Browse Items (110 total)

Phil Wade reflects on Catholic childhood, shame, survival, teaching, and Denver LGBTQ community. Born in Manhattan and raised in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, he describes feeling different early, struggling with masculinity, Catholic guilt, school…

Bill Fry reflects on adoption, repression, faith, travel, and gay life across several decades. Raised in small-town Attica, Indiana, he describes a loving but emotionally limited family, early awareness of difference, military school expulsion,…

Joseph Bump reflects on a life shaped by conservative religion, study, family, loss, and late-life LGBTQ community. Raised in an extremely conservative Methodist holiness tradition, he trained in education, theology, music, Greek, and Latin, later…

Bublz La Rue is a long time performer and personal friend of Christi Layne. In this oral history he talks about his career in drag as well as growing up in the South and his activist work in Seattle as well as the early days of the International…

Jennifer “Behind the Green Door”’s oral history centers on the Gender Identity Center, Tommye Kelly, and the practical, emotional, and community realities of transition in Colorado. She discusses finding early transgender information through The…

Robin’s oral history traces her life from a military childhood in Michigan, Kentucky, Alaska, and Boulder to work, music, art, and lesbian self-understanding in Colorado. She discusses Catholic school, Boulder High, CU, Mountain High Ice Cream,…

Jim Hipp’s oral history traces his life from Minnesota to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver, centered on Baptist upbringing, gay self-discovery, nightlife, work, friendship, and survival. He discusses leaving home, early gay bars and cruising…

Daniel Wenger’s oral history traces his life from rural Indiana to Denver, including childhood isolation, bullying, funeral work, military service, marriage, fatherhood, alcoholism, mental health struggles, and gradual self-acceptance as a gay man.…

Aileen Gaumond’s oral history traces her life from New Jersey to Colorado, including childhood, athletics, hitchhiking, education, marriage, motherhood, and work as one of the early women electricians in Colorado. She reflects on sexism in…

Phil Hoyle’s oral history traces his life from a religious Kansas upbringing into church work, marriage, fatherhood, and eventual self-recognition as a gay man. He describes long years of understanding himself through bisexuality, his loving but…