I am deeply grateful to the DGALA Board for having made possible my trip to the 40th anniversary All-Class reunion in July and for presenting me with their “Hero” award. Accepting the invitation was a challenge for me, and it took personal encouragement and support from Pete, Erik and Amanda to give me the courage to follow through.
Making the trip meant confronting the physical limitations imposed by my three-year battle with Long Covid, as well as reconciling a half century of conflicted feelings about my complicated relationship with Dartmouth. At the time I received the invitation, leaving my apartment required a lot of physical effort, and overcoming months of housebound social withdrawal.
Never having attended any Dartmouth reunion before, there’s no denying the apprehension about returning to the place that largely set the course of my life, for good or bad. I worried about how it would feel being among so many others whose grand successes in life made me less proud of my own, especially when struggling with serious current health and financial problems.
Making the decision to attend set a goal for me to build the strength and stamina that a cross-country trip would require and motivated me to begin pushing myself forward again. Even more than the award, the prospect of at last meeting in-person the fabulous “House of Lewan” drag children and seeing them perform reinforced my determination to be there.
Was I even remotely prepared to handle the tropical heat and humidity, punctuated by a violent storm warning blaring exactly as I was checking in at the registration tent? Not a chance, but I did my best to damply lumber my bulk around campus, sweating as profusely as I ever did back in the bathhouse days. Did I move so slowly and require stopping for rest breaks so often that I missed about half of the activities I had hoped to attend? Yes, but the events I did make, Friday night’s Talent Show with the House of Lewan, and the al fresco awards dinner Saturday could not have filled my heart with more joy.
Somehow, my lodging assignment put me back in the same corner of Richardson where I had spent my tumultuous Freshman year—and the window framed exactly the same view I stared at during those long, lonely hours of wondering who I was and what was going to happen to me. I felt the continuity of the through-line of my life, searching for direction and answers from “out there,” when the eventual reality was that they were to be found inside me. Even the surprising jolt of adolescent “sexual tension” flashback reaction to all-male shared bathrooms and group showers took me back a half-century!
And what is a “hero” award anyway? The trip got me to go back and read my handwritten journals from those bygone days, and I even pulled up all the articles written about me from the archives of ”The D.” Somewhere I’d heard that a hero was someone who felt fear but went ahead and acted anyway. So much of for what I was being recognized wasn’t so scary at the time, but simply my wanting life to be better in those barely co-ed days for everyone who didn’t fit in the Webster Avenue mode. If anything, my “bravery” was more like naivete or foolish disregard and denial of consequences. That years later people were showing me appreciation for those sometimes silly, sometimes serious things made me realize we never quite know the extent of the impact we’ve had.
Nothing for which I’m recognized would have been possible without the friendship and hard work of so many other Dartmouth pioneers, like Bill Monsour’77 first launching Students for Social Alternatives, and Hillary Goodridge ’78 leading the women’s community. The infamous “Carnival is a Drag” show was a group effort of my Alpha Theta house siblings, especially the late Beth Krakower ‘92, and my ’79 classmate Sam Abel.
Dean Warner Traynham ’57 generous support of the Tucker Foundation created a safe space to enable Dartmouth’s first open gay community as much as Dick’s House Head Counselor Bruce Baker’s kindness and affirmation in those early Human Sexuality Growth groups. That we are celebrating this 40th DGALA reunion is testimony to Ed Hermance ’62 and Chuck Edwards A’86 organizing gay alumni in 1985 at the height of the AIDS crisis, when any hope for the future was desperately needed.
And who could have ever predicted that Dartmouth would create Triangle House in 2014 so queer students could have a place of their own? Or would officially recognize Jaime Aranzabal ’24’s petition for a drag performance troupe whose success is now winning admirers far and wide?
Too many to mention are all those who may have kept the closet door firmly closed at one time, who have later come forward to donate, volunteer and contribute to the vision of Dartmouth’s gay students and alumni taking their place as equals in the Big Green family. And that goes totally without mentioning all the straight allies who privately or publicly risked their reputations to do the right thing, bravely confronting prejudice and hate. Since the advent of social media, I’ve been surprised by how many people have reached out to apologize for past hurts, to clear their conscience, to make amends, some who I never knew by name before.
The weekend flashed by so fast that by the time Sunday morning arrived and it was time to leave, the list of things I wanted to see and do while I was in Hanover was many times longer than before I got there. Instead of enduring dark thoughts and bad memories, the verdant green grass and bright blue skies connected me with happier times I’d nearly forgotten. That’s probably why reunions are in the summer, I’d guess, rather than having us relive the trauma of 8AM classes during Winter Term.
Now that the Reunion experience is a few months past, I can report the momentum of the trip has gotten me through a round of medical testing that shows more recovery than I had thought possible, and renewed energy to reach out and re-establish social connections. At the beginning of the year, things felt pretty gloomy for me, but now day-by-day I’m finding a path toward something better. As I said when accepting the award, no matter how much my butt was kicked, Dartmouth has repeatedly brought opportunity, connection and renewal into my life. As difficult as it has been at times for me to admit, I owe Dartmouth for much of what made who I am and made my life worth living.
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