LGBTQ Archives - Page 4 of 10 - StoryCorps

Memories of a Sister and Daughter Murdered in a Transgender Hate Crime

On July 17, 2008, Angie Zapata — a transgender woman — was killed in northern Colorado. Angie was murdered by a man she was dating.

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Angie’s killer was sentenced to life in prison plus 60 years. This was one of the first U.S. cases ever to result in a conviction of a hate crime against a transgender person.

Ten years after Angie’s death, her mother, Maria Zapata, and Angie’s brother, Gonzalo Zapata, sat down to remember her at StoryCorps.

Top photo: Maria Zapata and Gonzalo Zapata at their StoryCorps interview in Brighton, CO. Credit: Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps.
Bottom photo: Angie Zapata. Courtesy Maria Zapata.

War Vets John (WWII) and Jerry (Vietnam) on Love and Their Marriage

John Banvard, 100, and Jerry Nadeau, 72, are military veterans, and served in World War II and Vietnam, respectively.

When they met in 1993, they were “sort of in the closet.” John’s wife of over 35 years had died nearly a decade prior and he had never been in a serious relationship with a man. Neither had Jerry.

At first, the two seemed worlds apart. John was a lover of art and theater, while Jerry was an outdoorsman. But they hit it off and soon became inseparable.

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Today, they live together in a senior home for veterans in Chula Vista, California — just a few miles south of San Diego, where they were married in 2013.

Top photo: John Banvard (L) and Jerry Nadeau at their home in Chula Vista, CA.
Bottom photo: Jerry Nadeau (L) with John Banvard outside their home in Chula Vista, CA.

Originally aired February 09, 2018 on NPR’s Morning Edition.

 

Christopher Harris

StoryCorps Legacy gives people with serious illnesses the chance to share their stories.

At Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Christopher Harris recorded his memories from the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

In the early 80s, his marriage fell apart after he came out as gay. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. At the time, there was only one drug approved to treat the disease, and a diagnosis often meant a death sentence.

With StoryCorps, Harris remembered how he came to work with the Atlanta Buyers Club, which distributed medications from the black market to people with HIV before the drugs had been approved by the FDA.

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Originally aired December 1, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Bottom photo: Christopher Harris holds his infant daughter. Courtesy of Christopher Harris.

Emily Addison

On June 12, 2016 a lone gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Among those killed was Deonka Drayton. She was 32.

Deonka left behind a young son and her co-parent, Emily Addison. At StoryCorps, Emily sat down to remember her.

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Originally aired June 9, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

There were hundreds of people at Pulse the night of the shooting, and some were able to escape in time. Christopher Hansen is among those who survived that night. It was the first time he’d ever visited Pulse, having just recently moved to Orlando. He came to StoryCorps to remember what happened that night.

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These interviews were recorded in partnership with WMFE and the Family Equality Council. In March, StoryCorps recorded 14 conversations in Orlando, Florida about the Pulse nightclub shooting and the lives that have been deeply affected by the tragedy. The project welcomed survivors of the shooting, friends and family members of lost loved ones, and community organizations who have been vital in the aftermath to record their experiences, and focused on capturing stories from the LGBTQ community. In addition, WMFE used the StoryCorps app to collect stories from the broader Orlando community, in a project they called Taking Your Pulse.

Top photo: Deonka Drayton with her son, Diyari. (Photo courtesy Emily Addison)

Middle photo: Emily Addison and Deonka Drayton with their son, Diyari. (Photo courtesy Emily Addison)
Bottom photo: Christopher Hansen at StoryCorps

Chris López and Gabe López

Chris López always knew there was something different about her youngest child, Gabe. Assigned female at birth, Gabe felt like he was a boy.

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Gabe was always more comfortable in clothing traditionally worn by little boys — cargo pants and superhero shirts — but switched back and forth between these outfits and those often worn by little girls. Just after his seventh birthday, he convinced his parents to let him cut off his long hair and get a mohawk — a haircut he had been wanting for years. Around this time period, Gabe started dressing only as a boy and answering exclusively to “he”.

At first, Chris was concerned that Gabe, being so young, might change his mind. She was scared of how people would treat him as he transitioned. But after seeing how Gabe responded to the changes in his hair and clothing, she felt confident that he had made the right decision.

Gabe, who’s nine years old now, has been attending the same school since kindergarten. In the fall of 2016, when he started third grade, he began having others refer to him by his preferred gender pronouns —”he” and “him” — for the first time.

In 2015, the López family attended a camp for transgender, gender creative, and gender non-conforming youth in Tucson, Arizona.

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Gabe and his mother came to the StoryCorps MobileBooth to talk about how that camp transformed his life.

A version of this broadcast aired May 1, 2016, on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and was rebroadcast on March 3, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition. 

Middle photo: Gabe López. Courtesy of Chris López.
Bottom photo: The López family.

Drew Cortez and Danny Cortez

Danny Cortez was the founder and pastor of the New Heart Community Southern Baptist Church in La Mirada, California, in 2014 when his 16-year-old son, Drew, told him that he was gay. Up until that time, Danny’s church would either recommend celibacy or reparative therapy—a widely discredited form of treatment that identifies homosexuality as a mental disorder with the goal of converting people to heterosexuality—to congregants who identified themselves as gay or lesbian.

Even before Drew’s coming out, Danny had slowly begun to reevaluate his views on homosexuality and whether he was doing more harm than good. When his neighbor invited him to visit the HIV clinic where he worked, Danny was introduced to a community of people he had not previously known much about. This began, for him, a gradual change of heart.

Years later, as he was driving Drew to school, “Same Love” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis came on the radio. Danny liked it a lot but didn’t understand that it was a celebration of LGBT love. Drew, encouraged by his father’s affection for the song, then revealed to him that he was gay.

Realizing that they could no longer keep this secret from those they love, Drew posted a video online, and a week later, Danny delivered a sermon to his congregation about his changing views on homosexuality. As a result of the sermon, the Southern Baptist Convention cut ties with Danny’s church and his congregation split leading he and other members to form a separate LGBT inclusive, non-denominational church.

Danny and Drew came to StoryCorps to remember the sermon that changed their lives.

Originally aired on August 28, 2016, on NPR’s Weekend Edition

Rev. Troy Perry

On June 24, 1973, a fire tore through the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Thirty-two people were killed in the blaze and many more injured. To this day, it remains the deadliest fire in New Orleans history and until the killings on June 12 at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, this act of arson was believed to be the largest single mass killing of gay people in U.S. history.

Unlike in Orlando where there has been an outpouring of support for the victims, following the Upstairs Lounge fire, there was overwhelming silence from politicians, religious leaders, and the local community. PerryNPR2And while police conducted an investigation, no one was ever arrested for the murders.

After hearing about the tragedy, Rev. Troy Perry (pictured at left with his partner Phillip “Buddy” De Blieck in June 1970, at the first LGBT Pride Parade in Los Angeles), founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, a national Christian denomination dedicated to serving gays and lesbians, flew from his home in California to New Orleans to provide support.

Offering comfort and assistance to the victims in hospitals, Rev. Perry recalls speaking with one badly burned man who told him that the school he taught at had fired him after learning that he was present at the Upstairs Lounge. That man died the next day.

Not wanting to return home until he held a service, Rev. Perry remembers the difficult time he had finding a church willing to act as a host. Eventually, the St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in the French Quarter opened its doors and mourners came to fill it. When the service ended, cameras outside confronted attendees and Rev. Perry offered them a way out the back. But in a show of strength, pride, and courage, “Nobody left by the backdoor. And that’s the legacy. We never ran away.”

The initial reaction to the fire is something that New Orleans has had to come to terms with in the ensuing years. In 1998, a plaque was placed on the spot where the Upstairs Lounge once stood to mark 25 years since the fire, and in a Time Magazine piece on the 40th anniversary of the blaze, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans apologized for its silence.

Rev. Perry came to StoryCorps to recall what he saw upon his arrival in New Orleans.

Originally aired June 24, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top Photo: Inside of the Upstairs Lounge on June 25, 1973. Associated Press/Jack Thornell.
Photo of Phillip “Buddy” De Blieck and Rev. Troy Perry courtesy of Rev. Troy Perry.

Joel Tucker and Gordon Blake

UPDATE: Joel and Gordon’s story aired June 26, 2016, on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

The shooting at the Orlando, Florida, nightclub Pulse on June 12, that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, while unprecedented in scale, is certainly not the first time a killer has chosen to target the LGBTQ community. Anti-LGBTQ violence has a long history in the United States, and in this special StoryCorps production (excerpted from our latest podcast, StoryCorps 473: Upstairs, Backstreet, Pulse), we look back at another high-profile incident.

Tucker3On September 22, 2000, 53-year-old Ronald Gay entered the Backstreet Café, a gay-friendly bar in Roanoke, Virginia. According to police accounts, Gay had set out that evening in search of gay people to kill, and after seeing two men inside the Backstreet Café embrace, he pulled out a 9mm gun and began firing. Gay ended up killing Danny Overstreet and wounding six others.

One of those shot was Danny’s friend Joel Tucker who was there with his partner and friends drinking beer and playing pool. At the time, Joel was not out as a gay man and recalls in a StoryCorps interview that he regrets telling a newspaper reporter that he was at the café at the time with his girlfriend. While initially not realizing what was going on, Joel remembers seeing fire come out of the gun, and when it dawned on him that there was a man shooting at people, he screamed for everybody to get down. “It was just like seven shots, seven people. Then he just walked out the door.”

Joel (above left) came to StoryCorps with his long-time friend Gordon Blake (above right) in Hollywood, Florida, days after the Orlando massacre to share some of the emotions that flooded back to him after learning about the killings at Pulse. Gordon, who was supposed to meet up with Joel and their friends at the Backstreet Café that evening in 2000 but did not make it, joins with Joel in offering advice to the survivors:

“You have got to be strong. Don’t let something like this ruin your life because it could’ve ruined mine…This was one person who hated and I have seen hundreds of people who love. And I think love wins.”

This story is excerpted from a special StoryCorps podcast featuring another previously unheard piece from a witness to the devastation that followed the June 24, 1973, fire at the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Until the killings at Pulse, this blaze, which took 32 lives, was believed to be the largest single mass killing of gay people in U.S. history.

Click here to listen to StoryCorps 473: Upstairs, Backstreet, Pulse.

Top Photo: A vigil outside the Backstreet Café in Roanoke, Virginia, September 2000. Copyright, The Roanoke Times, republished by permission.

Zeek Taylor and Dick Titus

Dick Titus and Zeek Taylor met in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1971. Zeek was openly gay having already come out to his friends and family, but Dick was still in the closet with the added burden of having his family living close by.

TItus3In order for the two of them to be together, they decided to leave Memphis and move to Fayetteville, Arkansas, a city that would put some distance between Dick and his family, and where he knew he could find work as an electrician. But when they got there, Dick was convinced that he would have to continue to remain closeted after encountering homophobia on job sites, leading him to believe that he would lose work if anyone discovered that he was gay.

In order to protect Dick (pictured on the right), they decided to buy two homes—one to live in together and another to use as a dummy house for Dick in case any of his fellow workers wanted to come by at the end of the day. They also established a code in case they ran into any of the people Dick worked with while they were out together. Dick’s colleagues called him “Oscar,” so when they were in public and heard someone use the name, Zeek (pictured on the left) would pretend that they did not know each other.

Today, Dick is out to his friends and family. They came to StoryCorps to recall their journey from owners of multiple homes for 13 years, to married owners of a single home together in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Originally aired March 4, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Octavius Smiley-Humphries, Carole Smiley and Seth Smiley-Humphries

Hoping to meet someone special, in 2010 Seth Smiley decided to give online dating a try. Soon after posting his profile, Octavius Humphries reached out to him and they began an email correspondence.

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Despite their age difference—Seth is 19 years older than Octavius—they immediately hit it off, bonding over their shared search for “commitment, consistency, and (a) connection.”

Eventually they met in person, going on their first date on Christmas Eve. Unsure of Octavius’ plans for the holiday, Seth invited him to dinner the next night at his family’s Atlanta home. Octavius, who was still grieving the deaths of his parents, had, unbeknownst to Seth, planned on spending the holiday alone. Instead, he reluctantly accepted Seth’s invitation.

At StoryCorps, Octavius (above left) and Seth (above right), along with Seth’s mother, Carole Smiley, sat down to remember their first Christmas together, as well as a more recent memorable holiday event.

Originally aired December 25, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Above photo: Seth, Octavius, and their son Julian (photo courtesy of the Smiley-Humphries family).