00:00:02.960 - 00:00:09.980

So let's start with, you might have already answered this, I don't know if this is correct, but how's the doctorate going? What exactly are you

00:00:09.980 - 00:00:19.160

studying and how's it going? Well, it hadn't quite started yet in the fall. And, you know, I've only had a glimpse

00:00:19.160 - 00:00:31.120

at the potential courses that are coming up. But it looks like one of my first forays will be into some work with archives, which is a great interest of mine,

00:00:31.120 - 00:00:40.780

as well as some speculative fiction. And, you know, a lot of the required stuff has to get done first, too. I'd love to hear more about that

00:00:42.010 - 00:00:50.120

speculative fiction later, for sure. That's very interesting. Why did you end up leaving University of Delaware in the first place?

00:00:50.120 - 00:01:01.680

Oh, wow. Ooh, we need more than an hour for that. But it was a combination of factors, primarily financial and sort of life

00:01:01.680 - 00:01:15.140

decisions. I mean, it was a time where, you know, I had left home at age 17. I was supporting myself and it was very difficult to be a student and

00:01:15.140 - 00:01:25.560

earn enough money to actually live when I wasn't living on campus anymore. And, you know, I was getting a little older and I was finding out who I was

00:01:25.560 - 00:01:39.600

and I wanted to spend more time exploring that. And so I felt the need to, you know, sort of spread my wings, get out there and live my authentic life, which

00:01:39.600 - 00:01:48.200

meant that I needed some more money. And that meant it was harder to maintain classes. You said you left home at 17. Was that of

00:01:48.200 - 00:01:59.000

your own accord or was there a force that pushed you out? Well, there were plenty of, you know, forces behind the scenes. But basically, I was always a year

00:01:59.000 - 00:02:09.060

younger than everyone in my class. So I graduated high school at 17. And I was a freshman at the university at 17. I didn't turn 18 until

00:02:09.060 - 00:02:25.240

December of that first year. And I just basically never intended to go back and I never did. sorry why did you end up coming back

00:02:25.240 - 00:02:39.200

unfinished business you know I mean had always nagged at me I had taken a class here and there I took a class at Temple I took a class enrolled in a couple of other things and

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I you know I'd always intended while I was having my career to sort of finish the degree that I'd started back in the 70s, but I didn't. And so when I retired in 2020

00:02:51.840 - 00:03:04.540

and learned about the programs available at the university for people my age to be able to go to school very affordably, I said, let's do it. It's time to finish this stuff

00:03:04.540 - 00:03:16.000

up and get back to the things that always meant so much to me, which is really writing. So I wanted to get back to school and wanted to finish that up spend a lot of time writing

00:03:16.000 - 00:03:30.160

my mom's currently taking advantage of the of the same program doing her master gardener program oh nice yeah so our paths may cross yeah it may matter who knows um what

00:03:30.160 - 00:03:40.640

was main street like back in the day i know a lot has changed since the 70s um a lot has changed since five ten years ago honestly what were some of the places that you old

00:03:40.640 - 00:03:51.940

haunts or someplace you frequented that maybe aren't there anymore well my favorite thing that's not there anymore is when you walk up the steps uh going to you know as if you

00:03:51.940 - 00:04:02.000

were going to walk straight across and go toward the little bob you know the stairs on the right as you're if memorial halls at your back okay and you walk all the way up and

00:04:02.000 - 00:04:12.660

you go up that stairway on the right if you made it immediate right the first thing you'd hit It was a movie theater called State Theater. State Theater, yeah, awesome. Yeah,

00:04:13.100 - 00:04:29.000

and I mean, it had been like a typical family-run theater for years and years. I'd actually gone there once with my family when I was an adolescent to see a movie. But

00:04:29.000 - 00:04:44.700

by that time, there was a townie, kind of an interesting character who was running it. And it had some daytime movies, like regular movies, but it was primarily like College

00:04:44.700 - 00:04:58.560

Crowd and Midnight movies. So you could see The Song Remains the Same with Led Zeppelin, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clockwork Orange. You

00:04:58.560 - 00:05:12.480

know, it brought in all kinds of really interesting films that primarily catered to, you know, people who wanted to hang out. And eventually, I think by the time I was out of

00:05:12.480 - 00:05:23.560

Newark, Rocky Horror was hitting the scene. So, you know, there was a whole midnight movie kind of thing going on there. Yeah, even though I never experienced it, I

00:05:23.560 - 00:05:32.820

lament the loss of the state theater. had an incredible marquee up front oh yeah few few neon signs uh currently and well would have been in dollar we barely have any left which

00:05:32.820 - 00:05:45.960

is a shame that's true um so going a little bit further uh did you protest the omiller case and uh if so how exactly did you do so uh it was my first time i ever protested

00:05:45.960 - 00:05:57.760

anything certainly the first time as um a gay person in public uh you know gay people didn't protest much in public back then or make too much noise

00:05:59.120 - 00:06:12.220

and i what we did is between you know we used to call the land between memorial and the street you know and the big buildings that was referred to as the mall i know i

00:06:12.220 - 00:06:22.460

think they call everyone calls it the green now green yes called the mall so there were protests on the mall um and it It wasn't, you know, when I'm saying protests or

00:06:22.500 - 00:06:33.580

thinking about it today, you can't really call it a march because you can't call 50, 60, 75 people really a march if it was even that many. But it was, you know, a

00:06:33.580 - 00:06:42.820

group of people who would come through and make a little noise, put up tables. There was an Allmiller Defense Fund. So we were trying to collect money

00:06:42.820 - 00:06:53.040

for the Allmiller Defense Fund. A very good friend of mine. And the atmosphere between professors and students was very different at that time.

00:06:53.160 - 00:07:08.360

There was a lot more mingling, and students and professors sometimes hung out together. So I had a couple of friends that were professors, and one of them was a photographer

00:07:08.360 - 00:07:20.560

who donated a fair amount of his work to be auctioned off for the defense fund. A friend of mine was a business owner, young business entrepreneur on Main

00:07:20.560 - 00:07:33.160

Street. He gave away gift certificates and product from his hair salon. So there were people, you know, in the community who were also trying to help raise

00:07:33.160 - 00:07:44.540

funds to support Richard's efforts. Do you lament the loss of that kind of student-teacher intermixing? Oh, very much so.

00:07:44.970 - 00:07:57.880

And I mean, you know, today I think people are terrified of one another. And, you know, I can only share, you know,

00:07:58.000 - 00:08:08.000

I can think of three occasions with three different professors who, when I was either a sophomore or somewhere, you know, then when I started going part time,

00:08:08.000 - 00:08:15.600

it's hard to say what year I was in. But during that time period, when I was living off campus, my roommate and I, people would come over and have dinner.

00:08:15.800 - 00:08:22.920

So, you know, I had there were professors who would come over and have dinner. We'd have class in each other's apartments or houses.

00:08:24.260 - 00:08:35.720

I also think it's really important to to think about that time period that the drinking age in Delaware was 20. And in Maryland, it was 18. And in New

00:08:35.720 - 00:08:50.600

Jersey, it was 18. And so all around Delaware, right, there was easy access. So it was not a big deal for younger people to get together and have wine. Wine and beer

00:08:50.600 - 00:09:00.260

was sold on the campus at the university in a couple of different places. If you had ID, you could go in and add a university function and you could drink.

00:09:00.630 - 00:09:08.520

So there was a lot more kind of socializing like that. actually like sponsored by ud not just you know one of the businesses on main street

00:09:08.520 - 00:09:18.440

yeah i want to say one of them was in bacchus there was a coffee house you had to be able to show id when you went in um they had folk music they had other kinds of things and

00:09:18.440 - 00:09:30.300

another one was in a uh where the trabant student center is now that building didn't exist obviously it was just the old church And the old church had a section that was called

00:09:30.300 - 00:09:40.020

a Raskeller with just big, long tables. And at certain nights of the week, they would have a night, I think, where if you were a certain age, you could get in and

00:09:40.020 - 00:09:50.220

you could, you know, you could drink beer. Sort of unrelated, but what's your opinion on the Trabant Center? I heard it was very controversial when it was first put in.

00:09:50.220 - 00:09:59.120

Do you have any strong feelings one way or the other about it? uh you know when i came back i had left this area for a while too when i came back

00:09:59.120 - 00:10:13.140

and it was there i was like whoa what is this thing um it's a clever use of the space i mean admittedly because of that weird long strip uh i was just driving back

00:10:13.140 - 00:10:23.520

from class monday night and i think it was the first time i'd driven in the dark for a while and saw all those big blue and gold arches that are visible and i was like

00:10:23.520 - 00:10:36.120

well you know that's kind of cool but it destroyed houses obviously it destroyed other buildings that were probably old cool buildings that were hanging out that um

00:10:36.450 - 00:10:48.140

yeah so i don't you know i don't love it i will say before we got together i was doing a couple of things i quickly looked up i think in uh just to give you an idea in

00:10:48.140 - 00:10:59.560

1967 i think one of the things i saw there are only 6 500 students at the university and in 1975 i don't know what the total number was but the number that lived on campus

00:10:59.560 - 00:11:15.200

versus the commuters uh was i think somewhere like probably 20 80 80 commuters and maybe even 10 15 living on campus because there wasn't as many dorms and there wasn't

00:11:15.200 - 00:11:28.100

as much housing back then so yeah buildings needed to happen there was a building spree while i was at the university smith got built kirkbride got built um you know

00:11:28.100 - 00:11:37.760

those are all brand spanking new buildings when i was there the cutting edge technology they haven't changed much since then for me i'm not no and they're terrible Yeah.

00:11:38.780 - 00:11:51.040

So how do you feel about what's currently happening on campus with the protests and all that? What's your opinion on all that? Well, I'll be honest, as a grad student.

00:11:51.980 - 00:12:03.300

And it was a big shift when I was still finishing my undergrad degree, I was on campus every single day. And so I was seeing and feeling sort of the pulse more than I do

00:12:03.300 - 00:12:16.960

now. The last year, I'm only on campus maybe two days a week. Or if I am more, I'm usually just hunkered down in the library. I'm not moving around the campus as much.

00:12:16.960 - 00:12:31.760

So I haven't physically run into these protests as myself, but I was on a call the other evening with an alumni group called UD Pride, and they were talking about this

00:12:31.760 - 00:12:41.900

group from New York that comes and protests. and that they come it's some I think the church of something or other I don't know what the name of it is they come and they

00:12:41.900 - 00:12:51.600

make a lot of noise and apparently the last time they were here they were fairly ugly with homophobic and racial slurs and

00:12:52.840 - 00:13:02.680

so but what the way they do it and plan it is that they do it apparently they have to give so much notice before they can show up

00:13:02.720 - 00:13:13.640

and they know that they have can be this close to university property and this close to the public property. And so they know exactly what they can and they cannot do.

00:13:15.120 - 00:13:26.860

And so my first thought was, well, how many people can be mobilized quickly to surround them, make more noise than they do, drown them out, hide them from view,

00:13:28.340 - 00:13:36.940

which are all things I experienced in other parts of my life when counter-protesters would come to Pride events, for example, in Philadelphia

00:13:36.940 - 00:13:54.560

or other places that I've been to. So I personally am not feeling and seeing that. I think it's very sad that people are and angers me. And I wonder who, you know,

00:13:54.820 - 00:14:04.580

I sort of made a mental note to myself to see if I could find out more about who are the campus leaders that and what are any efforts that they

00:14:04.580 - 00:14:13.000

have what plans what do they do do you feel the climate around the protest is kind of soured since you were here do you feel like it's sort of a lost

00:14:13.760 - 00:14:27.300

um or um as just a form of well one of the things that's really interesting to me you know from my perspective at my age and having

00:14:27.300 - 00:14:38.780

been through, you know, other decades when protests were really happening all of the time, is that there used to be a system of bulletin boards all

00:14:38.780 - 00:14:51.080

over the university. And so you could very quickly overnight alert the campus, the literal student body who was walking by these billboards, that there was going to be a

00:14:51.080 - 00:14:59.700

function, that there was going to be a rally. There was going to be a meeting. All you had to do was get things printed really quickly. Things were cheaper then and get

00:14:59.700 - 00:15:09.460

as many people out at night to staple that stuff up. And then as people were walking by in the morning or during the day, they could see it and they could cut glass and

00:15:09.460 - 00:15:21.120

they could go, which a lot of people did. Now, because everyone literally walks fate with their face in their phone. And if they're not connected to you

00:15:21.120 - 00:15:31.500

specifically to that organization that's sharing that information, I'm not certain there's a way that it gets out. And so it's daunting. The

00:15:31.500 - 00:15:42.480

question is a daunting one. How do we use technology to its best advantage when we thought it would be more helpful and yet it seems to not be helping

00:15:42.480 - 00:15:55.160

as much as it could what uh what is the udcc and were you in it and what did being in the udcc i was i walked the entire length of the campus and knocked on

00:15:55.160 - 00:16:09.120

every dorm door um with a slate of candidates i in that history i was telling you about uh because i was looking it up. Apparently, the dean that was there

00:16:09.120 - 00:16:27.100

when I was there, his name was Eddie. He reimagined student government at the university in 1972. It had a different name before 1972. And in 1972, it became the

00:16:27.100 - 00:16:43.200

University of Delaware Coordinating Council. And so that's what the UDCC stood for. It gave a lot more input to the students in relationship to desires for curriculum, for

00:16:43.200 - 00:16:54.280

change, and all those sorts of things. And some of the outgrowth originally from that looks like it was co-ed dorms, changes in curriculum, some other kinds of things.

00:16:54.790 - 00:17:05.740

But what it did was it formed like a Congress. And in that Congress, there were people who represented certain parts of the college, and then there were at

00:17:05.740 - 00:17:16.360

-large candidates. I was an at-large candidate. So I didn't represent a very specific quadrant or something like that. And I was part of a slate of candidates,

00:17:16.610 - 00:17:34.520

five of us or six of us who came together, who were sort of like minded people and were tended to be more like hippies, less like invested in Greek life and certainly less

00:17:34.520 - 00:17:50.520

invested in the idea that ROTC should have a grow, ever growing and stronger presence. on campus. And that was especially in light of the recent activities with the war in

00:17:50.520 - 00:18:03.460

Vietnam. There was a hangover with Vietnam that was, you know, happening with a lot of people. And of course, that was a time period where protests happened all across the

00:18:03.460 - 00:18:16.220

country at college campuses and Delaware wasn't any different. And I didn't really know some of that history until very recently. But the friction with the ROTC

00:18:16.600 - 00:18:27.160

programs went way back before me, according to the snippet that I looked at earlier today. There was always a friction with that.

00:18:27.300 - 00:18:34.330

All right. We will be talking about Vietnam later. So it's a good thing you brought that up. Okay. Do you know how being in the UDCC

00:18:34.330 - 00:18:49.300

differed from, say, how perhaps being in the Student government association is these days i i really don't to be honest um these crazy kids well you know again it's for example

00:18:49.300 - 00:18:58.400

i was thinking about well how did we do what we did there were offices under the student center where we used to hang out all the time but there was actually everything that

00:18:58.400 - 00:19:10.680

came to us came through inter-office mail so you know it was snail mail we got envelopes We got memos, and then that stuff we would have to get together in physical meetings,

00:19:10.940 - 00:19:22.460

read these things, make a decision, and then, you know, the president of the UDCC, who was part of the slate that I was with, you know, we would make our decisions

00:19:22.460 - 00:19:34.200

on how we would vote on certain things. But we were always trying to keep, I mean, and I don't say this, you know, to be glib, but we did feel like there

00:19:34.200 - 00:19:48.420

was an overemphasis on Greek life and on military, you know, the military aspect of the ROTC. So whenever budget questions came up and we had a voice to say anything

00:19:48.420 - 00:20:02.100

about budgets, we would try to tamp down money just flowing to those organizations without there being more questions. That doesn't sound like much has changed,

00:20:02.100 - 00:20:13.600

honestly, in all that time. But who was the president of the UDCC at that point? I believe it was Ross Hall. and you know i hadn't remembered that it

00:20:13.600 - 00:20:24.000

was ross hall until we were just talking about this then i was like i think it was i think it was ross that's good we can look into that uh this next uh question

00:20:24.000 - 00:20:37.720

probably seems like a no-brainer but it just says were you involved in queer campus oh you got what queer campus you know queer campus was where

00:20:37.720 - 00:20:48.480

two or three of us got together whenever that happened there there wasn't really any the only queer campus thing that I I would say I ever really you know was

00:20:48.480 - 00:20:59.280

involved in was they had these meetings in the what was called the Red Lounge I know I'm under I think I'm understanding that you're doing some archival research in the review and

00:20:59.280 - 00:21:13.820

other things so you may have run across my brain tells me it was in the basement of Harder Hall, but I might be thinking Hartshorn Hall, Hartshorn Gym, where there's also space.

00:21:13.820 - 00:21:23.120

All I know is it was at the farthest end of the campus, and I know the building at the farthest end of the campus is Hartshorn. So for some reason, I may be mixing those

00:21:23.120 - 00:21:32.380

two names up in my head, but there was a room called the Red Lounge, and we always thought that was hysterical. So a little ad would go into the review every now and then

00:21:32.380 - 00:21:44.540

and say, you know, gay student meeting Sunday night at seven o'clock or six o'clock in the red lounge at whatever hall it was. And it was terrifying.

00:21:44.560 - 00:21:53.760

It was terrifying to go. There were no lights back then, you know, the campus was dark. If you were walking way down that way, there

00:21:53.760 - 00:22:05.860

was, there wasn't a lot of foot traffic and you were easily a sitting duck for anyone who might have wanted to pick a fight with you because

00:22:05.860 - 00:22:19.980

you were on your way, you know. Was the lounge red? Hang out with the gays. Was the lounge red? Yes. You know, I don't, maybe.

00:22:20.300 - 00:22:29.500

It was like old, you know, it was like a tip. It was like being in a college, any old college, hand-me-down furniture kind of room

00:22:29.500 - 00:22:42.440

you know the stuff wasn't new and it wasn't comfortable and it was and it was uncomfortable because you know most of the people didn't know

00:22:42.440 - 00:22:51.960

each other and so you you kind of walk in and you'd stand there and I was introverted and shy and all those things and I was like oh my gosh I can't believe

00:22:51.960 - 00:23:03.060

i'm going to be in a room full of gay people who are these other gay people and um i don't know if you already said this but where exactly was this room located

00:23:03.060 - 00:23:13.880

would it still be a part of campus or i'm sure because in the basement and you can't you know they could move the walls around but the room somewhere has to be in whatever

00:23:13.880 - 00:23:25.780

building that was you don't remember which building it was though harder hall or hartshorne something tells me it's heart shorn all right we can maybe we can try and question

00:23:25.780 - 00:23:36.340

point where that was eventually yeah i'd like to know if you find out too yeah i'd be very interested um you mentioned in the questionnaire uh that you had informal monthly meetings

00:23:36.340 - 00:23:51.340

with other gay students what did these look like that's oh that's those that was those oh i mean at a different time um informal i don't know what i was referring to other

00:23:51.780 - 00:24:07.020

than oh i know what i was referring to eventually there was a gentleman um named david robertson who had an apartment above a storefront on main street

00:24:07.020 - 00:24:22.900

on he used to have monthly salons he was a poet and a writer i'm a writer um and a lot of the folks that would come to them were writers but it was also just a place

00:24:22.900 - 00:24:32.820

to hang out and be queer so not everyone had to come writing you didn't have to read anything you could just kind of hang out and uh those went on for a really long time

00:24:33.390 - 00:24:45.970

you can ask what store it would have been over at the point you know i don't remember somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood of Woolworths

00:24:46.540 - 00:24:57.800

that part of the middle of the block somewhere around that's not there anymore for sure yeah just a little apartment up there gosh only knows what's happened to it

00:25:00.140 - 00:25:08.000

oh you were asking the other things about Main Street there are some really other landmarks that I would want to quickly mention to you that

00:25:08.000 - 00:25:20.580

do have connections to gay life in newark there used to be a mini mall what which we hated but inside that mini mall there was a david's bookstore and i like it like

00:25:20.580 - 00:25:33.700

that records and then upstairs was a restaurant called the glass mug i like it like records was a very they were run by really cool people um you know i always wondered

00:25:33.700 - 00:25:40.640

if they were gay or they weren't it didn't really matter they They were just so cool. And it was a little privately owned record shop in this great

00:25:40.640 - 00:25:50.180

little bookstore that was there. And it was a storefront with sort of a lobby that went through the middle. And then there was a stairway that you could go up.

00:25:50.180 - 00:26:04.620

And that restaurant called The Glass Mug was one of the first places that gave us a gay night on Monday nights to sort of test

00:26:04.620 - 00:26:13.860

out if there was a crowd that would show up and support the business, any business. And of course, we did show up and

00:26:13.860 - 00:26:24.420

we did support the business and we packed them on Monday nights. This mini mall, does it have kind of like a triangular storefront, two stories tall?

00:26:25.520 - 00:26:38.740

No, it's just a plain front with two plate glass ears, There's like a store here and a store here, plate glass windows, and you walked through the

00:26:38.740 - 00:26:47.480

center of those two, and it was a linoleum lobby, and then there were stores above. So it's not – do you know if it's still there by any chance?

00:26:48.080 - 00:26:55.780

No, it's not. That's why I'm saying that's one of the things that was there that I think was kind of interesting. Is there a – I don't know. Is

00:26:55.780 - 00:27:03.280

there a – you know, near the Deer Park where the road splits? There used to be a building where the road splits.

00:27:03.760 - 00:27:13.890

which was a head shop and record store called wonderland wonderland is still there still there i thought something was there i wasn't sure it was still called wonderland i'm

00:27:14.160 - 00:27:24.820

very curious about this mini mall like there's a building i believe it could be but it's um it's would have been newer at the time that you had gone there or would have been

00:27:24.820 - 00:27:34.300

kind of yeah it was new it was you know people hated it i think i might know exactly what this building is maybe later i can get up an image but i'm definitely interested in the

00:27:34.300 - 00:27:47.620

uh that kind of era of of retail development so um jimmy's dine or uh five guys was a jimmy's diner jimmy's diner i know that one um there was a restaurant the sausage

00:27:47.620 - 00:27:59.880

house was called a post house um yeah so there were a lot of wonderful little local owned businesses that you know you could pop into and hang out

00:28:00.780 - 00:28:10.920

so that's the biggest difference what was the rodney dorm like when you lived there uh do you have any feelings about when it was uh well so let's we have to get our

00:28:10.920 - 00:28:28.360

geography to you know is there a rodney dorm now and that's near perkins right that didn't exist so that land where that great big giant building and dining hall was, was tennis

00:28:28.360 - 00:28:45.540

courts and basketball courts and trees. So you could sit in front of Perkins at night and look across the street and see people playing basketball and tennis and all kinds

00:28:45.540 - 00:28:54.290

of stuff, which was really cool because they had bright lights and everything. So that building didn't exist. The Rodney dorm I'm talking about is when you're going toward

00:28:54.290 - 00:29:08.820

Elkton after the road splits and you stay to your left and you know there's the railroad track underpass that you can walk underneath on Amstel, I think it's Amstel Avenue, if

00:29:08.820 - 00:29:21.260

you walked under that underpass there was a dorm complex back there. There were the Rodney dorms and the Dickinson dorms. So to the right was Rodney and to the left was

00:29:21.260 - 00:29:34.140

Dickinson And they had Rodney A, B, and C. So there were three dorms there for Rodney with a quad in the middle. And Dickinson, I think, A, B, and C. Because one of my best friends

00:29:34.140 - 00:29:48.140

lived in Dickinson and I lived in Rodney. and um the university sold all that land or sold all that land back to newark i believe and there's like a public park back

00:29:48.140 - 00:30:00.280

there now and other stuff i don't know what's where dickinson is but so that yeah so doesn't exist and they were nice dorms they were new dorms when i was there

00:30:00.280 - 00:30:14.360

fairly new not super those were the big brutalist buildings weren't they just kind of like dark brick square I was wishing I could have documented those but that was

00:30:14.360 - 00:30:23.440

a little before my time yes I know exactly the ones you're talking about quickly this is a building I believe might have been it does this ring any bells to you

00:30:23.960 - 00:30:38.880

oh yeah no I remember the building no it was much farther down toward um you know Woolworths all right that's I know that's gone for sure so I'll have to look into older things

00:30:38.880 - 00:30:49.800

but that was the thing I could have gone off of I would look up I like it like that records and David's bookstore because David's bookstore was on the ground floor and it had

00:30:50.300 - 00:31:02.080

so if you find David's bookstore and their front window you're going to see the front of that building just out of curiosity all right now i'm i'm very fascinated i see a

00:31:02.080 - 00:31:12.460

there's a remember when for delaware i'll look at that later um but next question i have for you uh do you see any regression in the current university environment is there

00:31:12.460 - 00:31:33.640

anything worse now than there was then or do you think it's generally been um progress i think it's generally been progress um Um, I mean, I think it's incredible that the

00:31:33.640 - 00:31:45.220

subjects that are talked about in classrooms at the university, the other thing that's progress is when I was first at the university, I think the enrollment

00:31:45.220 - 00:32:01.260

was 75% men and 25% women or maybe 70-30. it was really, really different. But there was no, you couldn't use, you didn't use the word gay. You didn't use

00:32:01.260 - 00:32:13.980

the words queer. You know, there was no women's studies. It was like a weird thing. You know, you knew who the women's studies students were. I mean, because we were

00:32:13.980 - 00:32:25.460

still hippies. So if people were walking around with really short hair and earrings and Birkenstocks and tie-dyed clothes, and you kind of knew, well, they

00:32:25.460 - 00:32:34.620

were maybe the women's studies. You couldn't generalize too much, but, you know, you could kind of pick out who was who. I had friends who were in the women's

00:32:34.620 - 00:32:43.780

studies department, and they, you know, people used to make, I mean, I hate to say that, but that's why I say it's progress. People used to make fun of that, like,

00:32:43.780 - 00:32:51.920

women's study, what are you studying? You're studying how to be, you know, you can imagine, you know, all the same goofy stuff people say.

00:32:52.920 - 00:33:05.300

So I think that's incredible progress. There was just an atmosphere of fear. People were not out. Coming out of the closet was not typical at that time.

00:33:06.340 - 00:33:19.840

And it was considered unusual, right? And that's why the Allmiller thing was such a shock. One of your questions was, did I know about

00:33:19.840 - 00:33:34.560

other people on campus? I think that's an interesting one. So there was a really deeply closeted person in the art department who, you know, I don't know whatever

00:33:34.560 - 00:33:49.840

happened to them. But this person was, and I know because I knew other people in the art department who knew them personally, they were deathly afraid that they would be

00:33:49.840 - 00:34:06.460

terminated and humiliated and lose their position. But not only that, their prestige in the art world, because they were a fairly accomplished individual in their field.

00:34:07.020 - 00:34:19.140

I know of one English professor, which is funny because I had this English professor and I always thought he was, you know, seemed like a cool, cool guy.

00:34:19.140 - 00:34:28.700

and then I ran into him in a gay bar and you know so that was always one of those oh he's here I'm here you know what

00:34:28.700 - 00:34:37.580

are you going to say and so that was kind of like the thing that you crack up about but the first time that happens it's always interesting and then

00:34:37.940 - 00:34:51.340

one of the professors that actually you know I was mentioning before had dinner at my housemate my roommate's and I apartment um and the class had the class over one

00:34:51.340 - 00:35:06.030

night too we were fairly certain that uh but she didn't she didn't come out to us so we were kind of we were like well we we've kind of felt like that was the case but

00:35:06.360 - 00:35:17.440

i'm sure there were lots more had to be and people were just scared that was actually the next question i was going to ask you that whole thing is did you any closeted

00:35:17.440 - 00:35:24.080

staff members or professors and how does this affect affect your experience both in and out of class so you've just knocked it out of the park answered that right there

00:35:24.400 - 00:35:34.080

um in the questionnaire you mentioned the tensions between the hippie rotc and fraternity students um didn't we did we talk about this or would you mind speaking a little

00:35:34.080 - 00:35:45.060

more about i mean tell you a little bit more about it was mainly you know there was not a respect in our country for the military that there is today. And of course,

00:35:45.060 - 00:35:56.720

that time of my life and others' lives, I don't think we understood the commitment or the sacrifice that's made by individuals. I certainly didn't. And even though many

00:35:56.720 - 00:36:05.460

members of my own family all served in the military, most of them, I would say, served in the military during World War II. My father was a Korean War vet.

00:36:05.660 - 00:36:21.760

But there was no getting around the idea that the war in Vietnam was unjust, that it was being maliciously prosecuted, that we were being lied to about what was happening.

00:36:21.760 - 00:36:42.260

And it's hard to imagine this happening now. So all through high school, every single newscast that I saw every night showed footage of people being killed and bodies being

00:36:42.260 - 00:36:58.800

brought back to the United States and numbers being given every single day. And so it was very difficult to escape the fear if you were a guy that you were going to age into the

00:36:58.800 - 00:37:14.420

draft and have to make a decision about what you would do if that, you know, that happened if the war continued but just to understand that all that stuff was going on so to

00:37:14.420 - 00:37:31.780

see people all the time everywhere walking around in uniforms at that particular time was very unnerving there was a lot of discontent about that and um you know i

00:37:31.780 - 00:37:44.190

don't know i mean I'm not on campus enough and certainly not enough at night, but there used to be big dorms or big frats that were much closer to campus

00:37:44.190 - 00:37:57.640

buildings, it seems to me, than they are now. There was one over by the Little Bob, like back there was, I forget which fraternity that was, you know, there's the

00:37:57.640 - 00:38:10.960

one near Smith, but there were others. And I hate to say it, it was a different time period. So, you know, women were harassed as

00:38:10.960 - 00:38:23.500

they walked by these places, the noise, all the kinds of things, you know. I went when I was new at school because she wanted to party and, you know, they had

00:38:23.500 - 00:38:39.480

was cheap you you know whatever it was to get in um and you'd wanted to party so but i always felt unsafe i always felt that they were dangerous my dad told me about

00:38:39.480 - 00:38:51.060

the kind of rows and rows of frowns they cleaned up in the 90s that there used to just be entire blocks of frat houses that were becoming you know the the the city was basically

00:38:51.060 - 00:38:59.660

saying this is becoming you know a nuisance to everyone involved and they ended up raising entire sections of that area um it's it's funny though it's almost like you can

00:38:59.660 - 00:39:08.400

see the questions i'm about to ask you because the next one was how did the vietnam war vietnam war both ongoing and the end of it impact your specific college experience i

00:39:14.210 - 00:39:26.970

think the biggest thing was the attitude um making me want to be more involved in politics making me want to be more aware of what the united states

00:39:26.970 - 00:39:39.470

was doing in its role in the world. It sort of made me want to look outward more. And once all of that stuff happened, our

00:39:39.470 - 00:39:48.810

faith in institutions, I mean, I sort of grew up believing all that stuff. Well, you know, they're our presidents. They're the people who are doing what they're

00:39:48.810 - 00:39:58.110

supposed to be doing. And then once you find out they're all lying and there are all these other things, and then the president has to resign because he's really a

00:39:58.110 - 00:40:09.390

crook and you find out all of that stuff. He said he's not a crook. I know, right? But, you know, you just have a different

00:40:09.390 - 00:40:23.270

way of looking. I was already aware, right, that all of these things didn't want to have anything to do with me, didn't, you know, didn't respect who I was.

00:40:25.030 - 00:40:34.750

You know, the military was just sitting there waiting to humiliate me if I had gotten to the place where I would have been registered for the draft and gone and had to go

00:40:34.750 - 00:40:45.430

through, you know, the steps to do that. You know, it always felt like, well, that'll be, that'll be, you know, being, you know,

00:40:45.430 - 00:40:54.260

we didn't have that term then, but it would have been being outed more than likely for me at a time when I was not prepared to do that whatsoever.

00:40:55.070 - 00:41:03.870

Um, so I'm not certain I answered your question, but I'm, you know, it's all part of a piece of

00:41:04.090 - 00:41:12.410

how you see the world and how you place yourself in it. So going back to a little tricky deck, how did the knowledge of Nixon's

00:41:12.410 - 00:41:20.590

resignation affect college life? Did it affect you specifically? End of question. Well, it made us much more want to be

00:41:20.590 - 00:41:30.790

politically active. You know, my best friends, I was saying the people who was in this little group that we sort of campaigned together, we all were very

00:41:30.880 - 00:41:47.970

suspicious of government in general. And so, you know, now I look at the news today and I go, oh, it's insane. But we, the

00:41:47.970 - 00:42:05.670

university president at that time, dare I say this, I knew people who likened him to a Nixon -like figure in some ways. And I don't know if that's fair. I

00:42:05.670 - 00:42:16.950

never, you know, I never met this person. I don't really know. I know that they made decisions that a lot of people that I knew and trusted who were older than I was

00:42:16.950 - 00:42:29.450

and who had experience more felt that he made very poor decisions in that way. He's the one who fired Allmiller. So I certainly knew how I felt about that.

00:42:30.890 - 00:42:43.510

um but i did read today that he he wrote and urged nixon during the at certain points during the vietnam war uh and certain things that they were doing to quell campus

00:42:43.510 - 00:42:56.230

protests around the country to sort of pull back on that and you know so i don't i don't really know it's very interesting though more impressions and you know than

00:42:56.230 - 00:43:06.180

honest information do you think that was the opinion of a lot of people on campus or was that mostly held by you i think so and it was it was more to do with the tuition

00:43:06.180 - 00:43:17.490

increase so there were a lot of protests around tuition increase and his name was ea trabant so we only use the trabant now but his name i don't even know what the ea

00:43:17.490 - 00:43:32.350

stand for but his nickname was uncle eat so all the signs said uncle eat you know and it's amazing the parallels that what you're saying in between what's happening right

00:43:32.350 - 00:43:42.630

now just the the mistrusting government and currently you know i don't similar to you i don't know much about um their current um leader but i hear from so many

00:43:42.630 - 00:43:52.190

people the disdain they have for i believe his name is asanas or something everyone goes it's like oh who wants to key asanas's car who wants to do all this yeah they're

00:43:52.190 - 00:44:01.510

they're not happy with them i wouldn't be doing that but um i just think that's interesting that uh the more things change the more things stay the same it seems

00:44:01.710 - 00:44:15.120

i will say this i you know you can see the faculty senate meetings uh they are recorded and you can see them online, and I have availed myself of two over

00:44:15.120 - 00:44:37.170

the last four months or five months. And I was heartened. I was heartened by the participation of the senators from the faculty and the insight and their

00:44:37.170 - 00:44:49.470

oversight and the way that they brought the information to the discourse. And I was kind of surprised at the level of transparency that the administrators,

00:44:49.550 - 00:45:03.610

including Asanis in one particular meeting, had addressed the group and was willing to stand there, not quite like the prime minister does in England, but at least in a

00:45:03.610 - 00:45:14.310

reasonable facsimile to stand there and be willing to take questions from the faculty Senate about certain topics and things. I know some of that, you know, could be

00:45:14.310 - 00:45:25.210

political theater, but I, you know, I thought, God, I would have loved to, you know, if we could have seen that before, what would we have known or

00:45:25.210 - 00:45:35.970

how would we have understood? There wasn't a transparency at all. that's why people were protesting the tuition rate because there was no sunshine laws and no

00:45:35.970 - 00:45:46.670

one knew what was going on in the books none not so ever whatsoever so when things got raised it was just like well we say they're going up it's going up and that's very

00:45:46.670 - 00:45:56.450

interesting because that's i feel people still have the same opinion we have all this information that people kind of have a narrative that they seemingly want to run with like i

00:45:56.450 - 00:46:05.570

know a lot of people i hear that of santos will give out a lot of um things and everyone's just like oh it's just theater like even if it is true it's like people know what

00:46:05.570 - 00:46:16.350

they want to hear whether it's true or not i have no opinion one way or the other i'm not particularly involved in that but it is it is interesting to see all the

00:46:16.350 - 00:46:29.210

parallels um straying away from sort of that era we're uh maybe the same era i'll just ask you uh what did jeans day look like oh well jeans day

00:46:29.890 - 00:46:41.690

was you had to um they put up the posters around that said um if you were gay or you wanted to support gay people or i forget exactly what the wording was come to

00:46:41.690 - 00:46:54.230

school wearing jeans um and nobody wore anything but jeans so imagine every pair of sweatpants on campus or yoga pants yeah i gotcha turned into jeans and that that would

00:46:54.230 - 00:47:07.490

give you an idea of how many people went oh my god i'm wearing jeans um but i'm not gay you know so people some people would have to run you know we used to kid and

00:47:07.490 - 00:47:17.150

we'd be like oh it's probably one of the frat guys had to run back to his frat house to change into something else because he couldn't couldn't bear the thought

00:47:17.150 - 00:47:27.650

of anyone thinking he might be gay that's interesting yeah so it's kind of a fun way of just you know light -hearted i see yeah Did you go to ACT

00:47:27.650 - 00:47:42.610

UP protests? What did those look like and how did you prepare for them? No, there was no ACT UP then. ACT UP wasn't until 81, 82, 83,

00:47:42.730 - 00:47:58.230

80. Yeah, probably 81, 82. I know there's more of an ACT UP expert in the room than I am. Maybe it'll appear in chat. 87 okay so even later um yeah so i

00:47:58.230 - 00:48:10.330

i did not i was living in philadelphia at the time i belonged to a bunch of different groups i would pop in and out of them so there was action aids in philadelphia there

00:48:10.330 - 00:48:22.170

was i think something else called philadelphia fight i belonged to a group group during that time called Men of All Colors. Actually, back then it was called

00:48:22.170 - 00:48:33.450

Black Men, White Men Together that was interested in integrating civil rights and gay rights together and some other things. And I would

00:48:33.450 - 00:48:45.870

pop in and out of those different organizations. But I was not, By that time in 1987, a lot of my free time was eaten up with

00:48:45.870 - 00:48:58.290

personal caretaking and other things that were going on and, you know, work and stuff. What became of any of those groups? Are they still around today? Have they evolved? Have

00:48:58.290 - 00:49:14.690

they died out? Most of them, I don't know if ActionAIDS exists anymore. I think it's morphed. I think most of them have morphed into different entities and sort of the core

00:49:14.690 - 00:49:28.570

personnel from those groups that survived certainly probably stayed within the industry. If they, you know, the nonprofit world and the service industry, unless

00:49:28.570 - 00:49:37.270

they moved out of Philadelphia. But there's still a lot of groups in Philadelphia. field what do you currently think of act up what it's working on currently

00:49:37.270 - 00:49:49.790

any opinions one or the other i don't know about what they're working on right now shame on me me neither don't worry um uh in the process i would

00:49:49.790 - 00:49:56.010

love to if there's some active chapters out there that'd be cool in the protest you did attend what did you do in them

00:49:57.930 - 00:50:06.250

Oh, wow. You know, well, first was, you know, just getting out in the street and being visible.

00:50:07.570 - 00:50:20.150

After the Hardwick decision, the Supreme Court came to Philadelphia for a sort of a garden party behind Independence Hall one

00:50:20.150 - 00:50:34.710

evening, one lovely spring evening. and a bunch of people organized a protest where we surrounded all the sidewalks. We couldn't get anywhere close to it, but

00:50:34.710 - 00:50:44.550

we could surround all the sidewalks as much as we could around the three streets behind City Hall because they were like, you know, they'd set up a marquee and

00:50:44.550 - 00:50:55.410

tables and stuff out there. And we brought whistles and bells and pots and pans and just made as much noise as we could make for as long as we could make

00:50:55.410 - 00:51:06.790

until we couldn't stand it anymore. You know, oh, I remember going to, there was a really big protest when

00:51:06.790 - 00:51:18.530

Ronald Reagan was in Philadelphia. That'll do it. God, yeah, that was an awful one. And people were carrying coffins

00:51:18.530 - 00:51:31.190

down the street and doing all sorts of things. And a guy I kind of knew, Paul Arcure, the protest got violent and he was

00:51:31.190 - 00:51:43.060

injured and something had to do. Anyhow, he ended up with a big lawsuit against the city. And yeah, I mean, there were a lot there were a lot of different kinds

00:51:43.060 - 00:52:00.170

of eruptions that went on. Sometimes it was silent. Sometimes it was noisy. Yeah. City Hall. I mean, certainly at

00:52:00.170 - 00:52:07.770

City Council, because there was a homophobe in the City Council in Philadelphia called Franny Rafferty. And he just,

00:52:08.970 - 00:52:24.550

imagine Marjorie Taylor Greene on being able, but not even as filtered as she is, believe it or not. I mean, just every vulgarity you can think of, slur that was

00:52:24.550 - 00:52:36.270

still allowable to say back then, flying out of their mouth, you know. So it was. That's, that's interesting. of all the we would come we would go and protest him a lot

00:52:36.270 - 00:52:45.530

make a lot of noise that seems worth it of all of all the presidents you could protest i think reagan would be you know top of the list there well that plus marked you

00:52:45.530 - 00:52:59.930

know i twice i marched on washington once during reagan and um then when clinton clinton really what was that one about it was just a big old march it's just like we're gonna

00:52:59.930 - 00:53:10.870

show you how big we are all right in fact i were just talking about this in class on monday night i think part of that as i look back was more an expression of um we're no

00:53:10.870 - 00:53:24.510

one was afraid anymore to be in the street not no one but most people were willing to be in the street and to show numbers um but show that as a voting block but also as

00:53:24.510 - 00:53:36.250

an economic block to say you know you need to pay attention to us because we're not just this teeny tiny little group over here. What was the most memorable

00:53:36.250 - 00:53:47.030

protest you ever went to? Oh, I think the Supreme Court won. Because, you know, they were close

00:53:47.030 - 00:53:57.030

enough that we could see people sitting at the tables. We couldn't see who they were. But, you know, we knew we knew who they were.

00:53:57.770 - 00:54:06.130

I knew that you couldn't get anywhere near Reagan. I didn't want to get anywhere near Reagan. Yeah, no, he destroyed it. You know, I certainly

00:54:06.130 - 00:54:19.210

would, I certainly went. I'm trying to think if there was any other big ones. I can't think of any.

00:54:21.470 - 00:54:33.750

It might have been i don't know if the first bush if we can't we might have gone out for something about the first bush too another good one to

00:54:33.750 - 00:54:47.190

do yeah did the university itself have any comments on to the students on the protests that you attended not that i'm aware of no and then heading a little bit forward

00:54:47.190 - 00:54:56.050

um not particularly related to what we were just talking about but um about your ghost cards memoirs can you briefly touch on that and what emotions did that invoke

00:54:56.050 - 00:55:15.330

while writing it what does that entail oh gosh every single emotion um i'm getting choked up right now thinking about it i you know uh it's difficult to

00:55:15.330 - 00:55:27.450

remember some of those times and yet it's awesome to remember them. And it's important that those memories stay alive.

00:55:28.030 - 00:55:41.210

So it's sort of an ongoing work for me. And it's an ongoing, not just academic or creative project, but it's an ongoing personal project to sort of have to come to terms

00:55:41.210 - 00:55:57.550

with all of those things. And to be able to you know to use it in in that I talk about you know some people who I was really close to and in the last two nights it's

00:55:57.550 - 00:56:08.110

odd you asked me that question today last two nights I've had dreams with two of the people that I've written about in there and they were really intense dreams.

00:56:09.140 - 00:56:24.650

And so, you know, that's just part of a process for me of what is where it is and how it still connects to the present. And it's horrifying right now because I really

00:56:24.650 - 00:56:39.610

have a great deal of fear that changes that are being made are creating the opportunity for people who thought these issues were gone for the most part are going to experience

00:56:39.610 - 00:56:52.730

what some of those people went through um and that's horrible that's just horrible because we have the means um to prevent that and and yet it's not it's not being

00:56:52.730 - 00:57:05.430

prevented so that's very disturbing to me yeah can i ask how much you've currently compiled regarding this project well it's the six main profiles i'm working

00:57:05.430 - 00:57:23.530

on two i'm working on about 10 mini profiles called ghost scripts um and then the uh larger project that's sort of become my final project for my miles program is uh

00:57:23.530 - 00:57:37.510

under a new kind of title about visitations and what i what i'm doing is I've taken and created pieces of creative writing in different genres that are reflective of the

00:57:37.510 - 00:57:47.550

different decades in my life. And so some of them have, you know, ghost cards is a very direct thing. Like, these are my friends. This is what I'm writing about. But a lot

00:57:47.550 - 00:58:01.390

of the other pieces don't necessarily have me starring in them or, you know, other people that I know, but they are representative of people from my lifetimes feelings and

00:58:01.390 - 00:58:11.170

things like that and so thank you for the question it's it's it's ongoing do you think there's ever an end in sight or is this the kind of thing that you'll be working

00:58:11.170 - 00:58:33.070

on i'm beginning to think i'm gonna be for a really long But, you know, that's okay. I'm fortunate, you know, I guess in one way, you know, my advisor is listening on this

00:58:33.070 - 00:58:41.730

project. So I will say that, you know, I had a thought late this afternoon and I thought, you have journals that go all the way back to high school. why don't you quickly

00:58:41.730 - 00:58:49.930

go and grab the journals and start going through them and see if you could find a little piece or a quote or something that you could put in and and i said to myself

00:58:50.610 - 00:59:04.810

at some point you've got to just stop because it is a lifelong project for this phase these things have to you know they have to find their they have to find their end point

00:59:05.930 - 00:59:15.930

so a final question i suppose since we're coming up to the end And with all of your experience and all of, you know, seeing what you've seen, what, I guess, parting

00:59:16.080 - 00:59:29.070

advice would you give to the students currently on campus? Do you have any, what would you say to the people of today? The first thing I would say is be safe,

00:59:29.890 - 00:59:49.370

be as daring as you can be, be as unafraid as you can be, and keep each other safe. And to not take unnecessary risks, but to not let fear prevent you from

00:59:49.370 - 01:00:08.550

moving forward and being who you are, saying what you need to say, and to, you know, make a family out of the folks around you so that you have that support system.

01:00:08.910 - 01:00:28.870

and to, you know, demand the truth from people who are asking of you. You know, demand, it's a strong word, but ask for it and, yeah, demand it too.

01:00:31.800 - 01:00:43.110

We're coming right to the end. Final question, unrelated. This is my go-to question every time I interview anyone. Okay. what was your first car my first car yes

01:00:43.110 - 01:01:00.210

the coolest car and i destroyed it and it makes me sad every day i had a 65 ford fair lane did you really uh mint condition and i was dumb and i didn't

01:01:00.210 - 01:01:14.710

know you had to put oil in cars more so even then than now i mean i didn't have it until i you know i was 22 was my first car it would have been used for sure so

01:01:14.710 - 01:01:27.210

but so it was like this great old kind of classic car that was very cool and retro before i was even knew what that meant and you know i didn't take care of it properly oh what

01:01:27.210 - 01:01:38.140

a shame that's cool though that's my go -to other thing this is for me not necessarily for this kind of thing i'm trying to narrow down when they removed the uh newark shopping

01:01:38.140 - 01:01:49.870

center sign so they used to have a big neon sign out front would that have been there when you were on campus still or would that be gone i'm sure it was i would think

01:01:50.700 - 01:02:05.150

because i was It was there from 75 to 78-ish. So I think it was still there. All right. So it's 7 o'clock. Is that the end

01:02:05.150 - 01:02:08.010

of the line, or is that all right?