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Project tells LGBT elders' stories

By Sharon Gittleman

FERNDALE – In 1952, Michael Golden was 14 years old – and he had a secret.
"I came home and on TV, there was a live program with Sen. McCarthy," said Golden. "He stated communists, prostitutes and homosexuals would have to be obliterated from the Earth."
After listening to Sen. Joe McCarthy's speech, Golden learned an unintended lesson. He was gay.
"I kept my orientation a secret," he said.
Affirmations is collecting life vignettes like Golden's – from gays and lesbians over age 50, to compile them in a book for publication sometime over the next few years. Photographs will also be featured in the anthology.
It's all part of Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center's Heritage Project.
Affirmations celebrated the Heritage Project's kick-off with a dinner dance at the Gerry Kulick Community Center in Ferndale last week.
"We had a two-fold reason for the project," said Affirmations Community Outreach and Older Adult Services Coordinator Kimya Ayodele. "One, to locate isolated LGBT seniors and connect them with one another and the Center and two, to document the lives of LGBT seniors."
Life was very different when gay and lesbian elders were young, she said.
"A lot of seniors were raised during a time when you could be hospitalized for being gay," she said.
When the anthology is published, Affirmations will send it to LGBT community centers around the country – and to bookstore shelves in the area.
"We want to have a wide mix of stories – from gay, transgender, lesbian and people of color," she said.
Judy Chidester, 64, didn't realize she was bisexual until she was 33, when she recognized the true nature of her feelings for her best friend.
Her love wasn't reciprocated.
"I didn't know where to find lesbians," she said. "I didn't know what they wore and what they looked like. I thought, there must be another lesbian in the Detroit area."
Julie, 64, has been Chidester's partner for the past 22 years.
Julie didn't suspect she might be gay until 1977 – years after she stopped playing for the Detroit Demons, a women's football team.
"I said to a woman on the team, we're the only two that weren't lesbians, and it turned out we both were," she said laughing.
Penny Gardner, 64, said she realized her sexual orientation in her late 40's, after she started exploring feminism.
"My life became more and more woman-centered," she said. "Who knows whether it was nature or nurture that made me discover what fulfilled me."
Gardner said it's important for the LGBT community to listen to the wisdom of people who lived through past eras.
"It gives us roots to know how there's a foundation today," she said.
Most older people have stopped worrying about what the neighbors think, she said.
"Age gives us a lot of freedom to speak out," she said.

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