Imagine Central PA in the early 60s
Quotes from oral histories of LGBTQ+ community members
RICHARD SCHLEGEL
“Where did I ever learn about homosexuality? You could hardly find it in any dictionary at that point. The only availability of any nude photos of any kind was in medical books.” “I went to Penn State two years and I just knew that I had to get out of there, because after I had made this revelation to Summerfield, my roommate, and he blabbed around the fraternity and possibly elsewhere, the attitude changed. Because I have no reason to think that any of the other boys were gay.” (2) |
JOE BURNS
“Whenever I didn’t go to school, the next day I went down to the bookstore and bought all of the copies I could find on—on—on anything about to do with homosexual.” “...there were no books that I could find in the college catalog, in the card catalog, that started with the word homosexual. There were no books. There were no books on gay, which was a new term to me. I didn’t know gay when I started, actually.” (3) |
MARY NANCARROW
“It was a very difficult time to be gay, in the early ‘70s and thereafter. I—when anything—whenever anything is a big problem, in my mind, I read a lot, and so I was trying--I’m trying to read everything I could get my hands on.” “So it was at a time of upheaval in my own life, and it kind of took over my whole life—about, you know, figuring out who I really was, what my identity was, and I—I determined that I was so much more comfortable with women and attracted to women, and despite everything that my counselor at Shippensburg was telling me at the time, you know, I knew how my heart was, and I knew who I was falling in love with, really, and I just said, “Well, this is the way I need to go, however uncharted.” (6) |
RACHEL LEVINE
“I, ya know, I fit in, I compartmentalized any gender issues that I might have…” “As for many transgender individuals, when I hit puberty, then my adolescence, then had lots more thoughts and feelings. But now we’re talking about the late 60s early 70s and there was no context for it. Ya know, I had heard and read about Christine Jorgensen, that was probably the only public reference that I could find of someone being transgender. So I didn’t understand it, and I compartmentalized it.” (7) (Dr. Levine was born and raised in Massachusetts, but later moved to Central PA) |