, but they were having a conference call, the lawyers that had fought for these rights and talking about what had happened, what had transpired, and what it meant. And so when I say it was huge, we’ve always been married whether we could be legally married or not. We’ve always been married in our minds, in our hearts. But it meant that we no longer had to maintain huge insurance policies to try and help pay for -- you know if one of us passed away, the other one would inherit it. 0 7198 Closing Remarks MF: [...] But before we do that, Jane, I just want to ask, is there anything that we really -- that we missed today that you really felt you wanted to share in this interview? 
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 ; JL: Not that I can think of. I will share one story, and I don’t know why this just popped in my head. But when I retired from PPL by that time, I had -- it was a good company to work for, good benefits and good pay, so I kept taking jobs that were there. I always considered the garage my home. That’s really who I am, really where I spent the most time, but I moved on to other jobs. But when I retired, I had not worked in the garage. I retired in 2012 ; I had not worked in the garage since 1995. When I retired, it was the guys in the garage who threw me a party, and that meant the world to me. 0 MovingImage Jane Land describes her childhood in Bucks County, her experiences at Moravian College in a social work program, and her movement to Northampton Community College to study mechanics where she was the only woman in the auto mechanic program. Land goes on to discuss her work as an auto mechanic at a variety of shops until she took a job at PPL in their garage and eventually as parts manager. With reference to her work, she discusses sexism and homophobia in the workplace and her work on gay and lesbian rights for employees of PPL. Beyond her discussion of her career, Land describes LGBT community spaces in the 1970s and 1980s, her work with N.O.W. in the 1970s (including attending the 1977 International Women’s Conference in Texas) and AIDS Outreach, and her religious affiliations with Quakers and UUC. Toward the end of the interview, Land discusses marriage equality and her spouse, Michele Strohl. INTERVIEW WITH JANE LAND MAY 29, 2020 MARY FOLTZ: All right. My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here with Jane Land to talk about her life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. And this is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. Jane and I are meeting on Zoom because there's a pandemic going on, and today's date is May 29, 2020. So, Jane, just first, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me today. JANE LAND: Oh, sure. MF: And to start, could you please state your full name and spell it for me? JL: My name is two syllables long, so you have to listen carefully, it goes by fast. It's Jane Land. Last name is spelled L-A-N-D, and first name is J-A-N-E. MF: Thank you. And can you please share your birthday? JL: June 28, 1950. MF: All right, so prior to starting this interview, you and I talked a little bit about consent for the interview, and I'll start by just asking you, do you consent to this interview today? JL: Yes. MF: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made available online in searchable formats? JL: Yes. MF: And do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including articles, websites, short films, presentations, or other formats that might become available? JL: Yes. MF: And do you understand that you will have at least 30 days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview, to identify parts that you might want to delete, or to withdraw the interview from the project? JL: Yes, I understand. MF: Okay, great. Thank you, Jane. So to start our discussion today, I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your childhood? JL: My childhood, it was a long time ago, -- I'll be seventy next month -- and I grew up in the country. My father was a chemist. He had a PhD in chemistry, and he worked for a large pharmaceutical company. And my mother had a library degree, a master's in library science, but she was a homemaker until I was in seventh grade. I had only one other sibling, my sister, an older sister. She was six years older. She passed away a few years back. So I grew up in the country, and it was a great place to grow up, and I think it had a bearing on who I am. I spent a lot of time outdoors, playing outdoors, and my friends that I played with, my playmates, -- there weren't too many kids around -- they were all boys. The family on a lot adjacent to ours, -- we had three and a half acres, and it was rural, so everybody had some acreage -- there were four boys there so that's primarily who I played with. We didn't have a lot of toys, so we invented things all the time to play. And we traveled quite a distance to play. We had a creek that was maybe a mile away, and we would ride our bicycles into town sometimes. But mostly, we played outside in -- at the creek and in the fields and in -- climbing trees, building treehouses, and building rafts for the creek to navigate on the creek and dams on the creek and catching crayfish and putting them in our pond that we would make. I can't think of all the ways in which we invented things, but we have very few props, very, very few toys, so we had to use our creativity a lot. MF: So what part of the country did you grow up? Where was the closest small city to your country home? JL: I grew up in Northern Bucks County, Pennsylvania, so I was between... The closest town was a small town called Telford, which is actually in Montgomery. And I lived just three houses from the borderline between Bucks and Montgomery counties. I went to Pennridge High School and graduated from there in 1968. MF: And culturally, what was it like in that area around Telford? What was the community spirit like? What kinds of values were promoted in that country community? JL: I don't know. I just know the immediate families that my parents socialized with or had a connection to, basically neighbors. My parents were both educated, my father more than my mother even. My sister went on to get a master's also in biology. And a lot of the people they socialized with were similar middle-class families that the father had an education, mother may or may not have had an education, often did but didn't use it. As far as political -- politically, I'm not really aware politics went -- things that were talked about. MF: I'm curious about your relationship with your parents. You described their emphasis on higher education that they really believed in education. What was your relationship like with your parents when you were a child? JL: My father had to -- he had a job with -- at that time, it was called Merck Sharp & ; Dohme, it later became Merck Incorporated. And his commute to work from our home was maybe like twenty-five, 30 minutes. But at the time, I was eight years old, he took a job in -- had to take a job with the company in North Jersey, so he traveled. He commuted about three hours a day, so I didn't see much of my dad. When he was around, he was -- he had a fleet of cars that he would use to get to and from work. When one would break down, he'd have to grab another one and leave it for the weekend when he could fix it. He was a very bright man and very self-sufficient. He didn't have a lot of time to talk or spend with me, but I do remember watching him do things a lot, watching him fix the cars and anything that broke in the house, that kind of thing. My mother was I think a depressed person and so I didn't have -- you know, she kept to herself a lot. So I pretty much had to learn how to be self-sufficient early on. MF: So you described wonderful adventures as a child in the outdoors and making rafts on the river. And you described a kind of self-sufficiency, a kind of self-knowledge earlier -- early on in your life. What kinds of things were you interested in beyond the outdoors as you were going through middle and high school? JL: Well, you had asked about -- just mentioned something about education and I... There was a lot of unspoken pressure I think to get a college degree. Everyone in the family was educated. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I struggled with that. I really was not keen on going to college because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I have a lot of college credits, but I never got a degree in anything. [laughs] So I did start out by going to college after I graduated. I went to Bucks County Community College for a year and learned... I signed up for data processing. I had degrees in data processing, which was the old punch card system, ones and twos on the punch cards, and that was really boring to me. But as part of that, one of the courses I had signed up for at Bucks County Community College was accounting, and I learned that I liked accounting very much, so I changed majors to accounting. But then after a year, I ended up getting married. This was during the Vietnam War. I married a man who then ended up getting drafted into the service, and we traveled. He was first stationed in Phoenixville and then we traveled to San Francisco. When he was drafted, his -- after he finished basic training, he became -- he was assigned the career of a medic. And since it was during the war, medics was not a good occupation to be in. In times of war, they always try to take the medic and the radioman out of commission, so -- the enemy that is. So he signed up for more time and became kind of the equivalent of a M*A*S*H nurse, a field hospital nurse, and... The only reason I mentioned that because, obviously, that was a mistake I made in my life, getting married to a man. It took me a while to figure that out, but I mentioned it because I got the chance to travel a lot. So I lived out in California for a while and got to travel around the country. MF: Well, I'm curious, how did -- did you -- how did you two meet, and how did that relationship develop during that really tumultuous time of the Vietnam War? JL: He was the nephew of a high school professor, a high school teacher that I actually never had in high school. But he was -- Uncle John was a very -- a freethinker, and as it turned out, a closeted gay man. But he was a very dynamic teacher, and he would hold these -- he would have get-togethers with his students where they would come to his house and talk about all kinds of ideas. Really a very, very good teacher who would really expand your horizons, get you to thinking about different things in life. So after I got divorced from my husband, I started searching for -- thinking about going back to college. I did attend some college, some more college. I was in Minnesota with my sister-in-law who had gone there for her master's degree. I took some courses there, I came back to Muhlenberg, took some courses there. Eventually ended up living in Bethlehem and attending Moravian College, and I was getting a degree in social work. And then, one semester before I was due to graduate with a bachelor's degree in social work, I realized that that was not what I wanted to do. I still hadn't figured out what I was going to be when I grew up, what I really wanted to do. I was talking with one of my psychology professors at Moravian, and when you asked me to do this oral history with you, I did spend some time thinking about what were the people and the things that influenced my life the most. And that college professor, he -- a psychology professor, his name was Tony LoGiudice. And I was talking with him about so actually getting depressed thinking about spending the rest of my life being a social worker. Social work is a fine profession, but it just was not going to be my thing. And he said, "Well, you know I can give you some -- a battery of tests, and they'll show what you have an aptitude for. I'll send them away, and they score them, and then when I get them back, get the results back, we can sit and talk about what you might do when it showed your strengths were." So we did that, and we met. He said, "Your mechanical ability is extremely high." I said, "Well, what would I do with that?" He said, "You could be -- well you could be like -- you could be like an electrician or a carpenter or an auto mechanic, something like that." I said, "Really?" and he said, "Yeah, you know this is a really high score in mechanical ability and ability to analyze things and investigate them, be able to apply logic to come up with answers," so I said, "All right." Well, I'm not good at science, so I don't know how well I'd do at being an electrician, understanding the science of electricity. And at the time, it was 1975, and there was a recession going on and so the construction trade was really struggling. I was doing very poorly, so that was a -- that would be a really poor career choice because it'd be tough to make a living and so I chose mechanics. So my next step was where to go to school to become a mechanic, how do I do that. But I quit Moravian one semester shy of getting my degree in social work and one year short of getting a minor I guess, you'd say, in accounting or a dual degree in accounting and enrolled in Northampton County Community College. But before I did that, I went there. I was going to enroll there because they had an auto mechanics training course. But this was 1975, and it was like, would they even let me in as a woman. So I talked to somebody in admission, and somebody said, "Well, why don't you -- I'll give you the phone number for the fellow who runs that training program, and why don't you talk to him, see what he has to say whether he'd let you in or not?" So this fellow's name was George Gerstenberg, and I called him up. He just turned out to be a young fellow. He was not that far from my age, pretty close to the same age -- this was in 1975 -- and told him what I was interested in doing and why. I told him that after I had taken this test and learned that I had this -- realized that I had this ability. I thought back in when I was going to Moravian, I worked my way through college cleaning houses, and along the way for some reason -- these were often households that had educated adults in them -- and the men were not very handy. And the women would ask me if I could fix things and actually really insisted that I try to fix things ; I don't know why. This one woman asked me one day if I could fix a lamp, and I said, "Well, yeah, I'm pretty sure I could fix a lamp because I'd watched my father do it." She said, "Well, here, take this, go and fix -- see if you can fix it and then bring it back." So the next week, I brought it back, and I made the repair, and it worked again. She said, "That's great. I have a mixer that doesn't work, you think you could fix my mixer?" And I said, "I don't know about that. I have no idea about a mixer." She said, "Well, why don't you just take it home and try it, see what you can do with it? It's not working, so if you can't fix it, fine, but if you can, it's broken and I could use -- I'll pay you to fix this mixer." So I took it home, and I took it all apart, and that's something I realized that I used to do when I was a kid. My mother had a friend that had a son my same age, Doug was his name. He would come with his mother over to our house to visit, and we would squirrel ourselves away in my bedroom, and we would take things apart, so... [laughs] So it was just simply by taking it apart, it was -- had a bunch of, I don't know, hair and fuzz, dust stuck in it, and it just needed a good cleaning and lubrication again, and I put it back together, and it worked. So I talked to George Gerstenberg and he was like -- I was really surprised. He was like, "That would be terrific. It would be great to have a woman in the class." He said, "You'll be the only one," but he said, "I welcome it. I encourage you to try that. I think it would be wonderful." So because George thought it was wonderful, I got an opportunity. I'm not sure I would have gotten that opportunity if he hadn't thought it was wonderful back in 1975. MF: This is a wonderful story that you're sharing now. I'm curious if you could just talk a little bit about why you felt compelled to explore social work and accounting prior to thinking about other things like mechanics like -- and auto mechanic courses in particular. And I guess what I'm trying to ask is like during that time period of the '70s, what seemed possible to you as a woman laborer? Did you feel that there were specific careers like social work that were open to women and others that were closed? So I'm just curious why you were -- you thought social work in the beginning even though you weren't really enjoying the classes. So could you talk a little bit about that, the logic that you had for the courses you were choosing prior to really finding this field that felt really compelling to you? JL: Sure. Well, accounting was simply by accident. It was a course requirement that I was taking. It fulfilled some liberal arts requirement for a degree, and I just discovered that I really liked it. I really liked working with numbers. I'm not a mathematician, that's an entirely different thing than -- accounting was just basically arithmetic, but I really excelled at that. And it's funny that fellow Doug, that boy that used to come over to play, we would often play bank. We would play banker in the -- in my room, and we would do things with money, and it was funny. But to this day, I still do volunteer work as a bookkeeper for the church and have for several churches. So it wasn't really anything conscious there. It was just something I found I really had a knack for. One thing that I do realize is really instrumental in my childhood was my father never said you can't do this, you can't do that, a girl can't do this, a girl can't do that. He never ever said those things. And so in a silent way -- he was a pretty quiet guy, in a silent way, he was very encouraging that there wasn't anything that I couldn't do that -- if I put my mind to it, which is pretty much what he had done with his life. He was an only child whose father had died when he was still in college and so he pretty much -- I imagine he'd been in the same kind of circumstance where he just had the confidence, and he just decided there wasn't anything he couldn't do. He was trained as a chemist, but he is busy teaching himself how to repair automobiles and all kinds of equipment. The water pump died, he'd be hauling it out of the well and replacing that. Just anything that broke living in the country where there weren't many services or people who were trained in services, you had to do it on your own. You had to learn how to do it on your own, and that's pretty much what he did. So I think just being around that even though I remember as a kid, I'd ask -- as I got older, I'd ask if I could help because he was basically working all the time. Whether it was going off to work for a paid -- for a salary or working around the house, he was just always incredibly busy. So I'd ask if I can help, and usually within sixty seconds or less of me then trying to do what he had told me I could -- I should do, he'd be impatient and take it away from me because he just didn't have the time. I realize that in retrospect. But I think that was a huge -- an influence on me that he, in his silence, never gave me the idea that there wasn't something I couldn't -- anything I couldn't do. So when I went to college, I probably took -- I probably decided on a degree on social work for the same reason that virtually everyone who goes into social work and psychology goes into it for, which is their chapter one or their childhood had some major dysfunction in it. And then you were -- you went on to college and enrolled in those two disciplines to try and figure out your chapter one. And so it helped me just figure it out some and -- but the thought of -- and I enjoyed the courses. Along the way, I had to do a service project in the community, and I ended up at Northampton County prison. There was a small women's detention center there, and it was a very small area. They kept them segregated from all the men because they thought that would be a huge problem, and they basically had nothing to do. They were in this tiny area and had nothing to do. So I started a program there. It wasn't hard to get them to... I thought it would be really difficult to get the prison system to take any suggestion I had, but I think they were concerned about public opinion and the press. I started a program there where I got some sewing machines donated, and the women had sewing machines. And they actually had some women guards I think who had some sewing ability who then helped them learn how to sew as a career, as a way to make money when they would get out of prison. And so I enjoyed that part of social work, but it was not what I wanted to make a living out of, trying to help people figure out their own problems. I had enough trouble figuring out mine. [laughs] MF: Well, now, I'm curious about -- you said you were drawn to social work to figure out your chapter one. What did you figure out in the social work program about yourself or your family? JL: My mother lost her mother when she was -- I think it was ten -- ten years old and so my mother -- I figured out that my mother was stuck at that age. She had a trauma. There weren't many psychologists or psychiatrists back in those days. People didn't go for therapy particularly if you lived out on the country, so she pretty much was stuck at that age. And a lot of her life was tied to that, so she spent -- so I think she was a fairly depressed person and I didn't... I actually didn't see a lot of her growing up. She was a librarian as I had mentioned, and she spent a lot of time reading, escaping. My father was a good man, but I think he was angry that his partner in life was not being much of a partner. So he had a pretty bad temper. And my older sister, she was six years older, and six years older is like a lifetime at that age. I learned all this from social work and -- social work curriculum and my classes in social work and psychology that she picked up the dominant parent's behavior, so she had a very bad temper. So I spent my childhood trying to stay out of the reach of depressed and angry people [laughs] and a good part of my -- a good portion of my adult life too, so... MF: So you described finding this career in -- entering Northampton Community College. I'm curious, what was it like to be the only woman in that -- in the classes for mechanics at Northampton? JL: Well, the first thing I did was I didn't tell my family what I was doing. I stopped going to Moravian College and enrolled at NCCC -- in Northampton County Community College, and in that program. I went to the classes for several months pretty much the first semester before I was in a situation where I had to admit to a family member that I was no longer going to Moravian College, [laughs] so... And there were several family members -- and this is beyond my immediate family. I can remember my uncle in particular sending me -- as he lived in Illinois, him and my aunt, and my uncle sent me this scathing letter about what a big mistake I was making not finishing my college degree in social work and that the idea of being a mechanic was a really bad idea, and that I should really reconsider what I was doing with my life. My father was like, "Okay, great, and what will you do with it when you're done?" I said, "Well, you know I hadn't gotten that far yet," and he said, "Well, if you want to go in to business for yourself, let me know and I will help you." And my sister who I had a terrible relationship with because she was so angry also all the time -- she was -- had a very unhappy childhood. Because she had the same parents I had but also because she was -- she was very heavyset. She had extremely curly hair that she couldn't manage back in those days, -- the hairdressers weren't used to that -- and she also had terrible acne, so she -- I think those things were all factors in our life that made her a pretty unhappy and angry person. But I was surprised. She said to me when -- and she was the one I had to admit. She kind of pinned me down in a conversation long distance, and I had to admit to her that I wasn't going to Moravian anymore and told her what -- I had to admit to her what I was doing. I was scared that, uh-oh, now, I'm going to get in real trouble, and she surprised me. One of the few times in my life that she supported me, and she said, "You know, I wish my husband could go back and take something that he really enjoyed doing because he's not happy doing what he's doing." So I ended up really different from my family. I didn't want to spend my life as an angry, depressed person. I didn't want to... It wasn't a degree that mattered to me, it was that I found something that I had a passion for, and I found that I just loved mechanics. I just adored mechanics. I did well at school. I had so many credits that I didn't have to -- I transferred all my liberal arts credits and fulfilled all those -- that criteria and just was taking the automotive course and still working to support myself cleaning houses. I never finished the auto mechanics either. I did well, I think I was maybe first in the class, I can't really remember. But I took enough courses that I got it, and I was confident that I could keep learning. And then I decided that. The money was running pretty thin, I didn't want to take out loans, and so I got a job as an auto mechanic and finished learning to be a mechanic by working in a garage. MF: How did the other students in Northampton respond to you as the only woman in that program? And then I'll continue that, like how did male mechanics respond to you on your first jobs out of college? JL: You know I don't remember anybody in the auto mechanics class giving me a hard time because George wouldn't have allowed it. But I was busy learning. I didn't really care what they were doing. [laughs] I was busy learning, and it was just -- I was like a vacuum cleaner, I just sucked it all up, I just loved it. It was definitely my thing. I did well in classroom and well in the shop. Probably the question that you're asking should be asked of the guys that I went to school with. My guess is that they weren't... They were a little intimidated by me, I would imagine, because we were all students, and it's one thing to have another male student -- if you're a male, have another male student by yours side, and you're learning. But to have a woman doing better than you were doing in school was probably hard for them. I know for sure later on in life when I worked as a mechanic, that was one of the things that I recognized. If I did well as a mechanic and as being a female mechanic, it was really hard for men who weren't great at what they did to work alongside a woman who did a better job at mechanics than they did. It was a problem, and I realized that later on in my career, so... I first worked at a place in Bethlehem that might still be there. It was called Dave & ; Wayne's. What I did was when I decided that I'd had enough education and really couldn't afford anymore and needed to get a job, I just went door to door to garages asking for a job. Now, I don't believe anyone hired me because they thought that I could do the job at that time. I believe I was hired because it was a novelty, and they thought it would be fun and that -- probably that they could like... It would be fun to see me fail is what it would be. So at Dave & ; Wayne's, I did okay. I think the biggest problem I had was the male mechanics there would come over and want to talk, want to chat, want to flirt. Sometimes, it was great that they'd come over because I could learn from them, but the bosses did not like it. And so I was there maybe three months, something like that, and I got fired because I wasn't getting enough work done. I wasn't getting enough work done because these guys kept coming over and [laughs] interrupting me from working on a customer's car. It was the only job in my life that I was ever fired from, and I was devastated. It was not Labor Day. It was right before Labor Day. It was probably on a Friday. I know it was on a Friday. It's probably the Friday right before Labor Day weekend. Yeah, they came over to me in the morning and said, "We're going to let you go, so you can finish out your day, and we'll give a paycheck and then you can be on your way." So I thought about it for a few minutes, and I thought, well, I've still got half a day to go look for a new job. I had to support myself. I mean, I'm sure my family would've helped me if I asked them, but I didn't want. I wanted to be my own person. I felt if I was going to be in this career, and originally I felt they weren't going to approve of it, I needed to pay my own way. So after about half an hour, I went to Dave and Wayne, and I said, "If it's okay with you, I'll leave now," so they let me go. It's about eleven o'clock in the morning, and I did the same thing all over again. I started pounding the pavement, going to different garages looking for another job, and by the end of the day, I had another job in a garage. I'm sure it was for the same reason that I worked for Paul's Garage on -- in Fountain Hill on Broadway. I don't know if that's still there. I'm sure he's no longer in business because he was older than me but not by much. And I got a job there, I'm sure for the same reason, and actually, he used to work -- he started out his career working for Dave & ; Wayne. I didn't know that at the time. And so I'm sure I was hired there because I was going to be a novelty also. But Paul was -- he was owner of the garage, and he had a part-time mechanic working there, a young guy named Jeff, and I think that he was more -- a little bit more practical. I think he felt that he could take advantage of me pay-wise -- that he could use me to do a lot of work and pay me little and get away with it. So that's what happened. I worked my butt off for him. I became really fast at what I did. He taught me things. I learned how to do valve jobs on engines really well, so... He liked the work I did on that and so I would do a lot of the valve jobs, engine repair, upper half of the engine on a lot of vehicles. I would do other things too. I got my state inspection license while I was there, and I did a lot of tune-ups, that kind of thing, so... And you asked, how did men -- how did people feel about me being a woman working in this career. I remember at Paul's Garage, the customers that gave me the hardest time were women. Women play a part in discrimination also and stereotyping also. So for the women, a lot of them looked at me and were like, oh my God, I don't want a woman to work on my car, she doesn't know what she's doing. I need my car fixed, I don't want it to be wrecked. And so those were my toughest customers were the women. Sometimes, Paul would tell them, "Well, we'll get your car fixed, and we'll call you." And then after the car was all fixed and working fine, then he would tell them that I had worked on it. He would do things like that. He wasn't terribly supportive of me, but he was in the sense that he gave me a job. You know, 1975 to give me -- to give a woman a job in the garage was pretty big deal, so I have to give him credit. MF: At this point, you were divorced. What was happening in your social life during the -- that time in Bethlehem and then while you're moving into this new career? JL: At that time, I got involved with NOW, became a member of a chapter in Bethlehem. I was just a member but trying to get plugged into women's rights and find some support there, that kind of thing. So I belonged to that for a while, and eventually, there was another chapter in Allentown. I don't remember if it was called -- I think it was called Lehigh Valley rather than Allentown NOW. I'm pretty sure that's Lehigh Valley NOW, and that's where I met Dixie White who was an activist that I'm sure you probably know about. I know that ; Liz Bradbury had talked to me about that connection and finding my name in some of Dixie's memorabilia once Dixie passed away. So I learned the one thing that NOW was good for -- I've never been real big on being a member of groups. I'm just more of a solitary person who needs to do my own kind of thing. But what I got out of NOW was a sense of connection and sisterhood and some support in that way. And also, I met a woman named Sharon who worked for PPL -- it used to be called Pennsylvania Power & ; Light -- and she said, "You ought to apply for a job at PPL." I said, "Well, it's an electric company, what would I do for them?" She said, "Well they -- you could be a mechanic in the power plant." She said, "Or they have a garage where they repair their vehicles, you could work for the garage maybe." So I applied there. And you asked how men reacted to me working in this nontraditional field for women, I'm the only person that I ever encountered at PPL who had to go through four interviews to get my job. The job interviews were not about... Well, and first of all, they didn't just -- I didn't just put in an application, and they called me. I put in an application, and I didn't hear from them in several weeks, so I called their HR department, and they told me, "Yeah, we'll get to it, we still have your application, we'll get to it." So I called maybe two or three times and so after maybe three times of calling them, they brought me in for an interview. And so the interviews were all about not my mechanical ability. Didn't ask me, how do you do this, or how do you fix that, or what do you think would be wrong with the vehicle if this happened? Because some of the people who were interviewing me weren't just HR people. Most of the interviews -- I think maybe the first interview was probably the HR department, and the other three were people who were in admin in the garage, in the transportation department. And so they'd want to know things like, well, if you're out in the field working on equipment, construction vehicle equipment like bulldozers or digging trucks, whatever, and you have to go to the bathroom, what will you do? Those are the kinds of questions [laughs] they wanted to ask. Or what are you going to do when some guys swears in front of you? I mean that's what those three interviews were all about. I remember only them asking me one -- somewhat a mechanical thing, which was if you have to go out and fix a flat on a line truck, how would you go about doing that? Because you're talking about a tire and a rim -- an 1120-tire with rim weighs more than I do. So I told them how I would use leverage and just like a guy would do. He's not going to pick up a 1020 [laughs] and throw it on to -- the studs on the wheel, so... So eventually, I got the job. I got the job in August of 1977, and I took the job with the stipulation that even though I wouldn't have been entitled to any kind of vacation after just joining the company, that I be given time off to go to the international women's conference that was held in Texas in 1977. I've been chosen as a delegate for that. MF: What was that conference like when you went to Texas? JL: That was pretty amazing. I was young though. I was twenty-seven at the time, I wish that I had -- and just newly plugged into NOW and women's rights, and I wish I had -- I could've appreciated it more because the women that attended that... I got in as a delegate. Dixie White said, "Why don't you apply to be a delegate for this?" and I said, "Okay." So I did, and I wasn't picked, and this was a process that went on for several months, maybe a half a year or something like that. She said, "Well, try again, but this --" She said, "If you want to get in since you're not really plugged into the leadership, you're my friend and I'm a leader in NOW, but since you're not really plugged into the leadership or haven't had any -- an active role in leadership," she said "you have to find -- you have to be a minority. Why don't you try being a specific minority, and maybe you can get in to fill a quota that way with the conference?" I said, "Well, what minority would that be? I'm a female and I'm white, what minority would be --?" She said, "Well, you're a Quaker, so apply as a religious minority," and so that's what I did, and I got chosen because I was a Quaker, which is a not very well-known type of religion, so... And that's where I knew Tony LoGiudice from, my psychology professor. That's how I ended up at -- being a Quaker was because he was also a Quaker and attended the Lehigh Valley Quaker meeting. So I went to the conference, and it was incredible. Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, you name it, Gloria Steinem, they were all there. The conference was to set -- it was run by parliamentary procedure and was to set what were the important things that women needed to pursue to become equal citizens in our country and in the world. It was really an international thing, and so... I don't know ; they picked out maybe 20 platforms of things that needed to be worked on from an equal rights amendment to women having access to educa-- equal access to education, equal acce-- equal pay for jobs. It was pretty heavy stuff. [laughs] MF: Did you bring back some of those platforms to the NOW organization in the Lehigh Valley? What were the major Lehigh Valley, the kind of platform issues for the NOW organization here? JL: I did not. I ended up not being much of a NOW member. I'm trying to think of a way to say this. There was a lot of dissension about how things were going to be run, and I'm a doer and not so much a talker, and so... They got rather enmeshed in trying to figure out who was in power and where the leadership was going and so I drifted away from there pretty quickly. MF: It's 1977 or '78, around there, you got a great job at PPL. Are you dating at this time? Are you in the LGBT community at this time, and if so, what was that like? JL: Dixie and her partner [Carol?] were always on the lookout to find someone for me to match up with, and I did eventually. I'm trying to remember how we exactly met. Oh, I know. So I was working at Dave & ; Wayne's, and for the moment, I can't remember exactly how I met Diane, but -- or maybe it was actually another woman. But this woman had a house on Carlton Avenue in Bethlehem where she was -- and I got to know her and [Diane?], my first lover. [Annie?] had a room on the third floor of this house that wasn't in use. It was actually the attic. I needed a cheaper place to live to meet my expenses and so I talked Annie into letting me make the attic a livable space and letting me live there. So I insulated it and did some other work to it and ended up living there, and that's where I met Diane. She lived there also. She had rented another room. So there were four women living there, Annie, Diane, me, and a woman from -- who was a professor, a visiting professor at Lehigh University. MF: So what was the community like? I mean that sounds great to have a house of four women in Bethlehem. What was the community like in the '70s, the LGBT community? JL: 1977, it was pretty closeted. You had to worry about losing a job, not just losing a job but having... It was difficult to be out because you had to really worry about how you were going to make a living because it was not -- it was -- people were pretty ugly about it back then. Diane and I ended up being partners, moved out of Anne's -- Annie's house and bought a home in Catasauqua. You could go to Rosemary's bar in the Flatiron building in the east Allentown off Union -- very close to Union Boulevard, and that was it. You found each other. You're gaydar helped you find sisters and brothers out there in the community. You found ways to manage to hint at things that you each would safely realize that you were both gay. And then you would see each other at each other's homes, do those kinds of social events, and go to the bar and be able to dance and let loose there. And there were a couple of festivals around. There was a good one called [Sister Fire?] down in Maryland every year, those kinds of things. MF: What was Rosemary's bar like? Will you describe what a night out at Rosemary's might look like? JL: Rosemary's bar was a good location. It was on this little -- literally on this little triangle of land. It was pretty much the building, so you didn't have to -- the wonder of the bar didn't have to share the building with someone else. There wasn't a neighbor that could -- a neighboring business that could complain about a gay bar being there. And it was a great place where you could just go and be yourself. They have a deejay, a number of deejays, really good deejays. You could go and dance and drink and just relax and be yourself. And Rosemary kept that bar going for a lot of years, and it's a pain in the butt to run a bar and she was just -- you know, a lot of times back then, the bar owners were really supportive of the community. They would have special events and that kind of thing. It was like a home. Back in those days, Diane and I used to have -- on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, we would have open house at our house. Any of the friends that we had, gay and lesbian friends could come and visit and hang out at our house. We put out the invitation every year because a lot of gay people could not go home to their families with their significant other. Maybe they couldn't go home at all even by themselves. They had been ostracized by their family, they had been abandoned, turned away by them -- by their family, and they were not welcome. So it was always a place where people could come to be together and instead of being depressed about their family's treatment toward them, where they could feel good on a holiday. MF: Good. I don't think we talked about -- how did you come into a lesbian identity? When did you start to get a sense of your sexual identity? Was it in the '70s, was it earlier? How did that happen for you? JL: I came out to myself in 1977. I realized looking backward that I've been in love with my camp counselor, [laughs] in love with a girl that I met at Girl Scout camp also, and just realized that, wow, I'm not heterosexual. Those relationships aren't working out. Even when I was going to mechanic school and working at Dave & ; Wayne's and also working at Paul's Garage, I still dated men, but it wasn't doing it for me. And I realized when I got involved with NOW and were around all these women that it was incredibly exciting because I realized that this is who I was, that I was a lesbian. MF: What was it like to live with in Diane in Catasauqua together when you built that, that home together? JL: Well, it was an existing home, and actually, we had lived also in -- we moved from the South Side of Bethlehem to a row home in Allentown that we owned with a third woman who was -- so the three of us on the house together. She was much older. She was from Quaker Meeting also. So it's tough living, two people together, let alone with three or four. So first we lived together, four women and then it was three women and then we realized you just need to live with your significant together because it doesn't work out too good. So we ended moving to a town house in Catasauqua. And you had to be careful about what you were doing that you didn't offend the neighbors. It was still a fairly closeted situation, although the street we lived on in Catasauqua, we had just picked it as a house that we liked well enough and could afford, and it turned out, it was like lesbian heaven there. We had two women, two gay women that -- oh, sorry, we had two lesbian couples that lived on that street. It was just a circle, a town house circle, two lesbian households and two gay men households on that street, and they were -- in this development, there were three circles. On the other circles, there were also gay people, so it turns out that there was a lot of gay people there. So we also had that support that even though we weren't being really out in the neighborhood, we had each other there, and somebody we could turn to or socialize with. MF: Who knew that about Catasauqua? I've got to say like who knew? JL: [laughs] Yeah. [laughter] Right, we didn't know. It was just an accident. Well, I don't think it was just an accident ; I think it was meant to be. MF: So you're living in Catasauqua, you're working at PPL, what -- how -- what changes in your life in the '80 s are you -- how do you sort of enter into the '80s? What are the big things that are happening for you in those early years? JL: Well, once I got a job with PPL in the garage, you start out as a handyman. In garage is basically you're a gofer, you run for parts, you jockey cars around. Pretty much that's what you're doing. You don't really get to do any mechanical work. So I had gone from doing pretty much -- doing a lot of mechanical work at Paul's Garage to being a gofer. But I did that for a couple of months, and it didn't take long until I got into the mechanics. They had a mechanics training program there, so... It was a four-year program where you worked and you also went to school. And so once I got started at being a mechanics, I had shift foreman whose name was Al Koch. And when I think back -- when you ask me to do this, I thought back to who were the people in my life that really made a difference, Al was another one. Just like Tony LoGiudice and George Gerstenberg, Al Koch, my shift foreman, right away let me inspect cars and trucks. The transportation department, PPL was responsible for all the equipment, any -- everything up into cranes, all the equipment they owned or leased at the time and did the repair work on. Al recognized that I had my state inspection license, which usually if you went through PPL's training program, you didn't get a chance to sit for your exam and become a state inspection mechanic until year three of your training. He gave me the opportunity to do that right away. He was encouraging, but he was fair. He didn't treat me differently than the others. He treated me a little differently in the sense that I remember very keenly one day he paired me with a guy named Jack, another mechanic there. And it was to do a routine maintenance, lubrication, change oil, that kind of thing on a line truck, a digging truck that would dig holes to plant poles -- and to do the maintenance and also the state inspection on it, so pull wheels to look at brake lining and that kind of thing. Jack was not a very good mechanic. He hated working with me. He refused to speak to me the entire time that we did the work on this vehicle, so I ended up having to... All the parts of the vehicle that he checked over, since he wouldn't tell me what the condition was, I had to do the whole -- I had to do his part of the job also. And so when it was done, it had taken me twice as long as it should have taken two people to do that job because I -- he wouldn't talk to me. And I went to Al, and I said, "This is what happened." I said, "Please don't put me with someone again." He said, "I understand, I won't, I won't do that to you again. You're a junior mechanic with a state inspection license, I put you with someone who was farther along in the program, but obviously, it was a problem, it made --" He didn't say all this out loud, but this was the gist of the interaction we had that this was an embarrassment to this man, plus he wasn't a very good mechanic, so he never did that again. So I did all my work on my own. Very rare that I work with someone, it was extremely rare. So Al was really good about that, really supportive. He protected me in that way. When I worked on the garage, I would think of it this way. I looked at the men that I worked with, and there were the guys who were like, it's no problem that you're a female working on this job, and those became my friend, they're my friends and good friends. And about a third of the mechanics, it was like, okay, so you're here, that's fine, no big deal, but we didn't become close. And then the last third, they were the problem ones, they were the ones -- and it took me a long time to understand this. It took me a while to understand this, a couple of years, but I came to understand that those men that really hated working alongside a woman or working with a -- or having -- the idea of having a woman as a mechanic. Those men were ones that were not good mechanics, they were not confident in their skills, they didn't really understand mechanics very well, it was not really their thing. And those were the ones that were -- gave me the hard time, all the time. They were constantly threatened because... And I realized, they might -- being in a situation where I do a much better job than they did and then what did that mean about them. And so those were the ones that would sabotage my work where when I'd walk away from the vehicles and go to the restroom or whatever, come back, they'd had poured transmission flood down the carburetor so that when you start it up, it would smoke like crazy. They'd change the -- loosened the distributor and changed the timing on the engine so that the engine would backfire and wouldn't run, those kinds of things, so... But then, there were the guys who realized that I could be helpful because I have little hands and I could get in really tight spaces. Where when you're working on the hydraulic systems of a line trucks, the digging trucks and the bucket trucks, that I could get in these very tight spaces to get fittings loosened or started again to get them threaded and all kinds of places that were little places, so... But the one thing I remember when I first became -- started to do mechanical work there, a lot of the guys were upset with me, and finally after a couple of weeks, the union steward, the shop steward took me aside and said, "Look, you have to slow down. You're working way too fast, and you're making us look bad, so you need to slow down," [laughs] so I did. And, yeah, I have to say I always enjoyed working for a union. The union is real -- really instrumental in me being able to keep my job. The union was a fair enough union. It had its problems just like everything does in life, but they were about keeping the union employees employed. And so there could be... Along the way, I wanted a place to change my clothes and shower just like the guys did. You're filthy dirty, and you have to crawl into your vehicle and drive home. They didn't have a locker room for the women. The first thing they did was to take -- to -- in response to my request, the union stood behind me, but management was not about to build one woman a locker room, and so what they did was they changed my hours by half an hour. So I would use the men's locker room at the beginning of the shift and at the end of the shift. My shift was half an hour different, so I could use the women's locker room. The union made -- meant that I was going to get -- I was a mechanic trainee just like the other mechanic trainees ; I got paid the same amount they did. So I really appreciated working for a union. But I think that I was a pretty darn good mechanic. I'm not one to toot my horn, but I do think I was a pretty darn good mechanic, and that's what changes people over time. That's what changes discrimination. So along the way occasionally, women would bid into the job of transportation handyman, and it was always a mixed blessing. It would be nice to have another woman there, but if they weren't putting out a thousand percent, then it was -- made my life harder. And along the way, the women that did come through, pretty much all of them were in the category that they weren't really mechanics. They didn't have the training or the inclination or the, yeah, aptitude for it. And over time, it no longer became a problem for me because they did recognize that I was a good mechanic. And they'd say things like, "Oh well, you're different." But I had plenty of people from other departments, like the linemen would come in to drop off their vehicles, and they come up to me and say, "You know you're taking the job away from a man. You don't belong here. You're taking a job away from a man," and I'd say, "Well, who's going to support me? I have to have a way to support me too. Why shouldn't I be able to have this job?" "Well, you should marry a man and then there would be -- and then that job would be there available for a man." MF: Well, I mean, that has -- that kind of leads me to wonder about what it was like to be a lesbian working at PPL during that time period. I'm curious, was there homophobia in the workplace? What was it like to be at PPL as a lesbian person? JL: Yeah, that was really tough. It was hard enough being a woman in a nontraditional job, and then to be lesbian on top of it was really hard. The whole time I worked in the garage, I was closeted, I was not out but every-- virtually everybody knew it. [laughs] Well, I don't know ; it's kind of weird. The guys who gave me a hard time, they seem to know it, they seem to pick up on it. They guys who were my friends didn't exactly seem to pick up on it because actually several of those friends along the way expressed that they had a romantic interest in me in one form or another -- two of them did. We managed to weather through that and not go in that direction without me saying I am not interested in relationship with a man other than a friend. And we managed to maintain our friendships. Eventually after I left the garage, I ended up in -- I was a mechanic for a number of years and then a job came along as the parts person. They called it the transportation material handler. And the fellow who was in that job, they needed to have a second person, and his name was [Dave?]. He came to me and asked me, "Would you please apply for this job?" I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, the pay is about the same, and I'm not a mechanic, and you're really good at what you do. And there's some men that are applying for the job -- going to apply for the job that I do not want to work with, so would you please apply for the job?" And at that time, I was getting really tired of the guys who would sabotage my work and so I thought, oh, maybe -- it was the same pay, maybe this would be a good idea. It broke my heart to stop being a mechanic but I... And it was a hard transition for me because I love what I did. I just was tired of the struggle every day coming and having to deal with some men [laughs] who just couldn't wrap his head around the idea that I would be -- as a woman, be working there. It was a blow to their ego and so there was a certain number of men who it was constantly -- they were out to get me, but like I had said before, not all of them. But I decided I would do that. And so I became material handler and really kind of became the parts manager, even though that was not a title, that was not my title. Because the other fellow really wanted to just do the paperwork, pay the bills for the parts, and this, that, and the other, and wanted me to be the one to find the parts for all the equipment we have. And so it turned out, I ended up loving that job. I could use my mechanical background to do that job, and I could use my knack for accounting and my knack for problem solving. I would find parts sometimes all over the world. I remember one time, I had to -- I ended up pursuing -- looking, and I would read the diagrams for all the vehicles and all the hydraulic plumbing and everything. We had a cable stringer that needed a part, and the cable stringers were used a lot in dock work. You'd think, well, what do you need a -- why would you go to...? I went to the manufacturer of this particular piece of equipment, and it was used for dock work, but it was also used to string electrical cable, heavy -- really heavy cable. I ended up talking to somebody in Italy to find this part. And I was equally as good at doing that job if not better because I was -- I got to operate by myself. I used my mechanical ability and also my problem-solving abilities, and I felt I was really appreciated by the management there. In fact, sometimes, one of the poor mechanics would ask me for a part, and I'd think, why in the world would you want that part, and I'd ask him. I'd say, "Well, what's the problem with the vehicle?" and they'd say, "Well, it's doing this or that or not doing this or that, and I want this part." So I'd say, "Okay," and then I'd have to go to the foreman and say, "So-and-so wants me to order this part. This is what's wrong with it, I don't think this is the problem, I think he needs this other part instead." And the foreman would say, "Yup, you're right, go ahead and order it." So that didn't make me popular with that third group of mechanics who weren't competent at their job. But I was on a much more level playing field because I was the only game in town. They had to come to me for their part. So if you treat me too badly, you might not get the part you needed in the time you need it. [laughs] MF: So PPL today has an LGBT staff group. At that time, were -- did you know other people at PPL that were lesbian or gay, or was it mostly like people knew but didn't know or was it -- JL: No, you knew, you knew who the gay people were there. Your gaydar told you who they were. You gingerly approach them and then they acknowledge they were gay also. So in '95, they started cutting back on services, and they went through the transportation department. Because of the union, I was -- the fellow Dave who asked me to take that job as the parts person, he was there first, so they cut back to one material handler in every garage, so I lost my job in 1995. I went up to the service center, which was also on the same property and became a dispatcher for -- a power dispatcher for repairs of electrical -- sending people to repair electrical equipment for storms and that kind of thing. And that's when I became out. I was actually outed by a lesbian up there who was not a very nice person and decided she would do that for me whether I liked it or not. But in retrospect, it turned out to be one of the best things in my life because I was just tired of trying to be closeted. And so that's when I got involved in -- shortly thereafter, another woman, a lesbian there -- PPL announced they were going to start diversity groups, and a woman activist there named Donna asked that there be a gay group and so that was begun. And I ended up writing the proposal for lesbian and gay rights for employees. Because at that time, if you were a heterosexual employee of PPL , you got all kinds of benefits for your family. And if you had -- you were in a gay relationship because you couldn't be married, you couldn't get any of those benefits. So the biggest argument I made in the proposal I wrote for all kinds of benefits for gay and lesbians was you are -- it should be equal pay for equal work. And that's what you say you have here at this company, but it's not because all of the single people are subsidizing the married couples because they get a huge advantage cost-wise of paying for the benefits for the rest of their family. Whereas our lesbian or gay partner does not get those benefits and has to go out and buy them elsewhere. It took seven years. I think it was seven years... I'm not sure about the timing here whether it was -- it took -- I think it took seven years and maybe seven years for management to get the benefits. It was either five years and seven years or seven years and nine years. Management got the benefit first, employees that were gay and lesbian that were management, and then it took two more years to get the union to give us the benefits. And I still to this day cannot believe that the union stood behind us. [laughs] It wasn't easy to get them to stand behind us. It was actually from the larger union leadership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who pretty much forced our local IBEW to give gays benefits. Prior to that time, if your significant other in life died -- and we had several of these situations. If that person died, you might not even get the time off to go to the funeral. MF: Not all of our listeners, especially younger generations, will be familiar with the kinds of benefits that you were asking for. But what you've just described is like the ability to attend a funeral, the ability to leave work to go to a hospital if a loved one is experiencing illness. I'm sure life insurance might have been something else. But could you describe a few of the benefits that you really identified in that white paper and that you really fought for those seven years for all gay and lesbian PPL employees to have access to those benefits? What were they? What did you really prioritize? JL: Sure. The first benefit we got was a single benefit and what was the right to go -- have the day off to go to the funeral of your partner. That was the first one. And you had to declare that you had a relationship, and you had to prove that you had that relationship by -- now, this isn't something that anybody who was married had to do. They didn't have to turn in their marriage certificate in order to get benefits. They just had to say, "Hey, this is my wife or my husband, and these are my kids' names, and these are their birthdates," and that kind of thing. But the very first benefit we got was a funeral benefit and bereavement benefit. And that was that you could have from the time you're -- just like the straight people got, from the time your partner died if you had them registered as your partner to the time that the funeral occurred, you could have those days off and then you had to return to work the day after the funeral. I know in dispatch, there was someone who was in that case. Well, actually, in that department, it was called -- the fellow held the job of system operator, and his partner died. And because system operators are -- you must -- there aren't a lot of them, and they had to be on the job 24/7, and they did a lot of overtime just like the people in dispatching did, this fellow, they would not let them go because they didn't have a replacement. And so I can't imagine, I can't imagine how much -- how hard that must have been and how much that must have hurt. I was amazed that the fellow hadn't even -- hadn't quit the company, but he weathered through it. There was nothing for us when we started, nothing. When I say it took the seven and nine years, that was to get health insurance. So we're looking to get health insurance, and you couldn't be married at that time as a gay person. So you were looking to get that health insurance. I remember there was one woman in the -- our group there at PPL. The name of the group was called GLOW, Gays and Lesbians in the Workplace, and [Tammy?] was her name. She would call her her wife even though they legally weren't married, and her wife had two children. Actually, the two children were born by artificial insemination in the time that they were together. And so Tammy was a great poster child for our cause because we would occasionally be able to have a meeting with someone in higher management, and we would bring Tammy in to plead her case -- she was great. And Tammy worked as a power plant operator out in Central Pennsylvania, and she will come in. She was a tough broad, but she would tell them, "It breaks my heart when my children are really sick, and I don't have health insurance for them. And I must try to take them to the hospital and get care for them, and I can't get care for them really very well because I don't have insurance, and my partner does not have insurance." And so eventually, the best that they were able to do was to get her partner and the children who were her biological children, she had carried them, on Medicaid. But still on Medicaid, the services were really poor. And so she was one of the big factors that helped turn them around, but it was a lot of factors that -- a lot of work over seven years to try to get them to give health insurance. When you got health insurance, they made it clear that -- the legal department at PPL made it clear that if you left the company -- well, let me not even say left the company. If you retired and you're -- you went on Medicare then because you're a retired employee, that your spouse would no longer -- if the spouse was younger, they would be kicked off of the PPL insurance policy because you weren't legally married. So actually, the rights that I fought for, for all those years, I never ended up using because my partner and now, my -- who's now my wife, Michele was eight years younger, and she's self-employed. We looked at that and said, "You know, I'm going to retire, you'll get bumped off. You have a preexisting health condition and you will end up not being able to be insured, so we're going to have to continue insu-- you're going to have to continue insuring yourself because I don't dare put you on this policy. Because, one, you'll be in your late fifties when I will retire, and trying to find you an insurance policy would be very difficult, that we could afford." It was really already unaffordable, I mean, until I was able to get married -- till we were able to get married and then I could go back to PPL and say, "Okay, now even though I'm retired, you need to put my wife on your insurance policy." That was in 2015, not very long ago. [laughs] But by that time, Michele was paying twelve thousand dollars a year for health insurance as a self-employed person. So when you say help younger people understand, this was huge. Also, I was able to get a life insurance policy for Michele when I was at PPL. That was huge because when you couldn't be married, you're talking about if one of you passes away, the other one has to pay fifteen percent inheritance tax on everything you have accumulated in your life together, and Michele and I have been together thirty-six years, and we maintained -- early on, we got life insurance policies against each other so that if one passed away, the other one would have the life insurance policy to pay the inheritance tax on everything we had built in life. MF: So while you were working with GLOW at PPL, were you aware of other LGBT organizations in the valley that were working on similar issues? Or did you have connections with other activist organizations in the valley? JL: We did. Air Products was one we often -- that we were connected to, and we would often talk with, maybe meet with here and there. They were ahead of us in trying to get benefits, but in the end -- I'm not sure if they ever got benefits in the end. The people at Air Products were -- all the people we worked with were professional people, people with degrees, so they were considered management employees at Air Products. So I think because of that, Air Products acknowledged them earlier than PPL acknowledged our gay and lesbian workers. But I think because of maybe financial issues, the company was -- I'm not sure why that Air Products seemed to struggle. You would have thought they would get all the benefits before we did. MF: Were outside of employee -- like industry-based LGBT organizations, were you aware of social or health-based LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley? Or were you involved with any other organizations outside of the -- outside of GLOW at PPL? JL: On the individual level, I got involved with a community service group, a gay community service group called AIDS Outreach. I didn't have the time to try and dig out when I had actually all the -- when I started volunteering for them, but I'm pretty sure it was somewhere around '92, '93 maybe that I volunteered to be a worker at AIDS Outreach. At that time, the AIDS epidemic had been going on for some time, and it was getting activists. AIDS activists were getting their stories out more and more in the press. There was still a hugely negative sentiment around someone with AIDS. When I started with that group, what that group did was I was, what they called, an AIDS buddy. So they would pair a volunteer to be a support person for someone who had AIDS that had come to AIDS Outreach for services. And so as an AIDS buddy, I was there to be the cheerleader, the person who would help when someone is really sick, get groceries, to be an advocate for services, which might be health services, all kinds of things. And when I started, I volunteered for that job because I had read an article in the newspaper and I thought -- just it moved me to tears. I thought it's hard enough to die, let alone die without a single person in the world there to support you, to give you comfort, to touch you. People were just scared out of their minds by AIDS. And AIDS Outreach not only provided the buddy program, but they educated the public that it's like, you're not going to get AIDS from this person who has AIDS by touching him. You're not going to get it unless you have a transfer of blood products or -- and that kind of thing. You are more of a danger to that person who has AIDS and a compromised immune system than they ever will be of you. If you're not having sex with them, you're not swapping saliva or blood or semen -- I'm sorry to be graphic, but that is basically a product semen -- and so you're not going to get AIDS, and you're not really at risk at all. The first AIDS buddy I had when he was hospitalized -- every time he'd be hospitalized, they had him in a quarantine room. The people would -- or the nursing staff would come in and when they absolutely had to. They pretty much avoid coming into the room. They were scared to death of AIDS and not unlike the situation we're in right now with COVID-19. But I think in a lot of ways, it was even worse because there was the stigma of in our country it was, you don't have this disease unless you're gay on top of it. So you have this horrible disease, it also means you're gay and we don't -- society, for the most part, really ostracizes and does not like gay people at this time in history. And so, I couldn't imagine trying to live with AIDS or die with AIDS without a support system so that's why I got involved. It was hard back then. MF: For how many people were you a buddy during that time period in the early '90s? JL: I worked for AIDS Outreach until the year 2000, and I had three AIDS buddies. I was an AIDS buddy for three clients over that time. The first one, his name was [Brian?]. It was early on, and there was -- they didn't have a combination drug regimen at that time, so he did not last long. So it was maybe a year that we were together. The second person that I was an AIDS buddy for, his name was [Nick?], and I had him for a good number of years. By that time, they had combination drug therapies, but again, they weren't the greatest, and Nick was not -- Nick was -- well I'll just say it. Nick had drug-use problems and so that being a drug user and having AIDS was pretty darn tough on someone's immune system. We were probably together for five years -- four years -- maybe four years, yeah, maybe like three to four years, I guess, until he passed away. And then the last person I had was a woman who was a heterosexual woman who had gotten AIDS from having sex partners -- male sex partners that had AIDS because -- probably because they were drug users. I think she dabbled some in it but not hugely in drugs. And she had four boys, and she was the last client that I worked with. MF: Did you -- in 2000... I guess my question is like, did that organization, was that still -- organization still going strong into the early twenty-first century, or did the volunteer structure change in that, in AIDS Outreach as an organization? JL: I looked on the internet this morning to see if AIDS Outreach still existed. It looks like it does still exist. I know they worked closely with the Lehigh Valley Hospital to provide services for people who have AIDS. People are able to live decently, decently well with AIDS these days, so the picture has changed a lot. I stopped being a volunteer for AIDS Outreach in the year 2000. The last woman, the woman that I had, her name was [Marie?]. The woman who ran AIDS Outreach is a wonderful person named Linda Lobach, and to this day, I think of Linda Lobach every couple of months probably because she had a great saying. She would tell the volunteers and all the people that work for her that "When you're dealing with people with AIDS, AIDS is one thing, but there's a lot of other behavior that enters into working with another human being and trying to support them." When there was a problem, she would say, "Take the AIDS out of it, and what are you left with? Is this reasonable or not reasonable?" [laughs] And so I still use that little bit of wisdom and logic to deal with a lot of things in life, take the whatever out of it, and what are you left with? Yeah, this is not reasonable behavior. [laughs] So I parted ways in 2000 because the last client I had, Marie was... She ended up losing her four children because -- I often had to be the parent. These kids would go without food. I didn't have to, but I wanted to try to help them. Eventually, somebody reported her to a neighbor, or someone she knew reported her to children and youth services, and they took her four kids away because she was... She had AIDS, but take the AIDS out of it, and you were left with someone who was doing drugs, drinking to excess at times, and basically hanging out at bars to find men, and leaving her kids unattended, so... I thought that it was a good time to part ways. AIDS Outreach had been -- to me and my way of thinking, had been established for a very good reason, and that reason was getting lost. And it may have just been... I don't want to discourage AIDS Outreach -- [cat purrs] Hi, Spanky. This is my cat Spanky. [laughs] Say hi Spank. [laughs] Okay, Spanky, go play somewhere. I don't, by any means, want to disparage AIDS Outreach. It was a wonderful organization and did a lot of good work and probably still does a lot of good work. And it may just have been the client I had, but I thought I'd had enough. I needed to do something else, so... MF: Well, we're nearing the end of the interview, and there two sort of areas that I'd like to explore just a little bit further. I'm interested, you've mentioned a few times about being a Quaker in the '70s. I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about your spirituality? I'm wondering if you could just discuss a little bit about your emergence into the Quaker church and maybe the evolution of your faith? JL: Okay. Well, I started going to Quaker Meeting in the early '70s I guess. And I mentioned my psychology professor, Tony LoGiudice went there, and that's how I ended up attending a Quaker Meeting. He said that I might like this place. Maybe he recognized I was a lesbian -- that was years before I knew I was a lesbian -- I don't know. But maybe just because I was in a nontraditional -- looking to get into a nontraditional job or probably because Quaker Meeting was a place that allowed people to -- it was not dogmatic, a dogmatic type of religion. They encouraged people to be freethinkers. You could believe in God, or you could have eastern India -- East Indian background and religions. So you could be of any kind of faith and be accepted there. There were people who were agnostic or atheists. It was a hodgepodge of people that basically believed there is a spiritual light within each of us that we can touch and nurture and share with each other. Quakers were early pioneers of endorsing domestic partnership relationships. Before there was marriage, there were certain states where you could go and be united in the -- as a domestic partner with each other. So it turned out to be a good place for me. MF: Are you still in the Quaker church, or was that your consistent faith community through your adult life? JL: I will always be a Quaker at heart. They worship and they don't... We have what's called an unprogrammed -- the one in Lehigh Valley was called an -- what we called an unprogrammed Meeting where there was no minister. You would sit in silence and meditate. When you felt that a strong urge to speak that you had been given a message from -- a spiritual type message to share with others, then you would stand and share that message. When I say I'll always be a Quaker at heart, it is because that's the way I prefer to worship or to -- that's my spirituality that speaks to me. I'm not a member of Quaker Meeting any longer. There are no Quaker Meetings where I live now. The closest I could come is Unitarian Universalist Church, which again is very supportive of gay people. Any disenfranchised groups, both the Quakers and the Unitarian Universalists are -- champion rights of the oppressed or the disenfranchised group. They worship very differently and so I will -- I like the people at the Unitarian Universalist Church. I share a lot of the same values with them, but their way of worshipping is entirely different. They have a minister and a programmed service, and so... That's not so much to my liking. MF: It sounds to me like your faith -- the faith communities that you've been involved in, the Quakers and now the Unitarian Universalist, have been really affirming of both women and LGBT people. Like the MCCLV church in Bethlehem has been -- in Bethlehem and Allentown has been really supportive of LGBT people. Would you say that you ever struggled as an lesbian with your faith? Or would you say that your faith always confirmed the value of your identity, of your sexual identity? JL: I didn't have a religious faith until I was a young adult and did a bunch of searching at different churches to try to find where I fit in. I did that for a good number of years. So it wasn't until maybe like 1972 -- I would have been twenty-two at the time, twenty-three, around there -- that I found Quaker Meeting. So it's probably to my advantage that I didn't have much of a religious upbringing because even not having a religious upbringing, I still struggle with -- that I was a gay person and that this was wrong in society's eyes. So there were some guilt but not as much as -- I certainly had a number of friends who had been, say, brought up in -- maybe the Catholic church was one of the hardest ones. If you were brought in the Catholic faith and you were going to be gay, you were doomed to struggle and struggle and struggle with what you had been taught was wrong to do and try to figure out how to come out and be a reasonably happy and well-functioning gay person. MF: That certainly was the case for me being raised Catholic ; it was a little bit of a challenge. Okay. So since we're nearing the end of the interview, I'm wondering if you could share the Michele story? Like how did you meet Michele, if you could talk a little bit about this primary partnership in your life? JL: Well, it's pretty bizarre. [laughs] Before Michele, before I met Michele, I had two other lovers. The first one was Diane, and the second one was Janice. And Janice was with me a couple of years and maybe four I guess it was, and she had two children. We all lived together, and Janice had been a straight woman and then she decided that being a gay woman was what she wanted. And she did that for four years and then decided she wanted to be straight again. So she left me and I had the house still in Catasauqua, the town house. I could make it financially on my own, but I had other, a couple of loans because I had made some renovations to the house. I think I had a car loan out, and I was really strapped for cash, so I needed to find a roommate fast. So I asked my friend Dixie White. This was one of the people I said, "I'm looking for a housemate that's going to be probably somebody who's a lesbian or possibly a gay man, but somebody that wouldn't be offended living with me, and I need to find somebody fast." So Dixie had gone to -- she put out the word to a couple of people. And this one day, she went to the dentist, and the dentist, hygienist, or maybe it was the office manager was a gay woman, a lesbian, and she said, "I have this friend who's looking for a housemate." And so, this woman whose name was Gay [laughs] took down my name and my phone number and said, "I'll keep that in mind." And so as I recall, I think I have these details right -- Michele might confirm it when you speak to her -- but Michele was a patient I believe and came in to the dentist's office and so Gay told her. And Michele had just lost her lover who had gone and run off with some woman, other woman and so Michele needed a place to stay. And so this woman, Gay who was a total stranger to me and not very well known at all to Michele ended up putting us together. And Michele contacted me. She came over to look at the house, and I was pretty traumatized at having been left and I was pretty scared of... I just wanted a roommate to help me pay the expenses and so I -- and so Michele had -- she smoked and while she was there, I asked her if I could get her something to drink. It was during the day, oh probably late afternoon, and I didn't expect her to say she wanted some type of alcoholic drink, but she asked for an alcoholic drink. And so I was like, oh, I was a little scared, she wanted alcohol and she smokes, and I told her. I said, "No one smokes in this house. I will not allow you to smoke, you'd have to smoke outside." And she was nervous, had a couple of drinks and so I wasn't sure about that. And so she said, "Well, let me think about it." And she called me back sometime later and said, "I have decided that I don't want to become your roommate," she said, "but I would like to date you." [laughs] So that's how we met. MF: Well, what did you say? What did you say when she said that? JL: So we started dating. It was tough because we both struggled financially because neither one of us ended up with a roommate. We did that for about six months and then she moved into the house with me. [laughs] MF: That's a great story. [laughter] If you reflect back on your relationship because you get -- been together decades, how would you describe your relationship with Michele? JL: Well, Michele is a psychologist by profession, so.. But you take the psychologist out of it as Linda Lobach would say, and you're just left with a person where you have to learn how to negotiate a lifetime together. Do we fight? Sure, we fight at times over the years. It's gotten to be less and less and less, but we both needed to grow, and we grew together. And so we have a pretty solid relationship at this point. And we are a team. We've been together longer than any of her siblings and their relationships. Let me think here a minute. All of Michele's siblings are divorced and have remarried or -- let's see, are they all remarried now? Yup, they're all remarried. They've been divorced at least once if not twice. And so occasionally when they were going through the hard times in their relationships, they would ask us, "Well, what's the -- what's your secret to staying together all these years?" And we'd say one word, "Commitment." You want to make a relationship work, you have to be committed to the relationship. When you're having a hard time, you don't get to run away. You have to stick it out and work it through, and it is no magic bullet. You're not going to be madly in love with each other like you were at the first for the rest of your life. It's going to be a different kind of love that grows very deep because through thick and thin, you stick together, which builds trust, which is an issue for a lot of gay relationships. And you are there for each other and don't break that trust, and you'll get through it, whatever it is. MF: What did marriage equality do for you and Michele? JL: Oh my God, it was huge. It was huge, just huge, and I'm surprised. We were so shocked that we got the right to get married in Pennsylvania, the state of Pennsylvania. It was 2014, May of 2014 when they passed that, and my brother-in-law who lived in Texas -- my sister had passed at that -- by that time -- my brother-in-law who never speaks to me called me. He's an extremely quiet guy, extremely quiet -- called me and said, "I just heard this on the news." He was the one who told me that it had been passed in Pennsylvania. Later that day, I got -- the phone rang, and I picked it up and it was -- I didn't understand what I was listening to at first, but it was a conference call with the gay... I can't even remember at the moment which gay group it was, but they were having a conference call, the lawyers that had fought for these rights and talking about what had happened, what had transpired, and what it meant. And so when I say it was huge, we've always been married whether we could be legally married or not. We've always been married in our minds, in our hearts. But it meant that we no longer had to maintain huge insurance policies to try and help pay for -- you know if one of us passed away, the other one would inherit it. We didn't have to have these really complicated legal documents. We didn't have to... We could be married, and Michele could be on my insurance policy at the company I used to -- that I retired from. I mean that was the biggest one. What did it mean to have marriage equality? Health insurance. [laughs] That's what it meant, health insurance and the right to inherit without having to pay tax. That's it in a nutshell. You no longer had to produce documents, if one of us was in the hospital, that said we had the right to see each other or to make decisions if someone was in poor health, and we were in that situation a number of times. Doctors that would fight with us, get out of here, you don't have a right to be here, huge. MF: Did you have a ceremony together when you got married, or what was your marriage like? JL: We got married at the Unitarian Universalist Church that we belong in -- belong to here in Athens, in the area, Athens and Sheshequin. Good friends of ours from the church, Katie and Chris were the first couple in the county to go to the courthouse and apply for a marriage license. Michele had to think about it a day or two, what it might mean to be out as a psychologist in business for herself. And she thought about it for two days and said, "That's it, I'm not going to live in the closet, we're doing this." We became the third couple to apply. And interestingly, the second couple to apply in our county was from New York State where they already had marriage, the ability to get marriage -- be married for a couple of years, but the county that they lived in in New York State were very close to the border. The clerk there that would issue the marriage license was very homophobic and gave them a very hard time and so they came to Pennsylvania to get their license. So Katie and Chris were the first and Michele and I were the third applicants, and our minister was just finishing up a sabbatical from the church. She came back in June -- I think as of June the first and Katie and Chris and Michele and I were all married at the same day in the same ceremony. We wanted to do it quickly because we were afraid that the state of Pennsylvania would withdraw. The legislation would be overturned, and we would no longer have the right, or it would become a legal issue. So we wanted to get married quickly, so it would at least make it tougher for them to divorce -- to divorce us, so to say, so... And our anniversary is coming up June the fourth, and Katie and Chris and Michele and I still join together every year on -- if not that day, the closest day that we can to it to celebrate that we were all married on the same day. MF: Oh, that's just wonderful. Well, we are well over 90 minutes, so... I have more that I'd love to talk about, but I feel like I really need to end the interview. But before we do that, Jane, I just want to ask, is there anything that we really -- that we missed today that you really felt you wanted to share in this interview? JL: Not that I can think of. I will share one story, and I don't know why this just popped in my head. But when I retired from PPL by that time, I had -- it was a good company to work for, good benefits and good pay, so I kept taking jobs that were there. I always considered the garage my home. That's really who I am, really where I spent the most time, but I moved on to other jobs. But when I retired, I had not worked in the garage. I retired in 2012 ; I had not worked in the garage since 1995. When I retired, it was the guys in the garage who threw me a party, and that meant the world to me. MF: Well, it's clear that they agreed, too, that you really were a star in that garage, and they felt really connected to you. JL: Even the ones that gave me a problem when I worked there, after I was forced to be out, I go back and visit periodically, they all become my friends. And so we all stay in touch till this day. MF: Thank you for sharing that story. The way that I'll end our interview is simply by saying, Jane, it's just really been an honor, a real privilege to hear your story today. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me and to talk about your life. JL: Well, thank you for inviting me, Mary. I'm a pretty low-key person. At first I really didn't know if I wanted to do something like this, but I thought, oh, let me be out of character a little bit and do it. So I hope it works out for you, what you needed. Thank you for the opportunity. MF: Thank you so much. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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02:01:53
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Jane Land, May 29, 2020
Description
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Jane Land describes her childhood in Bucks County, her experiences at Moravian College in a social work program, and her movement to Northampton Community College to study mechanics where she was the only woman in the auto mechanic program. Land goes on to discuss her work as an auto mechanic at a variety of shops until she took a job at PPL in their garage and eventually as parts manager. With reference to her work, she discusses sexism and homophobia in the workplace and her work on gay and lesbian rights for employees of PPL. Beyond her discussion of her career, Land describes LGBT community spaces in the 1970s and 1980s, her work with N.O.W. in the 1970s (including attending the 1977 International Women’s Conference in Texas) and AIDS Outreach, and her religious affiliations with Quakers and UUC. Toward the end of the interview, Land discusses marriage equality and her spouse, Michele Strohl.
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LGBT-10
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2020-05-29
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/09d5c14222164d2f4df0fcfa722f335c.png
20a6bf673fbc1e7cbe5317e72871180a
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Title
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Mary Foltz
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Michele Strohl
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Viewer)
https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-11.xml
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5.4 June 5, 2020 Michele Strohl, June 5, 2020 LGBT-11 02:13:29 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Michele Strohl Mary Foltz video/mp4 StrohlMichele_20200605_video.mp4 1.0:|27(4)|62(2)|79(16)|100(10)|123(15)|148(5)|171(3)|192(3)|213(2)|236(5)|255(16)|278(17)|303(2)|324(17)|343(12)|362(16)|379(9)|404(5)|421(21)|442(7)|463(11)|480(11)|499(4)|522(9)|543(6)|564(8)|585(7)|602(14)|621(9)|638(6)|657(5)|680(11)|701(6)|722(7)|739(14)|760(3)|781(2)|800(2)|817(10)|840(16)|861(13)|884(13)|903(16)|922(10)|939(13)|958(4)|977(13)|1000(2)|1023(5)|1042(9)|1063(5)|1086(4)|1103(11)|1122(18)|1141(12)|1160(16)|1179(6)|1202(4)|1223(12)|1240(10)|1259(13)|1278(2)|1301(13)|1322(6)|1345(17)|1372(13)|1393(15)|1414(15)|1435(12)|1456(3)|1475(16)|1494(6)|1515(13)|1534(2)|1553(15)|1568(18)|1589(3)|1610(17)|1629(7)|1646(17)|1665(8)|1682(2)|1701(12)|1724(2)|1747(7)|1764(10)|1781(7)|1804(6)|1821(5)|1842(16)|1853(7)|1866(10)|1887(2)|1906(3)|1925(8)|1948(7)|1969(7)|1994(3)|2013(12)|2036(6)|2059(6)|2084(11)|2107(8)|2128(12)|2149(9)|2168(5)|2187(7)|2210(5)|2229(17)|2254(4)|2277(17)|2300(10)|2321(4)|2346(3)|2371(13)|2392(10)|2415(16)|2438(7)|2459(10)|2478(16)|2495(5)|2512(5)|2529(8)|2548(14)|2567(5)|2588(7)|2609(10)|2630(5)|2649(11)|2668(9)|2691(2)|2714(9)|2739(4)|2752(4) 0 https://youtu.be/djSEcBHVz4w YouTube video 0 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: Okay. My name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with Michele Strohl to talk about her life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. This is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. And Michele and I are meeting on Zoom because there is a global pandemic, and today is June 5, 2020. So first I’ll just say thank you so much, Michele, for joining me today for this interview.
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 ; MICHELE STROHL: You’re very welcome.
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 ; MF: And to start, could you please state your full name and spell it for me?
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 ; MS: My name is Michele, middle name is Victoria, and the last name is Strohl. My first name is spelled M-I-C-H-E-L-E, just one L. Middle name is Victoria, V-I-C-T-O-R-I-A, and the last name is Strohl, S-T-R-O-H-L. 0 123 Early Childhood/Family Life MF: Great. Okay, so let’s go ahead and start. And Michele, maybe let’s begin, could you tell me a little bit about your childhood?
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 ; MS: Well, I was raised in a blended family, so I was raised by my mother and my stepfather, who actually adopted me. Also, he gave me his last name when I was about five or six. So I do have a number of brothers and sisters. I grew up with three brothers and three sisters, so there were seven of us, and later in life, around the age of forty, I met my other brother, who was a half-sibling of mine that I had known about since I was about seven or eight, but we had never met. So that’s kind of my family. My mother is still alive. She’s eighty-one. And my father -- and I call him my father even though he’s my adopted father -- he's deceased, and he died in 2016. 0 405 Teenage/College Years MS: High school, I was a pretty shy girl, studious, athletic. I played three sports in high school, basketball, softball, and volleyball. Didn’t really get the whole dating thing that was going on in my teen years. I mean, certainly there was a lot of my girlfriends talking about boys, wanting to date boys. I wasn’t feeling that. Ever since I was twelve, I kind of knew I was attracted to girls. Didn’t really know why, didn’t know what that was called. Just knew that I preferred their company once I got to be pre-teen and teen, and kind of thought I was weird. I thought, well, maybe I’m a slow bloomer, and maybe I’ll catch onto this boy thing that everybody’s talking about. Not so. Did not happen for me. 
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 ; I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, very rural town, farming, logging, and you were expected to date boys. You were expected to be lady-like. I had to wear dresses to school or skirts. Pants were not allowed. I’d change into my pants or shorts as soon as I got home. Hated dresses. So by the time I was in seventh grade, they changed that rule in junior high, and we were able to wear pants, and I was so delighted. And I have to say, Mary, very seldom from that time on have I ever worn a dress. Hate them. Feel very odd and uncomfortable in them, but if the situation arises that I have to wear one, I can, but that just was not my uniform of choice. 0 836 Realization of Sexuality MS: And it wasn’t until I got to college that I knew there was a name for women like me. I went to East Stroudsburg University, got my undergraduate psychology degree there. I was in a dormitory named Lenape Hall, which later we called Lesbian Hall because a lot of the lesbians lived in Lenape. 
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 ; I was fortunate enough very early in my freshman year to meet other women like me. Quite a few of them lived on my floor or the floor above or a couple floors above me. And I did meet my first girlfriend my freshman year of college, and she was Mennonite, which is kind of unusual. And I did not go after her. She came after me, which also surprised me because she was raised Mennonite. 0 1083 Coming Out/Family Reaction MS: So my dad was pretty upset that I had said I love you on the phone. My mother started giving me all kinds of negative messages through my freshman year about those weird gay people and things she would hear about on TV and what’s wrong with them and a lot of negativity, a lot of not real hateful words, but I could tell my mom was not liking people like me. So finally after hearing it several times when I’d come home to visit, I was alone with my mother, and I said to her, enough of this. I can’t listen to you talk about gay people like this. This is very hurtful to me. And she said, I don’t understand why, and I said, because I am one of them, mom. I am a lesbian. So then I came out to my mom. I was eighteen. 0 1715 Experience of Being Out in College/Social Life
 ; MF: You’re not rambling. This is wonderful. I have some questions about what it was like to be out at East Stroudsburg University in that period prior to meeting Jane. I’m just curious about what college life was like for people that were out in East Stroudsburg.
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 ; MS: I would say I was out to my crowd, out to the other lesbians. I didn’t consider myself to be out, loud, and proud like some people were starting to do. I don’t really feel that I was as much a part of that until maybe later, until I got closer to maybe my senior year of college. But I was lucky enough to meet a lot of lesbians very early on, and a lot of life at that time was parties off campus, older women that lived in a community that once went to college there. Alumni that were in town would host parties. Some upperclassmen who were lesbian who lived off campus would host parties, and so we would go there. 0 2765 Transitioning into the Professional World MF: I’m interested in that period leading up to when you meet Jane. What happened after college? How did you transition into your career?
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 ; MS: Well, after college, I came back to Bradford County, Northeastern Pennsylvania, because this is where I lived, and so I moved back in with my parents for a brief period of time and started looking for work, and I got a job at a program called Step By Step Incorporated. It was designed out of Wilkes-Barre to help people who were coming out of the mental institutions, state hospitals. I don’t know if you remember this or if you’re a little bit too young. A lot of people were institutionalized for long, long periods of time if they had mental illness, particularly a lot of women who men wanted to get rid of. 0 3749 Meeting Jane MS: So I was talking to this patient that came in, and at the time, I was not working in my field. I’d left Step By Step. I was working as a receptionist at this dental office. So this woman, Gay, said to me, oh, I know this woman. She’s looking for somebody to rent a room in her house, and you guys would probably get along great. She had met her at an organization called Women’s Inc. which was a women’s organization in downtown Allentown that was kind of an activist organization. Jane was a member there. Dixie White was a member there. There was a number of women that were movers and shakers in town that belonged to Women’s Inc. 
 ; 
 ; So Gay gave me Jane’s number, and so I called Jane and arranged to have an appointment to see her house because she was going to rent a room in her house, and that seemed to be what I could afford at the time. So I went to meet her and didn’t really know anything about her other than she said I drive a big truck, van thing. I said, okay. And she said, I’m a mechanic. I work at PPL, so when you see me, I’ll be in my uniform, and oh, I have longer hair. I said, okay. 0 4096 Other Work & ; Schooling MF: Okay, so you met Jane, you moved in with Jane. What’s happening with your career? You mentioned you were looking into being an Allentown police officer. You just moved from Step By Step, so what’s happening with your career at this point in your life after you met Jane?
 ; 
 ; MS: The Allentown police thing, I did pass the test, the physical agility test. I did pass the exam. I was placed on the list for academy. You’re on that list for two years, and they pull people off that list when there are positions that come available. So during that time, they were getting ready to hire four to six new officers, so I thought, surely I would be one of them, and I had scored pretty high on the tests, and all of a sudden, it comes out in the newspaper, pictures of the new officers that had been hired, and I wasn’t called. 0 4536 Engaging with the LGBT Community in the Lehigh Valley MF: So while you and Jane are living together and your career is progressing, you’re going to get advanced degrees, how are you engaging with the LGBT community in the Lehigh Valley? What kinds of organizations were you involved in or social groups were you involved in during that time period?
 ; 
 ; MS: The bar scene was a pretty big deal back in the ’70s, ’80s, even into the ’90s. So Jane was not really a bar person. Jane was more of a stay-at-home, low-key person. I kind of grew up as a baby gay East Stroudsburg and lots of activities and going to the city, and I liked night life, so I liked to go to the gay bars, and so I would drag Jane out with me to the gay bars, and she was not a dancer either, but I was a dancing fool, and I taught her to dance and made her dance with me. 0 5165 Living Through the AIDS Epidemic MF: I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what it was like to live through those early years of the AIDS epidemic and to work so closely with people who had been diagnosed with HIV. Just for your personally, what was it like to live through that time?
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 ; MS: Well, it was sad, very sad, somewhat scary. It created some anger for me that at the time, we couldn’t get President Reagan to pay attention to fund research to develop medications. It was difficult to find housing for people who were positive, let alone somebody who’s dying from AIDS. There was the Rainbow House down in Wernersville. Thankfully that’s someplace that people who were so ill that they couldn’t live on their own, they could go there, and they could be there and be cared for. So we helped facilitate a lot of different needs for people at that time, anything from making sure they were fed. 0 5546 Gay & ; Lesbian Task Force MF: Were there other organizations in the Lehigh Valley, maybe like the Gay and Lesbian Task Force or other organizations, that you felt were really valuable during this period?
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 ; MS: I was a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force. That did not exist until we organized it. That was kind of in response to the Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and so there was a number of people, the ones that really got things started were professors at Northampton Community College, and so Manny Gonzalez and Chris Boes were talking to me. I think we were at Rosemary’s one night, and I think this might have been after some kind of demonstration or protest or something that had happened, and they said, you know, we should really develop a task force. We should do something to try to further GLBT rights. And so a number of us were sitting there talking and drinking at the bar -- most things happen at the bar -- and decided to develop this task force, and they asked me if I’d be a board member, so I said, sure. 0 5869 Importance of Marriage Rights/Experiencing a Stroke MS: So we had a wonderful lawyer, Robert Brown in Allentown, and he’s since deceased, but he drew up our papers for us, so we had wills and power of attorneys, health power of attorneys, financial power of attorneys, because we did not want either of our families, if something should happen to us, to take what we built together or to deny the other the right to be in a hospital room. So we had those wills. I was twenty-eight years old, my first will and power of attorneys with Jane. 
 ; 
 ; And when I had my stroke, we needed those papers. We had copies of them in a file at home. We had copies in a lock box, so I was thirty-six years old, and I had a stroke. Kind of a fluky thing. I had no idea that I had an underlying genetic disorder. That came later after the stroke to find out why I had it, but I had a terrible, terrible headache one night coming home from Hazleton. I was working for my psychologist licensure, and I was driving one hundred and ten miles a day commuting, under a lot of stress, and went to dinner that night with a friend, and I had been having headaches maybe for two or three weeks before. I don’t usually get them, but I was having some pretty bad headaches. And I used to run, and I was running a few weeks before and kept feeling this pulsing in my neck when I was running, and I didn’t know what that was. Later I knew what that was. 0 6331 Connecting with Others in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community MS: So that is what took me out of working with the task force, to go back to that thread, but it didn’t mean we didn’t stay involved with being active in other things that were going on in the community. Trish and Liz -- Trish Sullivan, Liz Bradbury -- they kind of came along during the time that Jane and I were together. They started doing things to be organizing and helping out the community, and I’m very thankful that they have since -- we left the Lehigh Valley before they developed the community center, but I will say, there was a community center in Allentown before the Bradbury and Sullivan LGBT Center. 
 ; 
 ; When I moved there in the ’80s, in 1980, there was the Lambda Center that was on Hamilton Street in Allentown, and it was a place you could go if you wanted to play games or meet up with other gay people. It didn’t last very long. They couldn’t support it, pay the rent, so it dwindled pretty quickly, but when Liz and Trish came to town, and they met with Steve Black, and they were part of PA-GALA and getting people to know who to vote, and then there started to be organizations like GLORA, the Gays and Lesbians of Reading and Allentown, and we went to GLORA events, and these were potlucks in people’s homes and organized outings to plays and different events that were being done for socialization, so you could meet other gay people that weren’t necessarily out, maybe didn’t want to be out, but wanted to be connected. 0 6506 Significance of Marriage Equality in Michele's Life MF: I’m curious what marriage equality has meant for you. You described this sort of harrowing experience having a stroke and really advocating for your relationship, for that to be honored. I’m curious now what marriage equality has meant to you personally and how that has impacted your life.
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 ; MS: Oh, that’s been huge. Jane and I, earlier on, had tried to do a marriage ceremony, commitment ceremony I guess they were calling it at the time. We belonged to Quaker meeting in the Lehigh Valley, Lehigh Valley Friends. They knew we were a gay couple, and this was the forerunner to marriage equality and the marriage law being passed. 
 ; 
 ; So a lot of people were doing commitment ceremonies, civil unions, things like that, so we asked our meeting house if they would allow us to have that ceremony at our meeting, and we had two dear friends who were a straight couple that were having a recommitment ceremony for them. It was an anniversary for them -- and I’m sorry I don’t remember which of their anniversaries it was, Barbara and Jim -- and so they said, how great would it be if -- Barbara was Quaker, too, and she said, how great would it be if they could do their recommitment ceremony, and Jane and I could have a civil commitment ceremony? 0 7264 Work with the Transgender Community MF: Wow, what a wedding story. I wish I could have seen that one hundred and fifty people ceremony. Thank you for sharing that story. Michele, we’re getting towards the end of the interview. I’d like to give you an opportunity. Is there something that we haven’t talked about today that you really feel the need to share, something that we missed in our conversation?
 ; 
 ; MS: One of the areas that I worked in that has been pretty important to me is working with trans people. I came by this pretty accidentally, actually, but when I worked at Step By Step, I had an individual who lived in our residential program, a gentleman who was very tortured. He wanted to be female. He felt that he was female, and here I am in my early twenties in charge of this program, and this man is one of our residents, and he can’t get anybody to listen to him about being wrong-gendered. I used to take call, and I can remember that when this call came in, this gentleman was so distressed by being in the wrong body that he cut his testicles off over a bucket at one of our programs, and the call came in that he was in danger of bleeding to death and needed to be taken to the hospital. 0 MovingImage Michele Strohl describes her childhood in Northeastern PA with a focus on family life, discussion of normative understandings of gender, and her school experiences. Strohl describes college life at East Stroudsburg University, the lesbian community at college, and her first jobs as a mental health worker in Wilkes-Barre and then Allentown. Strohl goes on to explore getting a graduate degree in Psychology and her work in this field. In terms of the LGBT community, Strohl discusses a variety of organizations, including PA-GALA, AIDS Outreach, Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLORA, and GLOS. She also provides information about local LGBT bars and nightlife as well as moving accounts of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and the impact of marriage equality on her personally. Finally, she discusses her marriage to Jane Land with details about their marriage ceremony and life together. INTERVIEW WITH MICHELE STROHL JUNE 5, 2020 MARY FOLTZ: Okay. My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here with Michele Strohl to talk about her life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. This is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. And Michele and I are meeting on Zoom because there is a global pandemic, and today is June 5, 2020. So first I'll just say thank you so much, Michele, for joining me today for this interview. MICHELE STROHL: You're very welcome. MF: And to start, could you please state your full name and spell it for me? MS: My name is Michele, middle name is Victoria, and the last name is Strohl. My first name is spelled M-I-C-H-E-L-E, just one L. Middle name is Victoria, V-I-C-T-O-R-I-A, and the last name is Strohl, S-T-R-O-H-L. MF: And will you please share your birth date? MS: 8-31-1958. MF: And previously, we had talked about the consent for this interview. Do you consent to this interview today? MS: I do. MF: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online? MS: I do. MF: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including articles, websites, presentations, films, or other formats? MS: Yes, I do. MF: And so you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview, identify parts that you'd like to have deleted, or withdraw the interview from the project? MS: Yes, I do. MF: Great. Okay, so let's go ahead and start. And Michele, maybe let's begin, could you tell me a little bit about your childhood? MS: Well, I was raised in a blended family, so I was raised by my mother and my stepfather, who actually adopted me. Also, he gave me his last name when I was about five or six. So I do have a number of brothers and sisters. I grew up with three brothers and three sisters, so there were seven of us, and later in life, around the age of forty, I met my other brother, who was a half-sibling of mine that I had known about since I was about seven or eight, but we had never met. So that's kind of my family. My mother is still alive. She's eighty-one. And my father -- and I call him my father even though he's my adopted father -- he's deceased, and he died in 2016. Let's see. What else would you like to know? Being in a blended family and lots of kids around all the time, we had lots of chores that we had to do, and I would say that my parents started out kind of traditionally asking the girls to do the girl chores and the boys to do the boy chores. I didn't like that so much. Kind of fought against that because I wasn't liking the cooking and the cleaning. I'd rather be outside cutting the grass or maybe helping my dad chop wood. So my dad and my grandpa had a sideline logging business, and so my dad was a logger part-time, and I would beg him to take me logging with him, so through that process, I learned how to skid logs and use a chainsaw, cut down trees, split wood, kind of help out in that area. My dad taught me to run a lot of different pieces of equipment. He was a crane operator, so we had bulldozers and cherry pickers, and I was able to learn forklifts, learn how to drive those pieces of equipment. So I was kind of the unusual girl on the block. People would walk by, and I might be with my dad up on a lift, a forklift, while we're building our chimney, or we might be painting the house with the bulldozer, and he'd be in the bucket, and I'd be moving it around the side of the house. Or we might be cutting trees in the side yard, and he'd bring the cherry picker up, and we'd be up in the bucket cutting trees. So as time went on, my parents realized that I was not their typical little girl, and they did allow me to experiment with lots of different types of work and ways of being. So I would say ultimately, I got to be raised unisex. I could do boy things. I could do girl things, and I happened to like the boy things better. So that's how that kind of went, which takes me to when I got ready to go to college. I guess I should back up a little bit. I was always kind of known as a tomboy. I used to fight a lot in the neighborhood with all the neighborhood boys, plays a lot of sports with the neighborhood boys. Probably had more boyfriends than girlfriends to start. Later on developed a good circle of girlfriends. But the boys had baseball, and we didn't have much in the way of sports at that time. This was before women's sports became pretty popular. That wasn't happening in my childhood. So I wanted to play baseball with the boys, and they wouldn't let me play, so my dad, he worked pretty much six days a week when I was growing up, but my dad got together with a couple other men in the community, and he said, my daughter wants to play softball, so they organized a softball league, and they developed -- I think we had between four and six teams at the time. And so there was a lot in town that wanted to play softball, so my dad helped organize that, and I got to play softball, not baseball, but softball. And of course, to make it acceptable during those times, it was called the Pony Tail League. Not exactly what we wanted it to be called, but that's what they called it. So that's a little bit about early childhood. High school, I was a pretty shy girl, studious, athletic. I played three sports in high school, basketball, softball, and volleyball. Didn't really get the whole dating thing that was going on in my teen years. I mean, certainly there was a lot of my girlfriends talking about boys, wanting to date boys. I wasn't feeling that. Ever since I was twelve, I kind of knew I was attracted to girls. Didn't really know why, didn't know what that was called. Just knew that I preferred their company once I got to be pre-teen and teen, and kind of thought I was weird. I thought, well, maybe I'm a slow bloomer, and maybe I'll catch onto this boy thing that everybody's talking about. Not so. Did not happen for me. I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, very rural town, farming, logging, and you were expected to date boys. You were expected to be lady-like. I had to wear dresses to school or skirts. Pants were not allowed. I'd change into my pants or shorts as soon as I got home. Hated dresses. So by the time I was in seventh grade, they changed that rule in junior high, and we were able to wear pants, and I was so delighted. And I have to say, Mary, very seldom from that time on have I ever worn a dress. Hate them. Feel very odd and uncomfortable in them, but if the situation arises that I have to wear one, I can, but that just was not my uniform of choice. So through high school, I did date boys even though that was not where my heart was, and just didn't get it, what the girls were saying about these boys. I found them obnoxious and kind of jerky and yeah, just didn't have much in common with them. I did kind of have a first experience with some girls at age twelve, which was somewhat sexual exploration, and that stuck in my mind as I started dating. I thought, wow, this is what I remember kind of playing around with these girls, and of course, they said, this was in preparation for dating boys, and I thought, well, I kind of like this with the girls. Didn't really dare speak about that. Heard a lot of negative language about homosexuals. That was the word at the time. Didn't know what that meant. Didn't know that that might apply to me. So I just kind of tried to do what everybody else did and was not very successful at it. Went off to college only after begging my father to allow me to because at the time in high school I was dating a boy that liked me very much, and my father liked him very much, and my dad was like, I don't understand why you want to go to college. Mary, I had always gotten really good grades in school. I had always been telling my parents that I would never marry. I would support myself, and if I had my way, I would have been born a boy because boys had more power. Boys had more opportunities, and I wanted to be a boy. Now, that does not mean I'm trans, and I know a lot of people now have that opportunity to be who they feel they are in their heart. I think if someone would have heard me speak like this, and I were living now, I might have been taken to counseling for some trans counseling. That is not what was going on with me. What was going on with me, I believe now, looking back, was I like the privileges that men had, and I didn't understand that as a nine, ten -- and this was young -- nine, ten, eleven years old. I didn't understand. I just knew that they got to do a lot of neat stuff and girls weren't supposed to. And they got to date the girls, which I wasn't supposed to. So that upset my mother very much to hear me speak like this. She did not want to hear that I wanted to be a boy, although she did allow me to cut my hair short and wear my hair short. She was a beautician by trade, so up until probably fifth grade, my mother would try all her new hairdos on myself and my sister, and I would go and wash my hair out because I didn't like bologna curls. I had long hair, and I would just ruin her hairdos. So finally she cut my hair short. So these were some of the things that were happening as I was growing up, so by the time I got ready to graduate, I said to my father, I want to go to college, and if I can't go to college, then I want to be an oiler for your crane because you taught me all of this stuff about heavy equipment, machinery, and I want to go do bridge jobs with you and work with you, and he said, oh, no, no. We can't do that. I said, why not? Because you're a girl. And I said, well, I don't understand. All my life, you've let me do everything that I've asked to do. You've taught me how to do all these boy-like things, and now you're saying, I can't do this, and I don't understand why. And he said, well, when we go out on these jobs, there's no bathrooms. I said, okay. Where do you go to the bathroom? He said, well, we go to a tree. I said, well, then I can go behind a tree, too. He said, oh, I'm not going to let any of my men see my daughter's *hand gestures*. I said, oh. He said, so you can't do it. He said, I thought you'd outgrow this. I thought you would outgrow this sooner than this. I said, outgrow what? Being a tomboy. Being a tomboy. Why can't you just start to do some of the things like the other girls are doing, you know? And why don't you just marry Robby, who happened to be the boy I was dating in high school that my father liked, and I said, I don't want to marry Robby. Yeah, he's a nice guy. He's a friend. I don't want to marry Robby. So I said, well, if you're not going to let me be your oiler, then you need to send me to college because I need to be able to take care of myself, dad. I'm not marrying Robby. So after a few discussions with my parents, they did allow me to go to college, which they did help me pay for it. And it wasn't until I got to college that I knew there was a name for women like me. I went to East Stroudsburg University, got my undergraduate psychology degree there. I was in a dormitory named Lenape Hall, which later we called Lesbian Hall because a lot of the lesbians lived in Lenape. I was fortunate enough very early in my freshman year to meet other women like me. Quite a few of them lived on my floor or the floor above or a couple floors above me. And I did meet my first girlfriend my freshman year of college, and she was Mennonite, which is kind of unusual. And I did not go after her. She came after me, which also surprised me because she was raised Mennonite. But as soon as she and I got together, then I realized what those girls were talking about in high school when they were dating boys because all the things they said that was wonderful and they felt when they were with their boyfriend, I felt with my girlfriend, Shirley. It was kind of like all of a sudden, something turned on, and I now felt like a sexual being as opposed to just a person in the world, and it was pretty wonderful. Also pretty frightening because we weren't out at that time yet. Some people were starting to come out, but this is 1976, and up until 1973, this psychiatric diagnostic manual still said that being gay was a mental illness. You could still be hospitalized for that. So it was kind of scary to realize that now that what I am is a lesbian, and in society's terms at that time, a homosexual, which was a dirty word, and kind of felt shameful about that. That was the flip side of the feeling excited. I also felt shameful, like what will I do with this? How do I reconcile this not just with myself but with my family? I was raised in a somewhat religious family. Did go to church ever since I was a little girl, was active in my church, in youth group, taught Sunday school, so I had to grapple with a lot of feelings once I realized who I was and that I now had this girlfriend that I very much loved. So I had a little bit of a rough time trying to reconcile that, and I would say that process took time. I can remember going home to my mother, and I would be talking about Shirley and talking about other women that I was spending time with. I also happened to have a very close friend from high school that I later found out was gay, actually three friends from high school that I later found out were gay, and there was one I played a lot of tennis with, and I talked about her a lot, and my mother did not like this. I wasn't talking about boys. It's all girls. And my father heard me on the phone one night telling one of my friends that I loved them, and he got angry after I got off the phone, and said, telling a girlfriend that I loved her was unacceptable, that you only loved your family and the man that you will marry. So my dad was pretty upset that I had said I love you on the phone. My mother started giving me all kinds of negative messages through my freshman year about those weird gay people and things she would hear about on TV and what's wrong with them and a lot of negativity, a lot of not real hateful words, but I could tell my mom was not liking people like me. So finally after hearing it several times when I'd come home to visit, I was alone with my mother, and I said to her, enough of this. I can't listen to you talk about gay people like this. This is very hurtful to me. And she said, I don't understand why, and I said, because I am one of them, mom. I am a lesbian. So then I came out to my mom. I was eighteen. And she and I then sat and talked for about two hours. And she had lots of questions, and she also wondered, did I do something to make you gay? Are you gay because I wasn't married to your father? Because my mother got pregnant with me when she was at beauty school and never married my dad. And I said, no, mom, it's not something you did. It's just, I think, who I am and how I feel inside. I think I've always been like this. And I said, I remember feeling this way very early and all the way back to when I wanted to be a boy. That was like very young, seven, eight, nine years old. And when I was twelve, I realized I liked girls. And she just couldn't quite wrap her head around it, but of course, she loved me and she said that there was not any chance that she was going to not have me in the family or throw me out. She just didn't understand. It might take some time to understand. But she asked me not to tell my dad. Please don't tell your dad. And of course, from my early situation with the phone call, I thought, no, I'm not going to tell dad. And of course, I had younger siblings, and my mother said to me, do not tell your siblings because we don't want you influencing them. They're young. They don't know who they are yet. They look up to you. We don't want you influencing them. My siblings were pretty upset later in life because I didn't really tell them until they were in their late twenties, almost thirty, and they were really angry, particularly my one brother. Why was this kept from us? And it doesn't matter. It did matter to my parents at the time. I did bring girlfriends home. My mother and father did allow me to bring girlfriends home, which was nice because I would have been devastated if I couldn't, and they always welcomed them as if they were family. That was not an issue until I got serious about someone, and that someone is Jane, and Jane is my wife now of almost -- well, it was six years legal yesterday on June 4, but we had been together it'll be thirty-seven years this August. So when I first brought Jane home, that went well, and they liked her. Jane's a little older than I am. She's eight years older. A lot of my other girlfriends were very near my same age, within a year or two, so it was a little different to have an older woman in the home with me. My father apparently knew about me now because he talked with me after I had brought Jane home and said, what are you doing with this older woman? And I said, well, I'm with her because I love her and I care about her. And at that time, we had just started living together, and he said to me, are you sure you're not being kept? Yeah. Old school words, right? Are you sure you're not being kept? I said, what do you mean by being kept, dad? Well, she's an older woman. She's established. She has a career. She has a house, and you've moved in with her, and I just want to make sure you're not taking the easy way out. Which really was hurtful to me because I had a college education. I had a job. I had been working in my field. Wasn't a great paying job. And he thought I was looking to be cared for by someone else. Yes, I was looking for someone to be cared for and to be loved by, but not to be taken care of in the way he meant. He had paid for an education, right? I certainly would be using my education to support myself and contribute to the household, so that's what I told him. That made me pretty angry, and of course, I had a conversation with my mother and said, I thought dad didn't know, and of course, she said, your father and I share everything, and I told him over the years, so he knew. Then we fast-forward to Thanksgiving holiday, and my parents have a big -- well, my parents had because we've taken that over now, but my parents used to have a big spread on Thanksgiving, and my grandparents would be there, and all the family would be there, and lots of good food. So I was going to bring Jane home for Thanksgiving dinner, and when I was speaking to my mom, trying to find out when they were holding it and when I could arrange for us to travel from the Lehigh Valley up to my home town in Pennsylvania, my mother said, oh, you're bringing Jane? And I said, well, yes. I'm bringing Jane. Is that a problem? And she said, well, can't she go to her family? Doesn't she have a family? And I said, well, of course she has a family, but I would like her to come and meet mine. And we always have a big gathering, and anybody's welcome, right? And my mother persisted with the, I really think it would be best if Jane would go and have Thanksgiving with her family. I don't want to deprive her family of having their daughter with them. And I said, mom, Jane's parents usually go south for the winter, and they're on their way to Florida and then on to Texas. They're not having a Thanksgiving dinner. I want her to come home with me. And my mother again persisted with, I don't think that's a good idea. Now this is early on when my siblings are still young. This is early on when everybody didn't know. And all I could figure is my mom was trying to figure out, how do I explain this? So I said to my mom -- and this was very frightening for me to take this stand early on. I think I was twenty-six or twenty-seven, around that time, and I said to my mother, if Jane does not come home with me to this holiday gathering, I will not be home for any other holiday gatherings going forward. If she is not welcome, we are not coming. I'll go someplace else for Thanksgiving and Christmas and every other holiday. You have to understand, my mom is all about family. I knew this would really get her. If I was going to have any chance of getting Jane home, this would be it, but I also knew if she wasn't on board, and if she wasn't accepting totally of me, as she has said she would, I would be out of home to go home to for holidays. Luckily, my mother said, oh, well of course you can bring her. So Jane went home with me for Thanksgiving and met the family. Jane comes from a very, very small family, mom, dad, and older sister. Jane comes from a family that was educated. Her dad was a doctor in I believe it was chemistry, so he worked for Merck Sharp & ; Dohme and was a doctor, and her mother had a masters in library science, and my mother's a beautician and my father's a crane operator. And Jane was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, and I grew up in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania in the sticks. So bringing Jane home to my family was also kind of a risk because, okay, we're a big, loud bunch, and Jane's used to some sophistication, but my family welcomed her. She had a good time, and she's been home with me ever since. So that's kind of how that part progressed. What else can I tell you? I don't know. I feel like I'm rambling. MF: You're not rambling. This is wonderful. I have some questions about what it was like to be out at East Stroudsburg University in that period prior to meeting Jane. I'm just curious about what college life was like for people that were out in East Stroudsburg. MS: I would say I was out to my crowd, out to the other lesbians. I didn't consider myself to be out, loud, and proud like some people were starting to do. I don't really feel that I was as much a part of that until maybe later, until I got closer to maybe my senior year of college. But I was lucky enough to meet a lot of lesbians very early on, and a lot of life at that time was parties off campus, older women that lived in a community that once went to college there. Alumni that were in town would host parties. Some upperclassmen who were lesbian who lived off campus would host parties, and so we would go there. There was also a bar in East Stroudsburg called the Blue Bugle. I had a fake ID at that time, so that we could get into the gay bar, and so we would go to the Blue Bugle. I went to college before Rainbow Mountain was there, so that was not an option. We would travel to Allentown, get a car load of us, and go to the Stonewall. That was one of the places that was available to us. And there was a bar in Easton at the time called the Musical because -- I don't know if that word means anything to you, musical? No? MF: No. MS: Being gay in the '70s, because a lot of people weren't out, you had to have ways to find each other, recognize each other. Musical was a word that was used for gay people. Are you musical? Particularly used more for gay men, but if you were musical, then you might be invited to a party. And the bar in Easton was called the Musical, and so we knew it was a gay bar. You could go there. So these were the highlights of college life was to go to the Stonewall, to go to the Musical. We would travel into New York City. My parents had told me, don't go to New York City. You'll get killed, maimed, raped. Something bad will happen to you. I had a car on campus. I drove my friends to New York City. So we would go into the city and go to Greenwich Village. We'd go to the Duchess. It was during the disco era. I love disco. I'm a disco queen, so we'd go in to dance. We'd drive uptown and go to Dapper and Friends. After hours, we'd drive out to Long Island and go to the Swamp, which is another gay bar out on the island. So this was how we spent a lot of our social life. While my straight counterparts were going to frat parties, my gay friends and I were going out of town to the gay bars or to local kind of underground house parties. So that's kind of what it was like there. You looked for people that were wearing lambda necklaces because the lambda symbol was a symbol of being a lesbian, and we all joked about the lesbian uniform, flannel shirts and jeans and shit-kicker boots, short haircuts. You looked for women that looked like you. There wasn't very many feminine-looking lesbians at that time that I could see. The first gay bar I went to, I was eighteen, and actually it wasn't at college. It was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I had an older friend -- and remember I was dating a Mennonite girl as well that was from Intercourse, Pennsylvania. So the first gay bar we went to, I was with Shirley. I was a freshman in college, but high school girlfriend who was gay lived in Lancaster, and she invited the two of us to come down and visit her and her girlfriend for the weekend, so that we would have a place to be ourselves. That was a big thing then. Go someplace where you could be yourself. So we drove to Lancaster and stayed with Pam and Lori, and they took us to the Sundown, the name of the bar, in Lancaster. And this was an eye-opener. I had never been to a gay bar before -- neither had Shirley -- and we walked in, and it was smokey and dark, and there was a lot of pumping disco music playing. Of course, Shirley didn't dance, being Mennonite, and we were met at the door by a big dykey woman, and she wanted to know, what are you? What do you mean, what are we? We're gay. No. No, no, no. What are you? I know you're gay. You wouldn't be here if you weren't gay. What are you? You butch or you femme? Are you butch or are you femme? 1976, right? So we're neither. Well, you've got to be one or the other, is what this big old dyke said. You've got to figure that out. You've got to be one or the other. You two look like dykes to me. You look like you're butch. Kind of soft butch, but butches over there, femmes over there. And we said, on the opposite sides of the room? I mean, that sounded like high school dances with heterosexual people. She said, that's just the way it is here. And I spoke up and said, well, we're not butch or femme, and we're together. And she said, no, no, no, butches can't be together. Butches are with femmes, and she kind of directed us to the butch side of the room. And the two friends we were with, they were more traditional that way. My friend Pam was very butch. Her girlfriend Lori was very feminine. She had long, dark hair and wore more feminine clothing, and my friend Pam looked like a young man. And they just kind of shrugged their shoulders and took us with them, you know? And we kind of just looked around wide-eyed and got a drink, and I did manage to get my girlfriend to dance with me because, you know, nobody's going to know. No one from your church is here, right, to know that you're dancing with me. Which is another phrase they used at that time. Do you go to our church? Are you musical? Do you go to our church? Are you a friend of Dorothy? These are all phrases that you would hear when people were trying to find out, are you gay? Are you lesbian? In college, I had one woman come up to me in the laundry room, and she said, are you in the life? And I said, what is in the life, you know? She said, you know, in the life. You look like one of those people. So apparently, this was also another phrase that I learned was in the life. This was a woman from, I think, New York City at the time, a black woman. I had never heard that before, and that was what she asked me. So very interesting. There were pinky rings you'd look for. Is that person wearing a pinky ring? There were handkerchiefs in the pockets, mostly the gay men wore those to indicate what kind of sexual things they were into. So you had to kind of be careful who you talked to. You tried to find out who's who, so you didn't get hurt. There was a lot of concern about getting hurt at that time, which, you know, I was chased. I'd been chased at East Stroudsburg by people who apparently surmised that I was gay, and I remember having to run a few times to get away from someone who was, I think, going to hurt me if they caught me. My car was vandalized when I was in college by some frat boys. They ripped the mirror off my car, and I remember going home very angry because I had to tell my parents that my car had to be repaired and why. And at the time, when I was a freshman in college, I looked more like a younger boy. I was very androgynous, more boyish looking. And I really wanted to get back at these people, these guys, that had vandalized my car, and my mother talked me out of it. And that was not the only time that my car was vandalized. I used to go to a bar called Rosemary's in Allentown, Bethlehem area. It was on the border of Allentown and Bethlehem line, kind of on a triangle. And I was there one night and went out to leave, not just one but two of my tires were flattened. Somebody had stuck a knife through them. Not only were my tires flattened, but a friend of mine who was parked near me, her tires were flattened, too. I didn't realize both of them were until I had changed one. I got the tire out of my car and put one tire on only to release the jack and realize, there's another tire flat, and I only have one tire. So the two of us went back into the bar, talked to the bartender that we knew, and AJ had to take us home because we couldn't drive our cars. The next day, a friend of mine that I worked with drove me back to get my car, and there was a tire place up the street called Joe's Battery and Tire. And she said, let's go there. We'll get the guys to get a couple tires and go down and get your car and get it fixed. So I went in there and said that I needed two tires and that my car's tires had been slashed the night before, and would they be able to sell them to me? And the guy started laughing, and he said, oh. Where was your car parked that you got your tires slashed? And I didn't want to say because again, at that time, you tried to be low key. This would have been 1981, I think. So I didn't want to say where my car was, and right away, he piped up and said, was it down there in that parking lot across from that gay bar? He knew where my car was, which made me wonder if they knew something about or had something to do with our tires being slashed, being a tire store that sells tires, right? Again, I was pretty angry that somebody had done this to myself and my friend, and I'm not proud of this, Mary, but what I did the next time I went to the gay bar was I took a tire iron, and I laid in wait by my car for hours with a tire iron while my friends were in the gay bar to see if anybody was going to come around the parking lot to bother our cars. Because if they were that night, I was prepared to fight. Now I'm not generally a fighter, but I was very angry. And luckily after a couple hours, one of my friends came out and said that, you know, this is not a good idea. You really shouldn't be out there. Why don't you come in and join us for the party? Which I did, but that's how angry I was. I was at that bar another night when we had a bomb threat, and they had to evacuate the whole bar because someone had threatened to bomb the gay place. I'm a little bit too young for raids, but we heard about them from older lesbians and older gay men, so this bomb threat was really scary, as was knowing somebody's out there cutting tires. So there was a number of things that were happening at that time that were kind of scary for gay people. I know people who had been beaten up. I know people who have been stabbed. I know people who have been killed because they were gay. I think a lot of young people today don't realize that that was not that long ago. I'm sixty-one, and I'll soon be sixty-two, but it was not that long ago when you couldn't just be out and proud without some pretty major consequences. So at East Stroudsburg, you had asked me what it was like there. A lot of that was kind of like on the QT. As my group got closer to being seniors, there was movements afoot for women's rights. There was movements afoot for gay rights. So I did participate in some marches and demonstrations. At East Stroudsburg, there was a women's center. There was a women's annual convention -- I can't remember what it was called -- where they brought in speakers to speak to women about women issues and GLBT was included in that as well. So I did participate in that. I did participate in a sport when I was in college, in intramurals. I did participate in student government. I ran a coffee house when I was in college and brought in musical acts and singers, so that we had entertainment. And that was a big part as well of trying to find out our culture was women's music. Cris Williamson, Tret Fure, Ferron, Holly Near, there was all these women singers that made us feel good about who we were, so we try to pass that music around, that information around. There were books that you wanted to read. Rita Mae Brown was big, and everybody wanted to read Rubyfruit Jungle and Southern Comfort. Later on, there was some really bad lesbian films. Tigress Productions put out some lesbian films. Some of them weren't so good, but anything that we could identify with, we wanted to access it. We wanted to share it. So we'd get together, and we'd watch these things together, or we'd pass these books around. There was gay newspapers, Village Voice out of Greenwich Village. There was a Philadelphia paper. We'd eat all that stuff up just to be able to hear about other people like us. Coming to poets, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton, any literature material that we could get our hands on. So that was kind of what it was like in my early college years being lesbian. MF: I'm interested in that period leading up to when you meet Jane. What happened after college? How did you transition into your career? MS: Well, after college, I came back to Bradford County, Northeastern Pennsylvania, because this is where I lived, and so I moved back in with my parents for a brief period of time and started looking for work, and I got a job at a program called Step By Step Incorporated. It was designed out of Wilkes-Barre to help people who were coming out of the mental institutions, state hospitals. I don't know if you remember this or if you're a little bit too young. A lot of people were institutionalized for long, long periods of time if they had mental illness, particularly a lot of women who men wanted to get rid of. If their husbands wanted to get rid of their wife, they could easily sign them in to a mental hospital, after a period of time divorce them, and move on to marry another woman. So there was women, and there were men, too, that were hospitalized for twenty-five, thirty years in mental institutions, and they were able to live in the world. I mean, they were not that mentally ill, right? So there was a movement at that time to bring people out of the state hospitals and to help them get reacclimated to living in the world. So Step By Step was a residential program that was designed to take people out of the state hospitals into a full-care facility that's twenty-four hours staffed, teach them skills that they would need to live on their own, and then moved them to a sixteen hour residential apartment. And then from that sixteen hour staffed apartment, if they did well, moved them into their own apartment with only appointment-only staff to check on them. So my first job was with Step By Step as a mental health worker, and I worked in the full-care facility, stayed overnight, worked with the mentally ill that came out of state hospitals. I was at home probably three months doing this job and living with my parents and feeling pretty isolated because I'd just come from this very rich college environment, where I had a lot of gay friends and a lot of opportunities and a lot of activism and a lot of things going on, back to my hometown that was very rural, and I didn't know any gay people except a couple of friends from high school. So I worked for three months with this program, and my director said, we're opening some new programs down in the Allentown area, and we'd like to promote you to a supervisory role, and we'd like to know if you'd be willing to move to that area and help set this program up. So I talked to my parents. I'd only been home three months, and my mother said to me, I think you should go. And I said, really? You feel like confident in me? I just started working, you know? And she said, well, more for the reason that because you're a lesbian, I think you should go. I said, what? She said, if you stay here, I'm afraid you'll get hurt. If you stay here, I don't think you'll be happy. If you stay here, you might bring attention to our family and the younger siblings. I think you should go. You liked it there. There are people like you there. I think you'd have a better life there. So that's not exactly what I wanted to hear from my mom, you know. I would have liked a little bit more pride in I'd like you to go there because you're getting this new job, which I think she was excited about, but there was more of a push for you should go there for these reasons. So I did. I took the job and went to the Allentown area. The house that I supervised for Step By Step was on Sixth Street between Gordon and Chew. Not a good neighborhood really, right? So when I went to training in Wilkes-Barre, because that's where the main headquarters were for Step By Step, they told me I had a few weeks. This was before Christmas, 1981. And it was a few weeks before Christmas, and they said, we'd like you down there, I think it was like the seventeenth of December, so we could get started. Two weeks of training, and I'm supposed to be there if I want this job. I didn't have a place to live. So I had met a woman during the training who lived in Allentown who was going to be one of my coworkers, and Maggie said to me, why don't you come live at my place, and you live with me until you find a place to live? So that's what I did. She was a little bit older than I was, and I moved in with her and left home and took a job in Allentown. Maggie helped me find a suitable apartment. I started looking at places in really bad neighborhoods, and she said, oh no, you're not from here. She said, you can't live there. So she went with me on her lunch hour several times until we found a place that she thought would be safe for me to live. So that's how I moved from where I lived in Bradford County to the Allentown-Bethlehem area, and did not meet Jane until I lost that job. I did have a couple girlfriends ahead of Jane, a couple significant relationships before I was with Jane, but none of them were longer than a year. There was a woman that, when I worked at Step By Step, that I fell in love with, and she was straight, and I thought, well, this is not going to work. But she over time developed feelings for me, and she actually approached me, so I thought, oh. So she and I ended up being together for a while. Being that she was newly then out because she had been with a man before she was with me, and she was attending a Moravian College and was in her senior year and worked at my site. I was twenty-one, and I think she was nineteen or twenty, so she left her boyfriend and was with me. When she got ready to graduate from college, she broke up with me, which was devastating to me because I really loved this girl, and the reason that she broke up with me, she said, was I don't know if I'm really gay. I really love you, and I really wish I could stay with you and be with you, but I want children, and I can't have children with you. 1981, I can't have children with you. There wasn't any movement yet for lesbians to adopt children or to inseminate. If you had children, it's because you got pregnant by some boy in high school or college, and you later found out you were gay, or you later came out and knew you were gay before but later came out, or you had a good friend, good male friend, that would impregnate you, so that you could have children, but you didn't have children because you got inseminated or you adopted them. And so I didn't know how to answer this question for my girlfriend at that time. I begged her to please stay, that maybe in time things would change, and she said, I'm not strong enough. I'm not as strong as you. And she went back to her boyfriend, and she did say to me at that time, I want you to stay in my life. I would like you to know my children. And I thought, well, this is something, right? So I said, sure, that would be fine. So at some later date, and only a few months, I called her to try and stay in touch, and she answered the phone, and she was very angry with me. Don't call here. Don't call here again. What are you doing calling me here? And I said, well, I'm calling you because you wanted to stay in touch. You wanted to stay friends. And I knew she had married her boyfriend, and she said, what if he had answered the phone? Don't ever call here again. So that was very hurtful. After her, I met another woman. Her name was Lori, and Lori was lesbian through and through, had been ever since she was a young girl, so I thought good, not a straight woman that thinks she's gay. It's someone who's lesbian and knows she's lesbian, so I was with her for about a year, and she cheated on me with the girl that lived downstairs. We were in the apartment upstairs. She was downstairs. I was working a lot of hours, supervisor of the Step By Step program, a lot of responsibilities for a young person, and she was a party girl, and she just couldn't be alone for very much. So that ended. That didn't end very well. She was also, I found out later, using some drugs because I came home and found drugs in the house and people partying, and that didn't set well with me. And at the time that that was going on, that she was doing drugs and partying -- this was just before we broke up -- I had been working for Step By Step for a while, didn't pay a lot of money. My second degree, my minor degree, was in criminal justice, so I had applied for Allentown City Police, and I was being investigated. People were checking me out, and I was sitting for the exam, and here's my girlfriend doing drugs in my house. So I had a talk with her about that, and I said, I can't believe you're doing this. You know, I'm trying to become a cop. You're going to jeopardize this opportunity for me. We got into an argument, and it's the very first time that anyone ever beat me up. So this girlfriend, I believe at the time and I didn't understand, but -- I mean, I knew she was doing drugs, but I believe she was under the influence of drugs, and she beat me up because I asked her to stop these activities while I was trying to become an officer. So that was pretty devastating. That was the end of that relationship. I was not going to be with somebody that would harm me. She is the one person that I was with that we tried to get an apartment before the apartment we were in, that we were discriminated against by a landlord, and they would not rent to us, so she was the one girlfriend that I had that we were denied housing because we were lesbian. The landlord said, we would fight, one of us would break up with the other, and somebody wouldn't be able to pay rent, so he wouldn't rent to us. But the person that rented to us in the apartment where she beat me happened to be the landlord of the girl she was cheating with on me. So that relationship ended. I called friends in New Jersey, asked them to come and pick me up because I was afraid to stay in that house. So that relationship ended, and it was after that relationship that I met Jane. So I had taken a break from working at Step by Step. That job, there were some things that happened there that didn't go too well, so stopped working there. There was a situation at Step By Step where I had interviewed someone for a job under me who was a black woman. I had also interviewed a white man, long-haired fellow, and I hired him instead of her, and so there was now a lawsuit that was going to be brought against the company because the black woman, who also was a lesbian, claimed that I had discriminated against her because she was gay and black and that she was going to sue us. I was the one that interviewed her. I had not discriminated against her. I chose the white hippie guy because he was better qualified for the job. This blew up into a really big thing. The company I worked for wanted me to come out as a gay woman because clearly I didn't discriminate against her for that because I'm also a lesbian. I got a lot of pressure from the company's lawyer to come out publicly. It would be in open court. Would I do this, so that the company would be able to survive being sued, and I said, I didn't discriminate against her on either count, but I'm not willing to come out publicly for this company. So I kind of lost my job, so I no longer worked there, so I was working at a dental office -- I think Jane might have gotten this a little backwards -- and there was a woman that came in for services, and her name was Gay, which was very apropos, and since Lori and I had just broken up, and Lori had moved out and left me with an apartment that I could not afford on my own and left me with a bunch of bills that I also couldn't afford at the time, I needed to downsize and move someplace else. So I was talking to this patient that came in, and at the time, I was not working in my field. I'd left Step By Step. I was working as a receptionist at this dental office. So this woman, Gay, said to me, oh, I know this woman. She's looking for somebody to rent a room in her house, and you guys would probably get along great. She had met her at an organization called Women's Inc. which was a women's organization in downtown Allentown that was kind of an activist organization. Jane was a member there. Dixie White was a member there. There was a number of women that were movers and shakers in town that belonged to Women's Inc. So Gay gave me Jane's number, and so I called Jane and arranged to have an appointment to see her house because she was going to rent a room in her house, and that seemed to be what I could afford at the time. So I went to meet her and didn't really know anything about her other than she said I drive a big truck, van thing. I said, okay. And she said, I'm a mechanic. I work at PPL, so when you see me, I'll be in my uniform, and oh, I have longer hair. I said, okay. So I got to her house first. Jane's always late. So I got to her house first, and this woman pulls up in this big van, hops out, and she's this little, short, five-foot-two, pretty little lady with curly hair down to her shoulders, and she's wearing a blue mechanic's uniform that says Jane. And I thought, wow. How cute is she, you know? So she invites me in, shows me around the house, shows me the room that would be mine if I choose to rent from her, asked me if I'd like a drink. Sure, I'd like a drink. I was very nervous. So I had a drink. I drank that pretty fast, and she said, do you want another? Sure. Ah. And she said, oh, do you drink a lot? And I said, well, no, not really. She said, well, that's two drinks pretty quick there, and I said, well, I'm a little nervous, and I lit up a cigarette. And Jane said, oh, you smoke? No one smoked in my house for a number of years. Now I want to put it out, but she didn't have an ash tray or anything, so I'm blowing this big time. I'm just really not going to be renting this house at all. And soon she got talking to me a little bit, and she said, why do you need to move? I said, well, my girlfriend broke up with me, and I can't afford the rent. And I kind of wondered if Jane was gay. She was very feminine-looking, but she was a mechanic, and she said, oh. My girlfriend left me, too, a while back, and that's why I need to rent the house, someone to share expenses, because she had a couple loans that she had taken out with her girlfriend, and when her girlfriend left her, she couldn't afford these loans. So I was like, ah. And then Jane kind of interviewed me pretty hard because she owned the house, and she thought I was a party girl, and she's like, you know, if you're going to live here, you can't be partying, carrying on, because I own the house. And I said, I'm not really a party girl. And she said, and, you know, you're gay, and I'm gay, and it would be strictly business. There would be no, you know, chance of anything here. So I don't know if I was giving off some, I think you're cute, but she quickly set me straight about that. So she said, what do you think? You want to rent the room? I said, no, I don't want to rent the room. She said, why? I said, because I'd like to take you out. Would you go out with me? I can't date you if you're my landlord, right? She said, no, you can't date me if I'm -- so I don't want the room. I'd rather go out with you. So she said, yes, she would go out on a date with me, and our first date was to the Bronx Zoo in New York City. I drove, which if you were to know us today, Jane does all the driving. I don't. I mean, I drive sometimes, but she likes to be the in control and she drives. But our first date, I drove to the city, and she showed up with a picnic lunch, roasted chicken, some good salads, some wonderful foods. I had a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread and some cheese. You know, not much contribution to the meal. But we ended up eating our picnic lunch in traffic because one of the Yankee games was playing at the time we were traveling through and got stuck in traffic from the ball game, so we ate our lunch in the car. By the time we got to the Bronx Zoo, it was open for half an hour before it closed, and that was our first date. And we dated for maybe three to five months before she asked me to move in with her. I lived in a really crappy area of Allentown down on Fifth Street. Somebody has shot through my neighbor's front window while I was living there. And Jane would stay at my house sometimes, and we'd stay at her house sometimes, but after a couple of these events in downtown Allentown, she said, I don't think it's safe where you live. I'd really like you to move in with me. So I did, and we have been together ever since. So that's kind of how I met Jane. What else can I tell you, Mary? MF: Okay, so you met Jane, you moved in with Jane. What's happening with your career? You mentioned you were looking into being an Allentown police officer. You just moved from Step By Step, so what's happening with your career at this point in your life after you met Jane? MS: The Allentown police thing, I did pass the test, the physical agility test. I did pass the exam. I was placed on the list for academy. You're on that list for two years, and they pull people off that list when there are positions that come available. So during that time, they were getting ready to hire four to six new officers, so I thought, surely I would be one of them, and I had scored pretty high on the tests, and all of a sudden, it comes out in the newspaper, pictures of the new officers that had been hired, and I wasn't called. So I was pretty upset about this, and I called up and asked. Hey, I scored really high. I didn't even get an interview. What happened here? I was on the academy list. And they said, oh, we had to select from a minority list this time because there was affirmative action, and we had to be picking officers that were minorities, and I said, aren't I a minority? And they said, no. Why would you be a minority? I said, well, I'm a woman, and they said, women are no longer considered a minority in police work, and you're a white woman. So they had hired women and men of color. I had seen the pictures in the paper. It didn't even occur to me that that's what that was. I mean, I just didn't see that it was people of color. So I was told that I'd have to wait another two years to reapply, at which point I decided to go back to school to further my degree in psychology, mainly at Jane's urging because she said, you know, you're really smart. Why don't you go back to the school? And the time that I was with Jane, I was working as a security guard up at Bethlehem Steel at the research center, so that was my job at that time. So I did. I went back to school at Kutztown University, and Jane said, don't worry about the extra income, not a problem. So she was pretty good about that while I had this crap job and went to college. And I had gotten a job after the security job back in my field down in Pottsville and worked at a clinic that was called Turning Point on Center Street in Pottsville. And so I did group therapy there, individual family therapy there. I guess I didn't go back to college until I got the next job, which was I got a job at the Allentown Hospital in the adolescent psychiatric unit when they first opened that up, so correcting my memory here. I did not go back to college until I was in the hospital position, and once I was in the hospital position, they offered two-thirds tuition if you were to get a degree in the field that would help you with your current job. So since I was in psychiatry, I was going to get a mental health degree. As long as I did A or B, they were willing to give me two-thirds of my tuition back, so that's how I got my next degree was through while working at the hospital, and luckily they rearranged my schedule from days or thirds or seconds, so that I could go to college whatever course was offered. I also did my internship there under the direction of the psychologist at that time and then later went on to become a psychologist, again, at Jane's urging. Why don't you do that? Because I could still be licensed at the masters level at that time up until 1986, if you were in a program, so I went on and did that as well, did my final internship up at Northeast Counseling in Hazleton and traveled one hundred and ten miles a day, commuted back and forth to that job for three years while I did my licensing internship, all the while being supported by Jane, so I could get that next degree and start my career as a psychologist. So that's kind of how my career progressed. And I lived in her house in Catasauqua after moving in from that crap place in Allentown. It felt a little uneasy after a few years that Jane owned a house, and I really didn't have any part in that, and I was feeling a little insecure about that, and Jane had been through that very bad breakup with her girlfriend prior to me and before that a breakup with a girlfriend who almost took her house from her, so she didn't really want to put me on the deed, and at that time, we couldn't be married and own property together, so it had to be a more business arrangement. So it took until our fifteenth year together, and on our fifteenth anniversary, Jane gave me a card, and the deed, my name was now on the deed to the house. So it took a little while for Jane to feel comfortable that I was going to stay, and she could share her property with me. I told her I understood, you know. I felt a little insecure about it, but I understood that she had been hurt before, and I wasn't going anywhere, so fifteen years later, she put me on the deed. Now, let's see, what is it, 2020 now? 2005, we built a house together up in my home area, and then we truly had our place. It became our place. MF: So while you and Jane are living together and your career is progressing, you're going to get advanced degrees, how are you engaging with the LGBT community in the Lehigh Valley? What kinds of organizations were you involved in or social groups were you involved in during that time period? MS: The bar scene was a pretty big deal back in the '70s, '80s, even into the '90s. So Jane was not really a bar person. Jane was more of a stay-at-home, low-key person. I kind of grew up as a baby gay East Stroudsburg and lots of activities and going to the city, and I liked night life, so I liked to go to the gay bars, and so I would drag Jane out with me to the gay bars, and she was not a dancer either, but I was a dancing fool, and I taught her to dance and made her dance with me. So we'd go to Rosemary's. We'd go to the Stonewall. We'd go down to the Silhouette in Easton. We'd, you know, go to different places, down to Philadelphia. Giovanni's Room was a big thing at the time, go down to the bookstore, get some books, see who was in the gay [inaudible] down in Philly. Go to Judy's Café. Try to go places like that, and that's where you would hear about what's happening out in our world, what's happening that we need to march for, what's happening that we need to be involved with. I'm a super voter. Been a super voter since I could vote, so there was a PA-GALA. We put out a voter's guide every year. Steve Black was really instrumental in getting that started, and then Liz and Trish kind of took that over later on, Liz Bradbury and Trish Sullivan. I believe they met up with Steve Black at some point and then took that over. So we would try to educate ourselves. I met Liz and Trish first time at their house down on Turner Street when they had Charlie Dent and some other officials over to their house for a meet and greet, so we would go to things like that. Jane had gotten involved with AIDS Outreach during the AIDS epidemic. That started in 1983. I had moved to the Lehigh Valley in 1980, so pretty quickly after moving there, that became a big deal. That was very scary. I can remember being pretty frightened about, oh my gosh, you know, are we going to get AIDS? And trying to be educated about who gets AIDS, how do you get AIDS, how do you be gay and sexual and not get AIDS? Because there was a lot of myths at that time about how you got this disease. And there was a lot of hatred at that time about gay people, particularly males, and AIDS. So here was this big backlash coming at us again about being gay. So I can remember that we started to hear about different people who were getting sick, and it was a pretty scary time. Jane wanted to do something about that, so she got involved with a group called AIDS Outreach that was down on Sixth Street, I believe it was, in Allentown, and she became a buddy for the buddy system, and they would partner a person with someone who had HIV or AIDS to help them with things, help them with doctor's appointments, picking up groceries, cooking, cleaning their place, just company sometimes. And after she was involved with that for a while, they were in great need of people to help counsel folks who were being newly diagnosed, families who had members of their families who are HIV+ or dying from AIDS, and I had just gotten my license to practice psychology, so Jane said, why don't you approach them and see if you can like help in some way? Maybe they can help you get a start, and you can help them. So I did. I went and talked to Linda Lobach at AIDS Outreach, and they were very happy to bring me onboard. They did have a psychologist there. What was his name? [Gerry Machado?]. He was a psychologist that they had hired, and I spoke with Gerry, and he said, yeah, that'd be great. We'd love to have you onboard. They gave me an office to practice out of in the upstairs of AIDS Outreach, and they said, as long as you can see the people we refer to you, you may use this office and see other people and build your practice. So it was a wonderful opportunity. The Lehigh Valley Hospital AIDS Net would refer people to AIDS Outreach, and they would refer people to me, and I started seeing people who were newly diagnosed, meeting with them, meeting with their families. I ran a support group with other people from the hospital, and we ran an HIV/AIDS support group for many, many years. I started doing that '95 and stopped doing that somewhere around 2010, I think, something like that. In the beginning, we started counseling people how to die right, how to die right, how to get ready for death because people were not surviving this illness, and how to get things in order, how to reconnect with family that maybe had kicked them out, ostracized them. And as the protease inhibitors started to be made available and people were starting to be able to live with HIV -- because at first they had AZT, and AZT caused all kinds of problems for people. Once the protease inhibitors came onboard, we had to start counseling people how to live with HIV, and there weren't so many people dying of AIDS anymore. People would die of natural causes, so it transitioned during my work there. And I also helped AIDS Outreach run buddy program training, so I was part of the team to help caretakers take care of themselves, so that they would know how to cope with dealing with people that were this ill and also have the facts right, so that they knew that they weren't going to get HIV if they just help clean somebody's apartment or if they hugged them or if they cooked with them. So we did some training. So that was something that Jane and I did that was kind of an activist role. She was out being a buddy, and I was doing buddy training and counseling. Other things that we did, we went to Washington. We marched on Washington for GLBT rights, and I can remember going there with Jane and being very excited, Think FACT or Pride or Lehigh Valley organized that, and we all went down together, and all of a sudden there's movie cameras and people being filmed, and I thought, oh my god, what if my mother or my siblings who are still young see me on TV? I didn't tell them I was going to be here. Oh no. So I was a little frightened that there were TV cameras, and Jane said to me, don't worry. They're not going to film us. We're too normal-looking. They're going to get the dykes on bikes. They're going to get the trans people. They're not going to get us. So yeah, when it was on TV, of course, anybody that looked a little different was on the TV. The people that looked like us that weren't so different, they didn't have us on film. So it was fine, but yes, that was exciting. We marched in that. We went to Sister Fire outside of Washington D.C., went there a couple times to see all those women sing wonderful, empowering women's music, meet other lesbians, all shapes and sizes and ages, vendors, buy stuff that represents you, right? So we did that. I'm trying to think if there's other things. In college, I did Take Back the Night against rape and things like that. We went to the annual women's workshops at E-Berg for a couple years after I left college, and we went back to support the women's center there. Those kind of things. We would support local bars, gay bingo, drag shows. There was a lot of drag shows that went on down at Rosemary's. Things that were a part of our culture at the time and a part that helped us celebrate who we were safely in our own communities. Yeah. Those were the kind of things we were doing. MF: I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what it was like to live through those early years of the AIDS epidemic and to work so closely with people who had been diagnosed with HIV. Just for your personally, what was it like to live through that time? MS: Well, it was sad, very sad, somewhat scary. It created some anger for me that at the time, we couldn't get President Reagan to pay attention to fund research to develop medications. It was difficult to find housing for people who were positive, let alone somebody who's dying from AIDS. There was the Rainbow House down in Wernersville. Thankfully that's someplace that people who were so ill that they couldn't live on their own, they could go there, and they could be there and be cared for. So we helped facilitate a lot of different needs for people at that time, anything from making sure they were fed. There was Las Manos De Dios, which was next door to AIDS Outreach. The Hands of God was a Hispanic church that partnered with AIDS Outreach to make food every week, and people would volunteer and come and package it up, and AIDS Outreach had a list of people that needed food because they were too ill to cook for themselves, and the buddies would take the food from Las Manos De Dios to these people with HIV and AIDS, so that they could eat. There was a lot of taboo. People didn't want to touch them. People didn't want to have them around or in their presence. Family members turned away sometimes to people who were infected. It was kind of a sad time, and at first, people were dying, so you might know somebody or work with somebody, and they would pass away, and you'd have to go through the loss of someone that you had worked with and try to help. I know Jane experienced that several times with some of the people that she buddied with. One of her buddies went blind from HIV. Another one developed some dementia. I had to hospitalize him because he was hallucinating and not safe for himself, and that was hard to have to put him in a hospital. And unfortunately, he was placed in the psychiatric hospital, and then we had to advocate for him because that's not really where he belonged. This was part of his illness was affecting his brain. He wasn't psychiatrically ill, but there just weren't places for people to go. And so sometimes they were placed in inappropriate settings. I mean, this man had to sit in groups and was on a behavioral program and was chastised for not being able to sit in a group for an hour. He was sick. He couldn't sit in a chair. He was almost bones. It hurt him to sit in a chair. So we had to try to advocate to get him out of those groups and let him lay in bed. Just feed him and keep him safe. So those were hard things to watch and try to navigate. Going and seeing the quilts, and some of these quilts were people we knew. [long pause] That was hard. And to wonder who's going to be next and to realize that some of the male friends that we socialized with were diagnosed with HIV, and some of those men died, and having spent time with them, you know? It was a tough time. So we did the Washington march. We went down and saw the quilt, which was pretty awesome to watch them lay it out across this large area down by the Capitol and walk through it. It's just many, many, many people who died. And then when they brought it to Muhlenberg, and they couldn't bring the whole quilt, but parts of it, we attended functions to support bringing the quilt to the Lehigh Valley. What else did we do? I don't know. I can tell you that the last groups that I ran with people who were HIV+, my oldest client had been living with HIV for twenty-five years, so it was very heavy to have members of my group who had longevity, who had survived it, who were still doing well and were going to die of old age. So that was kind of the upside as time went on, but the early years were very hard. It was very scary. MF: Were there other organizations in the Lehigh Valley, maybe like the Gay and Lesbian Task Force or other organizations, that you felt were really valuable during this period? MS: I was a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force. That did not exist until we organized it. That was kind of in response to the Clinton's Don't Ask Don't Tell, and so there was a number of people, the ones that really got things started were professors at Northampton Community College, and so Manny Gonzalez and Chris Boes were talking to me. I think we were at Rosemary's one night, and I think this might have been after some kind of demonstration or protest or something that had happened, and they said, you know, we should really develop a task force. We should do something to try to further GLBT rights. And so a number of us were sitting there talking and drinking at the bar -- most things happen at the bar -- and decided to develop this task force, and they asked me if I'd be a board member, so I said, sure. So this would have been 1994 into '95, so I was part of that group for the early of the task force, and we brought speakers in to speak. There was a woman. I can't remember her name -- I've been trying to remember her name for a while now -- that they brought in to speak about the Don't Ask Don't Tell because she was a ranking officer in the military. And one of our board members was ex-Navy and also had had some experiences with discrimination because of being a lesbian in the service. So we brought her in to speak and was one of the events in the Lehigh Valley that people could attend. Pretty shortly after I had become a board member, unfortunately, I suffered a stroke, so I had to resign and step away from the organization as a board member at that time. I still stayed active later as attending events that they put on, but at that time, I needed to recover and take care of myself. But one of the things we did at the task force was to help disseminate these voter guides when I was there. It was to make sure that all the bars and all the places that gay people frequented, they could get access to these voter guides, so that they knew what representatives in the valley would represent us and work to get our rights. And many of the members of the task force talked to people, talked to representatives, tried to get them to understand what we needed and why we needed it. Marriage equality, that was kind of like an idea, but I never thought that would happen in my lifetime, but that was something we hoped that maybe this newly formed task force someday would maybe get there, but we just wanted things like anti-discrimination. We just wanted fair housing, not to be able to worry that you'd lose your job. These were all things that could happen to you as a gay person at that time. You could be fired. You could be denied housing. Your children could be taken from you. We have a friend that lost her son in a custody battle because she was lesbian. We knew a couple women like that that lost their children. So it was very important. The task force had lots of different areas they wanted to look at from AIDS to anti-discrimination. At that time, civil unions and marriage ceremonies were kind of like the only thing we could do aside from developing your own legal protections, which Jane and I did very early in our relationship. I've had a will since I was twenty-eight, so very early we realized we didn't have these rights, and if something were to happen to one of us, we wouldn't be allowed in a hospital room with each other. We wouldn't be given time off work. We wouldn't have any of these rights. So we had a wonderful lawyer, Robert Brown in Allentown, and he's since deceased, but he drew up our papers for us, so we had wills and power of attorneys, health power of attorneys, financial power of attorneys, because we did not want either of our families, if something should happen to us, to take what we built together or to deny the other the right to be in a hospital room. So we had those wills. I was twenty-eight years old, my first will and power of attorneys with Jane. And when I had my stroke, we needed those papers. We had copies of them in a file at home. We had copies in a lock box, so I was thirty-six years old, and I had a stroke. Kind of a fluky thing. I had no idea that I had an underlying genetic disorder. That came later after the stroke to find out why I had it, but I had a terrible, terrible headache one night coming home from Hazleton. I was working for my psychologist licensure, and I was driving one hundred and ten miles a day commuting, under a lot of stress, and went to dinner that night with a friend, and I had been having headaches maybe for two or three weeks before. I don't usually get them, but I was having some pretty bad headaches. And I used to run, and I was running a few weeks before and kept feeling this pulsing in my neck when I was running, and I didn't know what that was. Later I knew what that was. So I went to dinner this one night after work with a friend, and I hugged her goodbye, and when I hugged her goodbye, I felt something snap in my neck. As I'm driving home from Hazleton to Allentown, I feel like I'm drunk. The lines on the road are kind of wavy, and I'm having trouble staying on the road. I have this terrible, terrible headache, like the worst headache of my life, and I stopped and got gas, and I called Jane and said, something's wrong. I have a terrible headache, and I'm having trouble driving. So when I got home, she gave me some, I don't know, Tylenol, something, and I'll just go to bed, right? Got a headache, go to bed. And she went to work the next day, and she said, why don't you call your doctor? I said, okay. And off she went to work, and it was our habit to lock the door in the morning with whoever was left behind. You know, we lived in a fairly nice neighborhood, but we still locked our doors. So we lived in a townhouse, and I was upstairs, and she locked the door. She leaves. I get up to call my doctor. I fall in our den with the phone in my hand. I can't get up. I feel like my brain is shutting down like a computer, like, brrr, and I just thought, oh no. Something's really wrong. I go to dial the phone, can't remember my doctor's number, can't remember to call off work. Get the phone book out, can't read the phone book, so now I'm thinking, I'm really in trouble. So the only number I can remember is Jane's number at work. I call Jane's number at work, and she wasn't available immediately, and I got her coworker, and all I said to him was, have her call me. I could still speak at that time, and he said, okay. And within a few minutes, I realized I was going to lose that ability, so I called back, and all I could get out at that time was, I need help, and Davie, her coworker, got Jane on the phone, and Jane said, as soon as she heard me trying to speak, said, I'm sending an ambulance to the house. So I was locked in. They couldn't get upstairs to me. Her mom and dad lived next door to us at this time because we had moved them from where they lived -- they had lived in Bucks County and they were getting older -- we moved them up next to us, so luckily she called her dad, and her dad came with a key and let the ambulance in. Jane's on her way to the hospital to meet me with a couple neighbor ladies who drove her. Then she gets there, and I'm in the ER, and they won't let her in because she's not family, and so they don't want to let her in. And one of my neighbors said to her, don't you have papers? Didn't you say you guys had papers? So she told them that she had papers and that she was my medical power of attorney, and they said, unfortunately, if you don't have them with you, we can't let you in. So I am now starting to -- I mean, I could lose consciousness. I am having trouble advocating for myself. The neighbor lady drove her home. She got our papers out of the file, drove back, and presented them, and then they let her in. But that's what you had to do then. This was 1994, November 1994. And after that, I had to follow up with this doctor. I had a temporary left-side paralysis, full facial droop on the left side, affected speech, so I had two-and-a-half months of rehab. Luckily all of that was temporary. It all came back, and I made a full recovery, but I had to see this neurologist frequently, and I had to be a blood thinner, and I couldn't drive for two-and-a-half months, and I'm trying to do my psych internship to finish up for licensure, and he doesn't want to talk to Jane. I want her to come with me to my appointments because I need someone to help me make sense of everything that's happening. I've had a brain injury. I need a second set of ears, right? He was pretty disrespectful at first. Why does she need to be here? You are my patient. Who is she to you? She's my girlfriend. She's my partner. She's not your family. So we had to negotiate. I was pretty angry with my doctor at first, and so was Jane, and did a lot of crying. And eventually over working with him for a period of weeks to months, he and I came to an understanding, and I'm glad to say to this day, I count him as a friend. We kind of won him over. Yeah. And I credit him with saving my life that day. Luckily, I was able to recover fully. Did have some neuro-psych testing at my insistence because my doctor did not -- this is during my arguments and fights with him -- he did not want to have me tested for neuro-psych testing because he said, you're fine. I said, I'm sitting for my psychology license to practice psychology, and I want to make sure my brain's okay because I really only get one or two chances to sit for this test, and if I don't get it, I'm not going to get it. So I finally talked him into allowing me to do that. I think because of my tenacity and I kept at it with him that eventually he came to respect me, and he came to respect Jane, and pretty quickly, she started going to all my appointments with me. And if she didn't come, he would ask, where is Jane? Now. So that is what took me out of working with the task force, to go back to that thread, but it didn't mean we didn't stay involved with being active in other things that were going on in the community. Trish and Liz -- Trish Sullivan, Liz Bradbury -- they kind of came along during the time that Jane and I were together. They started doing things to be organizing and helping out the community, and I'm very thankful that they have since -- we left the Lehigh Valley before they developed the community center, but I will say, there was a community center in Allentown before the Bradbury and Sullivan LGBT Center. When I moved there in the '80s, in 1980, there was the Lambda Center that was on Hamilton Street in Allentown, and it was a place you could go if you wanted to play games or meet up with other gay people. It didn't last very long. They couldn't support it, pay the rent, so it dwindled pretty quickly, but when Liz and Trish came to town, and they met with Steve Black, and they were part of PA-GALA and getting people to know who to vote, and then there started to be organizations like GLORA, the Gays and Lesbians of Reading and Allentown, and we went to GLORA events, and these were potlucks in people's homes and organized outings to plays and different events that were being done for socialization, so you could meet other gay people that weren't necessarily out, maybe didn't want to be out, but wanted to be connected. There was GLOSS. There was the Gay and Lesbians sports group, and they played ping pong, and they played softball, and there were different groups that started to spring up. There was an educational group that tried to help out with schools and education. And there was a little newspaper, the Valley Press, the [inaudible] Valley Press put out, that would list a whole calendar of events of different things that were happening in the gay and lesbian community that you could attend, that you could go to, and hopefully there would be something that spoke to you. So that was happening in the '80s, in the '90s, in the Lehigh Valley. So a lot of things were word-of-mouth and these small flyers that would get printed and put out. That was what was happening then. MF: I'm curious what marriage equality has meant for you. You described this sort of harrowing experience having a stroke and really advocating for your relationship, for that to be honored. I'm curious now what marriage equality has meant to you personally and how that has impacted your life. MS: Oh, that's been huge. Jane and I, earlier on, had tried to do a marriage ceremony, commitment ceremony I guess they were calling it at the time. We belonged to Quaker meeting in the Lehigh Valley, Lehigh Valley Friends. They knew we were a gay couple, and this was the forerunner to marriage equality and the marriage law being passed. So a lot of people were doing commitment ceremonies, civil unions, things like that, so we asked our meeting house if they would allow us to have that ceremony at our meeting, and we had two dear friends who were a straight couple that were having a recommitment ceremony for them. It was an anniversary for them -- and I'm sorry I don't remember which of their anniversaries it was, Barbara and Jim -- and so they said, how great would it be if -- Barbara was Quaker, too, and she said, how great would it be if they could do their recommitment ceremony, and Jane and I could have a civil commitment ceremony? The Quakers said, no. They would not allow us to do it, even though we were members of this meetinghouse for a number of years, and Jane being a very active member on committees and such. So that was very hurtful that they would not allow it, and so our friends had their recommitment ceremony, and we did not get to be a part of it with them. And later, they then asked us -- they were going to put a First Day School addition onto the meeting house, and they were raising money, and we were one of the first people that they came to to ask for money for this project because at the time, I was a now practicing psychologist, and Jane had a very good job at PPL, and they asked us if we could contribute ten thousand dollars towards this project. Yeah. In their little pyramid, that was their top number that they were looking for. They came to us as one of the first people and asked would we contribute this for the children of First Day School. Oh, I was very angry. I said a few words, and then I had to go upstairs, and I left Jane to finish because I just would not be able to hold my temper. But I thought, how dare you ask us for this much money for a cause that we're not really as much a part of when you could not support us in our commitment ceremony? So we did not contribute towards that, mainly just because of hurt. Not because we didn't want the First Day School, not that we didn't want the addition, but I just was not in a place where I was going to be generous at that point. So by the time that marriage equality was coming around, I said to Jane, people are going to other states. They're getting married in other states. I don't want to go to another state. I don't want to go to Canada. If I'm going to be married to you, and I want to be married to you, I would like to be married in my home state, and I will be married when our state passes it. So in May of 2014, when it passed Supreme Court, we were at our new church, which is a Unitarian Universalist church of Athens and Sheshequin in Athens, Pennsylvania, which happened to be at the time we joined, about one-third GLBT, which is why we joined it. We were at the church at a function, and my mother called me on the phone, and Jane's brother-in-law texted her, and my mother said, hey, I don't know where you are right now, but I think the Supreme Court just said you guys can get married now, and I wanted you to know. So my mother's come a long way. She's come a long way. And Jane's brother-in-law had texted her almost at the same time. Hey, did you see the news? You have a marriage equality. So we told two of our friends at the church, Katie and Kris, that this had just happened, and oh my god, could this be real? And they were excited, too, because they're a lesbian couple, and they've been together a number of years, and they're like, we can get married, and I said to Jane, do you want to get married? And she said, yes. So then the question was, where to get married, and where do you go for your marriage license? We're here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, very conservative, Trump land big time, and it's my home area where I grew up, where my mother said to me, you should go to Allentown because you'll be safer there, and here I am back in my home area working as a psychologist. Built a home here in 2005, and here it is, 2014, and we're allowed to be married. So I said to Jane, I'm not sure if I want to go to the courthouse in my hometown and ask for a marriage license because at that time, when marriage equality came out, there were people that were denying them even though it was now the law of the land, and I was not sure if we would be met with trouble here. And she said, well, I understand that. She said, we could go back to the Lehigh Valley, and we could get it there. I said, let me think about it, and she's like, well, okay. And our friends said, we're going to go right down and get it here, the two friends that went to our church. They were going to go to the courthouse in Bradford County. They were the first gay couple in Bradford County to get their marriage license. It took me about three days. I wanted to think about it, and on the third day, I said, come on. Let's go down to the courthouse here in my hometown, and let's get our marriage license. We were the third gay couple in Bradford County to get our marriage license. And when we went in, I was surprised because the clerk said, it's about time. It was wonderful. So we were a little afraid that maybe the governor would appeal it, overturn it, so we were afraid that we should very quickly -- because that was happening around the country, and so we decided pretty quickly after getting our marriage license that we should marry as soon as we could, and we asked our minister at the UU church if she would do the ceremony, and we asked my parents if they would stand up for us. Unfortunately, Jane's parents had passed away years before this, so they did not get to be a part of our wedding, and unfortunately, her older sister had also passed away, so they did not get to see us marry, but my parents said yes, including my dad, who was still alive at the time. And they went with us to the UU church. Our friends Katie and Kris were married the same day, minutes apart from us, by the same minister, and we were married on a Wednesday afternoon. I took off the afternoon from work. We got married that Wednesday afternoon, and I was going to go back to work, and Jane said, you're not going back to work. It's our wedding day. [laughs] So we then went out to dinner and celebrated with our friends and my parents and the couple that had stood up for them. Shortly thereafter, within days, my sisters found out that we had gotten married on a Wednesday afternoon, and they weren't a part of it, and they were very upset, and they said, what the heck? You've been waiting all these years, and you can finally get married. We thought there was going to be a big wedding, and you snuck off and got married in the middle of the week. We want a celebration. So Jane and I decided to have a do-over wedding ceremony in September of 2014, and we invited one hundred and fifty people. I told Jane, if I was going to have a wedding celebration, I wanted everything. I wanted it to be big. So we had friends and family and people from our church and coworkers from the thirty-one years that we were together at that time, and it was hard to select who got to come, but we tried to pick people who had kind of been supportive of us through the years. And the people that stood up for us were the people that had known us as a couple the longest, thirty years for Barbara and Jim, the couple that had wanted us to marry at Quaker Meeting. My dear friend that I grew up with from high school, we were best friends from fifteen to sixteen years old, playing sports together, and she's also a lesbian, her and her girlfriend came up from Philadelphia and stood up with us. Jane and my dear friend from Quaker meeting who had moved to Alaska and we had known for twenty-five years and had always been supportive of our relationship, she and her boyfriend TJ, Debbie and TJ came from Alaska to stand up with us. So we had many, many people come to this wedding. We were married in the historic church of the UU church here in our home area. The minister that married us that Wednesday did the do-over recommitment of our marriage that September. My father and mother were part of the ceremony, and all of my siblings got to come and some of their children. So we had a great service at the old historic church. A good friend of ours, the photographer, she took some wonderful pictures. We had a big celebration with a DJ and all the traditional throwing the bouquet. Yes, I carried flowers. Jane did not carry flowers, but she wore a flower. And we danced in the church on the way out, and we went to a local hall that you could rent that is owned and operated by two gay men, and we had our reception there. Started out upstairs in the dining room. My niece and her partner had a catering business, and they catered our wedding for us, so we had a cocktail hour, and we had a nice, sit-down meal, and then we moved downstairs to the cabaret bar and stage where they had a DJ, and we had dancing until late in the night, so it was wonderful. And what did it mean to me? When I got to say to Jane the vows that I had written, and she got to say what she had to say to me, I felt legitimate. I felt whole. I felt like we counted, like everybody else, and it was a wonderful feeling, and I'm not really sure how else to describe it, but something shifted and changed for me that day. It was great. MF: Wow, what a wedding story. I wish I could have seen that one hundred and fifty people ceremony. Thank you for sharing that story. Michele, we're getting towards the end of the interview. I'd like to give you an opportunity. Is there something that we haven't talked about today that you really feel the need to share, something that we missed in our conversation? MS: One of the areas that I worked in that has been pretty important to me is working with trans people. I came by this pretty accidentally, actually, but when I worked at Step By Step, I had an individual who lived in our residential program, a gentleman who was very tortured. He wanted to be female. He felt that he was female, and here I am in my early twenties in charge of this program, and this man is one of our residents, and he can't get anybody to listen to him about being wrong-gendered. I used to take call, and I can remember that when this call came in, this gentleman was so distressed by being in the wrong body that he cut his testicles off over a bucket at one of our programs, and the call came in that he was in danger of bleeding to death and needed to be taken to the hospital. So of course we got him emergency services, and he was taken to the hospital, and we thought for sure, Lehigh Valley Hospital would make him right. They did not. They did surgery, and they fixed him up, and now he was a man with a penis and no testicles. Terrible, terrible story. Terrible story. Could not get someone to help him get his body fixed. So here I am, twenty-one, twenty-two years old, and this is my first experience with a person who needs to have sexual reassignment surgery. I didn't know what this was. I mean, I had heard of transsexuals. The only thing I knew about transsexuals were the men that dressed up in women's clothing and Rocky Horror Picture Show, right? I didn't know much else beyond that. Now I have a person in my program who's very clearly distressed over his gender and wants to be female and knows that all his life, he's been female, and we can't get him what he needs. So that was one reason that I wanted to start helping folks who were trans. The second one was when I did my psych internship up at Northeastern Counseling in Hazleton. Again, we had a gentleman who was distressed about his gender. He wasn't as open as the other fellow was at Step By Step, so it wasn't known to us until he had his situation occur, and again, an on-call situation where we got a call that this gentleman had cut his penis off at his home, and we sent emergency services to his home to get him and his penis and take him to the hospital, and before emergency personnel could get into the bathroom to him, he flushed it down the toilet, so they could not reattach his penis. This is how distressed he was. So again, I'm thinking, here I'm in my thirties now, and I'm thinking, surely they will fix him and do the surgery now. No. They did not. They again sewed him up. He now has a small stub that they fixed, so he can urinate out of it, but he still has testicles and a small stub to urinate from. Can you imagine the psychological distress this person was now in? And we didn't have resources, and we couldn't find a way to help him. So then I'm working at Northampton Mental Health and Mental Retardation in the Lehigh Valley as a young psychologist there seeing patients, and I have a young trans man come in, and he is in between. Still has some feminine characteristics, starting to grow a beard, voice is changing, still has breasts, and is very distressed about his situation and needing to find services to get gender right and very angry because where do I fit now? I'm stuck in between. What can you do to help me? Again, I'm a thirty-something, new psychologist working in the Lehigh Valley, and I don't know, and this person had every right to be angry at me because coming to me for services, and you don't know? Who can help me? I said, I'll find out. I'll find out. So I started asking around, and there was PK Counseling in the Lehigh Valley, and she had been doing some work with trans people, and she came and met with me and brought me some of her books. She was an older woman getting ready to retire, and she passed her books onto me, and she said, I'll help you learn what you need to learn if you will take over this type of work. So I did. I didn't know what I was doing. She mentored me. I talked to some people down in Philadelphia and got some mentoring there. There was a couple psychologists down there that were associated with -- it's going right out of my head. The center down in Philadelphia, I can't think of it right now. I know it, and I should be able to tell you. Maybe it will come to me, [The Mazzoni Center]. At any rate, word got out, and I started seeing people who were transgender, people that would have gone to PK Counseling she was referring to me because she was retiring, and that became a part of my practice in Bethlehem, and I became known as one of the few people in the Lehigh Valley that would see trans people and help them with sexual reassignment surgery. The first person that became gender-right under my care went to Thailand to have her surgery done, and I coordinated care with a doctor in Thailand through an interpreter. So since then, we were able to develop more local resources, different people that we could count on for hormone therapy and gender reassignment. Dr. Christine McGinn down in Doylestown area[inaudible] for sexual reassignment surgery, Dr. Sherman Leis down in Philadelphia for sexual reassignment surgery. There was a doctor that we met at the trans conference in Philadelphia. I went to the health trans conference when I was newly starting this work, so that I could learn, and met a lot of physicians and psychologists who were working in this field, and that was a pretty wonderful experience. Talk about feeling like a minority, to be in a hotel in Philadelphia at the trans health conference and being one of the only people walking around who's not trans. Pretty interesting. So I began that work and have had a number of people transition under my care since, and I continue to see people who are trans in my practice now. So that's one of my subspecialties as well as GLBT issues. Back long ago when Liz Bradbury was doing her photo exhibit and wanting to photograph couples, she asked me if Jane and I would be in her couples photograph series, and I said, not yet. Not yet. And she's like, why not? Why not? Everybody knows you're gay. You're out. I said, well, I'm not really out out, shouting-it-from-the-rooftops out. I'm not sure I want my pictures out there yet. I'm practicing in the valley, and I'm seeing a lot of young GLBT people, and I think I can do more good if I just stay kind of behind the scenes because GLBT people need a safe place to go and a counselor they can talk to, and some of these kids' parents would not have let them see me if they had known I was a lesbian. So I know that was not what Liz wanted to hear at that time, but that's why I did that, and that's why I didn't have our pictures taken earlier, so that I could do more good, as I thought, by kind of keeping that under the wraps. I knew people knew, but I wasn't going to put it out there and maybe exclude someone who needed services. Jane and I used to run annual holiday open houses at our home in Bethlehem because we knew people who had been kicked out of their homes, who had been disowned by families, and had no place to go for holidays, so we used to have Thanksgiving dinners for GLBT people. We used to have an annual Christmas party where people came and helped dress our tree and have a cup of cheer and be able to sit around and talk with everybody. I wanted to do that in my practice, too. I wanted to have a safe place for people to come, so that even though the parent might be sending them to see me because we don't really want them to be gay, they could come to me, and that kid could sit in my office without a parent sitting in the office and say, how do I get my parents to accept that I'm gay? They don't want me to be gay. They're sending me to you because they want you to change me. Can you help me change them? That's why we didn't have our pictures taken. When we got ready to leave the Lehigh Valley, I said to Liz, you know, you can have our pictures now, and we did finally get our photos taken, so that we could be a part of her photo display of GLBT couples in the Lehigh Valley. The one thing I do wish, and I hope she's done it since, it would be nice if there would be some way of being able to know on those photographs how many of us have been together for how long and whether or not we ever married because those pictures were taken before gay marriage, and now we're married. So it would be nice if that could be reflected in that photograph project as well. But yeah, that's another thing that I just thought would be worth mentioning. MF: Thank you so much, Michele. It's just been such a pleasure to talk with you today. I am so grateful that you took the time. MS: Well, thank you for interviewing me and asking all the right questions. I appreciate that. It made it easier to talk about things. MF: Thank you. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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02:13:30
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Michele Strohl, June 5, 2020
Description
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Michele Strohl describes her childhood in Northeastern PA with a focus on family life, discussion of normative understandings of gender, and her school experiences. Strohl describes college life at East Stroudsburg University, the lesbian community at college, and her first jobs as a mental health worker in Wilkes-Barre and then Allentown. Strohl goes on to explore getting a graduate degree in Psychology and her work in this field. In terms of the LGBT community, Strohl discusses a variety of organizations, including PA-GALA, AIDS Outreach, Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLORA, and GLOS. She also provides information about local LGBT bars and nightlife as well as moving accounts of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and the impact of marriage equality on her personally. Finally, she discusses her marriage to Jane Land with details about their marriage ceremony and life together.
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LGBT-11
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2020-06-05
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.