3 20 55 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/21d02a6d92c0f1bbc38aeacb4b197e21.mp4 d3d143b8975e231e89aee433ebbabac8 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/7fda3ee82db9d17466e3443f6b5400c5.pdf 2acf3458bfdcb44db5b39b13eba43da3 PDF Text Text �������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2003] Dennis Neill Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource December 10, 2003 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Laura Belmonte on December 10, 2003. Dennis discusses his early life growing up in Ponca City, Oklahoma, experiences at Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas Law School. In 1977, he moved to Tulsa to begin his legal career and then joining the Schusterman family in their oil and gas business. As a co-founder of the Tulsa Chapter of Oklahomans for Human Rights, which in 1985 became Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights and then in 2006 Oklahomans for Equality, he reviews the early years of the organization and involvement with other civic activities and the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Tulsa and the community response. Subject The topic of the resource Dennis Neill Oral History Project Interview from December 10, 2003 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dennis Neill, Laura Belmonte 2003 AIDS AIDS/HIV Dennis Neill HIV/AIDs interview Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte OkEq OKEQ Oral History Project Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahomans for Equality Oklahomans for Equality (OKEQ) oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU TOHR transcript Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) University of Texas University of Texas Law School video https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/e5058728974a0f195bd8900e5e7c92a9.jpg 200a294d14881d81dd06ce84750b1c0f https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/0dd0cb24915e78deb62c6fbaf1d3e07d.pdf 20d176b1914b1b1833c44428a7b6656c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert (Bob) Odle Oral History Interview - Feb. 19, 2026 Transcript PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Robert (Bob) Odle Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins (and Dennis Neill) Date: February 19, 2026 Transcribed and Edited By: Dennis Neill using Reduct.Video AI, March 13, 2026 Restrictions: Interviewee requested: N/A Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 historyproject@okeq.org 1 �About Robert (Bob) Odle Summary This interview with Bob Odle offers a deep dive into his life as a gay man, theater professional, and community advocate. Covering his personal journey, the impact of historical events, and insights into Tulsa's cultural scene, it provides valuable lessons on resilience, identity, and activism. Keywords LGBTQ history, theater, Tulsa, activism, personal story, AIDS, gay community, cultural history Key Topics    Bob Odle's personal history and identity The impact of historical events like JFK's assassination and AIDS crisis The development of theater and LGBTQ community in Tulsa Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background of Bob Odle 02:57 Early Life and Education 05:59 College Experience and Sexual Orientation 08:58 Military Draft and Sexual Identity 2 �11:50 Teaching Career and Coming Out 14:47 Theater Involvement and Gay Community Connections 17:48 Reflections on the LGBTQ+ Experience 20:57 Teaching Philosophy and Curriculum Development 23:56 Theater Companies and Professional Acting 39:52 Theatre Roots and Early Involvement 41:12 Memorable Performances and Traditions 43:39 The Birth of World Action Singers 48:06 The Evolution of Theatre Spaces in Tulsa 53:00 Theater Community Support and Changes 56:39 The Lynn Riggs Theater and Community Engagement 01:02:33 Impact of the Pandemic on Theatre 01:05:27 Personal Loss and Community Involvement 01:08:20 Political Climate and Advocacy 01:10:58 Concerns for Arts and Rights 01:20:21 A Message for Future Generations Robert (Bob) Odle Oral History Interview Feb 19, 2026 Toby Jenkins: Today is February the 19th, 2026. We are at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the Joe and Nancy McDonald Rainbow Library, and we are doing archival work and interview today, and joining me for the interview is Amanda Thompson, our archivist and the founder of Oklahomans for Equality, Dennis Neill. This is Toby Jenkins. Today, viewers, we are very fortunate to have a very special guest. Tell us your name and your date of birth and your address. Bob Odle: Bob Odle, Robert Odle. Date of birth is May 15th, 1945. Bob Odle: My address is XXX in Tulsa. Toby Jenkins: Thank you so much. We're here today, and I want us to tell...you've had such an interesting life, and I want to make sure we get everything, and we appreciate our viewers' interest in this, and so this is...we're going to give you some history that you might have a little trouble finding, so we're going to put it in one place where our viewers can find this information. Do you want me to call you Bob or Robert? Bob Odle: Bob. Everybody calls me Bob, except my sixth-grade art teacher. Toby Jenkins: What are your pronouns? How do you identify your gender? Bob Odle: Mr. He. Toby Jenkins: So, you identify as male? Bob Odle: Yes. 3 �Toby Jenkins: Okay, and could you just, for our time together, we're gonna...how do you identify in your sexual orientation, your...how do you identify? Bob Odle: Well, I'm queer as a $3 bill. Toby Jenkins: Okay, good. So, it's good to know, and for our historical people, that was a phrase we used a lot when we were growing up as kids. Bob Odle: Well, I just heard about the origin of the $3 bill just within the past week. During this Civil War, some of the southern states, as I recall, didn't have really enough gold, and so they issued those $3 bills, or maybe it was the American Revolution. I don't remember, but it was some revolutionaries, and they issued worthless money, and it was $3 bills. Toby Jenkins: So, that's why we have it. That's why they always used it on us. Where were you born? Bob Odle: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Bob Odle: Research Hospital. Toby Jenkins: Is your family from Kansas City, Missouri? Bob Odle: Most of my...the Bell side of the family is from Missouri. My four-times greatgrandmother came to Missouri with Daniel and Nathan Boone. Nathan Boone is buried not far from where she's buried, and so most of my relatives are there. The...and the Rileys are there, once they came to this country. The Odles are scattered around western part of Virginia. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Now, when you say she's buried up in Missouri, is she buried near Boone's Lick? (Editor’s note Boone's Lick is the historical site where Daniel Boone’s sons settled around Franklin Missouri.) Bob Odle: Oh, no, that's much farther north. Nathan Boone is much closer to Springfield, and it's a little country cemetery that is largely a family cemetery. I mean, I'm related by blood or marriage to most of the people who are in that cemetery, so she's buried there where the other Bells and the Rileys are. Toby Jenkins: And so you were...your family was in Kansas City at this time, or...? Bob Odle: Yes, they had moved...my grandmother and grandfather had moved to Kansas City, and I think most of my...all of my aunts and uncles were born in Kansas City, and my mother was born there, and...and so that's...that's where I was born. Toby Jenkins: Now, did you grow up there? I mean, was that what you spent your childhood? Bob Odle: Yes. I went to Munger Elementary School, which was named after a farmer who donated that land to the school district, and it was a little eight-room, four downstairs and four 4 �upstairs schoolhouse with a prefab outside for the 7th and 8th grades, and 6th and 7th grades. And so I went to Munger for the first three years, and then North Kansas City had a bond issue, and they built some new schools because that area of Kansas City was growing. They built right across the street from Munger, they built Oak Ridge and just a few blocks from us they built Maplewood. I went to Maplewood for the fourth and fifth grades and then my mother remarried and we moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma where I went to Luther Burbank for one year. TPS has recently sold that building. And then I went to Bell Junior High for two and a half years and then we moved over to 27th Street and I finished the ninth grade and went through high school at Nathan Hale and then got a scholarship to the University of Tulsa. I applied various places but TU gave me a scholarship that paid half of my tuition which was $600 a year. Toby Jenkins: And what year would that have been that you graduated? Bob Odle: I graduated from Nathan Hale in 63 and from TU in 67. Toby Jenkins: And how new was Nathan Hale? Was it a pretty new high school? Bob Odle: It was brand new that first year I went there. Toby Jenkins: Do you remember what your graduating class, how many were in your graduating class? Bob Odle: I contend there were 450 but some people, some members of my class say there were fewer than that. I don't know, I haven't counted the pictures in the yearbook. I keep thinking I must do that and I haven't. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, by the 70s it was up in the 2000s. Bob Odle: Yes, they added a wing. Toby Jenkins: But I think today Nathan Hale's graduating class is about 200. Bob Odle: Well, yeah, they added classrooms to the building. Quite a few classrooms after I graduated. Toby Jenkins: So was your family glad that you were going to school in Tulsa instead of getting accepted someplace else? Bob Odle: Well, they were glad I got a scholarship which was $300 which paid half of my tuition. And my books altogether, my books cost less than $100. Toby Jenkins: I don't think I ever paid $100. What did you study at TU? Bob Odle: I was a theater major. Toby Jenkins: And so this would have been in 1963 when you graduated. What was going on in our country at that time? I mean this was shortly after Kennedy had been assassinated. 5 �Bob Odle: No, it was when he was assassinated. That was a sad day that I remember that day. And the several days afterwards when we had no commercial TV. And Channel 2 played Handel's Largo during all of the station breaks. And we went until Monday after the funeral with no commercials on TV. And 24-hour coverage of the funeral and people visiting the White House and the Capitol. Toby Jenkins: Were you in school when y'all heard this news? Bob Odle: It was just my first time at the Baptist Student Union. They should have told me never to go back. My first time there and I went to class and a friend of mine who had a little portable radio said the president has been shot. And what's he talking about? He's crazy. And then it was during that class, I had humanities at 1 o'clock. It was during that class then that it was announced that the president was dead. I gave a friend a ride home and we listened to the radio. And the radio was covering the funeral and the death of the president. Toby Jenkins: And this would have been your freshman year? Bob Odle: It was my freshman year, yeah. It was a sad day. It was a sad several days. Couldn't believe that in the 20th century a president would be assassinated. I just couldn't believe that. Toby Jenkins: What were you studying at TU? Bob Odle: I was majoring in theater. I had a minor in English lit and a minor in education so I could get my teaching certificate. It was then, and I didn't know this until, I was so naive. I'm incredibly naive, even now. I heard after the first show that the person who played the lead and some other people were gay and, what? And so, later, I think the person who told me that had the hots for me for years. I think I later found out more and more people in the theater department, which is where I hung out, were gay and, oh, okay, I didn't know that. I had no idea. Toby Jenkins: Did you understand what that meant? Bob Odle: Oh yeah, I understood what it meant, but I just didn't know that they were gay and that there were so many. Toby Jenkins: So you were like in Gay Head Start, the theater department at TU. Did you, had you by that time, I mean, by then you're 18, adult, and you're a young male college student. Had you begin to realize about your own sexual orientation or was it? Bob Odle: Yeah, I went through a period, and I think it's not unusual, of denial. And, let's see, I was molested when I was like 12 years old, and I didn't know, I just, I didn't know anything about that. I just, it was when I was 15, I finally said, no, I don't want to do that anymore. Well, I didn't want to do it with somebody older, I wanted to do it with some of my classmates. And I remember when I was like in the seventh grade at Bell, the day we all suited up in our white tshirts and our white gym shorts and our white tennis shoes. And I walked, there were these other boys, and whoa, wow, I mean, this thrill went through me. Whoa, whoa. And so... 6 �Toby Jenkins: So you're in college, and you're in this program, and I guess it was gossip people were talking about people being gay. Bob Odle: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Was it in college that you began to, I mean, did you have a relationship with another student, a person, or? Bob Odle: No, not really, but there was one person who was in my English class who I had seen go to the, it was the Baptist student union, that was the reason I went that one day, and I went back subsequently. I did have the hots for him, and it was, he dropped out of school, I think, after the first semester of our freshman year. And in the past year or so have found out, I suspect he was killed in Vietnam. I suspect he joined the army, that school wasn't really for him. And when he didn't show up at any of our classes, and he was no longer on campus, I did feel like my heart was broken. I mean, I really had a crush on him. Toby Jenkins: So when he left school, I mean, you didn't know where he went, and so did you quit going to the Baptist Student Union after that? Bob Odle: No, I continued to go because I knew some other people who were there. Toby Jenkins: What was TU like in those days, in the 60s? Bob Odle: We had to wear our freshman beanies for the first six weeks. I still have mine somewhere, I tried to find it for the 50th anniversary, that's when I, oh no, this was 50 years after graduation. It was red, alternate red and yellow panels with a red 67 in the front panel, and we had to wear those for the first six weeks, I mean, that was the rule. We had to go to orientation like once a week. We had to take six hours of religion. I took Old Testament history and origin and principles of Christianity. Bob Odle: Later, they reorganized and we didn't have to take any religion, and I'd already taken six hours, and so we had to go to chapel, I don't know, maybe once at least…. Toby Jenkins: A week, once a week, or once a semester? Bob Odle: No, I think once in the first six weeks. The class of 68 had blue beanies with yellow 68 on the front. That was the last class, I think, that had to wear beanies. Toby Jenkins: About how many students do you think were at TU at that time? Bob Odle: I think they've held steady at about 4,000 to 5,000. Toby Jenkins: And so that would have been at the time when Tulsa was the oil capital of the world and TU was known as the top geology, or what am I saying? Petroleum engineer. Yeah, petroleum engineer. 7 �Bob Odle: There was one guy in the theater department who was from Egypt and he was in theater, but he, I think, came for petroleum engineering, which is why a lot of people were there from other states. Toby Jenkins: So you talked about the military and the Vietnam War. Tell us about that. Were there lots of students who were leaving? Bob Odle: I was not aware of any at that time because I graduated in 67, so the buildup, I think, started in 65, but I was not... We had student deferments as long as we were in school. Toby Jenkins: Were you in the military? Bob Odle: No, never. They didn't want me because I was gay. Toby Jenkins: You remember your draft number? Were you subject to a potential call-up? Bob Odle: I don't remember that. That's been so long ago. Toby Jenkins: So they didn't want you because you were gay. Tell us about that. I mean, by then, you were acknowledging…? Bob Odle: Well, I remember they had me come in and talk. There was a sergeant who was in charge of all of the physical examination and whatnot and he had me talk to a captain who asked me if I was sure I was gay, if I was just saying that. He said, I've always remembered, he said, you know this will go on your permanent record. Toby Jenkins: So you actually had to fill out a form that said that? Bob Odle: Yes. That was when... It was like an alumni meeting. All the guys I knew from high school were on the same bus, and some friends from junior high who went to Will Rogers were on the same bus going to Oklahoma City. That was part of what we did that day, was we had to sit down and fill out these forms about what diseases we'd had and if we had homosexual tendencies. So we had to actually fill out a form. Toby Jenkins: You felt like you needed to be honest? Bob Odle: Well, yeah, because I was going to go to law school, and I did go to law school for a while. So I thought, well, I can't lie on this. I think there was a small print that said it was a federal crime or something, and so I didn't want to lie. Toby Jenkins: So the captain tried to talk you out of it, is what you're saying? Bob Odle: He wanted to make sure that I wasn't just... Because a friend of mine said, I remember a party and he was talking about how... He had a high lottery number, so he wasn't chosen, but he said he had the choice of going to Canada or he could queer out. So apparently there were other people who were signing, yeah, they were gay. They had homosexual tendencies or whatever the wording changed to, and so apparently they had encountered that before, people lying about being gay. 8 �Toby Jenkins: This is fascinating to me. I don't know that I've ever had anybody talk about this. I don't know if I've ever interviewed somebody and them talk about the details of that and the possibility that the military wanted to make sure you weren't just using something. So I'm just curious, were you in a room with several people when you were asked this, or was it more of a private discussion? Bob Odle: Well, there was a big classroom with student desks for us to fill out the form, but then the sergeant... I was in a room, an office with the sergeant and a couple other non-coms. He said it would be better to get rid of me then than to go ahead and have me sworn in and have me booted out of the military for being gay. But he decided for some odd reason to have me talk to this, I guess, doctor who was a captain. I mean, I have no idea. They just know he was a captain and they sent me into his office for him to question me about that. Toby Jenkins: So you were able to avoid military service. Do you remember, I mean, you were a college student during these days. I don't know necessarily when… Bob Odle: Well, this was after I graduated that I got that. And it was after I'd taught for a year, too. But teachers had deferments. I mean, I was originally taken after I graduated with this busload of alumni, people I'd known in high school. And then the school board, I got a job teaching and the school board appealed that. And they had just gotten this draft board… I went before these old men. Toby Jenkins: Where were you teaching? Bob Odle: At Central High School, which was downtown. Toby Jenkins: The major campus that's still down there today. Bob Odle: Yeah, PSO owns it now, and AEP. And they had gotten something from Washington that they should give teachers who were teaching deferments or something like that. But I was drafted in the meantime. And so the public schools protested. But it wasn't that I got out of the military. The military didn't want me. Toby Jenkins: Very, very interesting. So well said. Bob Odle: Well, I know of other gay people who've had military experience. Well, and I have one friend who used to live in Tulsa, who lives somewhere in Dallas, I think, now. He was booted out of the Navy and was not happy with being booted out. I mean, there are a lot of gays who want to serve their country and be in the military. But we were not allowed to. And those who were drafted—and I have a friend who was investigated by the Naval Intelligence for a while. They trailed him. And I don't know if he was court-martialed or not. He stayed in the Navy for years and retired as a lieutenant commander. Some of his friends at his funeral said he would have been a commander had there not been that investigation. But he would sometimes go into bathhouses in San Diego or San Francisco in order to have the people who were tailing him leave him alone. 9 �Toby Jenkins: To make them have to follow him in there? Bob Odle: They wouldn't follow him in there. Toby Jenkins: So you said you finished TU and then you started teaching. Bob Odle: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And you had to get a teacher's certificate. Now, I'm just curious, you're teaching—what did you teach at Central High School? Bob Odle: Competitive speech and drama. Toby Jenkins: So you would have probably been my instructor because that's the kind of stuff I was in in high school. So you were teaching…This would have had you probably 21, 22? Bob Odle: I was just barely 22 when I started teaching. And I taught for four years. My goal was to teach for four years, save some money, and go to law school full-time. I went to law school part-time, but I quit to go full-time, and that was about the time we started doing theater. And I thought, well really, I'd rather be an actor than be an attorney. And so I dropped out of law school. My mother was not happy with it. She got over that eventually. Toby Jenkins: So you're a young adult. Had you begun to have romantic relationships with men, or had you connected to the gay community? I mean, you were teaching school. Bob Odle: Well, I had a lot of friends who, being in theater, I had a lot of friends who were gay, and pretty much openly gay. And so, you know, I would think about that, you know. And eventually, after I was doing theater, and eventually, after years went by, because I was in a state of denial. I mean, I lived with a woman for a while. And... But it was because I was in a state of denial, which is not uncommon, I think, and so eventually when we broke up, because it was not destined to be, she lives with her second husband in South Carolina, I think, and I contact her periodically, or she contacts me. But I didn't really have, I still was so closeted. A lot of people probably knew, but it was sometime then, sometime around 1980, I think, that is after we moved into the Brook Theater in 79, it was about 1980 that I decided to go to, well I had been to, I mentioned this at the breakfast the other day, I had been to Saddle Tramps in Oklahoma City years before. I had no idea it was a gay bar. I mean, when I was, I had done Tea House of the August Moon in Tulsa, and then I was asked to join the touring company in Oklahoma City. So I went down to Oklahoma City, and friends put me on a bus, and I went down there, and I saw this limousine parked across from the bus station, and I thought, well it'd be neat if that was for me. It was! The owner of the theater had a huge Cadillac limousine, and I mean the big, stretched thing, and so he took me to the theater, and there were a couple of people in that play, that were in that cast, that were gay. And then I did another tour, and I think some people were gay, and then a lot of people I knew from the theater were gay. 10 �And a friend moved back for a short time to help us open The Brook, I think, with his boyfriend from New York, and they lived together. And so all of this was like, you know, making an impression on me. And so finally in about 1980, well I was going to tell you about Saddle Tramps. The manager of the Gaslight, we were dark on Monday nights, and so one Monday night, and every other Monday we got paid. And so it was a Monday we got paid, and so we all decided to go to dinner, and we went to the Haunted House, which you have to have reservations before they will tell you the address. It's a fabulous old mansion somewhere in northeast Oklahoma City, and they had fabulous food. And so we went there, and those who didn't have cars, because some people had their own cars, but I'd left mine, I'd taken the bus to Oklahoma City. I was in the manager's limousine with some other people, who I think back, I think at least two of them were gay, maybe three of them were gay. And so we went to the manager's house for a little while, and he lived somewhere in northeast Oklahoma City, and not far from the theater as I recall. But anyway, then we went to a bar. He decided, let's go to a bar. So well, I know the bar we'll go to, and we'll go to this bar. Well, it was Saddle Tramps. I didn't know. And it was a Monday night, so nobody was there except us and maybe a couple other people and the bartender. And I went in to use the restroom at one point, and there was a toilet sitting right in the middle of the floor, and there was a bathtub also there. And this is strange. And so I went out and I told the others, you've got to see that restroom. And so that was the first time. Then later on, somehow a friend of a good friend of mine who had been a colleague in teaching and who'd lived just two doors down from when we first moved to Tulsa, her friend was doing drag for the first time at a place called, I think, the Stage Door on Main. And so a group of us went to see him do drag for the first time, and he was not very good, but there was this person in a mini skirt, a mini dress that had flowers on it, and a bouffant wig, who did Harper Valley PTA, was fabulous. And so that was my first time. So later then, I decided to go to a gay bar, and I went to one called, I think, Caruso's, also on Main, maybe a little bit south of where Stage Door had by that time, I think, become a parking lot, as much of downtown Tulsa is. I went to Caruso's, and I went there a few times, and then I decided to branch out and try some others. And I'd heard of people going to Oklahoma City and staying at what was then called the Pepper Tree, it was the Habana, and now it's a different name, and why it's not the Habana, because it's been Habana since it opened in the 1960s. Because I went there as a school teacher, we had our speech convention at the Habana when it was a Best Western. And little did I know that right next door was Saddle Tramps. And because I had, you know, it was dark, and I was being toted around in this limousine, had no idea where I was or what was going on. And so, I heard of people going there, and so I went down there, and I discovered all of the bars in the hotel and on the Strip. And... Toby Jenkins: So during this time, I know you were an actor in the theater companies, and obviously a professional actor, you were being paid. Were you still teaching at this time? 11 �Bob Odle: No, I went back to teaching after, in 1990, I believe. I worked in theater and doing workshops in schools all over the state. And I went back to teaching. A friend of mine, because the oil companies who had given us money had moved to Houston, so they could be hit by hurricanes and flooded by hurricanes. And so a friend of mine suggested, why don't you go back and get your teaching certificate? So at his urging, I did. And so I got a job teaching. I deducted my trips to Oklahoma City for our annual convention for my income tax, because the motel, I had to have a motel while I was down there. I deducted that for my income tax. I went down there and I would always stay at the Habana, and then there were all those bars right there. Toby Jenkins: So I know that was the gay district still, I guess, today is considered that. So during this time, had you ever come out as openly gay to your other theater friends and folks? I mean, had you pretty well, you said about 1979 was when you began to connect to the gay community. Had you told other people that you were gay? Bob Odle: No, not until the friend who'd come here for the opening of The Brook went back to New York, and he'd come back Christmas to be with his parents. And so after a show, I said, why don't we go to a bar? I know a bar at 18th and Main. So we went to Renegades. And then later we went to Tim's Playroom at 11th and Lewis. And that was the most fun. That was a fun bar. Then, later in the 80s, I went to New Orleans and discovered just about all the bars in the French Quarter and some in the Marigny, and met a person who had been a student at Central High School when I was a teacher there. We went to see a play over at the Marigny Theater, which is connected with a bar and around the corner from some other bars. He died, oh, it's been several years ago, and he had heart problems. He was very intelligent, talented, and so I started making sometimes four trips per year to New Orleans. Certainly, I've gone there every year for about 30 years. When the bathhouse closed down there, I went into mourning for two years. I thought about, should I leave a bouquet of condoms and lube outside the front door? Because people leave bouquets of things. I mean, I was like, I miss that. That was a fun bathhouse. After Katrina, it was a member of the club baths, and I had a club card, and they were good at the club baths all over the country. I went to some of the others, and they were not as good as the Club New Orleans. Toby Jenkins: Were you teaching during this time? Bob Odle: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Were you able to be openly gay? In the early days when you got the deferment, I know the school board was addressing their teacher's deferments. Did anybody at your school know that you had got a deferment because you told them you were gay? Bob Odle: No. 12 �Toby Jenkins: Okay. Then while you were teaching here in Oklahoma, were you openly gay? I mean, did your students know you were gay? Did your principal, your ... Bob Odle: No, not that I know of. I think some suspected, but nobody really cared. I was there to teach speech, and I was focused on that. That was my job, and I was focused on doing that, and I also had a humanities class, and I was focused on spreading this notion of the arts, all of the arts, through the ages. I put together a thing on humanities for the first two years myself until ... It took two years before I found a book that also covered Asia, because of my philosophy that we're too Eurocentric, and kids needed to know. I sandwiched into a short period of time 6,000 years of Chinese and Japanese and Indian Middle Eastern art, which is not doing it ... I mean, that should have been a separate class, but it wasn't, and so I wanted kids exposed to that. Toby Jenkins: So that was curriculum? You were writing curriculum for that? Bob Odle: Yes, I did. Toby Jenkins: Okay. What theater companies were you involved in? You talked about you were a paid actor. Bob Odle: Yeah, I worked with American Theater Company for years, and also during some down times when we didn't do many shows, I also worked with Gaslight. Toby Jenkins: Okay. How long were you involved with American Theater Company? Bob Odle: From its inception in 1970 until ... Well, I did a show 2006, 2008. For four years in a row, we did the Rocky Horror Show, the original stage musical, which is much better than the movie. I frequently think that is the case, that things on stage don't translate to film. Toby Jenkins: Live theater is better. Bob Odle: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Okay. So how many years would that have been with American Theater Company? Forty? Bob Odle: Well, man. Bob Odle: 70 to almost, yeah, almost 40, 37 or so, I worked. I was on the board after that, for some time after that, but I was just too busy to do shows. And so, you know, but I was still affiliated with the theater, but I've not been on the board for like three years now. Toby Jenkins: What performances were you in, what shows? Bob Odle: Well, on my tombstone, which I have already bought, and it is, although I intend to be cremated and have my ashes scattered, my tombstone, which is next to my mother and stepfathers, and near my grandparents and great-grandparents and so on and so forth, yeah, that's Karl Krauss as Ebenezer Scrooge. And Karl has played that role for years and years. And 13 �so, you know, that's me as Brother Oral Love. That's one of the things on my tombstone. I had Robert, I think Robert Leonard Odle, because I'm named after both of my grandfathers. That was a thing in my family for a while after both grandfathers or grandmothers. And so I have Brother Love and Tartuffe, Captain Hook, and there's one other that I keep forgetting, but it's one of my favorite roles I ever played. But those are three of the ones. Toby Jenkins: So I know Christmas, Carol, is kind of like a Christmas tradition. Bob Odle: I know, I never, the second year we did it, one of the reviewers for one of the Tulsa papers said, this needs to be a tradition. And I thought, and well, it has become that. This is, I mean, this fall will be 50 years since Rick and I wrote that. Toby Jenkins: Well, I'll just let you know whether you are surprised that it became a tradition. In my family, I took my children to see it, and now I have grandchildren, and all of us have made it a part of our Christmas tradition. We don't go every year, but we've been multiple times. Bob Odle: I go every year. I mean, I love that story. It's a great story about giving. Dennis Neill: We spent a little more time talking about Joyce Martel and the Oral Action Singers, how that originated and your role in it and the longevity of that show. And did ATC actually own the Brook at that point in time? Bob Odle: No, we rented it or leased it, I don't remember which. But, well, Jerry Pope and Rick Averill and I, Rick always wrote the music. Jerry and I would, he would write one scene, I would write another scene and so on until we wrote the play. And it's about, it was essentially about balanced growth in Tulsa and the reason we didn't have balanced growth. And we did some stereotypical characters. And one was this religious figure, which we called in that musical, Seth Righteous. And so that sort of began it. Then a year later at Cain's, we opened and ran a month with Joyce Martel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Texas. I think that title was based on something that was on T, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris or something. Anyway, so, but we decided not to call it Seth Righteous, to call it Oral Love because of the combination of the double entendre there with Oral Roberts out South and, you know, and the act of sex. And so we did that at the Cain's for a month and then they decided we were too bawdy for Cain's. That was when the people who had Cain's at the time were having people do the alligator and people were actually having sex in the audience. But we were too bawdy for them. So we moved to the Inferno, which is now the location of a car wash on South Peoria. The Inferno had a big sign outside that said topless lunch from 11 until seven. It was a long lunch. You would eat a lot of food. And we went in there and, like the first day we went in there, one of the dancers named Snowball grabbed me by the crotch and led me into the bar. So we did it there for a couple of months. Then we moved to Captain's Cabin, which was at 41st and Memorial. It's where Richard De La Fonte, a hypnotist, was working most nights and he had the prime weekend nights. Then we closed the show because we were going on the first of our summer tours. 14 �We talked about it during that summer tour and we came back and performed on the roof of the Mayo parking garage for a month- the coldest September on record, I think, and then the hottest day in October- we moved to the ballroom inside upstairs and we had this huge box that was two 4x8 sheets of plywood with about that much wood in between the shelves and all of our props and some of our costumes, and it wouldn't fit in the elevator shaft. So we had to take it to the freight elevator and we had to ride up on top of the freight elevator. We had to take it down to the basement, move the thing in on top of the freight elevator, take the freight elevator up to the floor below the ballroom and open the doors and move the thing out. It was a nightmare. Dennis Neill: So, Bob, this is all in the early 80s, right? Bob Odle: This is 75. Dennis Neill: Oh, okay, so now, which show are you talking about right now? Bob Odle: Joyce Martel. Dennis Neill: I saw it when I moved to Tulsa and I moved here in 77. Bob Odle: That was, oh well, we did the best of Joyce Martel in 76. And then in 77 we were at the Crest Club at the Mayo. We did some shows in the crystal ballroom, some shows we did downstairs in theToby Jenkins : Do you remember where you saw it? Dennis Neill: I thought I saw it at the Brook, but I could be wrong about that, correct? Bob Odle: Yeah, we didn't open that. 61579, that was the code on the security, the security system. Dennis Neill: I remember you and the flaming Bible, right? Bob Odle: Yeah, well, I used that for a long time. Dennis Neill: Okay, maybe it was another show. Bob Odle: We did the best of Joyce Martel, and then we closed that. And then in 77, well, we did some shows in the Pompeian Room, which is an artificial room they put because it was a two-story lobby, but they put a floor in and had this large meeting room called the Pompeian Room and it had Roman murals all around. It was horrible. Dennis Neill: So any pushback from Oral Roberts and the university with regard to the action singers? Bob Odle: Well, not then so much. We moved to the Brook, we continued, we did the Crest Club- and I don't remember what that show was called- right offhand. Then we got this deal with the Brook and we moved in there and we converted it from a movie house to a legitimate 15 �theater and we opened in June of 79 with huge, gigantic those spotlights on Peoria and drew a lot of attention. We had the marquee out front and some friends who had seen the show were friends with a man who made all of Oral Roberts' trinkets that he gave away for a donation and he had a pretty large house out south and it was his 50th birthday and they had happy 50th birthday up on the roof in big letters, eight feet tall. I mean they were huge letters- and so they decided he had all this money and he had everything he wanted, so they would give him something he wouldn't normally get, and so they gave him Brother Oral Love as his birthday, as entertainment for his birthday party, and there was a big crowd there. Some of the provosts of ORU was there and there were some other ORU people there and there were some of the people in the audience who just loved what I was doing. There were some who stood stony faced. Then one year, I don't remember what we renamed the show, we did a new show every year, which was a nightmare to write. But we did a show and I thought, okay, I'm going to write this sermon this year. What would I do if I were totally corrupt? And, you know, so, you know, like Jesus spent time in the desert. Well, I owned a house in Palm Springs. And because that's in the desert. And I had a Mercedes-Benz because there's a Janis Joplin song, Oh Lord, won't you give me a Mercedes-Benz. So I always ended with that. And the thing is that summer, Shoals, Jerry Shoals, I think his name is, published his book about Oral Roberts, the time he had worked for Oral Roberts. And it turned out he did have a Mercedes. He did drive a Mercedes. And he did own a house in Palm Springs. I mean, the stuff, if I were totally corrupt, this is what I would write. This is what I would do. Well, it turned out that was real life. And so Shoals came to see the show at least once. And he was tailed. They had people watching his every movement. Whether Oral actually knew about it or not, I don't know. But some of the people at the university did know what I was doing. But I got paid, so who cares. Toby Jenkins: So during this time, all these years, I assume you were teaching also but still doing theater. Bob Odle: No, at that time I was just doing theater. I had no time. Toby Jenkins: Was the theater community, live theater in Tulsa, did people attend the performances? Did it have lots of support? Bob Odle: We seated 750. That was what the fire marshal would allow in the building. We had lines that went from the box office around the corner and back to the alley, which is where our stage door was. I mean, we could stand and talk before the show to people who were going to see the show, maybe if they got in. Because we only seated 750. Dennis Neill: Those were the good old days. Those were great shows. Bob Odle: They were. 16 �Toby Jenkins: So looking back during those days and presently, is there still a lot of support in Tulsa for live theater? Bob Odle: I think so. I think Theater Tulsa is having, some part of it is the rent at the PAC. And Theater Tulsa has opened their place where I'm going tomorrow night and Saturday night, 55th and Peoria. It's a converted Dollar General store. And there are a lot of little splinter groups that do stuff. American Theater Company, I don't know. I mean, we always did five shows and we did a summer show. And at times we had like two or three shows running simultaneously. When we had Joyce running at the Mayo and Christmas Carol running at the PAC or whatnot. And some other times we did multiple shows at the same time. Because we had 25 people on our staff, full-time, paid. And others working part-time. Toby Jenkins: Who were cast members or writers, producers? Bob Odle: Musicians, concessions, bar workers, so on. Sometimes people in plays. But we had a staff of technicians and actors of like 25. Toby Jenkins: So here at the Equality Center, when we did our renovation about eight years ago, we felt like in our community we were having lots of theater groups that were showing an interest. And especially in our gay community, the queer community, about their interest in theater. One of the passions of some of our folks was that we convert a space into a theater space that could be used for the community, especially to make it accessible for people who wanted to do productions that might not have, you know, they might be cutting edge and be kind of outside of the standard stories to make sure that certainly queer theater had access to those theaters. And of course, it's named after Lynn Riggs, who wrote the story that became the Broadway musical, Oklahoma. Your thoughts about the Lynn Riggs Theater here at the Equality Center and the space and things like that. Bob Odle: Well, I love it. I think it's great. In fact, I was urging American Theater Company, we eventually moved, the Harwells bought the building at 308 South Lansing. And I always said this is a better place because there are posts there and I just like the Lynn Riggs better. I've seen some plays here. I've been to a lot of the Thursday night things and I like this venue. I think it's real neat. American Theater Company went from five shows down to last year, they did four shows. This year, they originally promoted three shows, but they eventually cut that back to one, Christmas Carol. And they do stand up comedy one night. They do, I think they have some drag shows out there. Occasionally, I mean, you know, it's not like the five show season that we used to market and then sometimes a tour or something special during the summer, it's not like that. I think that Christmas Carol hasn't drawn the past couple of years what it used to draw because the people who are managing the theater now determined that Christmas Carol is a tradition. So it doesn't need to be marketed. Well, they still market the Nutcracker. They still market other traditions. It needs to be marketed, people need to know. It needs to not be a secret production. I'm getting off on to my axe to grind. 17 �Toby Jenkins: Where all have you taught school? Dennis Neill: Well, TCC West and TCC North. English, comp. Toby Jenkins: No theater production or? Bob Odle: Well, I did have an acting class one semester and then that got to be a fiasco. It had to do with the management. I don't want to say anything more about that. But I taught at Central High School when it was downtown and I taught competitive speech and I directed plays and then I, well, I taught at Schulter for one year. They needed to bring up their test scores and they hired like the whole new administration and a third of the faculty was new and we brought up the test scores. So they weren't going to close. I hated leaving there because everybody was so supportive but I had this job offer at Mounds. And so it was like half the distance because I'd passed 201st Street halfway to Schulter. And so I took the job at Mounds and I drove down to Schulter to turn in my letters of resignation and to talk to them about, you know, I really liked this. Sorry to be leaving. And so I taught at Mounds for about 30 years and directed some plays, directed competitive speech. We won the state championship three years in a row. I had numerous individual state champions, one of whom never debated, but she is an attorney in Tulsa now and has fabulous commercials on Saturday Night Live and on the evening news. But she never, she persuaded me that she shouldn't take debate to, although she was undefeated. Bob Odle: Now, I'd be better if I took this, Mr. Odle. And so, okay. I mean, she persuaded me. Toby Jenkins: Now, did you ever teach at TU's theater department? Bob Odle: No, I didn't. Toby Jenkins: Were you involved with the? Bob Odle: After I graduated, I did do a play at TU that they then took to some contest at what used to be that horrible theater facility downtown in Oklahoma City [Mummers Theatre]. It's that thing that had boxes going every which way that they finally have torn down. And this should never have been built in the first place. Toby Jenkins: So just for purposes of our interview, the curtains in the Lynn Riggs were donated by TU Theater Department and the risers are from the TU Theater Department right before they closed down. Bob Odle: I know, and they still send me letters asking for money having closed the department that I graduated from years ago. And I think they gave the costumes to the PAC and they gave various other things away. Dennis Neill: We had to replace the curtains because they were out of code. 18 �Dennis Neill: Yeah, I think they had like a 10 or 15 year life. And so we replaced them in about 2020, 2021, something like that. Toby Jenkins: Let's go to our, I was curious to understand the trajectory in Tulsa, the incredible community support for live theater and how things have changed. You've lived through an interesting period. We talked about your, you know, being in college when Kennedy was assassinated. And here we are in 2026. During the, just real quickly, during the pandemic, were you involved in live theater and how the pandemic impacted our theater companies? Bob Odle: No, theater just totally shut down all over the world, I think. Now I, for a year there, I didn't go, except to go to research, I put on my mask and I still have masks in the car. But theater just shut down. And there was money, there was money for businesses that had to shut down and the theater applied for some grants and got some grants. The theater, the theater actually made more money the year we were shut down. They did no shows than some of the years when we'd done shows. Toby Jenkins: Because you didn't have any expenses. Toby Jenkins: Right. So here, I know that you, your family are here. Have you stayed involved in their lives? I mean, have they? Bob Odle: Well, they're all, my stepfather died in 2009 and my mother died just about three months ago. Toby Jenkins: Okay, our condolences. And how old was she? Bob Odle: She was 99 years and eight months and something. Toby Jenkins: Amazing. Bob Odle: She was, she would be, March 15th, she would be 100. And she was, she was doing all of her own, handling all of her business and doing all of her stuff until the very end when she just suddenly, precipitously went downhill. Toby Jenkins: Did she live by herself? Bob Odle: Yes, after my stepfather died, she did. She depended on her neighbor a lot and on me. It wasn't till I had to deal with our, the attorney that deals with our trust, and I had to write down, because I keep my calendars for years, and I had to write down all the times I'd taken her to the doctor and the dentist and the podiatrist and dermatologist and whatnot and to Reasor’s. And I didn't realize the amount of time and the amount of miles I was driving to take care of her. Toby Jenkins: Hmm. Well, I'm glad that she had you, and I'm glad that you had her. Bob Odle: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And our condolences. What do you keep, what keeps you busy now? 19 �Bob Odle: Dealing with her estate. And a good friend of mine, the one who persuaded me to go back and get my teaching certificate and get a master's degree, he died July 10th of 2024. And so I was named co-executor of his estate. And we had to go to court Tuesday. That's why I couldn't meet Tuesday to deal with, we had a hearing dealing with that estate. I'm hopeful that before the two-year time passes, that we will have this probate all aside, but we had a business, we had three houses, multiple vehicles, and other property to deal with, and it's just been, it's been a nightmare. That has kept me really busy, and dealing with my mother, and now dealing with her estate, and trying to keep my own life going. Toby Jenkins: Now, are you involved in, I know that you're involved here in the organization, you come to some of the programs for older adults. Bob Odle: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And are you involved in any other advocacy work, or political work, or? Bob Odle: Well, Tuesday, Tuesday I had to drop off the king cake, because it was Mardi Gras at the senior citizen breakfast. Then I dashed to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Retired Educators Association, because I'm a retired teacher, and I took some sausage rolls to that, and stayed for that meeting. We always have interesting speakers. And so I'm involved in that. Last Friday was the Democrats' monthly luncheon at Interurban, and we have fascinating, well, Cindy Munson, who's the candidate for governor, spoke. And we always have fascinating speakers there. And so I go to that, and then I think there was one night this past week, maybe Tuesday night, Tuesday was a busy day, I went to Connie Dodson's kickoff for her campaign for school board, and I don't live in her district, but the idiot who represents that district now, I would like to see defeated. Toby Jenkins: So you're politically active. Bob Odle: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And what is your present feelings about our, I mean, you've lived a long time, you've seen a lot of things. Bob Odle: Go back to the Truman, I remember when President Truman was reelected. Toby Jenkins: What's your present feelings about our political climate, and how you see, okay, yeah, yeah. Do you have some concerns? Bob Odle: Yes. I'm concerned about whether I've been contributing to a couple of the candidates for Congress, not the one who made a million millions while paying his employees minimum wage, but I've contributed to others, one of whom is my school board member, and I'm contributing, but I'm concerned about whether we're even going to have an election or any more elections. I'm concerned about what the Supreme Court might decide, whether they would give him free license to totally trample or burn or tear up the Constitution. 20 �I mean, a guy who was fired from, I saw a guy who was fired from ABC News on MSNow the other day. I don't remember his name, but I remember the interview where he talked to the president about the things in the Oval Office, or here's a copy of the Declaration of Independence. What does that stand for? Well, it's a declaration, and it deals with love. All of the he hases, that whole list of he hases deals with love, and yes, it's a declaration. That's in its title, the Declaration of Independence. Toby Jenkins: I mean, duh. Bob Odle: How stupid do you have to be? He is pretty stupid. Toby Jenkins: So you see our political climate, and you see the way, not just constitutional norms being eroded, but specifically the erasure of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer people, the blacks, American Indians, the arts being stripped of funding, the Kennedy Center, as a person who's fought and taught and been instrumental in keeping fine arts alive in our culture. What are your thoughts on that? Bob Odle: Well, it's not just gay rights. It's black rights. I mean, he complains that the National Museum of the Black Americans, or whatever that is, this Smithsonian institution, deals too much with slavery. And he has said there should be less emphasis on Martin Luther King Day, or Juneteenth. We should focus more on his birthday. He has insisted that that November 12th be called Columbus Day and not Indigenous Americans Day, which in the city of Tulsa and maybe Oklahoma, a lot of states have declared it to be Indigenous Americans Day. I mean, he and our governor, our governor waves his Cherokee citizenship card around, hate American Indians. He hates black people. I mean, is it any surprise that some of the generals that have been fired have been black? Toby Jenkins: And female. Bob Odle: And the two journalists, well, the commandant of the Coast Guard was female. And the two journalists who were arrested in church were both black. Two of them were black. And he, I mean, his racism goes back generations. He and his father were fined, what, two million dollars by the federal government for not renting to black people in their apartment buildings back in the 60s or 70s. I think that goes from his grandfather coming over here from Germany under suspicious circumstances whereby Germany, when he went back after World War I, Germany refused to have him and send him back here because he had avoided the draft. He'd avoided the draft by coming over here. He didn't tell them he had homosexual tendencies or anything like that. Apparently he didn't. But I don't know. The racism, and his grandfather grew up in Germany at a time when Wagner was heavily racist, when Adolf Hitler was being born and was growing up, when there was a lot of racism in Germany at that time. And so he brought that over here and instilled that in his son and his grandson. 21 �Toby Jenkins: So, as we come to the close of our interview, is there anything else you want us to talk about that we haven't talked about? Bob Odle: Not that I can think of, except I'm sad that there is only basically one gay bar in Tulsa. It doesn't give us much variety. That's why I like New Orleans. There's a lot of variety down there. A lot of cities have more variety than we have. Although they have gone to publishing a calendar and they have Latin Night, which starts at 10 o'clock on the last Friday. They have Leather Night. They have various nights. So they have opened it to various people. But I don't go there very often because it's boring. Hardly ever do I see anybody my age or anybody I know there, so I don't go. Dennis Neill: So, Bob, why do you think that in the early 80s we had like 19 bars. We're down to a handful. What do you think has caused that demise, even though our city is larger? Bob Odle: Well, I think from what I observe in Tulsa and in other cities, I think part of it is the AIDS crisis. I think there was a diminution of the audience after that. I think the pandemic that hit in 2020 is part of it. And I think also we're at an age when I think this is wonderful in a way, but in a way I think it's depressing. Young gay people can go to any bar, hold hands, kiss, hug, whatever, and nobody really cares. I see this in New Orleans a lot. I saw Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, which is where Lafitte's in Exile first started, except they've dropped the exile now. Until the owner of the building found out they were gay and they already moved them out and then they moved into a bigger place down the street. But I've seen people holding hands. I've seen, obviously, gay couples in there and in other bars here in Tulsa and in other places. And I think it's the acceptance of gay couples everywhere, in addition to those other things, but I think it's just an evolution. And I think it's a wonderful thing. Dennis Neill: You touched on AIDS. Can you talk a little bit more about your personal experience in the theatre, in the theatrical community, the impact both locally and anything you know. I am thinking about John Thomeyer who was so active and passed from AIDS. What has been your personal experience with AIDS? Bob Odle: Well, an actor who toured with Gaslight, who we then hired as part of our full-time staff, eventually quit and moved to New York. And there he began to exhibit all these different, you know, symptoms and died a number of years ago. A good friend who was in some of our first shows, our first season, moved to New York. He got cancer, some sort of colorectal thing, and he retired and he moved back to Tulsa. He eventually died, but essentially it was AIDS, you know, HIV. And then another friend who died in New York, he was from Tulsa, graduated from Will Rogers, was a student there when I did my student teaching at Will Rogers. And he did some shows with us early on, but then he moved to New York and he eventually died, I believe, of AIDS. And so I've known people who've died. I haven't known of anyone, oh, there's somebody, I can't think who it was, but there's somebody I do know who died….I didn't know him very well, but he died of AIDS. And I'm aware of numerous people who've died of AIDS, HIV. 22 �Dennis Neill: And were you ever involved in the 80s and 90s with some of the support groups around here or AIDS response within the Tulsa community? Bob Odle: I went to one meeting at Nancy McDonald's house of PFLAG, but I just didn't have time to get involved with that. And I was involved with you and three or four other people in reorganizing TOHR. That was in the 80s. But I really didn't have time because I was still doing theater at the time, and I was out of town doing tours and things, and I really didn't have time to get involved. And that's the thing about doing theater now, because I'm so involved in some of these social and political things. I hate to give up, because I gave those things up when I was doing theater, because almost every night I had to work. Now I hate to, I can't give up the political and social things I'm involved in. It's that time of my life for me. Toby Jenkins: So as we kind of come to the close, and just give you a minute to think about this, is there anything you would want to say to anybody who comes after us, or younger people today who will see this interview? Is there anything you would like to say, like, this is my message to you for the future? Bob Odle: Things will get better. I saw a person who has a shop on Greenwood talking about, he's an older person, talking about younger black people, thinking, why are you so bitter about stuff? Well, they had, young black people are enjoying the fruits of their labor. Young gay people are enjoying the fruits of our labor. But our labor shouldn't stop. It can't stop. Because we have seen from the past year that they can go back, these things can go backwards. Toby Jenkins: So don't stop. Bob Odle: No, we have to keep fighting for our rights. It was Hubert Humphrey who said, freedom has to be won every day. Toby Jenkins: Very good. Okay, if you'll give us your name one more time, and today's date. Bob Odle: Bob Odle, February 19th, 2026. Toby Jenkins: Thank you so much for your time with us today. Bob Odle: Well, thank you. Toby Jenkins: Thank you, Bob. Addendum: 23 �Robert "Bob" Odle dressed for the role of "Rev. Dr. Oral Love" for a production of "Joyce Martel," produced by the American Theatre Company of Tulsa, OK. The company performed this production at various venues from 1975 to 1985, some of which include the following: Cain's Ballroom, The Inferno, The Captain's Cabin, Mayo Hotel, and the Brook Theatre. The image shows Odle dressed in a church minister's robe while clutching a one dollar bill. Phot courtesy of the Museum of Tulsa History. 24 �Depicting five theater actors dressed as "Martels" in the finale of the production "Joyce Martel: They Say It's Your Birthday," produced in 1985 by the American Theatre Company at the Brook Theatre in Tulsa, OK. The actors and actress are as follows (left to right): Robert "Bob" Odle, Karl Krause, Melanie Fry (in the role of Joyce Martel), Greg Roach, and Tony Gates (kneeling). Photo courtesy of the Museum of Tulsa History. 25 � https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/92b7672f465b31469e90f256836e0487.mp4 4594a2c03a0488471c94cd800d12db1f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert (Bob) Odle Oral History Interview - Feb. 19, 2026 Video Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2026] Robert Odle Interview Subject The topic of the resource Robert (Bob) Odle Oral History Project Interview from February 19, 2026 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Odle, Toby Jenkins, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 19, 2026 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Toby Jenkins on February 19, 2026. Bob was born on May 15, 1945, in Kansas City, Missouri. His mom and stepdad moved to Tulsa when Bob was in the sixth grade. He graduated from Nathan Hale High School in 1963 and finished his theatre degree from the University of Tulsa in 1967. He was required to go to Oklahoma City for a possible induction into the military as this was the height of the Vietnam War. After two interviews, it was clear that Bob was gay and not subject to military service due to the ban at that time on homosexuals in the military. He began a teaching career in competitive speech and drama at Central High School in Tulsa. He discussed his early involvement in theatre with Gaslight Theatre and the American Theatre Company with its early satirical takes on Tulsa, Oral Roberts University and co-wrote ATC’s production of “A Christmas Carol,” which continues to be performed each December for some 50 years. Bob created the Brother Oral Love role that became a fixture of ATC’s shows along with the Oral Action Singers. Bob has stayed politically active, often writes reviews of plays and musicals and serves in other volunteer roles in the Tulsa community. 2026 A Christmas Carol American Theatre Company American Theatre Company (ATC) American Theatre Productions ATC ATC productions Bob Odle Brother Oral Love Central High School Gaslight Theatre interview military inclusion Nathan Hale High School OKEQ Oral History Project Oral Action Singers oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript Oral Roberts University Robert (Bob) Odle Robert Odle Toby Jenkins transcript TU Tulsa Central High School University of Tulsa video https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/d9c8a6149f14a01008d49c6d3f611a9e.pdf b4ccfe0cef6ae75fb4be9ca4125dc32d PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with John Orsulak and Pat Hobbs Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins (and Dennis Neill) Date: March 19, 2026 Edited By: Dennis Neill using Riverside Studio AI, March 21th, 2026 Restrictions: Interviewee requested: N/A Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 historyproject@okeq.org 1 �About John Orsulak and Pat Hobbs Summary This interview with Pat Hobbs and John Orsulak explores their 36-year relationship, their careers in theater, music, and education, and their activism within the LGBTQ community in Tulsa. They share personal stories, insights on community involvement, and their vision for a more inclusive future. Keywords LGBTQ, Tulsa, theater, activism, community, aging in place, Rainbow Room, cohousing, Pride, advocacy Key Topics  Personal stories of Pat Hobbs and John Orsulak  Their careers in theater, music, and education  Involvement in LGBTQ advocacy and community building  The vision for the Rainbow Room and co-housing in Tulsa Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the Oklahoma LGBTQ History Archives 02:59 Love Story: Pat and John's Journey Together 05:49 Childhood and Early Influences 08:57 Navigating Identity and Sexual Orientation 12:00 The Impact of AIDS on Personal Lives 14:58 Career Paths and Community Involvement 17:49 Theater and Music: A Shared Passion 2 �20:53 Family Dynamics and Acceptance 23:58 Reflections on Life and Legacy 39:31 Theater Memories and Personal Triumphs 42:08 Integrity in Arts Organizations 43:27 Reflections on the Catholic Church and Leadership 45:22 The Journey of Finale's Restaurant 52:40 Y2K and the Impact on Business 54:50 Gardening and Community Living 56:28 The Vision Behind Heartwood Commons 01:01:32 The Role of the Rainbow Room in Tulsa 01:09:42 Theater Community Health and Future 01:14:38 Being a Face of the LGBTQ+ Community 01:18:39 Messages for Future Generations John Orsulak and Pat Hobbs Oral History Interview March 19, 2026 Toby Jenkins: Today is March 19th, 2026. We are at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in the Joe and Nancy McDonald Rainbow Library interviewing today two wonderful people for our Oklahoma LGBTQ History Archives. Present in the room is Dennis Neill, founder of Oklahomans for Equality. Amanda Thompson, our archivist, and Toby Jenkins. Could you tell us your names? Pat Hobbs: I'm Pat Hobbs. John Orsulak: I'm John Orsulak. Toby Jenkins: And just to kick this off, how long have you been together? Pat and John: 36 years. Toby Jenkins: Now, we're interviewing this couple together and then we're going to find out a little bit about their lives. But I think for our purposes today, I'd like to start out with this question, because I know Oprah would ask. How did y'all meet? Pat Hobbs: Oh, Lord. In church. John Orsulak: Well, church rectory. At the time, I was a church music director at a small Catholic church in Bay City, Michigan, birthplace of Madonna. And the staff was invited over to the rectory for Thanksgiving. And the pastor I worked for was gay. Not that that makes any difference. But anyway, he had the staff over. Pat was visiting a mutual friend of ours who happened to be living there at the time. And Pat 3 �came into the kitchen and we started talking about theater. My ex at the time also showed up at the time, and he'd had a few. But we just hit it off and then... go ahead. Pat Hobbs: Well, we hit it off and he invited me to breakfast on Monday before I left town. And we started a long-distance conversation for about a month. And we met for the next time in Chicago for New Year's Eve. And I spent New Year's in Chicago. John Orsulak: I came down for Valentine's. Pat Hobbs: He came down in February to meet Tulsa. It was his Tulsa debut at Jerry Jackson's and Jeff Feist House for a big party. And then it just evolved. John Orsulak: You came in April. Pat Hobbs: I came in April, went back up there. And it was just kind of a decision. Who's got the better job? He was in music and he can do that anywhere. And I had a really good job here at the time. So we just decided to move here. And John moved down July 4th weekend. Toby Jenkins: And what year would that have been? Pat Hobbs: That was 1990. John Orsulak: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: All right. Well, let's find out how you two people became smitten with each other. What led to that moment? Pat, tell us about your childhood and your family. Pat Hobbs: Well, I'm the second of four boys growing up in Southeast Texas. My dad was a lieutenant colonel in the Marines. So we were his four Marine Corps boys. My baby brother was gay. He was five years younger than me. But we didn't realize that until 1990. So I grew up in Beaumont, Texas and spent time at the farm up in Newton County. And just considered myself kind of a country boy at some point. Toby Jenkins: So where did you go to high school? Pat Hobbs: Went to high school in Beaumont, Texas. Toby Jenkins: Beaumont, Texas. And what year did you graduate? Pat Hobbs: 1970. Toby Jenkins: So it's 1970. What was the world like in 1970, your world? Pat Hobbs: Oh, it was hippie time and it was protest time. Protesting the Vietnam War. Nixon was president. A lot of politics going on. But the draft was going on too. And sending kids overseas to fight in a war that we didn't, many of us didn't believe in. Luckily, I had a very high draft number and I didn't go. Toby Jenkins: So you never did get called up? Pat Hobbs: Never got called up. Toby Jenkins: What were your interests in school? 4 �Pat Hobbs: All my interests in high school were band and theater. And when I was in high school, I went with a friend to help him audition. They convinced me to audition and I got the lead. And it was the first thing I'd ever done. So it was one of those real quick things that, oh, this is fun. Toby Jenkins And what was the production? Pat Hobbs: It was a play called See How They Run. Toby Jenkins: Okay, it wasn't a musical. Pat Hobbs: No, we didn't do musicals in high school because the drama department did not speak to the choir department. They were at the same period, so we never did a musical. But I always loved them. Toby Jenkins: So that piqued your interest in performance. Were you in the band? Pat Hobbs: I was in the band, marching band. I played tuba. Toby Jenkins: Tuba. Pat Hobbs: I played tuba in the marching band. Toby Jenkins: And it probably was bigger than you were. Pat Hobbs: It was bigger than me, but you know, I placed first my junior and senior year. I placed first in competition. Toby Jenkins: In tuba. In Texas. Pat Hobbs: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Well, of course you did. You've always been an overachiever. Pat Hobbs: And then I actually won a state award my senior year. I was the first from our high school since 1952 to win a state UIL, University Interscholastic League award for boys' prose reading. And my winning selection was James Thurber's Unicorn in the Garden. Toby Jenkins: Wow, How appropriate. Okay. So this was 1970. Do you happen to remember how many were in your graduating class from Beaumont? Pat Hobbs: 289. Toby Jenkins: Okay, so it was a mid-sized Texas town. Did you go to college after that? Technical school? Pat Hobbs: I went to SMU the following fall and spent four years at. Toby Jenkins: And SMU is? Pat Hobbs: Southern Methodist University. I was a theater major my first year. And it was just a weird time for me because I thought there were a bunch of weirdos in the theater department. I wasn't out, but there were just a lot of weirdos. I mean, gay people. You know, what I thought were gay people. And I ended up transferring over to the business school and got a degree in accounting and finance but kept my love 5 �for theater and performing. And I would do all-school talent shows when it didn't involve the theater. Toby Jenkins: At SMU? Pat Hobbs: Uh-huh, when it didn't involve the theater department, yeah. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Did you, by then, you're a college student. Did you, how do you identify? What is your sexual orientation? Pat Hobbs: At college? Toby Jenkins: Well, now. Pat Hobbs: Oh, now I'm gay. Toby Jenkins: Okay, what about at college? Pat Hobbs: I was straight, struggling. Toby Jenkins: Okay, but you had that sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. Pat Hobbs: I did, but, you know, it took a long time to get to the point, to actual coming out. Toby Jenkins: So you got a accounting degree from SMU. Pat Hobbs: I did. Toby Jenkins: And what happened after that? Pat Hobbs: You know, I had a job there in Dallas, and then I was dating a young woman, and she had a family business here in Tulsa. Their accountant retired, so they asked me if I would come to work for them here in Tulsa, so that's how I got to Tulsa. Toby Jenkins: And what year was that? Pat Hobbs: I worked for them, that was in 76, and worked for them until 1987. Toby Jenkins: Now, were you married? Pat Hobbs: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And how long were you married? Pat Hobbs: 11 years. Toby Jenkins: 11 years. Any children? Pat Hobbs: No children. Toby Jenkins: Okay. And during that 11 years, were there any kind of struggles over that? Did you have a sense of insecurity in your sexuality, or were you comfortable in that relationship? 6 �Pat Hobbs: I was very comfortable in it until the last couple of years, and there was this desire to see what's out there, you know? Toby Jenkins: Okay. John, tell us about your childhood. John Orsulak: Oh, gosh. Born in 1954. I'm the youngest of six. I have three brothers, two sisters, and also a stepsister, which was later, after I was an adult. Used to be, I think, current count on nieces and nephews is 13, though I do have some grand, or great, whatever it is, nieces and nephews now, and I think I'm even now getting to the great, great stage, which is weird. Lived in Danville, Illinois, hometown of Dick Van Dyke, Donald O'Connor, Gene Hackman, Bobby Short, and myself. It's mid-size at the time, blue-collar, Hyster, a lot of GM plants and things, they're all shuttered now and the town is kind of drying up sort of. I graduated in 72 from Danville High School, was involved in choir, got involved in junior high and then that transferred into high school. My high school choral teacher, Helen Wolfe, was instrumental in getting me into the drama department or a drama club and I don't, I'm trying to think, I was more behind the scenes than on stage at the time and ended up for some weird quirk the president of the club my senior year. While I was in choir, the music department held their very first two musicals while I was there. My junior year it was Brigadoon. I have a picture that was in the yearbook of me within my kilt with a hand up and it looks very gay, as far as the skirt a little hiked up on the leg. And then the second, the senior year was Little Abner and I was just, I think I was the milkman. But that was really the last theater I did for many years. I went to Danville Junior College to, now it's Community College, and got my degree there. That was the era of Streakers, had my first experience with people streaking down the quad, that was interesting. And then went, transferred to Illinois State University and got my degree in elementary ed. Toby Jenkins: And where was that? John Orsulak: Normal, Illinois. Bloomington Normal, where State Farm is located, their headquarters. Didn't do any theater, got very active with the Newman Club there, was involved in all kind of things. Toby Jenkins: So you were Roman Catholic. John Orsulak: Right, right. Toby Jenkins: Did you, you talked about theater, when did you become a musician? When did you become... John Orsulak: Oh gosh, I did that back as a kid. My grade school that I went to, St. Joseph's, which is no longer in existence, long time. They had a small pipe organ they needed somebody to play. I was, had taken piano and just kind of self-taught myself and would play for services. And then that just kind of evolved over time. I really didn't do anything that I recall in college. When I got out, I had my degree, I worked for the Catholic school. Our parish merged with another one, because that was the time small parishes had to do that. And so I taught at what was then, used to 7 �be St. Patrick's, now is Holy Family. I don't even think it's in existence now. Catholic school was seventh and eighth grade, language arts to start with, was doing no theater at all. Still would do the church music. For me as a kid, it was an escape at recess to go over and practice, just so I didn't have to deal with sports and bullying or anything else on the playground. But a friend of mine who had got her degree in theater at Illinois State, talked me into auditioning for a production, local theater production of Annie Get Your Gun. And so did that, chorus, and then from that point on, I basically got hooked, because the next show I got a featured role, Mr. Snow in Brigadoon, not Brigadoon, [ Pat added Carousel] yeah, that one. Thank you. And then just kind of off and on things there, I decided to get out of education, because I was drawn more toward church music, and went back to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana to get my undergrad work in music. Had to audition for voice, so I had to take voice as part of it. And when I walked into the audition studio, here is William Warfield. Old Man River himself, sitting there, and I'm singing, you know, I'm in my probably mid-20s by then, and it was, you know, I don't recall anything. It was just kind of a blur. It was just seeing him but did that and then continued working and doing church work, moved to a small parish in Decatur, Illinois, if you know where that is. Was there a year, got fired, didn't work. I was a little too progressive for them because at the Newman Center, it was a very progressive Newman Center, and I mean the priests didn't wear a collar, the the woman who was religious, you know, didn't wear a habit. It was very laid-back, very contemporary. Toby Jenkins: Lots of folk music. John Orsulak: Yes, sang a lot of Godspell, things like that. But I did that and then went back from there, came back to my home parish in Danville, worked there for a while, and then went to Bloomington, which was the sister city of where I went to college, Bloomington Normal. Worked at the church there for a year. It didn't work out, though I did get a chance to participate in the renovation of the church, which was, that was a big deal. It was an old Art Deco style, but then they really stripped a lot out and got it. I don't know what it looks like now. Toby Jenkins: So was your career, just like Pat’s was accounting, was your career in church music? John Orsulak: I thought it was going to be. I did it for, I taught for five years and then went into church music full-time and then when I moved here, that's what I thought I was going to do and continue. And at the time there was only, I think, one parish that had any kind of an opening and just didn't feel, just moving here and experiencing their version of Catholic liturgy, they were so far behind. About ten, I was spoiled with a very progressive bishop and again, he was one that you taught, you called him Ken, you didn't call him Bishop, and it was just very laid-back. During that time when I was in Michigan, it's when I had my first relationship with a man and just kind of then met him [Pat] and the rest was history. Toby Jenkins: So during that time how did you identify and what is your sexual orientation? 8 �John Orsulak: Now I'm definitely gay. Back then it was, I think I'm straight. It didn't really feel right. It was, you know, there was a little experimentation here and there and I had one person at a rehearsal, no, it was a cast party after a show, who pursued me home and I was scared to death. I mean, I went to the garage, turned off the lights, got in the house as quickly as I could, turned off the lights and, you know, now I converse with him occasionally through Facebook and that's, you know, and there's no issue with that at all, but yeah, it was church music for a long time when I moved here and there wasn't anything available. I just went back to what I knew, which was education. So I got back to doing subbing in different school districts. I became popular, so to speak, in Jenks because they got to know me well. They liked me and I was offered a position to open the southeast campus when it first opened and from that point on I worked for Jenks over 20 years, fifth grade mainly. Toby Jenkins: Did Jenks school, did they know you were gay? John Orsulak: I wasn't out, but people knew. They knew and parents figured it out. I think a lot of parents did. The biggest controversy, occasionally he would be with me and I just would sidestep it, but... Pat Hobbs: May I interject here? John Orsulak: Go ahead. Pat Hobbs: So if any of you know about the Malcolm Baldrige Award, it's a highly prestigious award given by the Department of Transportation, no, Department of Commerce. Three or four companies a year win this award. Jenks schools won it. Mesa Products won it three times, twice when I was with them, so we called ourselves the Baldrige Boys. Well, when they made the presentation at the Hyatt, or the Marriott, it's now the Marriott down there, they had a nice little presentation thing at 7 o'clock one night, and I was late getting there, John was sitting at a big table of eight with his principal, and they left the chair open for me to come in next to the principal, and I came in and I sat down, and the principal did this, he actually moved his chair two feet away when I sat next to him. John Orsulak Yeah, that was uncomfortable, to say the least. Pat Hobbs: It was very uncomfortable. Toby Jenkins: And that was what year? John Orsulak: That was, oh gosh, that was... Toward the end. 2 Pat Hobbs: 2011, 20... I was at Mesa seven years, 2010, 2011. Toby Jenkins: So towards the end of your career in teaching at Jenks, did you see the culture change where administration and maybe other teachers were more supportive? John Orsulak: It was never an issue. People met Pat, they were comfortable with him. My co-workers, we never discussed it, but they were fine with him, they had no issues. About the only thing that really was controversial with me was for my 40th, I 9 �decided to pierce my ear. I had just done a production of Annie here locally, had done the whole bald head thing, and I was growing it back. And so I had just a poster, a hoop in. Well, there were parents that were just aghast, and they tried to get me to either, I don't know if they were trying to get rid of the earring or get rid of me, and one of the assistant superintendents, who I knew well and they knew me well, supported me and told them no. And from that point on, it was not... Pat Hobbs: But you even had the support of the superintendent, Kirby Lehman, back then. You know how they do prom pictures in Woodward Park? Every Friday and Saturday night during the spring, you can't find a place to park because all the kids are taking prom pictures. Well, living across the street from the park, our driveway was a turnaround, and we saw Dr. Lehman down the street. He became a really good friend of ours through some work with Theater Tulsa, and he came over and had a glass of wine with us. You know, it was our home, you know, come in while you're getting your pictures made, you know. John Orsulak: What do you do? Do you invite him in? Pat Hobbs: Yeah, invite him in and have a glass of wine. John Orsulak: And that was the year, had a young man drive up in a vintage Mustang with his girlfriend for pictures. And we're out there with a cocktail in hand, gawking at how people are dressed, like we normally did. And this kid looks over to me and says, hi, Mr. O, and he told me his name, and I immediately knew it was a former student of mine, but it was not, it was no big deal. And here are the two of us, I was like, okay, he's figured that out. But, yeah, it's... Toby Jenkins: Yeah, so your house faced Woodward Park. What was the street there? John and Pat: Rockford. Toby Jenkins: Rockford. So, well, you talked a little bit about your career and how you ended up in Tulsa. Did you want to talk any more about what your other interests, like how you got into the theater community here, or, I know you had that day job as an accountant. Pat Hobbs: Oh, yeah, but that was just a day job, you know, it paid the bills. Since 19... I had moved here in 76 and auditioned for a show in 77 for Theater Tulsa and did shows for them ever since. Did shows for all the theater companies here in town just about once, two, three, four times a year, you know, kept it up. Toby Jenkins: I know that you developed a character who became kind of wellknown, kind of a comedian musical character, you want to tell us about that? Pat Hobbs: Danny Day? Danny Day is almost a, oh, I don't know what to call it now…autobiographical story. He started in theater when he was five, playing Tiny Tim. And he was 55, the last time he was on stage he was 55, 60 years old. And he had done all the shows. He had done all the musicals in town. Sometimes two or three times. Sometimes this part. Sometimes he had a lead. Sometimes he had a supporting role. But he knew all the gossip. He knew all the scoop about what was 10 �going on in town. And he knew where the bodies were buried. He knew who slept with whom, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it was a little character I made up. But it was very autobiographical at the same time. Toby Jenkins: It was very popular. You did it several times. Pat Hobbs: I did, yeah. Toby Jenkins: So you came to Tulsa, what year was it? Pat Hobbs: 76. Toby Jenkins: And I know you were married, and then you divorced. You were in Tulsa, this was, let's talk about before, and then John would have been still in Illinois, correct, during that period. You're men who are figuring yourselves out. Tell me about the first time you heard about AIDS. John Orsulak: Oh gosh. Pat Hobbs: Probably on TV. Probably? John Orsulak: Yeah, I really can't think of a date or a year either. Pat Hobbs: Early to mid 80s. 83, 84, 85. Toby Jenkins: Did you see the impact of that on maybe people that associated with the churches you were working for? Did you see an impact on friends, family? John Orsulak: I didn't really until I moved here. And got involved with the center. Pat Hobbs: And the Names Project. John Orsulak: Yeah, and then Billy. Pat Hobbs: And then my brother. Toby Jenkins: Okay, tell us about that. Pat Hobbs: Billy's five years younger than me. He was born in 1957. And it's a really lovely story, but he came out to me and John. We were all in New York one weekend for New Year's, and he came out to us at the dinner table one night, and we had no idea. I mean, just absolutely no idea. And we had this wonderful relationship for about three or four years. We'd go down to Houston where he lived. He'd come up here to Tulsa. We just had a really grand old gay time. He even had a parking place at J.R.'s, a private parking place at J.R.'s in Houston. He was so popular. But it was right after mother died, and we were, in fact, it was the day after, the afternoon after her funeral, and the four of us boys were sitting on the front porch. You know, it was, the will was cut and dried. We all knew what was gonna go on. And we were talking about the farm, what we were gonna do with the farm. And we're sitting there in our rocking chairs, just rocking back and forth like this. And he stands up and had a cigarette going, and he threw the cigarette out in the yard, and he said, it doesn't make any goddamn difference to me. I'm dying of the 11 �fucking AIDS. And he got up and he walked off in the woods. And about a month later, I got a call from a friend of his in Houston. And he said, I think you need to come down one weekend. You know, come down, see what's going on. So from that point on, John and I, we either drove down or we flew down every other weekend for a year to make sure he had food in the house, care in the house, a clean house, do all the things that we could do from a distance. John Orsulak: And it was right before the cocktail. Pat Hobbs: And it was right before, right before. Toby Jenkins: So it was 1995. Explain the cocktail. Pat Hobbs: 1995. John Orsulak: Gosh, originally it was just ATZ. Then other drugs, combinations came about that helped prolong life. And for Billy, it was just, he was too far gone. Pat Hobbs: Six months, six months. John Orsulak: Luckily he had good hospice care toward the end. Pat Hobbs: We had, yeah, very good hospice care. Toby Jenkins: This would have been what year? Pat Hobbs: 95. Toby Jenkins: And he would have been how old, Pat? Pat Hobbs: 37. Toby Jenkins: 37, yeah. Dennis Neill: Pat, how did your other brothers deal with it? Pat Hobbs: I'm just gonna say that my other brother between the two of us, what do we tell people he died off. That's as much as I'm going to say. But we found a hospice in Houston, Omega House, and it was just like, similar to St. Joseph's here in Tulsa, where the designers had taken a room and designed a room. And it was small, it was there in the Montrose area of Houston. And that's where he spent the last six or eight weeks of his life. And if you recall the pictures you saw on television of people in their last stages, the wasting syndrome, the weight loss, that's what Billy was. His wasn't a, I'm not going to say it wasn't a dignified death. Physically it was not a dignified death. What we did going down there was make sure that he died a dignified death by having food and help and making sure his will was properly prepared before he died. But his was one of the worst, wasting, devastating deaths. John Orsulak: But your nieces were very supportive. Pat Hobbs: They were very supportive. And they were very young, too. Toby Jenkins: Now, you told us that your brother, you and John, had already been together. Had you come out to your family as gay? 12 �Pat Hobbs: You know, I... John Orsulak: First time I met the family was at his father's funeral. Pat Hobbs: At my father's funeral. And, you know, John drove down to Texas and we buried Daddy. And from then on, it was, he was fixing mommy drinks at five o'clock every afternoon. I didn't have to say anything. You know, it was just... Toby Jenkins: So his mother met you. John Orsulak: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Pat Hobbs: And mother's uncle was gay. He had two long-term relationships, Uncle Fred, that we grew up with. So it wasn't a surprise to her. You know, she never said anything. I never said, hey, mom. You know, but he was always there at the house. John Orsulak: Tell the story of when I was moving. When we stopped in Danville. Pat Hobbs: Oh, oh, yeah. This is his dad. So we were moving down from Michigan. And we had a U-Haul van filled with his stuff and had the car towed behind. And we stopped at his folks' house in Danville to spend the night. And it was a tiny little house, and a tiny little bedroom that we were in with a tiny little almost twin bed that we shared. And we got up the next morning and had breakfast and getting ready to move on. And his dad takes me aside. His dad says, take care of my son. John Orsulak: No more words. Pat Hobbs: Take care of my son. John Orsulak: Yeah, it was never discussed. It was just a given. Yeah. Pat Hobbs: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Still welcomed by your family. John and Pat: Oh, very much. John Orsulak: When I come home, where's Pat? Toby Jenkins: Okay. Well, you're fortunate. I think you know that. But you're fortunate that you found each other. And you're fortunate that your families maintain the relationship. Tell us a little bit about some of your, I mean, you both had careers. But tell us a little bit about some of the things that you began to get involved in here in Tulsa. All of the organizations and the things that were passionate to you and the projects. Pat Hobbs: Oh, geez. How can you, you know, over the years, how many boards did I serve on? Including this one, twice. You know, of course, the arts have always been a passion of mine. And I've served on the AHHA board. I was on staff at Mayfest for a while. The Tulsa Garden Center. Anything creative and artistic, I was either on the board or on staff at some point, volunteer staff. And then got involved here at OkEq back in 2001 or 2002, when Brent Ortolani was president. And the previous president was Michelle. Help me out. She's in Kansas now. [Michelle Hoffman.] 13 �Anyway, because of my accounting background, they asked me if I would be treasurer. And this was when the center was located at 21st and Memorial. And I would go down and do the books on Sunday mornings while you'd go to church. I'd go down and do the books at this office we had down there that had no heat. I would bundle up in my coat to go down there. We didn't even have, we had, it wasn't even QuickBooks or Quicken, and it was some very, very elementary software program that we had. And it took maybe a couple hours to go in and write checks. And I think our total budget at the time was maybe $19,000. It was just, yeah, very grassroots at the time, if you will. And the smell from the bar next door, from being open on a Saturday night, I'd come home and have to hang my clothes outside on a Sunday afternoon just to get rid of the smoke that was in the office in the afternoon. But yeah, I served as treasurer for a couple of years until some health issues took over. And I had to relinquish those to Dwight [Kealiher]. And Dwight took over until the organization kept growing and growing and growing. We had $21,000 in the bank. This is one of my reports. 2021. Oh, wow. Just when the Pyramid Project was in its infancy. Toby Jenkins: So John, he said, so were you still playing, doing music for a congregation here at the time? John Orsulak: Not at first. I did do a little bit with one congregation. It didn't last long. Pat Hobbs: You did St. John's for a while. John Orsulak: Right. I was there at Jerome's, but it didn't last terribly long. Toby Jenkins: I think there were some, I don't remember what the reason was, but it just didn't work. Pat Hobbs: Political issues. John Orsulak: Yeah. Yeah. Probably more interpersonal things. But no, I really got back into education. And then because I moved here and we already had the love of theater between us, within a month, I was cast in a show. It wasn't a musical, but started my career with Theater Tulsa and then just kind of branched out into musicals. Toby Jenkins: So when he says he was working on the books and you were at church, are you still active in that? John Orsulak: No. No. Toby Jenkins: Okay. John Orsulak: I haven't been for a long time. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Dennis Neill: Excuse me. John, what was your favorite acting role that you've... 14 �John Orsulak: Oh my gosh. That's a tough one. Probably the one that I'm proudest of, it was probably the hardest role I had to do was Juan Peron in Evita. Not only did I have to dye my hair, because it's very gray, the best they could do was a dark brown, but musically it was some of the toughest stuff I ever had to learn. And I'd have to drill and drill and drill because it was very atonal, but it was this critical speech I do on a balcony and just getting through that was a triumph for me because it was a challenge. Otherwise, things came fairly easy, so it was nice to get a challenge that would push you a little bit more. Now, we've kind of aged out. Roles are few and far between. Dennis Neill: So with that Evita role, that was not that long ago, right? John Orsulak: What would you say? 10, 15? Pat Hobbs: It was probably 10 years ago. Dennis Neill: Oh, it was that long ago? Pat Hobbs: Yeah. John Orsulak: Yeah. Dennis Neill: And then Pat, how about you? Your favorite role and then also your favorite board position? All the non-profits you've served on. Pat Hobbs: Oh, my favorite role by far is Zaza, the Drag Queen in La Cage. Dennis Neill: And you did that as Tulsa... Pat Hobbs: Tulsa Project Theater, and it was an equity show, I got equity points. I'm equity eligible for that show. Dennis Neill: And how much did you get paid? Pat Hobbs: Oh, it was a hundred dollars. But the story I like to tell about that is that the end of Act I is when Albin is out there, or Zaza is in her full sequins and feathers and everything, dismisses the entire cast and sings the gay anthem, I Am What I Am, and it closes Act I. And I had the privilege of singing with an 18-piece Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in that show. It's Jerry Herman. It's horns. It's a beautiful orchestration. But here I am on stage by myself for the last five minutes singing this wonderful, wonderful song. And I realized on, it was dress rehearsal, when you're just totally in that role and you're totally singing, and you finish that last number, and you rip that wig off, and the curtain comes down, and there's nobody around you. You've just done the performance of your life, and there is, the cast has gone upstairs to change clothes for Act II. The only person on your left over here is the stage manager who calls curtain. There's nobody else on stage, nobody to catch it. And it's like, so after that happened on dress rehearsal, I asked my co-star Chris, who was my husband in the show, I said, would you please stand offstage on stage right and just hold me when I come off? Because you just exposed every nerve and every emotion in your body singing this wonderful gay anthem. And I just needed 15 �somebody to hold me, you know? So from there on, for every performance, Chris was there to catch me. But I love that. That was my... Dennis Neill: I loved the show. Pat Hobbs: I would love to do that again, too. Favorite board position. Oh, geez. You know, Dennis, my integrity, my professional accounting integrity, has gotten the best of me sometimes, being a board member. And specifically with a couple of arts organizations here in town who were doing the wrong thing and blowing through Harwelden money like they were going to get it next year, you know, get the same amount next year. And they kept blowing through it and they didn't have their policies and procedures in place. I'm not going to say I have the best organization I stayed on, okay, that I served on. But there were some fun moments for all of them. But all of my integrity got to me on a couple of them, really, and just had to walk away. Toby Jenkins: I wanted to ask this. We were... I was going to ask you about... You had worked for these churches and apparently still were connected, so you're no longer involved with the Catholic Church. As a former Catholic, I guess is the way I'd... What do you think about our present Pope? John Orsulak: Hopeful. The previous Pope, I liked him a lot, just he was on the right track. I don't know. I don't still... I'm waiting to see how he deals with people who are gay. The number of people who work for the church who are gay is... I think if people realized that, they'd be astounded. I worked for two gay pastors, very obviously, an assistant. And it's like, okay. Here locally, you just kind of wonder. I see a lot of cassocks and old school looks, and it's like, okay, what are you hiding from? Just not of interest to me anymore. I don't want to play the game. Toby Jenkins: It's still pretty profound though, that the world's number one religious leader for all of Christianity, whether they acknowledge him as their spiritual head, it's pretty significant that the last three or four years we've had a Pope who called us to treat people with dignity regardless of their journey. John Orsulak: John, the current one, he's from Illinois, my home state, and he's a Cubs fan, so you can't beat that. Good combination. Toby Jenkins: He's pretty critical of the United States' present positions on multiple issues, calls us out. Pat and John: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Okay, I just was curious about that. Now, let me ask you about this. Tell us about Finales. Pat Hobbs: Lord, really? John Orsulak: I need a drink. Pat Hobbs: That was the most expensive MBA anyone has ever gone through. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Pat Hobbs: I think we were kind of like Joseph in The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in that we were years ahead of our time, just ahead of our time. We 16 �found a space down here on First Street, and it was my dream to have a restaurant with entertainment, like Lucy and Desi, come down to the club. So we remodeled the first floor of the Jacobs Building down here on First Street and hired James Schrader as our chef, who ended up doing a dang good job of it. We hired people like you. We didn't know what we were doing, but we had fun at it at the same time. We had cast parties for opening night for several of the touring companies that would come in. The opening night cast party for Chicago was our biggest night that we ever had. My God, it was a fabulous evening. Beauty and the Beast, we had their cast party. And for all the local companies here in Tulsa, we have opening night cast parties, a place for people to go. Now they go to Kilkenny's or they go to McNeely's after a show. Toby Jenkins: So your vision was a restaurant with entertainment. Pat Hobbs: With entertainment, and it was before and after the theater. It was within walking distance. It was 476 steps from the Performing Arts Center. So if you're going to the Symphony or the Ballet, come have a nice dinner at 6, walk over to the PAC, come back and have coffee and dessert. Toby Jenkins: And so in those days, downtown was pretty deserted. Pat Hobbs: Oh, downtown. Toby Jenkins: You were it. Pat Hobbs: I think the May Rooms were still open. Toby Jenkins: And then across the railroad tracks was the Spaghetti Warehouse, but that was it. Pat Hobbs: That was it. Toby Jenkins: There were no other restaurants. Pat Hobbs: There was no Art District. Toby Jenkins: No other restaurants. Dennis Neill: And what's the time period? Pat Hobbs: This was 1998. 1998 to 2000. Toby Jenkins: And for our viewers, I was out and I needed a part-time job, and Pat and John, his partner, and his other folks who were there with him, took me under their arm and they taught me how to do fine dining. I didn't know how to, I never drank wine. They had to teach me how to serve it. But it was elegant. Tulsa's power people loved it. Tulsa's people who desired fine dining and entertainment supported it. Pat Hobbs: And we had a 1921 Steinway in the center of the restaurant. John Orsulak: You bought sight unseen. 17 �Pat Hobbs: I bought sight unseen out of California on the internet before they had pictures. John said, this is a drug deal going bad. And they delivered it to our house and I went, oh my God. Toby Jenkins: It was elegant. Pat Hobbs: It was, yeah. Toby Jenkins: But there was nothing in downtown Tulsa. Pat Hobbs: No, there was nothing. Toby Jenkins: Nobody lived in downtown Tulsa. There were no other restaurants. You were definitely pioneers of the revitalization and the restoration of our urban core, which we all take for granted. And younger people today just assume that it's always been like this. Because there was a period when downtown Tulsa was the place to be. And then everything left downtown Tulsa. And you and your colleagues were trying to, you could see it before others couldn't. Pat Hobbs: Well, thank you. Yeah, we just wanted to, the desire was to build it near the Performing Arts, find a place near the Performing Arts Center. And we looked two or three places before then. And the story goes, the name at the time was Finale's Cabaret and Restaurant. That is how we initially, and the word cabaret in Oklahoma in the 1990s did not mean the type of cabaret entertainment you see in New York City. That is musical theater, that's piano, piano bar, cabaret means strip clubs. So we found this place over here on Cincinnati and 2nd, right behind what was then Oklahoma Tire and Supply. It's now the Chinese place. And it was a twostory run-down building and we were gonna buy the building and renovate it. And then the word got over to the Williams Companies that cabaret, that a strip club was gonna open up across the street from the Williams Company's tower. And they came in and bought it out from under us and tore the building down because they didn't want a strip club because cabaret meant strip club. So we hunted for a couple of other places and found this one over on 1st Street, which wasToby Jenkins: And that was an old historical hotel. Pat Hobbs: That was an old historical hotel that was built in 21. Dennis Neill: And who was the landlord? Pat Hobbs: You know, the landlord, the legal landlord that owned the building or the one that... The legal landlord was a guy by the name of Ferretti and he lived in Oklahoma City. And he was this little short Italian guy who drove a big fancy Mercedes. I think he was mob related. But he owned the building and then Mike Sager got involved in it. And Michael Sager was the mouthpiece. And after we vacated the building, Sager had his name put at the top of the building, the Sager, but it's since gone. It's now Jacob, since Jacob's building again. But yeah, Michael Sager was the mouthpiece for Mr. Ferretti. Toby Jenkins: So this was going, and for our viewers, I was a waiter. And that is where I met Mary and Sharon Bishop Baldwin. They were there celebrating their anniversary. I was their waiter. I mean, it was a very, very elegant, impressive place 18 �to be. But I want to bring us to the place of closing night was what was going on in the world, closing night. Pat Hobbs: It was Y2K. You know, we had had, like I said, the night of Chicago was our biggest night. We had a private party in between the dinner hour and the cast party, and it was a big, and something happened in 1999, and the world was predicted to go dark because of the changeover, Y2K, 2000. Everything was gonna go, you're gonna lose your power. Nobody wanted to make New Year's Eve reservations. The year before, we had two turns. We turned that restaurant twice on New Year's Eve. This New Year's Eve, I think we may have had 80 reservations, and that was it. So we ended up catering a dinner for 37 up to the IT people up at Williams. So they, because they were on staff that night because we all knew the lights were gonna go out, and they didn't. Toby Jenkins: Oh yeah, we were afraid planes would fall out of the sky. Your current model cars would just shut down. Your computers would. Pat Hobbs: But you know, we were so hoping. I mean, you know, because restaurants are, you know, your margins are that big in a restaurant. And that was gonna get us through the next few months, you know, what we made off of New Year's Eve, and it just didn't happen. So we just kind of, we turned our own lights out. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, so I want our viewers to know that it was Pat Hobbs' idea to revitalize downtown Tulsa. Pat Hobbs: Oh no. Toby Jenkins: And you know, that, in 1999, he saw the vision, and so the city councilors should name a street after you. Pat Hobbs: And like I said, it was a very expensive MBA. Toby Jenkins: So, you're together, you're in Tulsa, you have your careers, you have your interests. Dennis has already questioned you about your involvement in all the non-profits. During this time, what else has been going on in your life, and what was passionate to you? Pat Hobbs: Gardening, gardening. We loved our yard over on Rockford, designed, initially designed by Dave Collins, did a fantastic job. We even brought cypress trees up from the farm. We had some cypress trees cut and Dave designed a beautiful cypress deck for us. And that was our passion for many, many years was our yard. And John's even a Linnaeus, was Woodward Park Teaching Garden. John Orsulak: Yeah, yeah. Formerly Linnaeus. Pat Hobbs: And still, you still volunteer every Tuesday. John Orsulak: Tuesday, now, yeah. Toby Jenkins: With who? John Orsulak: The Teaching Garden at Woodward Park, formerly Linnaeus, that's a whole story. But, yeah, I do that just to keep my fingers in it, because it's, it was, well, 19 �when we moved from the house, we moved downtown for three years while we were waiting for Heartland Commons to be built. And we really had no place to do, I could still go out and do some things at the garden. He had nothing, and it was driving him nuts. And that's been the one blessing of our current home is we've got a yard that's pretty much nothing was there and gave him a place to play. Dennis Neill: And give us a little more background on your thoughts about forming Heartland Commons, your passion about that, some co-housing with you. John Orsulak: Oh, gosh. Pat Hobbs: Okay, real quick, I'll give you the condensed, real quick condensed version. Performer Melanie Fry, we all know Melanie Fry here in town, been performing for 50 years, just did a production of Love Letters back in, for Valentine's. Melanie thought she and her girlfriends would get together and play water volleyball and drink wine in the summertime. And they thought, well, wouldn't this be a great idea if we all, as we age, all bought homes in the same cul-de-sac, and we can all live together and watch and take care of each other. Well, as they researched that, they found the co-housing website, and co-housing was developed in Denmark back in the 60s. And one thing led to another, they had an introductory meeting, Melanie is no longer involved in the project, she was for a little while, but she got us started along with four other families that started this journey back in 2015, I think. John Orsulak: Sounds about right. Pat Hobbs: It's been about 11 years when the initial conversation got started. But it's all about aging in place, keep going. John Orsulak: Well, it's, it's, you get, you, it's about community and having a support network that you can depend on. The house is secondary, it's nice to have, it's a new build, the, you're, you walk through the community to do what you need to do. If you're going to get mail, it's kind of like a condo place where you do that, however, if somebody's on their front porch, in co-housing, you're considered fair game. And you can be, you can visit and interact. If they're on their back porch, you usually leave them alone. That's a private space, but you're walking to get your mail, which normally would take you what, five, 10 minutes, depending on where you were in the community. For us, and that would turn into a half hour or more because you keep running into people who want to visit, who want to interact In some communities, that means a glass of wine, bottle of beer, sitting on the rail of the porch and just interacting and it's, it makes for a healthier lifestyle for older, for senior co-housing compared to traditional co-housing that is multi-generational. But it just enhances, gives you more opportunity for interaction, stimulation. You've got somebody to depend on if you need a ride, if you're needing an egg. You put it out there, somebody, you'll end up with a dozen eggs just because people want to help you out. Toby Jenkins: Very secure. 20 �Pat Hobbs: Very secure. Pat Hobbs: And you kind of look out for each other. John Orsulak: Right. We're basically our own neighborhood watch. That's evolved. We've been there over a year and we've had a few issues, but we've been working them out and had the Riverside Police, which is just two doors down from us, come over one evening and talk to us about safe practices and what to do and what not to do. And it's good to have those relationships. Toby Jenkins: So it's intentional housing, not just organic where you may know your neighbors and they sell their house and a new person moves in and you may not care for them. These are all people you chose to be around. Pat Hobbs: Everybody's become their best friends now. And it's kind of like family too because you have personalities. And sometimes your personality is buttheads, especially in a, what do I want to say, a homeowner's association meeting. And that happens everywhere. But yeah, we have common meals twice or three times a week. And it's where one of the residents will be responsible for buying the provisions. And we have a commercial kitchen in our common house and they are a team will do this evening meal for six o'clock and do the cleanup and everybody chips in $7 for their meal. And we all got, we had how many first St. Patrick's Day about, 28 or 29 of us and had this St. Patrick's meal with corned beef and hash and cabbage and it's community meal. It's all about community. John Orsulak: Yeah, it's got its pros, it's occasional cons. But overall, it's been a good experience. Toby Jenkins: Let me deviate a little bit from this because I do feel like it was good that we talk about that because there are going to be more of us that are older and we, instead of just letting housing happen, this is you purposely planning, this is what… John Orsulak: Oh, we looked at over 50 properties when we were in the area, north, south, east, downtown. And actually, we rejected the property we're currently in originally but came back to it and we realized this is where we want to be. Pat Hobbs: And it's five acres located at 71st and Riverside in that vicinity and it was an old farm, two and a half acres per lot. So we took the five acres and our community pitched in and we bought the property, we secured the bank loan to do the construction. John Orsulak: We designed it. Pat Hobbs: We had consultants come in and design it. John Orsulak: But we have, the nice thing with co-housing is you have input. You're not dictated like a traditional senior living. Nothing wrong with them, if that's your thing, good. But we set the rules. We have our own, we call them agreements that we've developed so that everybody's on the same page. You're not told what to do. You can do as much as you want. If you want to be active, you can be active. If you 21 �want to stay in your home, you can stay at home. We've got a mahjong group. We've got puzzles and TV and movie nights and it's just kind of like, okay, that floats your boat. You can be there. If not, you can just stay at home and curl up with your dog or cat if you have one. And yeah. Toby Jenkins: So thank you for sharing about this because this is, we've covered kind of a lot of areas. I want to, what a lot of people may know you for is here at the Lynn Riggs Theater in the Rainbow Room. Tell us a bit about your, just like Pat had the vision for the revitalization of downtown Tulsa with his pioneering days, he had a vision of he and John the Rainbow Room. And tell us a little bit about your vision for that in the Lynn Riggs Theater. Pat Hobbs: Well, let's go back to the 13 bullets for $13. That kind of, in my view, it kind of kicked this whole thing off when we had to replace the front windows. And that snowballed into basically an international fundraising campaign. But turning the garage downstairs into a theater. Thanks to David Nelson's help and Dennis's help and everybody else, I mean there were dozens of us on that team that were consulting on this thing. But we opened it in February of 2018. 2018, which was eight years ago. And I thought about it for a while and I thought, you know, let's do something fun with it. And I went over, I made the proposal to you, Toby. I remember going over to your house that afternoon and saying, I'd like to do this. Take it to the board or see what you have to do. And came up with the idea of Third Thursdays in the Rainbow Room. Which would be the third Thursday of every month. We do musical presentations. Now I say musical presentations. Tulsa has a plethora of talent in this town. And when people do their 32nd Chamber of Commerce elevator speech, they always talk about the arts. The philharmonic, the symphony, the ballet, the opera. But they don't really talk about the musical theater company. We have such a talented group of people in this town. And that was my vision, is to get some of these people, when they're not doing a show, to come in and do an hour and a half show. Come in and do a two-hour show. Do your own thing. If you want to do a one man show, do a one man show. If you've got half a dozen people, come in. And they're thematic. And I think one of the neatest things that I ever saw come out of this was a knight of musical theater. K-N-I-G-H-T, a knight of musical theater. And it was all songs from Camelot and Something's Rotten and Spamalot. And it was all songs about knights in musical theater. We've had some wonderful talent come through here though. We only had two presentations in 2020 because of COVID. But we've had over 60, 61, I counted them today. We've had 61 individual presentations as part of the third Thursdays. And now it's just Thursdays in the Rainbow Room because you can't just do the third Thursday. There's so much going on in town that people schedule. You've got to have it listed on a Thursday. But we've had 61 different performers. Janet Rutland, who is one of the most talented singers in Northeast Oklahoma, does her show in the Rainbow Room every two years. The latest one she did is around the Hollywood Campfire with John Wooley. And it has taken off, and she has performed that show all around Oklahoma this last year, but she premiered it here. Travis Guillory did his first drag show here. And it was three years ago, so it was 2023, I think he did his first drag Christmas. And look at him, Travis is now Miss Gay America. 22 �Toby Jenkins: Miss Gay America USA. Pat Hobbs: But we've had some wonderful, wonderful talent through this place. And I think it's exposed the center also. Having this little theater down here has exposed the Tulsa community to what we have. Many people have come in to see their friend perform, not just theater friends, but you know, like Janet, some of Janet's followings. They didn't even know it existed. They didn't know the Equality Center existed. You know, so they come down here and they, with our bar now and our seating, you know, they just, it's just like a little nightclub on a Thursday night. Dennis Neill: And Pat, do you think the opportunity for the performers to pocket a little bit of money, is that kind of a unique opportunity for some of these performers compared to the rest of them? Pat Hobbs: You know, absolutely, when you do musical theater, when you do community theater here in Tulsa, you don't get paid. It costs you two or three, $400 a show with meals and gas and costumes. But here you've got a chance to curate your own show. And the split that we've done with ticket sales is that the performers get 70% of the ticket sales. 30% goes back to the center. And you know, in most cases, that's eight, 900, $1,100 that goes back to the performer, you know, which, I don't know, you know, pays your pianist. It keeps, it's just a little enticement to keep people going, you know? Yeah. Dennis Neill: And knowing how important theater has been for both of you all this time, what do you think is the health of our theater community and where do you see it going in the future? Much like we've seen in other groups, there's a lot of small spinoffs and a lot of new theaters emerging. Are we healthy enough to support these and how do you feel like the direction is going to go for live theater? John Orsulak: That concerns me at this stage. Having moved, when I moved here, summer stage was still going on at the Performing Arts Center and that meant that was the only opportunity to do a musical for most, when Pat was doing Little Shop, or not Little Shop, Best Little Whorehouse when I moved here. And that was it. You had one show, one musical, and there were no touring companies coming around as I recall. A lot of straight plays, comedies, dramas, but if you aren't into that, it gave you no avenue. Now, I fear there have become so many splintered groups and so many organizations now within the community that it's almost spread too thin. They have so many opportunities now where these kids can do multiple shows in a year, multiple musicals in a year. But are there enough audience people to support it? It gets expensive. This past month, I don't know how many shows were going on, and the performers who want to go out and support their friends, they can't afford and they have to pick and choose. Okay, I can go to this show, but I'm gonna have to skip this one, or can I get to an IVR to see a rehearsal? Pat Hobbs: Our budget only allows us to go see so much. We're seeing, this is the third weekend of three weekends since we've been back, and it's like, okay, do we want to go? I want to go see my friends, but you know, yeah, there's a finite audience out there, I think, but they're doing some fantastic stuff. They're just doing some awesome, awesome shows. 23 �John Orsulak: And a lot of the, like Theatre Tulsa, for example, they've had ebbs and flows, the dips. So when I was there, it was an upswing, and then it had a major dip funding-wise, and they struggled, and they almost went under. But they clawed their way back up, and they've been able to, I think, restore, you know, there are always things you're always going to disagree with, as far as philosophy or structure. But, you know, Theatre Tulsa has that studio now, that used to be a dollar store, and it seems to be doing well. Pat Hobbs: It kind of makes me mad that they did that, because we've got this beautiful 100-seat theater here that they can use, but now they're using their own, because it doesn't cost them anything, you know? John Orsulak: But the nice thing with this theater, with Lynn Riggs, is it is small. It's a black box, so you have lots of flexibility on how it's used. You've got people, like Eli, running things, as far as the tech part of it. And it's big enough to do some good, solid productions, but it's small enough to be... Pat Hobbs: And we have done some really neat things here. I mean, when the Lynn Riggs can host the Tulsa Opera in a performance of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, and do the job that they did, it was a beautiful production. And even Chamber Music Tulsa, you know, was booked in here. So, it's taken a few years, but, you know, word's getting out. Toby Jenkins: Well, I may be overreaching, and Dennis can slap me, but that's because of you. You made it happen. He made sure the resources were there, but you sold Tulsa on Lynn Riggs' theater. Dennis Neill: Yeah, you've helped bring Bill and Jason aboard to carry on some interesting... Pat Hobbs: I know, and I'm so, so excited about those two guys who bring just another level of energy, another age, another age group, and the way Bill and Jason have embraced the community, and the way the community have embraced Bill and Jason, to have this new Broadway Clubhouse come out here later this month is just so exciting. I can't wait. Toby Jenkins: Okay, I just want to ask you, I had a situation that...How does it feel to be the face of the gay community as an older couple? How does it feel? And by that I'm talking about the day that you were on the front cover of Life Senior Services. Pat Hobbs: Vintage Magazine. Toby Jenkins: Their very first openly gay married couple in Oklahoma. And how did that feel? And did you get any... I know that's incredible support, but I want to know, have y'all had experience pushback at your life in this time? John Orsulak: No, we've been told some people, what, three times over the years. I'm not saying we're normalized, but we certainly were nothing to be afraid of. And we believe in the community. We're the only gay couple at Heartwood Commons. That doesn't mean we won't have more, but we're accepted, we're not shunned. 24 �Pat Hobbs: I just wish that I had a publicist, because all these things just came about. I mean, there was no rhyme or reason. I don't have an agent. To have all these things happen, you know, Tulsa People three times, and Vintage Magazine, and then there's a couple more. They just happen. They just happen. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, Vintage Magazine goes to 400,000 people. Did you know that? Pat Hobbs: No, I did not. Toby Jenkins: It's one of the largest senior publications in the country. Pat Hobbs: I feel honored. Well, you know how that came about. Toby Jenkins: No, you tell us. Pat Hobbs: My post-retirement gig at the Garden Center, I was keeping their books, and there was a young gentleman that was doing an internship in communications, coordinating website, Facebook, Instagram, and all of this. Actually, Vintage Tulsa called him to find…they wanted a face for their issue, and he had the office right next to him. He says, hey, Pat, you and John want to do this? I said, okay. It didn't even dawn on me that he could have picked another couple. He could have picked a heterosexual couple. He could have picked an individual. But he just leaned over and said, hey, you and John want to do this? They need somebody for the cover of this magazine. Oh, okay. But we never got any derogatory feedback on that. Never got any hate mail. Toby Jenkins: So you may not have gotten hate mail, and you may not have gotten overt rejection or harassment. As a couple, have there been times when you've known if you were welcome in the room or not? I mean, you talked earlier about the crews. Yeah, the Malcolm Baldrige. Pat Hobbs: Well, the Baldrige Award thing, where the principal moved his chair two feet away. You know, at this day and age, not so much anymore. John Orsulak: Yeah, I just say this is my husband, and like it or love it. Pat Hobbs: You know, honest to God, since the legalization back in 2014, that's what we do. We introduce each other as our husbands, not partner, not roommate. I mean, and it's more accepted, isn’t it? John Orsulak: I just say it. Toby Jenkins: Well, that leads us right into kind of the closing of our time together. What would you say, I mean, our situations, we're seeing so much pushback against our community, on public policy. Today, the lead story in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Tulsa World was state agencies, not state-funded organizations or agencies or colleges or universities or schools, could not acknowledge Pride Month. They couldn't fly a rainbow flag. Pat Hobbs: Well, let me tell you a story about what happened over at the Garden Center a couple of years ago. Dennis, thank you for the flag. May I tell this story? So, you supplied... 25 �Dennis Neill: Tulsa Progress Flags. Pat Hobbs: Tulsa Progress Flags. And it was flown, the Garden Center manager, Lee, flew it over the teaching garden and was instructed that the only time that the flag could be flown was during the month of June and immediately take it down the first of July. You know, half the staff at the garden center at the time identifies as LGBTQ+. And it was a city, it's city property. Take the flag down. Just made me so mad. You know, and this whole thing with the flag, it doesn't make any sense. What have we done differently over the last 20 years? Why now? Why are you offended? Toby Jenkins: So what would be your messages to those who come after us or for young activists? I always like to say it this way. In a hundred years, archaeologists are going to dig through the ruins of this property and they're going to discover that there was a day in America where there had to be LGBT centers and they uncover our archives. So the archaeologists, when they uncover your interview, what would be your message for the future, for those who come after us, and for young LGBTQ people and who identify as queer today? John Orsulak: Gosh, it's changed so much over the my lifetime. I have a former student of mine, fifth grade. I remember seeing him doing pirouettes on the playground. And I pegged him. At least I thought I did. And then later on, sure enough, and he's very now very active in the arts community here in Tulsa, has a husband, supportive family, and it's just like, oh, you know, it's become normal, much more normalized, and I hope it continues to be normalized where we don't have to live with any fear. That it's just, we're kind of at the point where it's like, I don't give a damn anymore. You know, you live with who I am, how I am, and if you don't like it, then go away or do whatever and I'll survive. I'm a worker bee, so it doesn't bother me. Pat Hobbs: Well, I've got my political comments, some that need to remain. I need to sit on it for a minute, but these bigots out there, these right-wing bigots, why now? What have we done? Like I said, what have we done? You still get your hair cut by a gay barber, okay? You still buy flowers at a gay florist, don't you? I don't understand why this movement is... And the one thing that scares me, though, is that they call them immigration detention centers for all these warehouses, that these empty warehouses, they're going to put all these immigration…I don't think it's going to be mostly for immigrants. I think it's going to turn out they're going to pick and choose what part of society goes in these places. That's just my opinion. I don't think there's enough immigrants to fill up all these warehouses. Toby Jenkins: Any other things for the future or for those who come after us or for today, for people who are wanting to know what to do. John Orsulak: And use your resources, the Equality Center. I hope it survives and continues to flourish because you need this. You need support. You know, if you're not alone, they need to know that. Pat Hobbs: The one thing I have learned from the Rainbow Room and the people who come here is that we are designated here at OkEq as a safe place. Always have been. And I guess it was during Pride or maybe that first Pride piano thing that we 26 �had a couple of years ago. But I had a lady come up to me and say, I feel safe here. Yes, that's why we need this place. Toby Jenkins: Well, it is March 19th, 2026 and today our interviewees, our special guests have been John Orsulak and Pat Hobbs. And they've been together 36 years. And joining us have been Dennis Neill, the founder of Oklahomans for Equality, and Amanda Thompson, the archivist. And this is Toby Jenkins. Thank you so much for tuning in. 27 � https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/0655db9527d9c965e3ae77cf9ab9ecd7.mp4 5fe3a81c4475dc5db209b6fe8bc46c29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2026] John Orsulak and Pat Hobbs Interview Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource John Orsulak, Pat Hobbs, Toby Jenkins, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource March 19, 2026 Subject The topic of the resource John Orsulak and Pat Hobbs Oral History Interview from March 19, 2026 Description An account of the resource This interview with Pat Hobbs and John Orsulak explores their 36-year relationship following a chance encounter at a church, their careers and longtime involvement in theater and music. They also highlight their activism within the LGBTQ community in Tulsa and the vision they had and implemented to bring the Lynn Riggs Theatre at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center to life. They share personal stories, including the passing of Pat’s brother to AIDS, insights on community involvement, and their vision for a more inclusive future. 2026 AIDS AIDS/HIV Dennis Neill Dennis R. Neill HIV/AIDs interview John Orsulak Lynn Riggs Theatre OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript Pat Hobbs Toby Jenkins transcript video https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/50c75d314ecd3bfe576df8fa1e4a818c.mp4 1cd0a806c5b45b06b12b8f2d5493d4a0 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/f1f040d517ee58dfd79531909e7a503c.pdf c50d91cd143acf3b75830c770059e040 PDF Text Text oklahomans for equality Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Leslie Penrose Interview Conducted by Laura Belmonte Date: March 31, 2006 Transcribed By: Matthew Warren Transcript Edited by Dennis Neill - December 27, 2025 Restrictions: Interviewee requested - NIA. Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 historyproiect@okeg.org �LGBT History Project 03/31/2006 Interview of Leslie Penrose by Laura Belmonte Laura: It is Friday, March 31 2006 and we are at the Community of Hope Church with Leslie Penrose for today's interview. Leslie, let's just start with some basic biographical information. When were you born, what was your family and education like and those sorts of things? Leslie: I was born in Amarillo, Texas in 1951 into an oil field family. And I grew up all over the Midwest and lived in almost every state west of the Mississippi. I went to 18 different schools between kindergarten and col lege. Roots are something I long for and moving is something I do well. Although, in my adult life I have lived in Tulsa since 1979 and really do feel like I'm establishing roots here and 2 �that this is home. Although my husband and I have moved to like 5 different houses so we still practice the moving thing. Laura: Did you have any brothers and sisters? Leslie: I did. I had two younger brothers and a younger sister so I was the oldest of four: and they're all still living. My dad is dead but my mother is still living. Laura: And where did you go to college? Leslie: T.U. for my undergrad degree in Religion. I got my Masters of Divinity at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. Laura: And you mentioned you are married, how long have you been? Leslie: 35 years. I got married 6 months out of high school. He was in the Marine Corps and I moved to California to take up residence on the Camp Pendleton Marine Core base the day after we got married. Laura: Wow. And do you have children? Leslie: I do. I have two. My daughter, Keli, was born there in California after we had been married about two years. And the other one was born on the East coast. We moved back here after Steve's discharge, for him to go to school at OU. From there we moved Richmond, Virginia for Steve's first job, and my son, Kyle, was born there. Laura: Well let's move on to the issues of the gay community and gay people and such. When was the first time you recall hearing anything about the gay community in Tulsa? Leslie: I'm not sure about hearing about the gay community in Tulsa, but I do know when my own sense of awareness of gay issues happened. In the late 70s I was a banker, and not particularly happy with that. I took a trip to Central America to try and figure things out and find out what I wanted to be when I "grew up." The leader of the group I went with was a gay man. 3 �It was a very transforming trip for me and my relationship with him was very transforming. I experienced him in a very pastoral, religious way. I asked him one day why he wasn't a pastor because he just had such a gift for it. He said, "Well I would be except that the church won't let me. I'm gay." It was not anything that I ever consciously 'knew.' I mean, I must have been aware of it on some level but it had never been part of my consciousness that that was where the church was. And it just blew my socks off. I have continued to maintain a relationship with him across the years. But it was actually that experience and my experience in Central America that drove me to seminaryseeking something beyond the shallow experience of 'church' that I had had growing up. Once I was in seminary, that issue and other issues of justice just kept pushing me to the edge, and I'd quit seminary and start it again, thinking, 'I can't do this church thing because it's way too oppressive.' But there was also something within me that came out of that trip to Central America that said, "My experience there says there's a different way of being church, a way that has integrity and is life giving." I wanted to be a part of THAT way of being church. Laura: Talk to me a little bit about your experiences at Phillips. Why did you decide to go there? Leslie: Well I decided to go there because it was the only seminary available to me. I was a young mother with young kids. I needed a local place. They were just opening their campus in Tulsa when I inquired in 1985, and asked if I wanted to be a part of that very first class that met here in Tulsa. I did. Laura: And you found this a kind of conflicted experience? were they saying about issues of social justice and homosexuality that you had to wrestle with? Leslie: You know I don't know if it was what they were saying as much as it was what the gospel was saying. I think actually the school was pretty mainline and kind of scared to enter into the really tough issues. I had, for most of my What 4 �life, been involved in social issues like nucleai disarmament, immigration, and civil rights for African Americans; but as I began to read the gospel and put things together it became clear to me that something was wrong with saying there are some folks that don't fit into the "salvation plan" or however you want to talk about it. The more I challenged that in my own thinking, the more I needed to involve other people in the dialogue. I was the President of the Student Council at Phillips at that time, and actually challenged them to, for the first time, put gay and lesbian issues on the agenda. I asked the Council to attend a board meeting and requested that Phillips might name itself a safe place for gay and lesbian students. It was not at that time - it was more 'don't ask, don't tell.' Folks were pretty threatened by that first dialogue, but it opened the door and they are now a very affirming place for gay and lesbian students. At about the same time, while I was in seminary, I was a part-time youth pastor at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church. I got a call one day from a friend of mine at St. Johns Hospital. She was a nurse, and she said that there was a young man there and he was dying of AIDS. "He hasn't had any visitors here for over a month. Would you mind co.ming?" I knew nothing about AIDS, but I knew someone shouldn't die with no visitors for a month. So I went, and it was a baptism by fire. When I finally got in to see him (after having to put on full protective clothing and gloves, I asked if I could talk with him and he said "Sure. Who are you?" I told him I was a minister, and he responded, "Oh, you don't even need to bother. I already know everything you have to say. My church has already told me I'm going to hell." It just broke my heart, and I said "I don't believe that." He let me stay a few minutes so we could talk, and when I left I asked if I could come back the next day. He said "yes." I was there everyday for about a week until that young man died. During that time I got to meet a couple of his friends who came by because they had heard he was going to die. They said they had been afraid to visit. And from there I was just 'connected.' It was like all of a sudden, a 5 �gate opened and there were a number of people who needed to deal with their spiritual issues relating to HIV and AIDS. Within a few weeks, I had connected with Dr. Jeff Beal and Ted Campbell... and all of a sudden I was like "the chaplain" for Dr. Seal's office. One day Ted Campbell called me and asked me to do some work with his HIV therapy group. "They have some spiritual issues to deal with", he said. So I went. I was there for about an hour, and it was actually a pretty hostile group at first. Not too willing to talk. They had a few nice questions to ask me, but there wasn't a conversation. And then, right before it was time to go, one of the young men, Jim B, looked at me and said, "I have a question for you. So tell me why it is that God would create somebody and then condemn them to hell. Tell me what kind of God does that." The only response I had was "a God who needs to die." Because that was true for me, the God that they were carrying around with them needed to die. So they invited me back and I went back to that group for several months and worked on theological and spiritual issues with them and about their own belovedness in God's eyes. Laura: How did you become aware of the difficulties that LGBT people faced at Phillips? Leslie: I just became aware that there were a couple of lesbian students there that were not out and were not willing to be out and only shared their story with me because I began to break the silence about the issue and ask those kinds of questions. By just becoming known as a 'safe person', several students shared their stories with me. Laura: Did you, yourself, have people assume you were a lesbian? Leslie: Absolutely, all the time. In fact, when I first started The Community of Hope I intentionally took off my wedding ring. I didn't want the straight community relying on the fact that I was straight to make me safe in their religious settings. Because the people I was working with were not safe in religious settings unless they pretended to be straight, I was unwilling for it to be that obvious that I was straight. Wrestling is a good thing for people ... 6 �Laura: You weren't willing to flaunt your heterosexuality? Leslie: Yeah ... I just wasn't willing for someone else to use it. It just made me furious that that's what made me safe. Laura: So what year did you finish seminary and how did your career trajectory go after that? Leslie: I was ordained in 1989 and I was still on staff at Memorial Drive UMC. In 1990 a young gay couple, both of whom were living with AIDS, started coming to that church. And then another couple came, and another, and so on. The church was fairly receptive to the first two: the tokenism thing was okay with them. But when it became 4 and 6 and 8 and a whole pew of young gay men, most of them with AIDS, the church got more threatened. Then in 1992 while I was in Central America leading a mission trip, the church leaders had these secret meetings and when I got back they told me I needed to leave. They were no longer comfortable with my ministry. Well, in the United Methodist Church that's not how it works. The church doesn't decide when you leave, only the bishop can decide that. So the bishop told them, "You don't decide when she leaves. I do. And she will stay until June when it is the normal time for pastors to leave." So between August of '92 and June of '93, I was in this horribly painful situation of serving this church where a significant number of the people did not want me there, but another significant number did. The church began to split and the pastor, Dr George Warren, got threatened. He wrote letters to two of the LGBT members who had already joined - Mark Vickers and Brad Mulholland informing them that they couldn't do things like go into the kitchen because they had AIDS; and they couldn't teach Sunday school; or read Scripture from the chancel area. I was appalled and they were deeply hurt - again. And so I went to the bishop and said, "I understand that I'm going to be moved in June and that's fine, that's the system. But PLEASE put someone in Tulsa who can be a safe place for these people. We've opened the door now and the care 7 �and acceptance that was promised needs to be provided." After some conversation, the Bishop said, "You need to start that congregation." Well, politically at that time, the United Methodist Church would not support my starting a new congregation that was open and affirming. So the Bishop and I put our heads together. He had just been in Central America studying Liberation Theology; and he knew I often went to Central America. We had both experienced the alternative 'churches' being formed there called Base Communities. It was a model, primarily in the Catholic tradition, where people who feel abandoned by the hierarchy in society and the church, formed small, local communities of justice and spirituality where the people are the church. Occasionally a priest may come and offer the sacraments, but the church is the people. The people are doing the work of nurturing spirituality; the people are doing social justice in their communities. The result is that the people began reading the bible in different ways, and questioning traditional theology. A Base Community made sense for Tulsa. And at the United Methodist Annual Conference in June of 1993 the Bishop of Oklahoma commissioned me to begin a Base Community here in Tulsa ... whatever that might mean. Laura: What was this bishop's name? Leslie: Dan Solomon - a very courageous man. He found $12,000 dollars for me to have a part-time salary for a year, and that's how it started: no place to meet, no office, no funds for advertising or supplies. Nothing except a group of people who were willing. I started by going to several different churches to ask for meeting space. Finally, Centenary United Methodist Church on North Denver, agreed to allow us to meet in the evenings in their basement. So on June 21, 1993 we had the very first gathering of Community of Hope. There were about 50 people at that first gathering - half gay and half straight. No children yet, but we had hopes. There had been a group of 12 or 13 people who had been meeting in my living room for two or three months trying 8 �to figure out what we wanted this church to look like. One important piece was that we were diverse in our membership_gay and straight, racially and age diverse. We chose to use a Rainbow candle as our Christ candle in worship - Christ candles are always white. Not ours - not our candle and not our Christ. Another important piece was that we wanted every aspect of our congregational life to bear witness to our valuesespecially to our belief that every single person is a child of God who deserves love and respect. So we decided that for every dollar we spent on ourselves we would also spend a dollar beyond our walls in some way that supported the marginalized. We've done that now for 13 years, supporting a number of social justice activities and organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. We met there at Centenary for about two months until one evening one of their morning members saw one of our member couples kissing in the parking lot. Within a few weeks, they asked us to leave. Next we rented a little life insurance building on the corner of Yale and Pine, and were there for about two and a half years. We outgrew it, and then we rented a warehouse on 2nd and Utica which we completely gutted and remodeled. It was a wonderful space for us, and we had a deeply rich and vibrant time. In early 1998, the City declared we couldn't stay because our zoning wasn't right for being a church. We suspected there was another agenda, but rather than spend time and energy fighting their ruling, we began to look for another building. We were 5 years old and looking for our 4t h home. Laura: It's a good thing you had the experience ... Leslie: That's right, all of my life - move, move, move. We decided to try and buy a building where we didn't have to worry about being kicked out again. We tried to buy three different church buildings but once they discovered who we were, they refused to sell to us. So finally-you 9 �know if there is anything I regret in my ministry I think this is what it is-we bought the building in the closet. We had one of our members buy it and transfer it to us. It was a deeply painful thing and it was fear that drove us to it: fear that we weren't going to have any place to call home. But I almost wish we hadn't done it, because I think it ended up hurting us in subtle but significant ways. I didn't realize that until a year or so later when I looked back at some of the conflict we'd been experiencing. We had never had conflict in our congregational life, but now some people were acting in strangely dysfunctional ways. I believe, looking back, that it was at least in part, because we had gone back into the closet in order to buy that building. Laura: Let's back up for a moment: I would assume some of this got public attention of some sort. When was the first time you remember gaining attention in the media for your outreach in the GLBT community? Leslie: Actually the Tulsa World did a story in probably 1995 and it was very positive about who we were and the outreach we were doing. That was probably the first time we got attention. I got hate mail regularly right from the beginning, and ugly messages on our answering machine. Some people in the neighborhood where we bought the building, filed complaints about us with the police, that we were "disturbing the peace." But we didn't really get much other publicity until in 1999 when I was brought up on ecclesiastical charges by the United Methodist Church. Then there was lots of it, nationally. Laura: When you were interacting with these leasing agents and realtors, had you been cognizant of laws on housing discrimination not including sexual orientation? Leslie: I think I probably had, but it was that na"ive 'it's not impacting me' kind of awareness. Besides, this was a church and it never entered my mind that you would turn down a whole church! It still just blows me away. Laura: The reason I ask is because we probably looked at 20 different spaces when we rented and that was just 2 years ago. �Leslie: And how painful it is! I mean I'm a straight woman, I had never dealt with any of this before and I had no idea of how painful it could be. Laura: Did you have any sort of dialogue within the church about the dissention that the decision to buy, sort of 'undercover,' was causing? Leslie: No, we never had a dialogue about it. I preached about it and I think that in and of itself - giving it voice - did some of the healing we needed. We named what was going on and that helped to heal the wounds: we admitted that we really messed up and we pledged together that we would not do that again. Laura: In relation to your having this sort of ministry, churches don't exist as little islands, when was the first time you recall encountering something from a different religious bent here in Tulsa? Leslie: In 1990, when I was presented for ordination in the United Methodist Church, I was charged by a colleague with heresy. The specific charge was that I didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ as a literal event. But what was behind that charge was the work I was doing with the LGBT community and how threatened people were by that. Terry Ewing who at that time was an associate minister at Will Rogers United Methodist Church was the person who actually filed the charges, saying that I shouldn't be ordained because I didn't honor the ministerial covenant. It was a deeply painful thing to stand alone on the floor of the Annual Conference at Boston Avenue Church, before the 600-plus ministers in Oklahoma, and have them debate whether or not I was appropriate for ministry. But it ended up being a pretty wonderful thing because it did two things: 1) It made me decide how important this particular ministry was to me, and what I really believed about the Gospel. I decided right then and there that if I couldn't do the ministry that I felt called to do, then being ordained was meaningless. I think that decision on the floor of the conference is what got me through later challenges in my ministry that were much more difficult. 11 �So I ended up being grateful for that initial little baptism by fire. The second thing that incident did was to openly challenge the Oklahoma Conference of ministers to deal with what it was going to mean to have diversity in its midst. The vote that day ended up something like 590 to 17. But the really affirming thing happened later that night, at the public ordination ceremony held at Boston Avenue Church with a full sanctuary. When Bishop Solomon ordains someone, he always invites family and others who are there in support of the person being ordained, to stand as he places his hand on their head and ordains them. That night, when he put his hand on my head, almost the entire room stood. The vast majority didn't know or care about me personally, but they cared about diversity. Standing for me was their way of saying 'we are not going to be a church who says no to diversity.' It was a very powerful moment. Laura: Was this coexistent or did it precede debates on LGBT clergy in the church? Leslie: Oh it was right in the middle of it. The Methodist Church has been debating that for years and years and years. Laura: This obviously was going in a different direction. Leslie: Yes, this wasn't about gay clergy but about what restrictions we place on who we minister to. Laura: How about from non-Methodist clergy in Tulsa? Leslie: Totally mixed. It's kind of always been true for me in Tulsa clergy circles that when I walk into a room, the room kind of divides by where they are on this issue and other kinds of liberal issues. There are a lot of times I become sort of a metaphor for liberal religion or social justice issues in many settings. I've just gotten used to that. Laura: Now who would you construe as having been allies in this? Were there others making similar sorts of overtures to the LGBT community as you were? Or were you the trend setter? 12 �Leslie: I think in 1993 there were not many allies in Oklahoma. Community Hope was the first open and affirming, mainline congregation (other than MCC) in Tulsa. There were certainly clergy friends that I had who were sympathetic but they were not out there pushing the envelope. Laura: After 1993, what happened? Leslie: In 1996 the United Methodist Church passed a law saying that Methodist clergy cannot do same-sex blessings and those unions cannot happen in United Methodist churches. Community of Hope had been doing them all along. We would publish them in our newsletter, and put invitations and pictures out publicly. There was no secrecy. When the law passed, we had a congregational meeting and decided that come what may, we were not going to quit. We started an intentional process of asking ourselves, what is our theology of marriage, and how do we justify what we do? That resulted in writing a document that we adopted as our official position, including the commitment that that we would not stop. At about that same time, Bishop Solomon, who had blessed the start up of Community of Hope, moved to another call, and Oklahoma was assigned a new bishop: Bruce Blake. Bishop Blake said immediately and clearly that I must stop performing gay unions. I responded that I can't do that. A kind of 'dance' started then with the Oklahoma Conference. COH continued hosting holy unions and I continued officiating at those services. The conference leadership began asking for print copies or videos of services, and we'd send them. They'd respond, "you can keep doing this part but you can't wear your stole ( official clergy wear) .... Then ... 'you can stand with the couple but you can't bless the rings'.... Then, 'you can't say I announce you as wife and wife' or whatever.... We tried dancing with them for awhile because we really wanted it to work-if they were going to move a little and let us do unions, then we could move a little as well and do them differently. So I quit wearing my stole .... Then I 13 �moved to bless the rings before the ceremony and not during it... etc etc. After months of this dance, with more and more restrictions, it just finally became clear that the process had no integrity. It felt like people were being asked to cut off one of their arms or legs. 'Don't kill yourself,' they were saying, 'just cut off a piece of yourself." I went back to the conference leadership and said 'I just can't do this, and we went back to doing full unions.' For awhile there was nothing but silence from conference leadership. Shortly after that, the strangest thing happened. In 1998 there was a holy union in California that a whole group of clergy did collectively instead of as individual clergy. And they asked clergy across the nation to join them by signing on as 'officiates in abstentia'. So I signed on. Some lay person in Eufaula decided that was unacceptable to him, and he filed official church charges against me for having done a holy union in abstentia in January. Channel 11 here in Tulsa did a report on those charges and as part of their story, they got in touch with a couple for whom I had performed a holy union. The couple proudly and innocently, shared a video of their ceremony with the reporter and that night it was on the news. Within days Bishop Blake filed more charges - not just for signing on in abstenia, but for conducting union ceremonies. The national media picked it up .... and it just got to be this ridiculous mess. Bishop Blake dug in his heels and told me that I had three choices: 1) I could stop doing any unions immediately, or 2) I could go to church trial, or 3) I could give up my ordination and leave the United Methodist denomination. It didn't make any sense to me go to trial: I'm was openly guilty and I didn't plan to quit doing the ceremonies. So why would I want to spend time and energy going through that. More importantly, why would I want to drag Community of Hope through a national spectacle. They were already wounded and weary from months and months of threats and intimidation and harrassment. 14 �Knowing w hat might come, I had done my homework about my options, I immediately began to work with the United Church of Christ to t ra nsfer my ordination. The UMC charges had come on February 4, 1999; I transferred my ordi nation orders on March 4 th 1999. That process required that I return my certificate of ord ination to Bishop Blake, which I did. He actua lly sent it back to me with my dismissal scrawled across it in black marker. Laura: And how did all of t his effect the congregation? Leslie: We lost a hu ge number of people. In mid 1998 we were averaging 90-100 in worship. By March of 1999 attendance had dwindled to about 35. One more time the church had said "you're welcome here" but then stabbed them in the back. It broke my heart. I had been in the Methodist chu rch for 15 years as ordained clergy. I had a lot of relationships th ere ... t here was a lot to let go of... . a lot to grieve. La ura: How did you make the overture to the Un ited Church of Christ and how did the change affect the church? Leslie: It was really interesting. The story I told you about going to Central America and the trip leader who was gay - well, as things were heating up in 1998, he wrote to me and said he had joined the United Church of Christ. "That is where you belong," he said. So I went to talk to Russ Bennett, who was pastor of the on ly UCC church in Tulsa. Russ's imm ediate res ponse was 'Of course you belong here!" That week he drove me to Kingfisher to talk with the UCC Committee on Ministry; and he nurtured me through the process of transferring. Laura: You've experienced a lot more first hand homophobia than a lot of gay people I know! So what sort of outreach and progra mmin g was the church doing? 15 �Leslie: Well, COH held its first worship service in June of 1993. In July, we started feeding the homeless once a month. We'd prepare the food together and then take - ---,,,,= it to the Day Center and serve it. We also started volunteering with the GED program in the jails in July. In August, we took 10 of our "companions" (we don't really use 'member' language) on a mission trip to Nicaragua to build a house in a critically poor community. Those are all things we continue to do, plus we sponsor an apartment for DVIS, had a RAIN team for years, we host 3 different AA/NA meetings in our building; and we volunteer with several other social service and non-profit agencies in Tulsa. But it was our ministry with and to those living and dying with HIV/AIDS that both shaped and defined us. From the beginning we've always been at least 25% HIV infected . The core symbol of Community of Hope was a "brokenmade-whole chalice". It was gifted to us during our formation by Ted Campbell who was an HIV therapist. He had found it in a small pottery shop when he visited what used to be East Germany not too long after the wall came down. It's a chalice that incorporates cracked and broken pieces, and yet, still holds the sacramental wine we use in Holy Communion. It is a vessel that has been wounded, but it's woundedness isn't hidden or a thing of shame; but rather a beautiful and blessed part of the whole. Just like each of us - including, and perhaps ESPECIALLY, those who are living with their dying . That chalice ... and the broken-made-wholeness it represents is integral to who we are. That's why it's so important that we - the community - engage in as many ways of serving others as we can. When we become the vessel of healing and hope to others, we find it brings healing and hope to us. And, we also found that people living with HIV often felt like 'victims' or objects of care. Serving others in mission projects switched those roles - the wounded became the healer and that was incredibly empowering. 16 �Laura: You've mentioned Jeff Beal, When was the first time you really encountered the AIDS epidemic? Was it before your ministry? Leslie: I'm sure I'd heard about it but it wasn't a part of my daily life: and I don't think I knew anything about it or the bigotry around it. Not until that nurse called and I met the young man who was dying alone. Laura: What were some of the things you remember about how the community was reacting? Leslie: There was incredible fear - both IN the gay community and OF the gay community. No one knew how you got it and people were afraid to touch anything that someone with HIV had touched. Families didn't know how to react. It was such a big part of my ministry to go into a hospital room or some other setting, and hold hands, hug, give foot rubs - just TOUCH the person who was being treated as an 'untouchable.' When Community of Hope started, we actually developed a whole series of Rituals of Touch that were about affirming the lives and bodies of people who were living with AIDS. And I often found myself modeling for families who loved their son/brother etc. but were afraid and had no idea how to respond. I would hug the person or give them a back rub and talk with the famjly about the myths surrounding the transmission of HIV. It was also incredibly hard to find nursing homes that would take people with AIDS. Home health care was almost impossible for PWA;s (person's with AIDS). Even funeral homes refused to serve people who had died of AIDS. For a long time, Butler Stumpff was the only home in town that would receive their bodies and serve their families... Lots of the funerals were done at Community of Hope because there was no where else to go. In those early years, I often did 2-3 funerals a week. Laura: So you change denominations and go through this searing experience. Did you get national attention and how would you describe that experience? Leslie: Oh a flash in the pan. Jimmy Creach was another Methodist brought up on charges about the same tim~, 17 �and it was in a couple national papers and theological journals. It felt so insignificant compared to what was happening here in my backyard, that I didn't really pay attention to it. Laura: Talk a little more about the local fires. Leslie: The press was willing to reprint whatever people said and that got pretty nasty. I remember one of the news channels came to do a report here at the church, and we were clearing "Methodist" stuff out of the church. Just kind of joking, I said "What in the world are we going to do with 80 United Methodist hymnals." And, of course, that's the quote they chose to put on the air! I got lots of ugly messages: "how can you call yourself a minister and say that you know the bible?" People put hours of work into trying to convince me that I was wrong. But we also got an equal amount of mail that was supportive. I got one card that said, "I will hold my head a little higher because of you. Thank You." That felt pretty amazing. Laura: Tell me about how the church has changed since all of this happened. Any particularly notable events or members over the years? Leslie: Well one relationship I want to note is Phillips Seminary. COH has several professors and students that are a part of our congregation and Phillips has been such a supportive and wonderful institution for us. Dr. Brandon Scott has written a book called "Re-imagine our World" and the last chapter is about Community of Hope, and in particular his relationship with one young gay man who died of AIDS. I'm really grateful that a straight white male in a powerful position is willing and able to look and say "I was really changed by this young man who people said didn't count and didn't matter." It's been so good and life-giving to spend the last five years pouring my energy into creative, healing ministry and not fighting. Those first 7 or 8 years were spent fighting the institution, or at least defending ourselves from it. And now we are truly dancing with our denominational partner in a mutually supportive way. It is 18 �so nice to be able to use our energy for creative things and not fighting institutions. Laura: How has all of this affected your husband and children? Leslie: It affected my children profoundly. They don't go to church and have never been able to find a faith community they trust. They just have no tolerance for hypocracy and are having a hard time figuring out what religious life means to them. My husband was probably more wounded by the stuff with the United Methodist Church than I was, because he felt so powerless. He couldn't do anything about it. All he could do was stand by my side and watch them hurt me ... and he has enough white male in him (exMarine) that he wants to be the knight in shining armor. I've been able to let go of my anger at them, but he just can't. To this day, every time he hears the whole UMC spiel about Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors, he just boils. I'm not angry anymore, and I'm able to name the gifts I received from my time with the Methodists. I had some wonderful years as a Methodist and COH never would have happened without them. But it's been hard for Steve. Laura: There's been a vocal and organized LGBT community for quite awhile in Tulsa, but that hasn't translated to big political names despite the city's size. Why do you suspect that is the case? Leslie: First of all I've seen lots of incredible changes. In 1993 when Community of Hope opened there was nothing for the gay community besides bars. Even like the pride store was inside a bar! The group at TOHR didn't have a home: there were just bars. I'm really grateful that it has become so much more mainstream in Tulsa. As for why, I think it's the same reason Tulsa hasn't progressed more with issues of racism and poverty. I think middle and upper class privilege affects us in ways that keep us from really dealing with issues of marginalization in the longterm way that we need to. We engage in the struggle for a little while, but if change doesn't happen quickly, we have other things to do-we have busy lives and enough privilege that we can move on. 19 �Laura: How has the gay community and the community at large supported you over the years? Can you give me some examples of that? Leslie: Well Nancy McDonald has always been very supportive, financially and in all other ways. People like Marcus Rice, who works at Williams, and Dennis Neill are there to be supportive and let you know that they are behind you. Laura: Is there anything else you'd like to add? If not, I appreciate your time. Leslie: Well I appreciate yours. And I appreciate the gift of the journey. Transcribed by Matthew Warren E~ited by Leslie Penrose, Dec 2026 20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2006] Leslie Penrose Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource March 31, 2006 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Laura Belmonte on March 31, 2006. Born in Amarillo, Texas in 1951, Leslie graduated from the University of Tulsa with a degree in Religion and then a Masters of Divinity at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. She discusses her marriage, children and work in the LGBTQ+ community as a faith leader and early outreach to those impacted by HIV/AIDS. With the Methodist Bishop’s support, in 1993 she founded the Community of Hope when church leaders at her mainstream church became uncomfortable with her AIDS outreach. Facing continued pressure from the denomination, in 1999 she transferred her ordination to United Church of Christ to continue her ministry to the LGBTQ+ community and support for those living with HIV/AIDS. Subject The topic of the resource Leslie Penrose Oral History Project Interview from March 31, 2006 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Leslie Penrose, Laura Belmonte, Matthew Warren, Dennis Neill 2006 AIDS AIDS/HIV Community of Hope HIV HIV/AIDs interview Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte Leslie Penrose OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript Phillips Theological Seminary transcript TU United Church of Christ University of Tulsa video Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2005] Janie Reeves Interview Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcription of Laura Belmonte’s interview with Janie Reeves on November 19, 2005. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Janie was born in Denver in 1971. She attended the University of Tulsa and became involved with Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights, the predecessor to Oklahomans for Equality. She served as board president in 1991. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 19, 2005 Subject The topic of the resource Janie Reeves Oral History Project Interview from November 19, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Janie Reeves, Laura Belmonte, Dennis Neill 2005 available at Center Board President Janie Reeves Dennis Neill interview Janie Reeves Laura Belmonte OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript TOHR TOHR Board of Directors transcript TU Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Board of Directors University of Tulsa video Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2020] Bob Ritz Interview Subject The topic of the resource Bob Ritz Oral History Project Interview from August 4, 2020 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Morgan Allen and Fraser Kastner on August 4, 2020. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> In the interview, Bob discusses his early life, coming out in the late 1960s, his military experience, involvement in the Tulsa LGBTQ community and work on behalf of immigrant rights. Bob passed on October 21, 2024. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bob Ritz, Morgan Allen, Fraser Kastner, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 4, 2020 2020 available at Center Bob Ritz Fraser Kastner immigration interview Morgan Allen OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript transcript video https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/cb45fd2c080c696f642bbf3a4ec34ca2.mp4 5200eb31f5519513b3b1c578c0a4b556 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/0a9ad56686aff1c861791cbd6e559964.pdf 9f05611ad7684b1eccd5aa7a33466e4d PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Jeremy Simmons Interview Conducted by Dennis Neill Date: January 21, 2026 Transcribed and Edited By: Dennis Neill using Reduct.Video AI, February 26, 2026 Restrictions: Interviewee requested: N/A Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 historyproject@okeq.org 1 �About Jeremy Simmons Keywords Jeremy Simmons, LGBTQ+, sexual orientation, HIV awareness, community advocacy, personal identity, religious background, nonprofit management, Tulsa, equality Takeaways  Jeremy grew up in a conservative, religious environment.  He navigated his sexual identity amidst societal expectations.  Experiences of bullying shaped his understanding of acceptance.  He identifies as more attracted to men but has explored bisexuality.  Performance art has been a form of self-expression for him.  Community engagement has been a significant part of his life.  He has worked with various organizations for HIV awareness.  Transitioning from OKQ to HOPE was a pivotal moment in his career.  Nonprofit management presents unique challenges and opportunities.  He believes in the potential for positive change in the community. Summary In this interview, Jeremy Simmons shares his journey of self-discovery and advocacy within the LGBTQ+ community. Growing up in a conservative, religious environment, he navigated the complexities of his sexual identity while facing societal expectations and bullying. His experiences shaped his commitment to community engagement and HIV awareness, leading to significant roles in various organizations. Jeremy reflects on the challenges of nonprofit management and expresses hope for the future of the LGBTQ+ community, emphasizing the importance of continued advocacy and support. 2 �Chapters 00:00 Jeremy Simmons Oral History Interview January 22, 2026 01:24:24 Introduction and Early Life 01:27:21 Religious Background and Identity 01:30:25 Navigating Sexual Orientation in Adolescence 01:33:35 Experiences of Bullying and Acceptance 01:36:31 Understanding Bisexuality and Self-Identification 01:39:24 Relationships and Social Circles 01:42:27 Coming Out and Community Engagement 01:45:21 Work History and Involvement with Equality Center 01:48:09 HIV Testing and Support Services 01:51:19 Challenges in Healthcare Access 01:54:15 Personal Experiences with HIV and Community Support 02:03:57 The Evolution of HIV Treatment and Public Perception 02:08:30 Community Outreach and Testing Initiatives 02:13:33 Navigating Funding Challenges in Nonprofits 02:20:23 The Impact of Government Regulations on Nonprofits 02:25:31 The Journey of Hope: From Formation to Growth 02:32:55 Reflections on Personal Growth and Community Engagement 02:40:16 Advocacy and the Changing Landscape of LGBTQ+ Rights 02:47:42 Looking Forward: Optimism for the Future Jeremy Simmons Oral History Interview January 21, 2026 Dennis Neill: Good afternoon. It is January, the 21st, 2026, and we're in the Nancy and Joe McDonald Rainbow Library at the Equality Center and we're having the opportunity to interview Jeremy Simmons. And Jeremy, would you state your name and give us some basic biographical information, like your birthday, your early growing up experiences, a little bit of your family background that you might want to share and your early education? Jeremy Simmons: Sure, Jeremy Simmons, I grew up in and around Bartlesville, so Washington County, so in the city of Bartlesville and it's, and in very small places like around Ramona and Tulala, like so in the middle of nowhere. At one point we had a 3 �house. It was like a half a mile away from anybody, so remote for some of that. I was born a long time ago and I'm much older now and I moved to Tulsa in 94 and that's where I've lived here over half my life and because it's been so long and like all of my adult life, I think of Tulsa as my home now. Dennis Neill: And where'd you do your elementary and high school work? Jeremy Simmons: That's a great question. I did it in different, at Caney Valley in Bartlesville, where the two schools that I was in and Wesleyan religious school at the beginningDennis Neill: is that the one in Bartlesville? Jeremy Simmons: Yes Dennis Neill: What year did you graduate from high school? Jeremy Simmons: Sometime in the 90s, and they have 56 peopleDennis Neill: Did you go immediately on to post-secondary? Jeremy Simmons: Not right away. I spent a little time at Tulsa Community College trying to sort of know what I wanted to do, and then I went to the University of Tulsa later in the 90s. I have an associate's degree in humanities from TCC and I had worked on a sociology degree that I did not complete. Dennis Neill: Okay, great, great, anything else that you can share with us about your family background, like siblings or other information you want to share about? Jeremy Simmons: So my life before I moved here was quite different and I don't really like to dig super deep into it. Just to be honest with you. I feel comfortable saying I grew up in extremely isolated rural areas, pretty religious background, as you can imagine. I did pre-k, kindergarten and first grade at the Wesleyan school, which is quite traditional conservative. So, coming from that background, although the interesting thing about it was kind of interesting going to the Weslyan School, I was surrounded by people from different countries and different races and nationalities, so then going to smaller schools and being not around that was sometimes more conservative, honestly, being in the public schools in a small town. Dennis Neill: Talk a little bit more about your early religious experience and how that's evolved over time. Any intersection with how you identify from a sexual orientation? Jeremy Simmons: Oh, that's a great question. So for me, in the way that I grew up, so all of my family was very religious and most of the people in my area were just very religious. So religion just dominated everything. And at one point for many years, next to a Southern Baptist Church, it was this like the second biggest building in town after the school. So it makes quite an impression. I was very Christian in a very traditional conservative way because I thought that that was there wasn't really any thought about it. It's like when you grow up in rural spaces a lot of times it's just like, everybody thinks that abortion is wrong and 4 �everybody thinks that homosexuality is wrong and everybody supports the troops and it's like they're sort of a far-right cultural line that blends with the religion and you just like 80- 90% of the people feel that way, or they pretend to. Yeah, so when I was quite young I was actually fairly conservative, which, looking back, it's kind of like okay, but then it's just kind of hard to integrate that old life with who I was later. But I also started making out with boys when I was a very young. Dennis Neill: Do you mind sharing what age you're talking about? Jeremy Simmons: Definitely by sixth grade, maybe by fifth grade range, roughly so. So even though everybody was far right religious, there was same-sex stuff and drinking. There were things that always happened. They were just very underground. You just had to be very, very careful about them, right? Dennis Neill: In that period, were you also trying to deal and date the opposite sex while you were in junior high, high school? How did you kind of blend those thoughts with your other aspects of your peers? Jeremy Simmons: That's another really great question and it's so hard to put into words. So, without, especially without doing like getting into psychobabble language, but cognitive dissonance is definitely a thing. I viewed myself as heterosexual and so I had girlfriends, but I didn't want to have sex with any of them and I did want to have sex with men and so, but it got to a certain point. as you get older, I think it's harder to even be gay undercover in some of those situations. I stopped doing anything with boys by probably 14, 15, definitely 16.. I remember by the time we were all driving age for sure, , like none of us were doing that anymore. It was considered like something that you just did as a kid and didn't talk about it anymore. So I just thought I genuinely thought for a while that if I just kept giving it a try, I'd meet the right girl. That's where my head was with all that. Dennis Neill: And did you go to like the proms or the other school events like that with… Jeremy Simmons: Very weirdly, yeah, I know, it was like when I talk to people who grew up, they want to talk to people my age or older. I come across a lot of parallels, or even younger people who grew up in rural areas still like who grew up 10, 20 years later than me. They're like: oh yeah, I mean, you've had to have a girlfriend. That was just a part of it. So also to, I was also kind of smaller. I wasn't super athletic. Not getting picked on meant being conservative and being straight and doing certain things. Dennis Neill: So did you have bullying experiences? Jeremy Simmons: Oh sure Dennis Neill: Over what reasons? Or what characteristics? Jeremy Simmons: I mean sometimes I would get called a faggot or or a sissy or whatever, something that, some type of equivalent of that. Some of that was 5 �probably more intentionally directed. And then some of it is just things that people say that are hurtful, like, if someone's slightly effeminate or smaller framed. They're gonna be compared to being girlish, separate from their gender identity or sexuality. I think it's just a jab, right, it's something that could be hurtful. And then some of it felt like more directed. I remember there was a lot of different experiences. Sometimes a lot of kids that were like one to three years older than us and that kind of range would try and isolate us and pick on us, and there was a one time where some older kids may just take our clothes off and I thought something like sexual assault was going to happen and it didn't, fortunately. That was one of the weirder things, but that's one of those things that happens when you get a bunch of other kids that are all supposed to be straight and hyper conservative. Dennis Neill: Were there any of these peers as you're growing up through high school that were more clearly out and comfortable with their different sexual orientations? Jeremy Simmons: No, not so. It depends on where. Probably in Bartlesville, but I didn't go to school there- very much, I think, and definitely not in the Weslyan school. Like you literally couldn't be gay and be at the Weslyan school, like that's a part of their rules. So it's like that wouldn't have been it, there wouldn't have been an option. At that time they only had school up through sixth grade and I quit before then. There are probably kids that that, looking back on it, seemed more effeminate or seem more physically intimate with the same-sex. That might have been something, but when you're young enough, that's all, that's okay. , there's a certain level like there's a little bit of bullying. But unless it gets like, unless you get really affectionate or something , like a little bit of that's okay. It's whenyou get into junior high kind of…Sixth grade and up is when I think people really start having more expectations. That was my experience anyway, and so everything started to get more codified, going to the dances and having regular girlfriends, you are serious enough to change exchange class rings, like there are certain rituals. It's like you needed to participate, and it was much easier for you if you did participate in that. So to not participate in that, even if you were straight and cisgendered and healthy, like, even if you were able, but like even if you didn't have a lot of bullying potential, if you removed yourself from the heterosexual norms, you definitely made yourself a target, so you had to either be- and some kids could do it. I remember the few people that did it- they had to have like a schtick, like they had to be the stoner with the motorcycle or something, like they had to have something, like you could be a black sheep in some, in some ways, but you couldn't just be like, oh, I'm just not gonna date me, buddy, right? Dennis Neill: Talk a little bit more about the process of when you finally decided what your orientation was, and how do you identify now that kind of that path that you followed in getting comfortable with how you currently identify? Jeremy Simmons: Right after high school, I decided that I was bisexual and I actually had sex with women, but very little and I didn't hate it. So bisexuality is somewhat applicable to me, I feel, but it was definitely for me. 6 �It was more of a transitional phase, and I hate saying that because a lot of people sort of pigeonhole bisexuality in general as that, and I very much don't feel that way. There's definitely bisexuality and pansexuality and all the other things are valid for me. I'm just very strongly attracted to other men. I had one girlfriend that was just like you're just not that into this, you just need to be gay. I spent two semesters briefly in Stillwater. I always forget about that in interviews and I was not very successful at school there because I was just interested in figuring out my sexuality and drinking, and doing whatever, so that actually I always forget that part that played. But even though it was just a couple of semesters, it played a huge role in my development because that's because I don't think I would have been able to be bisexual in Bartlesville or Ramona or wherever Copan, anywhere else around there. I mean like none of those places would have tolerated that. At the time in the 90s, I think a lot of people thought that that was just a bullshit thing, even amongst gay people and straight people. I think a lot of people were like, oh, there's just two genders and everybody's either straight or very gay. Everything seemed very bipolar in the 90s. You were just like: I'm this or that. Dennis Neill: Have you ever been married? Jeremy Simmons: No. Dennis Neill: What about any significant long-term relationships that you want to share. Jeremy Simmons: I dated a guy named Robert who's still saved in my phone as bastard ex-boyfriend for a couple of years in the 90s. He's actually a very dear friend. Once we figured out that we were supposed to be friends, everything was great. Um, that's my longest relationship. So when you asked earlier how I identify myself, I try not to do a lot of labels. I just I find it kind of constraining and tedious and then even when you get, even when you pick a label, then five years from now, like the culture and the language is going to change. It just seems like, oh, I'm just human. But the question is very valid, because I am much more into men than women. I feel comfortable as a male, and have always been perceived as more male than female. I feel like it's important to state this is where I come from, this is what I am. But I've had fun dressing up as women. I won by comp, by by crowd vote, at an 80s prom with the full canes. I won prom queen dressed up as Annie Lennox one year. So it's like I'm not really a drag queen all the time, but I feel very comfortable being, I felt comfortable being intimate with women. I feel comfortable being in women's clothes. But I feel more comfortable as a man and more comfortable being with other men. Dennis Neill: Do you consider your drag experience like performance art when you've been on stage, or have you actually been on stage? Jeremy Simmons: Nnot in a traditional way where I would get tips, no, It's been fun, something I've done a handful of times successfully and it was very interesting. 7 �To explain more about me to- I am a little bit of an experience junkie, so I like to fully understand things by immersing myself in them, without doing something like going really hardcore, then I don't feel like I've understood something. But a lot of times I'll do something like dress up in drag. I also was on stage for an S&M ball that my friends did and it's very fun, it's very engaging, but then I'm like: got it done, so, and I don't really know how to put that into words when it comes to…when you talk about sexual identity, because some people like, well, you're a sex addict and I was like absolutely not, like I haven't had sex since before COVID. Sexual sex is very low priority for me, right, but asexuality also doesn't feel right. It's like I say one thing and somebody's always like: oh, so you're asexual and I'm like: no, like I'm physically capable of having sex and I'm interested in maybe doing it again. , probably with a guy now in your network of friends. I have a huge network of friends. So that's one of the nice things about not dating or not having kids: it gives you a lot of time to follow personal interests and develop friend networks. So, yes, I have tons of friends here and I never have enough time to keep up with all of them, which is lovely. I have some that are much closer, but I don't know, when I was younger it was much more important for me to identify as gay and I think because- but I think a part of that was because I was told that that was wrong and because it was so much harder to do that in the 90s- be openly gay, especially if you were young and didn't have a ton of money. I think for people who have a lot of money or people who live in certain cities, it's always been easier for anything . A lot of that identity stuff was very important to me then, and dating was very important to me. Then the 2000s hit, I just got less interested in it and so every now and then I'll date and it just seems to run its course faster and it's done. Dennis Neill: Did you immediately get acclimated to the gay and lesbian community, like through the bars or other social activities? Jeremy Simmons: Yeah, Dennis Neill: And what was kind of some of your first experiences, going out and socializing like locations? Jeremy Simmons: Yes,in the 80s and 90s at a certain point it was okay to go out to after-hours clubs and and whatever your age was, and then I think maybe 92 to 94 range, before I moved here, they changed the city, passed law saying that they couldn't do that anymore. When I was a baby, like I remember- I remember going to Icon that did after-hour stuff and I didn't have my driver's license yet, so I was probably 15 at the oldest. And while that wasn't a gay club, it was a very gay-friendly place. Yeah, I remember the name, but where is the location? It used to be on Peoria, Brookside proper, close to where, I think it was in or near where Sharkey's is right now. Dennis Neill: Okay, so it was on that side [east] of the street? 8 �Jeremy Simmons: Yep, on the east side, definitely. Because at one time there was also what, Concessions? Dennis Neill: Concessions was across the street, very close there. Jeremy Simmons: Icon was great. And it was definitely, for somebody who was trying to figure themselves out, being in an environment like rural Washington County, and then coming there where there were people dressed in drag, and there was goth people, and there was ravers, and there was weird old bikers, and people were doing drugs all over the place. And so that was a very different world. It was very interesting. It was very fun for me. I was very young, so I was a little too timid to get too involved with anything, but it was definitely fun to be a fly on the wall at that time. While I didn't grow up here, I do remember things from the 80s and earlier 90s from here, because I've always lived near Tulsa. I remember coming out to some of those spaces that were definitely gayadjacent. And like many other men my age, around that time, I went to the Toolbox before I was 21, and that's the bar, which is now the Eagle on 3rd. I don't remember when, but it would have been, I don't know, before I moved here in 94. Dennis Neill: Did you live on your own initially? Jeremy Simmons: I had roommates for quite a while. Dennis Neill: Gay, straight, mix, were they your roommates? Jeremy Simmons: I mainly lived with a straight couple at first, but a lot of the crew that I was in were kind of ambiguous. I fell in with a crew of people that were more in the rave scene. I think that they were, and they were doing, there were tons of drugs all the time. I remember that much. I think there was a little bit of like vague bisexuality, but most of them were straight. Dennis Neill: How about once you left the high school environment and went on for post-secondary and then up to today, have you personally experienced any discrimination and prejudice with regard to your sexual orientation or how people perceive your sexual orientation or close friends that have experienced that? Jeremy Simmons: Oh, sure. I've actually experienced fairly little. Well, I feel like it's fairly little. Sometimes when I describe my life story to people who grew up in other progressive places, they're like, Oklahoma sounds like a shithole. But I also, once I was here, I was just like, I'm gay if you don't like it, fuck off. I made a lot of decisions based off of being safe as a gay person. I do remember one of my first apartments that I lived in by myself on Riverside, the guy made me put down an extra deposit because he said that if I got sick from AIDS, it was something like that I was more of a risk. I was like, but I don't even have HIV. But he was like, no, you're welcome here. It's just anybody with health problems or anybody that's risky has to put down an extra $250 deposit, which was a lot of money at the time. And I thought that was weird. I still think it's weird looking back on it. I was originally an employee at the Equality Center and then Hope split off, but then we still worked with the Equality Center forever. I was here one time when a guy 9 �came in and broke a lamp in the hallway and said he was going to something, shoot everybody. I don't know. That would have been…It was when we were on Brookside, and so it would have been after 95, but not a lot after 95. Dennis Neill: Yeah, we were up in there from about 96 to about 99. Jeremy Simmons: I was going to say maybe 97, roughly. So again, when people ask me to do the dates, it's kind of hard because I have to pick anchor events. I don't remember years well. So I know that it was after we'd phased out the 42nd Street Clinic and integrated into there, and that's when we were becoming more public, as OkEq was becoming more public about being an LGBT center. I think that even at the beginning, even when we were doing stuff, there was an effort to kind of have a little bit of a vague gray umbrella around a lot of the language that we used. And then when that center started on Brookside, that just wasn't working anymore. It's like, this is where gay people are. Dennis Neill: So was that your first experience with TOHR, or when we had the location there at the 41st apartment, were you ever involved in that small space that we had with the hotline and a little community? Jeremy Simmons: Yeah, so like I said, I think in 95 I came there for services, and then in 96 I came back for services early and started volunteering there. I had a traditional day-hour job, I think, at the time, and they had night clinics Mondays and Thursdays, which I think they still do to this day. So I was volunteering on Monday or Thursday. One of the night clinics, once a week I would come in and volunteer a few hours. Yeah, and to refresh my memory, so we had the space there at like 39th and Harvard on the east side, where the HIV testing center was like at 42nd and Harvard on the west side. Dennis Neill: So were you volunteering there? Jeremy Simmons: The 42nd, yeah, the clinic. So it's like, yeah, you go just past 41st and Harvard, take the right end on the west side there, go into that little clinic next to Tulsa Cares. We answered the gay, I think they called it the gay hotline at that time, something to that effect. That went into the clinic because we were staffed. And so I did get a very limited amount of training, and sometimes I would take calls for that. So it was usually clinic calls, but the other line came in too. And honestly, I didn't even know. It wasn't until then that I realized that the clinic was not a part, I knew that it was separate from Tulsa Cares. It wasn't just in a separate building, but it wasn't until then, later, I think it wasn't until 96 that I even really knew that there was an LGBT group that was in the space. Dennis Neill: Walk me through your early work history from the time you left college through the early years. Jeremy Simmons: Okay. Well, I did a lot of this and that. There wasn't a lot that was super interesting. When I was a teenager, I worked for my grandpa. He had a garage in Ramona, and so I did that for a while. But just surface stuff like pumping gas and 10 �bringing people parts, nothing too complicated. And then I got a job when I was, I think, 16 or 17, which sounds crazy now, but back then everybody just did that at Walmart in Bartlesville, and that was before Walmart became this massive sprawling show that it is today. So I did just miscellaneous stuff. I moved here, and I was doing Thrifty Car Rental which had their corporate headquarters here, and I think that they've been merged into Dollar, Avis, or some other group now, but they were a standalone car reservation place that was based in Tulsa for a long time, and I worked the reservation center for maybe a couple of years. And I was doing that while I was volunteering with OkEq. Dennis Neill: Is that when they relocated what is now Legacy Towers? Jeremy Simmons: Right, around 31st and Yale. And that was kind of interesting because I got to talk to people from all over the world. But it ran its course too. It was never like a permanent thing. And so then, in 96, I was volunteering with the Equality Center, not thinking about it, and they offered me a job, which kind of surprised me. I don't really know why. I think so and again, I just, , I grew up in a pretty small town and I come from pretty conservative background, and so I think people were like: you have to work and own your own business and and make yourself successful that way, or you have to go and work for a big company and make a lot of money. There's the concept of, I don't know, being a social service provider, , or an educator, or something like that it just wasn't really on my radar, which is weird because I was volunteering. So on the one hand, it was right because I was taking my time to help for free, so I had that in my nature. But then also I was like, oh, this isn't something people can do for a living, right, but it offered about the same pay as I was making Thrifty and I was like, yeah, fuck it. So it was kind of a lark, honestly, to start working at OkEq. Dennis Neill: Who actually hired you? Jeremy Simmons: Claudette Peterson. Dennis Neill: She was head of the testing program? Jeremy Simmons: Yes, right. Dennis Neill: Who was it before then? Jeremy Simmons: His first name was Jason, so Jason was doing the position that I filled. I don't know who was in charge before Claudette. Dennis Neill: I think it might have been Roger Morris. Jeremy Simmons: Yeah, that name is not familiar to me. Dennis Neill: Walk us through a little bit about your involvement there and then the transition process with regard to the testing clinic, as you recall, and the staffing changes that you recall. Jeremy Simmons: Sure, so it was also kind of interesting because I thought, because it's a medical job, and I thought, well, you have to be certified medically, but 11 �the state was doing finger stick testing. They were just doing a little finger stick, taking a little bit of blood and putting on a blotter card. Didn't have to be a phlebotomist, didn't have to be a nurse, didn't have to be anything. They trained you how to do that and it was surprisingly easy, and so I think that a lot of people were terrified coming in and so just making it feel normal and being nice to people was the biggest part of the job. That was the most important thing by far, and we had, I think, four employees at the time and that would shift quite a bit based off of state funding. When the state contracts would change, like the positions would come and go. It felt a little chaotic and it did for a long time, honestly, and it's a challenge for a lot of nonprofits, even as they get bigger. If the government funding is such a big chunk and then their priorities shift, then it's like, well, you have to be more of a counselor now, or you have to be more medical now, or you have to do group sessions now, and so you just kind of have to roll with whatever the grant says or get replaced. Fortunately they were pretty good…the state and OkEq and then later HOPE separately, were all pretty good about doing the trainings that were necessary because a lot of them weren't that complicated. They always kept it to where less medical or non-medical staff, non-counseling staff could do the jobs, because it just wouldn't have been an affordable otherwise, because we always needed a lot of free volunteers and low-paid staff or it just wouldn't have worked. Dennis Neill: When you did the finger stick at that time, was that still the requirement to send it off and wait two weeks. Jeremy Simmons: Right. Dennis Neill: What was your experience with that? Knowing folks were coming in getting tested. Did all of them, or a majority of them, come back and the experience you had when you were having to deliver a positive result? I mean, was there hope at that period of time? Jeremy Simmons: Not really. It was really really rough. It was hard getting people to come in, but if they came in they usually came back for their results. So if they were committed. We had something like 75- 80 percent return rate, which I always thought, oh, that's just so, so many people aren't getting their results. But at a lot of testing sites it was like 60 percent or less. So we actually had a good follow-up rate. I think a part of that was just being so openly gay-friendly and non-judgmental about drug use and sex workers and all the other things that people might get worked up about. We did have a lot of people come back in. It was quite, I remember, being from experiencing from the other side- like waiting for 10 to 14 days to get a result back was felt very stressful. While protease inhibitors came out in the 90s, their use and full understanding wasn't, wasn't in place yet. It wasn't until the early 2000s where that started to kind of shift. It took a little bit longer to get it fully ingrained- where we can have these long-term undetectable status kind of thing, a different ballgame. So then there really wasn't a lot that you could do. Getting tested really was more about hoping that you were negative,and then if you found out that you had HIV, then it was a little bit more about when am I going to need hospice care? How am I gonna live a fulfilling life for 20 years? It was more about okay, at a certain point this is going to catch up with me. 12 �Dennis Neill: The folks that did test positive, did you all have a referral list of doctors and counselors that you could provide to help them on their path? Jeremy Simmons: Sort of. There were always people providing services here, but not a lot, and it if you didn't have the right health insurance, it could be very difficult to get into the right people. I remember early on there was a guy named Jeffrey BealI'm sure you remember Dr. Beal- who was like I'm gonna make a clinic that focuses on HIV care and does a good job of it and it's gay, affirming and doesn't matter if people do some drugs or have hep C to or any that like. But a lot of places wouldn't take anybody with HIV. Or if they would, they wouldn't take any other problems, like if you had hep C at the same time or if you couldn't pass a drug test or if you didn't have good insurance or any number of things, because it was already kind of a stretch for them to deal with HIV. So we had some resources. They were few and far between and some of the ones that did it, like Dr. Beal, could quickly get booked up. So, yes, technically, there were resources, but for many people if you lived outside of Tulsa, if you didn't have health insurance, if you didn't have disposable income, if you had a comorbidity, you weren't really going to get care or very good care. Dennis Neill: In addition to Dr. Beal, did you work closely with Ted, his partner, who was providing counseling services. Jeremy Simmons: Fortunately, most of our test results were negative. When we would get a positive test result, people handled that wildly differently. That case where you just felt like, wow, this is gonna be a really tough case, both for you emotionally as well. Sure. So there are some people who like, under underneath it all, have a have a lot of cynicism or cynicism or optimism about life, and so this was definitely a job that taught me a lot about that. Because some people who have really terrible circumstances already and then we're getting HIV positive result, we're like, well, this is a hassle, we're gonna navigate it as best we can. And then some people- it was just all they could think about was how they were going to die. it was very clear, they were like, oh, and also some people wouldn't go into care because then they couldn't let anybody know is how they felt. Even if they had health insurance and even if they lived in Tulsa and had disposable income and didn't have a comorbidity, they might have been so closeted about their sexuality and in some cases, even if they were openly gay and had everything going for them, they felt like they could not let anyone know they had HIV or they would be shunned at the bar or they might be kicked out of an apartment or lose access to a kid or lose a job, which are things that definitely did happen to people. Not extremely often, but regularly, so the fear of them happening was much bigger than the actuality, but they were things that regularly occurred and so it made it made it kind of difficult. Trying to get people into counseling was always great. Some people would spiral and just party and not go to the doctor and their health conditions and overall life would get much, much worse. So not suicide by direct action, but definitely like, well, if I have five more years, I'm just going to enjoy it. 13 �Dennis Neill: How would you compare the percent, you said, fortunately, it was quite low on the positive side in the 90s. How does that compare with today, would you say, the more recent pattern? Jeremy Simmons: It's definitely shifted way down. There was a lot of things happening. It's just, it's a very different, from a public health perspective, communicable disease perspective, it's a very different game now. So back then, there weren't great treatments, like you could get on AZT and maybe combine that with something else, maybe get off and on AZT. There were different things that you could do. And it was sort of the chemotherapy approach. We're just like, hey, we're going to bombard your system with a bunch of toxicity that's going to kill the HIV more than it kills your healthy tissue, but it's definitely going to kill your healthy tissue. So you're going to get sick at a certain point if you stay on AZT or any of these other antivirals at high doses enough to actually help you. It was kind of a gamble. People had to just do their best with it. Now, not only are people living longer, but their health outcomes are much better and they're much less likely to transmit. So we had a lot of people who would get very sick from HIV or very sick from the medications or some of both and try and balance that back and forth. But meanwhile, they were often having a high viral load or a moderate viral load. And so their long-term health outcomes were never going to be great and they were highly infectious to other people. While not everybody fully understood that at the time, enough people understood it. You were shunned if you had HIV was often the case, but not by everyone. It didn't bother me, because I'm in the office around it all the time. But I knew that I was not the norm. There was so much fear among so many gay men that they might get it too. And even if you weren't worried about directly having sexual or blood contact with somebody, I just think a lot of, a lot of gay men looked at other gay men as, oh, well, they're going to get sick soon, sooner rather than later, , and they are potentially infectious. So we have to be more careful around them. There was, even amongst ourselves, I think there was a lot of people, there was a lot of, I think, serosorting is a term I've heard, where it was like there were groups of HIV positive men within gay men that were still, that would still hang out and have community. Which is why places like we talked about earlier, like Our House, were much more relevant at that time. But it's such a different thing now. We would often get 5% or higher HIV rates. Still over 90% of our test results were coming back negative pretty regularly. That would fluctuate a little bit month to month or year to year. But oh, when you looked at year long stretches and multi-year long stretches, it was pretty consistently under 10%, sometimes less than 5%. Now, as hope evolved and even got bigger and started testing more people, like sometimes the positivity rate would be less than 3%, less than 2%. You see a lot less of it. And the biggest part of that is the viral load being much more manageable means that people aren't going to accidentally give it to other people. 14 �Dennis Neill: I know there was an effort at one point in time to really reach out to the African American community with regard to testing. There was actually an organization that partnered with testing to reach out to the African American community. Were you part of that effort? Do you remember the special grants I think that organization received? Jeremy Simmons: I partnered with them. So there was, Derek Davis was very involved, Donald Rose. And this is that thing about human memory. Tall guy, what was his name? Dennis Neill: FUSO [Friends in Unity Social Organization] was the name. Jeremy Simmons: The interesting thing is we just always called it FUSO. They never spelled it out, so like that was the incorporated name. And they at one point they- Renfro was also a guy who was very active with them and I worked with [R.F.] Renfro and then he died, which was one of the…sorry, I'm usually very nonemotional these things, but every now and then he was a very sweet person and not that…that sounds like a shitty thing to say, like no one deserves to die from something so painful. He was involved with this group. He was so sweet and he was so bright and was so healthy and then, like a year, he was gone. Sorry, that's one of the ones that's always still really hard for me to talk about. Dennis Neill: He was not only part of that organization but a close friend as well? Jeremy Simmons: He was a friend, yes, and I knew him a lot better than many of the others and worked with him. It was very surreal, I think, when it came to the clients and I knew people in real life who had HIV too. I just had enough of a wall built up where I could still be engaged with then and care about them. I think that the grant, the process kind of fell away. He was a guiding force behind it, Derek [Davis] was very engaged, I think, Donald, and was as well…and I'm- I'm sorry I'm blanking on that, still blanking on the guy. I can see his face and he's a very tall and he would come up here once in a while. The way I understand it, it's just a lot of those grants, but a lot of those things fluctuate, and so sometimes too- I'm trying to say this politically correct- sometimes the funding sources change so radically that it it it becomes apparent that either someone doesn't know what the fuck they're doing or they're intentionally sabotaging the programs , and it can be hard to tell, because if we're talking about stuff that can start at the federal level and can have lots of intermediaries. For example, when we we formed HOPE as a separate breakaway, in part because state legislators were going after LGBT organizations and OkEq wasn't 100% doing something right on the financials and it was something that a lot of nonprofits would do- shell games with money, but it was also something that if someone wanted to pull the funds, they could do it right. While it was something that a lot of people did and it wasn't a problem, when you live in a place like Oklahoma, when someone goes on the warpath against you, it's just like okay. But even when we did everything we were supposed to do and became a health organization that focused on gay services instead of a gay organization, so we wouldn't get as much grief- the CDC cut funding to the whole state for all HIV programs because the state was just fucking things up so much. 15 �There's a lot of at state and federal levels and I think that I don't want to speak too much for a few. Because I knew them well and I love Renfro and I still keep up a little bit with Derek and Donald…I don't know all of the details there- they were there and it was great to see them being there. And when we phased out of the 42nd office, we moved over and had two or three offices were kind of designated to the HOPE wing or that. That's not what they called it then. They called it just something else simple like the HIV Testing Clinic or the HIV Services or something more generic like that. And then FUSO had a small office in the Equality Center on Brookside. Briefly. Dennis Neill: Talk a little bit more about that transition from 1998 when it became its own nonprofit. How did that whole process, and then when you felt like the ship was getting righted, as far as the relationship with the funders like the state and so on. And the various locations that you've experienced in HOPE testing. Jeremy Simmons: So, as I mentioned, we had some state funders come to us and said, hey, the state is going after anything that's too drug-friendly, anything that's too gay-friendly, and they're not going to give you money next year, probably. If you stay here, they also might audit you and they might end - was happening to an Oklahoma City agency that got shut down right after that. So, I felt like that was pretty sage advice. Dennis Neill: Do you remember the name of the Oklahoma City organization? They started something called the AIDS Support Program. Jeremy Simmons: It was something that hadn't been around forever and then went away. I can't remember it. And they had, because they were a part of an sort of an LGBT organization, someone there, an employee, had promoted some kind of material from NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. And that was just like the grossest, dumbest thing, They were very, like at their core, that group, it's kind of like when you talk to certain people, there's like the public pitch, but at their core, they were very much about grooming and having sex with very young, under 18 people. That was a core part of that NAMBLA group. So it's like, you don't touch them. You don't have to listen to their pitch too much and you kind of dig into what's like what's going on. That's what did them in. I don't even know that they were necessarily promoting something that would have been child molesting oriented. They just did something with that group. At the time, I remember having this conversation with Nancy McDonald and I was kind of against her, but then as I looked back on it, because I wanted to do a leather S&M focused HIV group and just call it what it was. And she was like, no, that's not smart. And I was like, well, okay. That would not have been good. There's just certain things you can't do here or you're gonna get on somebody's radar. That's how it was in the nineties. I think this was actually before we split away from OkEq. I don't remember exactly. I just remember she was one of the ones and I didn't know her very well and I always liked her and respected her, but we, she was very, very cautious compared to what I wanted to do. In retrospect though, I get it. It's one of those things where I was like, I'm happy to say that I would have made the wrong decision on that call. 16 �There’s just certain things you just couldn't do without raising too many red flags and then the next thing , and they're going to find a way. First they'll audit you and then if you're not doing everything right, which many nonprofits weren't in the eighties and nineties, when you really look into it… like we were on a reimbursement contract, not a grant saying we could spend whatever. So we had to use the money and then get reimbursed. If you didn't do it in just the right way, if you did it and people would be like, oh well, but we have to pay the lights and so we're gonna do this with that, then we'll catch up and pay that. At the end of the year, would it all work out? Sure. But you can't, when you're dealing with the Feds in general or when you're dealing with hostile state-level people, you can't shell game with the money at all. Or you can maybe for a year or five years or ten years, like you can for a while. But at some point they're gonna catch you and be like, no, no, you didn't do this exactly right according to this contract. And so now we're gonna pull all your funds and mark you as someone who can't be funded again. Dennis Neill: So in the current day is the HOPE deal where it's a reimbursement type of process as opposed to…. Jeremy Simmons: as opposed to a straight grant? Yep. So that HIV money, ever since I've been involved since 96, whether it was for anybody, like OkEq. HOPE, Tulsa Cares, anybody, whether it's CDC-based, HRSA-based, this is what you do. They'll sometimes make exceptions if you can deal with them directly federally. So there are some exceptions. But most people get reimbursed through the state as an intermediary. And the state's like, you have to do all these things. You have to show us that you've paid for it, and then we'll reimburse you. If you get really lucky, even if you're doing everything right, you're jumping through all the hoops, and you're spending all the money exactly right, and going to all that work, something like COVID will come along. They just won't pay you for five months. Doing that work can be really tough on the people at the top trying to figure out the money. It is challenging for everybody. It always cracks me up when people want to start nonprofits. And they're like, well, we'll get government money. And I'm like, no. You have to have so much liability insurance before certain government agencies will even want to touch you. And that's cost prohibitive to a lot of places. It's like there's just all these big things you have to have in place. And most of them now require annual audits. And if not annual, you will, at least every second or third year, have a serious, deep audit. You have to have all your time ducks in a row, because even trying to do the right thing. We got better as we split away, we were like, OK, we're going to be more legit about money. We still made mistakes. We got better over time. There's always gray areas. , they can come in and be like, well, you're not separating the gloves that you bought from the state health department money from the gloves you're buying for this. And so now you're going to have to pay us back for these gloves, because we can't prove by a visual check that you're the blah, blah, blah. 17 �But we're using all the free gloves you give us, and then we're spending our own money buying other gloves on top of that. Does that not show you that we're using all of the gloves? Anyway, any state or federal agency, if they want to cause problems for you, they can come in and say, oh, well, you didn't do this exactly right. And sometimes it's not even in the contract, which is the most frustrating. , when it's like, OK, we did everything according to the contract. I'm like, well, but this is still an expectation. Dennis Neill: Did you say it was 96 when you first started with the testing? Do you recall what month you started with testing? Jeremy Simmons: I became an employee in the summer. I believe it was July 1st. Because at that point, the state's contract, their annual calendar started something in the summer, June 1st, July 1st, August 1st, something like that. Dennis Neill: And was it HOPE at that point in time? Jeremy Simmons: It was. Dennis Neill: Can you tell us what it was and how that transitioned? Jeremy Simmons: So when we were doing it at first, while Claudette was still here, when we would answer the phone, I would just say it was something very generic but plain, like HIV Testing Clinic, or something really just direct. I don't remember what it was that we said. I don't think anybody was too uptight about it at the time. But we weren't like, thanks for calling the Equality Center, or thanks for calling OkEq, or thanks for calling whatever. It wasn't about branding or anything. It was just like, you've called. Because in part, that building we were in was separate, and it was literally only for… When the people came in for the gay hotline, it rang on a different line. So we needed to answer that as like something, Oklahoma gay hotline, or something. We might have used OkEq as part of that, or TOHR. For a long time. It wasn't until it was not until probably mid-97 to late 97 that I think, we started getting warnings that the state was gonna be auditing people that weren't doing things right. The state was coming for gay dollars. At a certain point before we left, we were like, okay, we need to differentiate ourselves. To be perfectly honest, many of us that were doing the actual work were like, oh yeah, we're gonna have to become a separate financial institution, because this thing where- and it didn't happen all the time, but occasionally we wouldn't get paid or we would have to sit on mileage reimbursements and we weren't making a lot of money. And that's the one sure way to piss your employees off and be like, hey, we actually have to do this stuff with the money instead. So your paychecks gonna be next week, or we're gonna give you a paycheck but you need to sit on it for eight more days, or whatever. And we started calling ourselves HOPE right before we left, but I don't remember when. Dennis Neill: Do you know how that name came about or who created… 18 �Jeremy Simmons: That's a good question, because and- and I looked back- when we did a history project thing and I was like I think I incorporated us both times and Ithere's three people that incorporated HOPE. It was originally HIV outreach, prevention education incorporated and then about a year and a half later we changed it to health outreach, prevention, education. And I remember much more vividly the second conversation because there was this huge debate about whether we were going to be an HIV specific organization or not and branch out into Hep C services and etc. At the beginning I don't recall, but I and Christy Frisbee and Johnny Eilert's were the three people that incorporated the organization as HIV Outreach. So I was involved. I was like oh, yeah, that's my signature, so it is interesting what you kind of remember and kind of don't. But I don't remember a lot of conversation about it. I think for me at the beginning part I was like this was also the 90s, was a different time and I was much younger and I think at the time I was like branding, shmanding, Now I have much, I have much more appreciation for it, but at the time I was like oh, yeah, sure, yeah, we'll call it the this. It was like we have to keep the services going and if we don't, I think if we don't break away, they're gonna come after OkEq, sorry, TOHR. It's hard for me to use that name for some reason, even though I used it, and so the funny thing is technically I was an employee of TOHR . I was paid from Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights, so I saw that name all the time. It's just merged, now OkEq. There was definitely a desperation. There was a lot of board discussion and some of it got quite heated because a lot of people felt like no, no, no, this is just blustering, which I don't think was true, but also I get it. It's like sure somebody, some random people- the state- say this and they're like: have them come to the meeting. No, that's not how it works. They're telling us this as a favor because they like us and they want the program to keep going, and they're seeing what's happening in Oklahoma City and it's duh, it's like Tulsa's gonna be next. That's what a lot of times the state people do. They start in Oklahoma City and then, if they have enough steam and need more attention or whatever, then they're just like: oh yeah, let's go after those guys in Tulsa and Lawton and Bartlesville, wherever else. Once we finally agreed to split apart, we stayed at the old building for a while and then we ended up getting another building space that was next door to Tulsa Cares again, and that was on Admiral, just a little bit east of Harvard. Dennis Neill: You were in the same structure? Jeremy Simmons: Right. For many years they had their main building and then there was a small building next door that was separated and we were there. They originally started off the model that they had when at the 42nd and Harvard complex, where they were like we're gonna be a home for a dozen organizations or more, so like the Names Project had like a, or Shanti had like a little teeny, tiny office, baby office there for a little bit. And then who else? There were other groups that had spaces there and we were one of them. We were definitely the second largest because of our staffing size and our funding capacities. RAIN [Regional AIDS 19 �Interfaith Network] was there for a little bit before they had their own thing. So it was supposed to be sort of like a coalition space. But pretty quickly, it became obvious that Tulsa Cares was getting the bulk of the money and that HOPE was getting another big chunk of money and everybody else was like 10% or less of what we were. The staffing and the client needs were overwhelmingly Tulsa Cares and secondarily HOPE. Over time, everything else, a lot of the other smaller organizations kind of merged into Tulsa Cares or finally moved out and got their own spaces. We were there for a while. Dennis Neill: Can you remember the street address? Jeremy Simmons: I think it's 3540 East Admiral Street. It's the Admiral that's north. I can see it always and there's a big church that was on the other side of the street and the building's still there and it looks almost identical to how it looked. I'm not sure if it's even being used right now. Blue and white. Tulsa Cares also started doing group meals at that time. IT started kind of changing what they were a little bit, I think. It was still good for us to have a separate space because people were just so terrified still of getting tested and I think they wanted like the least possible human interaction, the most private parking lot just as possible. We were there for three years to five years. I know that's a very broad term. I don't know exactly how long we were there. Then Tulsa Cares just kept growing and growing and growing and we were slowly growing and we were definitely, so we became the last two. All the other places weren't there anymore. And at a certain point Tulsa Cares was like, hey, we need to have a pantry and we need to expand these food services and we just cannot do this without a lot of extra physical space so you guys are going to need to go. And that was kind of debated and I think my director at the time thought that it wasn't going to happen and it ended up happening though. Christy Fresbee and I were the only two people that were incorporators on both times that we did the name change. We needed space, we had a lot of money for staffing and medical services but we were having a really hard time getting money for a facility and that's just a much, rent or owning is just its own thing. And Community of Hope on 25th and Yale was kind enough to let us stay there for like a year and a half to two years as a temporary transitional space. Then we moved, 3540 might be the 31st Street location. Then we moved to 31st Street which I think was a 3540 location. So that was on 31st a little bit east of Harvard. And we were there for about a decade. That was our longest location. Then we moved to a shopping center for a year and a half around 51st and Harvard and then Hope bought its final location that it owns now that's closer to 51st and Yale. Dennis Neill: When did you decide to leave HOPE and what are you up to now? Jeremy Simmons: I love being at Starlight, I think, but there was a thing going around for volunteer requests from OkEq for Pride and I thought about doing it but I kind of enjoy taking a break from HOPE and being distanced from that and being in some of those same spaces people just walk up and expect me to do HOPE stuff and so I was like I mean I think I just need to be a little further away. 20 �Dennis Neill: I was thinking maybe the late 80s early 90s Starlight was a gay bar but I could be wrong about that. Jeremy Simmons: Forever before it was Starlight it was the Chatterbox which was definitely not a gay bar but yes back in the 80s and 90s remember how we talked earlier about there was this golden time for teenagers where you could be wherever there was an after-hours thing. One of the names was The Factory. It was called many different things and so I went there as a little teenager but you had to wait until 1:45 A.M. or 2:15 or whatever because they made money as a bar and then reopened back up and sold non-alcoholic beverages. So yes, that was definitely... In different incarnations, a more overtly gay space or a kind of gay friendly space. But many of the after-hours places were…It was kind of Wild West compared to what it's like now. There's so many liquor laws now and there's so many ABLE Commission and police…there's just so many guidelines and so many people watching what you do now. Back then it was just like, yeah, someone's coming out of the bathroom with coke on their face, who cares? There's this wild thinking of that. As a teenager, like having access to that world, it felt like when people say it wasn't Studio 54, but when I see stuff like that for Manhattan, I was just like I get that general vibe. I don't know how it happens, but there's like you pay off the cops or you stay off their radar long enough or something , and it's just like people were just like whatever, and so there was more of that at those places. It was more of that live and let live, yeah, kind of a thing. Even the straight people were like, whatever, everybody's doing their own thing Dennis Neill: Switching a little bit to more kind of the broader community you're in, your involvement, advocacy, social activities and particularly your board service with OkEq. Jeremy Simmons: There was a little bit of confusion and hostility when HOPE split away from OkEq. I think it was pretty minimal and it was understandable. It's like okay. There was a little brief period of detente, but I think within several months, definitely within a year, there was conversations about us doing testing on Saturdays at the Equality Center. So we pretty quickly moved past whatever that was, and and started doing regular services here, in part to sort of help- and I've always loved it here- but in part also to sort of seem at that bridge between HOPEand OkEq. I became a board member and I became a committee member. I don't know exactly what they called it, it was something like the rebranding committee, so it was for conversations around the name change and logo, and so I was just… I was on a committee of people, some some board members, but a lot of other just community members, and so I did that and really loved it. It was a lot of fun- and then got on the general board and then the executive committee of the board. Again, I'm terrible with years, but I was on the executive committee as we moved into this building. Dennis Neill: So we moved in 2007. Jeremy Simmons: Okay, I knew it was after the millennia, but I couldn't, but it's just like. That's definitely one of those. I have a hard time anchoring it to another event. 21 �When I was on the committee, we were still in that shopping center on the 41st Street. Dennis Neill: You probably had what- Mark Bonney and Laura BelmonteJeremy Simmons: Yep, yep, I was much more involved with Laura because she was on. …She was very involved. Mark, I believe, was the president, but she was on the committee that brought me in, so I was much more involved with her, and then she became president at a certain point, yeah, and so I always remember being much more involved with her and, while she's on a separate board somewhat, I was more involved with Sue Welch occasionally for other things. I still, even though I'm with on the board, I'm still not a hundred percent sure what the different duties are between the two, like the, the two boards, just to be honest with…the Board of Trustees. I get it in general, but especially as we moved into the building, there was a lot of oh, we want to do this, we want to do that, and there was just like there was….It was very interesting trying to sort of figure all that out still is, because it's like everybody has so many good intentions and so many opinions and so many preferences, right, and so it's hard coordinating that. I- and it's something that I learned a lot from here- and I was like, okay, and I actually heard someone else say this from another LGBT group in another city- and they're like, well, but it's different, not that other marginalized communities or individual communities don't have problems also, but like a lot of immigrant families, a lot of black Americans, a lot of indigenous Americans….A lot of groups are raised within their own communities. So there are, generally speaking, a lot more acceptable norms and like expectations of what is gonna happen, whereas we come from every larger and smaller community. So I think it makes it even harder to get a lot of consensus. We have men and women and transgender people, we have all races, all regions, all socio-economic background, , and so there's all religions. There's not like an overarching norm, aside from maybe being an American, which is a million different things. I think it's just, I think it's common at LGBT centers, to make it harder to get true consensus because there's just so many different drives. Dennis Neill: HOPE in a way, it's certainly been on the forefront of advocacy with its education and outreach, so you've been part of that for decades. Are there other aspects of our community where you felt like you've taken on an advocacy role or in the future, you want to get more involved as you transition and any thoughts about our community at large as its transitioned over the years, the good and the bad. Jeremy Simmons: Oh, that's a really big one. I've worked with several different groups. I worked with the American Red Cross doing HIV education and education around blood-borne pathogens, and it was interesting working within a large bureaucratic, large system and trying to sort of make it be not scared of HIV, to be more open to LGBT. That's not my strength is. I enjoy doing it, but I think I need more immediate results. So I've always dealt with probably smaller groups. I volunteered for a while off and on with the Nightingale Theater and that was fun before the theater was here. There's a lot of small venues here in Tulsa, but before there was a theater here, Nightingale is one of those few spaces where you could do some really sexually 22 �explicit material, thematically or overtly, like, and so they did like a gay spin on the Dukes of Hazzard, stuff like that- that just there wasn't a place for it. Now we have an option here as well, which is great. So that was fun. I was one of the founding board members with the Equality Network, which picked up some steam but then eventually merged with Cimarron Alliance to become Freedom Oklahoma. I think it might have been called something else at first, but now it's Freedom Oklahoma, I believe. I've not kept up with them super well. They invited us to come and I spoke to some state senators about HIV laws and changing them, and that feels good in the moment. It's interesting to do. But also it's like four senators showed up- what I mean, and so- and they were mostly women from progressive women from Oklahoma City who were gonna vote with us anyway. Sometimes at the state level, it even it feels it can feel a little daunting. But because of that, I think that groups like OkEq and Freedom Oklahoma need to continue the pressure because- and sometimes it's just luck, right, sometimes things just line up in ways you can't expect, like we got law enforcement to to get on board with decriminalizing needles to a degree, and that's not the group that I would have thought would have supported us, but they're the groups getting stuck when they do frisking right. Jeremy Simmons: Sometimes something comes from a place , and so it's like, oh, legislators will listen to them, in conjunction with other community groups and public health people, to to maybe decriminalize this. So we understand it's like: no, we need cleaner needles so that everyone, not just the people that are using, but everybodyhas fewer blood-borne pathogens that they have to worry about. So there definitely needs to keep happening. That's harder for me to be engaged with personally. As I've gotten older, as I've lived and been an American, America has gotten overwhelmingly more gay-friendly and Oklahoma has not. There's pockets, in Tulsa and Oklahoma City that are way more gay-friendly. But I just think everybody understands that those are little isolated oases. Dennis Neill: Now that you're kind of free from HOPE, that stability, but also that confinement of being in that one job, do you still feel like you're anchored in Tulsa, or are you anxious to experiment, go other places? Jeremy Simmons: I'm open to see where the future takes me. Some friends of mine moved to Spain recently, and they're making a big pitch for me to come to Spain with them. Which sounds kind of ridiculous, but then also I'm like, there's certain skills like bartending that are kind of universal. It's easier to be a bartender in places like Spain than it is to be a phlebotomist. So, maybe. We'll see. I really like being here, though. I love... when I came here, I just knew almost no one. I had tons of casual acquaintances at first. And building up all these deep friendships and seeing these nonprofits and these cool, unique little businesses thrive here, and being able to even just support them a little bit in some way, has been really lovely. I really love Tulsa. So, I'm very open to anything now. I don't feel... So, forever, I did feel like... And I didn't fully understand this until I left, but I felt like I had to stay. 23 �And I don't really know why, because everybody else left a long time ago from the 90s, but I felt like I had to keep HOPE going. I personally had to make sure that HOPE was going, which is dumb. Everybody eventually ages out. Everybody dies, if nothing else. And then everybody gets tired. Like, when you're helping people... I was a full-time employee for 24 years. And I loved it for a lot of that. And then, towards the end, I didn't love it anymore. I think sometimes when you're helping people, you have to make a choice to go do something else that's more fun or go do something else that makes more money for a while. I'm not sure. I'm sure there are the Mother Teresa types that can do it indefinitely. But I'm like, I need to... so, whatever I'm doing in the future, for the latter part of my life, I need to get paid more per hour than what I was at HOPE, or having more fun than what I was getting at HOPE towards the end. It has to be at least one of those two things. Preferably both. Everybody wants that job, and that's hard to find. But I did feel very anchored to HOPE. I was just like, we are one and the same. To the point that I'm not sure it was super healthy, honestly. Dennis Neill: Well, you provide us with a valuable history about HOPE, AIDS, and your engagement. Are there any final comments you want to make as we bring the interview to conclusion? Jeremy Simmons: While the current federal administration is abysmal, I think this is some dying last gasps of some outmoded thinking. And so while things feel very dark right now, I think things are about to get much better in the next several years. And here, and everywhere else in the United States. And I really appreciate everybody who's been involved with HOPE, and OkEq, and all the other groups. Tulsa Cares, Our House, all the other LGBT groups, all the other HIV and Hep C and harm reduction groups like SHOTS. I just love that I know so many people that are doing so much great work. And it keeps me... While I personally need a break from it, I love getting on social media. I love showing up to the Equality Center. I love going to a gala randomly somewhere and seeing all of the support that Tulsa still has to give. So, I think the future's going to be great. And I appreciate y'all taking some time with me. And I appreciate everybody who's interested enough in this to listen to it. And just keep reminding yourself that even though things look very... feel very heavy right now, this is temporary. It will shift back. Dennis Neill: Jeremy, thank you so much. This is an invaluable interview. And we look forward to your continued advocacy in our community. Thank you very much. Jeremy Simmons: Thank you. 24 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2026] Jeremy Simmons Interview Description An account of the resource Jeremy Simmons shares his journey of self-discovery and advocacy within the LGBTQ+ community. Growing up in a conservative, religious environment, he navigated the complexities of his sexual identity while facing societal expectations and bullying. His experiences shaped his commitment to community engagement and HIV awareness, leading his long-time involvement first as a volunteer and then 30 years as an HIV educator and tester with Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights and then HOPE. Jeremy reflects on the challenges of nonprofit management and expresses hope for the future of the LGBTQ+ community, emphasizing the importance of continued advocacy and support. Subject The topic of the resource Jeremy Simmons Oral History Project Interview from January 21, 2026 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jeremy Simmons, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January 21, 2026 2026 AIDS/HIV AIDS/HIV education Dennis Neill Dennis R. Neill HIV HIV Education HIV Outreach Education Program HIV Outreach Education Program (HOPE) HIV/AIDs HIV/AIDs outreach HOPE interview Jeremy Simmons OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript TOHR transcript Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) video Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2005] Trish Spurgin Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 18, 2005 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Laura Belmonte on November 18, 2005. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Trish was born in Tulsa in 1941. [Editor’s note – full name was Agnes Patricia “Trish” Spurgin. She passed away in Tulsa on June 27, 2021.] She attended Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. In 1959, she experienced her first same- sex relationship while in college. She returned to Tulsa and attended the University of Tulsa. Trish worked in accounting and collections. Regarding the Tulsa lesbian scene, she discussed the bar life, social activities and the frequent police harassment. She discussed her interactions with her gay brother and observations about lesbians and gay men and her exposure to Tulsa Oklahomans for Equality. Subject The topic of the resource Trish Spurgin Oral History Interview from November 18, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Trish Spurgin, Laura Belmonte, Jensen Bridges, Matthew D. Williams, Dennis Neill 2005 Agnes Patricia "Trish" Spurgin Agnes Patricia Spurgin Agnes Patricia Trish Spurgin available at Center Dennis Neill Dennis R. Neill interview Jensen Bridges Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte lesbian Matthew D. Williams Matthew Williams OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript police harassment TOHR transcript Trish Spurgin TU Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) University of Tulsa video Western College for Women in Oxford Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2020] Jonathan Stanley Interview Subject The topic of the resource Jonathan Stanley Oral History Project Interview from July 14, 2020 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Morgan Allen and Fraser Kaster on July 14, 2020. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Jonathan discusses his experiences with the Tulsa gay scene and his involvement with Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jonathan Stanley, Morgan Allen, Fraser Kaster, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 14, 2020 2020 available at Center Fraser Kastner interview Jonathan Stanley Morgan Allen OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript TOHR transcript Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) video https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/006a3e291caac95522a9871ee0e6dd1d.mp4 dda5c960f90098b8d9d20d55850689d7 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/887e542a2807ed6edc3a72e264cd9f06.pdf e9d6b264782cd101eac600767ffbce33 PDF Text Text 1 Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Jose Vega Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins Date: May 22, 2026 Transcribed and Edited By: Dennis Neill using Reduct.Video AI, May 25, 2026 Restrictions: Interviewee requested: N/A Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 historyproject@okeq.org �2 About Jose Vega: Summary Join us for an inspiring interview with José Emanuel Vega, a dedicated LGBTQ+ advocate from Tulsa, Oklahoma, now making a difference in California. He shares his powerful story of overcoming trauma, fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, serving as Program Director and Deputy Director at Oklahomans for Equality, and building community through advocacy, education, and leadership. Keywords LGBTQ+ advocacy, Tulsa, California, trauma, resilience, community building, public health, HIV prevention, leadership, immigration Key Topics José Vega's childhood and family background Experiences with child abuse and conversion therapy Journey of coming out and self-acceptance Advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights and immigrant communities Impact of hate crimes and community response Leadership in Oklahoma and California Innovative programs like rainbow crosswalks and chapters International perspectives on LGBTQ+ issues and human rights Future goals for community empowerment and education �3 Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 02:21 Childhood and Family Dynamics 12:23 Experiences with Conversion Therapy 21:36 Struggles with Identity and Survival 30:06 Education and Career Path 34:39 Professional Growth and Advocacy 38:00 Finding Stability and Community 44:52 Confronting Discrimination in Safe Spaces 50:52 Advocacy and Leadership in the LGBTQ Community 57:56 Reconnecting with Family and Personal Growth 01:05:05 Navigating Hate Crimes and Advocacy for Protection 01:09:10 Handling Hate Crimes and Community Safety 01:11:58 Advocacy and Activism in the LGBTQ Community 01:15:07 Building Support Networks and Chapters 01:20:07 International Perspectives on LGBTQ Rights 01:25:07 Navigating Divisive Issues in the LGBTQ Community 01:29:54 Career Growth and Community Impact 01:34:54 Education and Public Health Initiatives 01:40:03 Inspiring Future Generations of Activists Jose Vega Oral History Interview May 22, 2026 Toby Jenkins: Good afternoon, and welcome to Oklahomans for Equality. We're at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is May 22nd, 2026. It's a beautiful Friday afternoon. We're here in the Joe and Nancy McDonald Rainbow Library with a history project interview. And today, our special guest, we all call him Jose, but will you give us your name the way you say it? Jose Vega: Jose Emanuel Vega. Toby Jenkins: Very good. And Jose, where do you live presently? Jose Vega: Yeah, I currently live in Sacramento, California. �4 Toby Jenkins: Where were you born and where are you from? Jose Vega: Yeah, I'm originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Family is from Mexico, Michoacan, Uruapan. And I was born and raised in Oklahoma. And I moved away from Oklahoma in October 2020. But it'll always be home for me. Toby Jenkins: And so you moved, where were you working when you left Tulsa? Jose Vega: I was at Oklahomans for Equality, and then I had the opportunity to move to Sacramento, California for the Sacramento LGBT Community Center there and work as Director of Health Services and Programs. And it was in the middle of COVID. Toby Jenkins: Right, and you were the Deputy Director here at the Oklahomans for Equality. Jose Vega: Yes. Toby Jenkins: All right, so we're gonna have what we call, you've heard of bisexual interviews. This is a bicoastal interview. We're gonna have a West Coast gay who comes back to the heartland, and we're gonna hear Jose's story. So today, our interviewing panel is Dennis Neill, the founder of Oklahomans for Equality, Mary Bishop-Baldwin, who works here with the archives, and also was the plaintiff in the marriage equality lawsuit that secured marriage for Oklahoma and a big section of the country, and I'm Toby Jenkins. Toby Jenkins: Jose, let's start with, like we do all of our interview people, I’d like to hear a little bit about, your childhood and kind of your experience. You were here in Oklahoma. Tell us a little bit about your family. Jose Vega: Yeah, I was born in 1992 and raised here, and my family, I'm a son of immigrants. My family is from Mexico. All my family lives here. They're either here in Tulsa or in Mexico. You know, the only two. I am the oldest of my dad's children. He remarried six times, so he's on his sixth marriage now, but growing up was only me and him with one woman and her kids, and then a revolving door and so forth, but it's always been me and him. Childhood hasn't been… I had a rough childhood with growing up with him in that aspect. I Can share, you know, my coming out story. So with that, now what I know now with my dad, I know that he gave what he could give to the best of his ability, but during that time, that's not how I saw it or how it was lived with. So, you know, my story, I came out at 15. I was a sophomore in high school, but before that, I had a lot of child abuse. My dad would come home and I knew that, now what I know is that he had bipolarism and he would beat me, lock me up in my room. Sometimes I'd have to skip meals. I would show up to school with bruises and they'd ask, what happened here? And I would always lie to protect my dad and my family. But it wasn'tToby Jenkins: Because you had your extended family. You had aunts and uncles and cousins and then you still were pretty connected to your grandmother, and she was still in Mexico at the time, right? Jose Vega: Yeah, yeah. As all migrant families, we're all very interconnected. �5 Toby Jenkins: No connection to your biological mother. Jose Vega: Not during that time. Not before the age of 18. Toby Jenkins: Ok. You were experiencing, he would be very violent and abusive, and you felt that you had to protect him and your family. Why did you feel like you needed to protect them rather than protect yourself? Just curious about that. Jose Vega: Well, what happens a lot in child abuse is that there will be a parent or family member say, don't say anything because it will break the family apart, and you don't want to risk that. And so that's what happened to me. I had aunts, stepmoms tell me, don't tell anybody, tell them that you fell down, that you hurt yourself, and that's kind of what I did, ended up doing. But it wasn't until I was 14 when I've had enough. And there was suicide in my history, and at that age of 14 is when I was going through physical abuse, mental abuse, and verbal abuse, and it was every day waking up that you're a piece of shit, you're a son of a bitch, worthless, and so you tell that to a child so much that they end up believing it. And at 14, that's what I believed. My own father doesn't love me or thinks of me this way, then I must be this. And so that's the first attempt. And I felt very depressed, and I remember his words telling me, you didn't take enough [pills]. And from that moment on, that's kind of where I took empowerment of who I was and kind of protect myself. But even before that, I asked myself, they knew I was gay for some reason, because growing up too, I would have my hand, little cap [limp] like this, you know, fallen, or my hand on my hip, and I would get beaten for having these mannerisms. And so at the age of 14 when that happened, it was the last beating I had. And I was about to turn 15, and he came in and he striked me, and I stood up for myself and I said, you know what? I can't do this anymore. You're not going to do this to me. And you talk about you'd rather have a thief as a son, or a rapist as a son, or somebody else as a son, or a drug dealer as a son, but not a homosexual or a faggot. And I said, I'm a faggot. And crying, I said that. And so he was like, get your stuff and get out. There will never be a faggot in my household. And at 15, I grabbed everything I could and I started packing my bags. And then he comes into the room and says, what are you doing? I was like, I'm packing my bags like you asked me to. He's like, but I paid for all of this. And so I left with the clothes on my back and a blanket. And I managed. I couch surfed through high school. I slept in the ditch next to Webster High School. That's kind of where I graduated. Slept in a ditch at a park. Couch surfed with friends; with anybody I could. I would shower in the gym at school. But I was a happy child because I wasn't getting beaten. I wasn't getting the abuse. Toby Jenkins: You didn't go to the school counselor and tell her you were homeless? You didn't go to foster agencies? Jose Vega: No, and the reason why is because at school, I became the student who would put newcomers together. And I loved it. I loved helping a new student come in, learn the system. I've always had that passion of helping folks. But I ended up �6 partnering and helping foster kids, foster youth. And they would share some of the stories that they were dealing with. And I knew that if I was caught, I would have to end up in a foster shelter or some system where I would be limited and not have the opportunities that I'm having now, that I was having at that time. I worked at Reasor’s [grocery store] as a sacker at the age of 15 after school. Once I turned 16, it became full-time. But I was very appreciative because it gave me money to pay for a cell phone, so I would go to the admissions office at school and I said, here's my new parent's number. And anytime they needed a parent's signature, I forged the signature. Anytime they would call, I would pretend to be the translator. Usually a lot of Latinos, youth, are the translators. We, a lot of youth, end up translating medical paperwork or school paperwork or even legal paperwork for their parents because they don't understand the language. I would translate, yeah, the teacher's saying this, and I would just make my own decisions. And I never got caught, and I was really good at school. I do appreciate Mary Waters, who was my high school counselor. She did look out for me. She helped me with getting enrolled with scholarships, the universities, and prepared me. And then I had a lesbian gym teacher. She would see that me walking down very early, like at six in the morning, walking down to the school. And she knew because she would leave the gym door open and the shower room open where we just knew… We looked at each other, and we just knew what was going on. But nobody ever said anything or reported anything. Also food-wise, too, they would help me cover for food and meals. But also during that time, as a 15, 16-year-old, working at Reasor’s and putting myself through high school, sex work was a thing too, that sometimes I needed to do to find a ride. To help me with wash clothes, laundry. And so that's part of my history too, where I needed to do certain things to get by. Toby Jenkins: I know at one point you talked about there was a period where your family decided they were going to send you to Mexico. One, so you could learn to speak Spanish the proper way, but also interact with your family, but to get you more connected to the church. So can you share with us a little bit about what that was like going through what we call today conversion therapy. I think it was called reparative therapy at that time. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience? Jose Vega: So yeah, my aunt said that she could heal me, and there could be a cure for this. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: At what age? Jose Vega: I was 14 to 15. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: Had you already left home? Jose Vega: No, this was before leaving home. So there was already this talk among my family that I was gay. There was already this talk, and they're like, well, we keep hearing his dad keep saying faggots this, faggot that, and that he doesn't want this at home and so forth. So maybe we can heal Joselito, that's what we call me. And so during the abuse too, it was a great getaway. �7 I can get away from my father from the abuse. So yeah. So I did a year in Mexico, my freshman year of high school, and they sent me to conversion therapy at a church, and it started with droplets and people just praying on me at church and telling me, you're going to go to hell if you don't change and so forth. But these droplets were black oil, black oil that I would take after every meal as soon as I woke up. If I had impure thoughts, I'd ingest, and every time I would throw up after a meal because it was covered with this coat… it was just black ooze. And the priest would say that that is the demon coming out of you. And I lost a lot of weight. And then I would remember to read from this little yellow book two hours before school. So I had to wake up early and be on my knees, not trying to lean, bend. So just be on your hard knees for two hours, praying from this little yellow book before and after. So early in the morning and then before bed. And then also a VHS tape of a priest that died and that God took him through hell and showed him how every sin is paid. So if you're a thief, this is how your sin is paid in hell. If you're a rapist or if you're a, whatever it may be every sin, but the one that I, that is embedded in my mind and I can see it so clearly because I would watch it for a whole year- was how homosexuality is paid and the priest can... I can describe it. It's not graphic, well, a little bit, but the priest would say: a hot metal rod is inserted through the anus, all through the body and out the throat at multiple times. And that's how homosexuality was paid in hell. And so having to watch this every day, read from this little yellow book and then be coated with this black oil stuff that I would ingest, I lost a lot of weight. I didn't even recognize myself. I was failing at school and then I was like: you know, I can't do this. I did it for nine months and I said, no, I can't do this anymore. And so that's kind of where I went back home and that's kind of when I stood up for myself with my dad. I said: you know what, I'd rather be gay, be where, I'd rather be homeless, gay and alone than having to endure this, this therapy or cure aspect, or even any abuse in the household. So I left. Toby Jenkins: Now, during this time when you're basically you don't have a permanent physical address, were you still in contact with your father and your aunts and uncles and cousins? Jose Vega: No, so all my family turned their back on me because I didn't finish the conversion therapy and I I wanted to… I just left home. So everybody turned their back on me. 15, 16 and um, nobody, nobody would reach out to me or talk to me. They knew where I was. They sometimes would see me at the grocery store or even see me walking on the street to my next destination. Toby Jenkins: Yet you made some friends, and those two are still your lifelong friends. Jose Vega: Yes, that's Martha and Jordan. Martha I met in high school and she knew so she was very, very sweet to me. She would bring me food from her home, just sometimes help cover lunch. And that's where it hurts, because when I needed somebody the most, she was there. She's my best friend. She's like the sister I never had. �8 Toby Jenkins: With all of that, dropped out of school and became a drug addict, right? Jose Vega: No. Toby Jenkins: What did you do? What happened? You graduated, didn’t you? Jose Vega: I graduated, I did so. So sophomore year of high school, I finished the year, but it became hard. It was hard because I was like I either need to quit school and get to work or find another alternative because I can't do this. I couldn't do this another two years of figuring it out how I was gonna get by. And I talked to Mary Waters, my high school counselor, and I said: I, I either need my GED, or graduate early or something. And so we looked at my grades and everything. She's like, Jose, you have great grades, you could jump a year. You could pay for summer school and do your junior year for that summer and then go straight into senior [year]. And I did. I did English Three that summer and came back to school as a senior. So I skipped my junior year. This is Pebbles [dog], she is three years old. Mary Waters helped me jump from sophomore straight to senior and I graduated early. And so I said, okay, I can do this one more year. So with that, one year is where I was able to move up along workwise at Reasor’s and stay in school and graduate early and then win scholarships. And then I moved to TCC, Tulsa Community College, where I went straight after high school. Mary Bishop – Baldwin: And did you get an apartment or were you still couch-surfing? Jose Vega: I was still couch-surfing during high school, but I was able to find something more stable and solid. I jumped a little bit ahead. There was a time where my aunt during that time- also senior high school- where she said: oh, Jose, God has touched my soul. And because she saw me as I was walking down the street, she says: God has touched my soul and I'm here to help you. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll take any help. She's like: you can live with me, you can sleep on my couch, you'll have a shelter. And it was family. So I was like, oh, probably they finally came around. But she was charging me $300 to sleep on the couch, charging me for everything, well, you're using water, you're using gas and I have to pick you up and do this and do that. It started to get expensive and as a high school senior, I'm like I can't afford this. I went back to couch surfing with friends, where I didn't have to pay anything, and start saving up. And then finally I was able to save up to get A little $1,000 car and that's kind of where I started my TCC journey. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: And did you sleep in your car? Jose Vega: There was a time where I slept in my car here and there, but I'm very grateful because Martha and my best friend, but I had met a boyfriend by that time, so I wasn't doing any more sex work or trying to get by. I met a boyfriend and we both moved in together and we had dual income and we were able to grow together. I was 18. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: Can we go back to when you were in Mexico in the conversion therapy program? What were your personal beliefs about yourself at that time? Did you believe that homosexuality was a sin, or did you feel like you knew within yourself that what you were and what you were doing was not wrong? �9 Jose Vega: No, I did grow up thinking that it was something wrong. My family- but my family's very- was very religious, very Catholic, and I was so embedded in the Catholic Church that they did tell us homosexuality was a sin. And so very young, I knew that I was different. I knew that why do I find other boys attractive, or why do I find this taller man attractive? And I didn't say anything, but I would hear. And then also a lot of media. There was this talk show, a Mexican Latina talk show, where there was a transgender woman or somebody who dressed up as a woman, man who dressed up as a woman who came to the talk show, kind of like it was a Mexican Oprah. Her name was Christina, so she was a Mexican Oprah. And in this talk show I was probably 10 or 11 and I saw that they were talking about homosexuality and gay men and they felt so to me. I was like that's how I feel I can see that. But I knew it was a…this mentality of it's a sin, it's a sin, you're gonna go to hell was very embedded in me and that's why I hated myself. I was like no, I gotta do this conversion therapy. Probably my dad will love me this time. Probably my family will accept me. I don't want to be different. So my mentality there was that. But it wasn't till I was 14 and going on 15, where I tried to commit suicide and my dad said you didn't take enough. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: Didn't take enough what? Jose Vega: Didn’t take enough medication. It was pills. I tried to do it by oral, but medication went to the hospital, my stomach got pumped, I had to eat charcoal. But when he said you didn't take enough, it was like a click, just something like a click where I'm like: why am I living for you or for anybody? No, I'm doing me, and very young, and I know that a lot like this is why I advocate for teen suicide and all and care, because- because not a lot of teens make it, or- and I don't know where I got the strength from- I know the strength that's saying I'm not doing it for anybody, but for myself, and that's why I broke the chains. I said I'm gay and you don't like it, and I hit the street afterwards. Toby Jenkins: So the sense of survival your own. You took it within yourself to take to survive. But you had to do it at a much younger age, while you're still a child yourself. You couldn't depend on any of them. So you decided, I'm gonna survive on my own terms, without any of your help. And if I lose you, I'll lose you. Jose Vega: And that's what happened. Toby Jenkins: And so you graduate from high school early, go to college. Were you in the Achieves program? Jose Vega: I was, Tulsa Achieves. Toby Jenkins: Now I remember a portion of your story, there was a time when y'all visited City Hall, you were a part of a youth program, which you later implemented under Mayor Bynum. Was that during high school or college? Jose Vega: That was during high school. My senior year of high school is when I applied for the Tulsa Mayor Youth Council. And it was run by Nick Doctor and his wife, what's her name again? Forgot her name, I'm blanking [Mana Tahaie]. �10 Nick Doctor started the program, the Tulsa Mayor's Youth Council, where youth would get involved with local politics and advocate. And I shared, like, we need to do something for our youth, our LGBTQ youth, and advocate more rights. And that's kind of where my passion for advocacy started growing. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: What year would this have been? Jose Vega: This was 2009 to 2010. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, but your earlier experience, you had been exposed to something like this that you… Jose Vega: Yeah, there is a footage, there's several interviews. In 2006, I was interviewed because there was a Latino career fair and advocacy to bring Latino men up into the workforce. So, every aspect of it, I enjoyed. Every aspect of supporting those who needed their voice heard, even in high school. Dennis Neill: Jose, during this period of time, until you finished TCC, did you experience bullying because of either your sexual orientation or your racial identity? Jose Vega: Oh, yes. Dennis Neill: And could you probe that a little bit more? And how the adults and other peers reacted to that? Did they help you address some of those issues? And can you explain a little bit about that background? Jose Vega: Yes, before I was 14, there was bullying for my skin tone. I would be called beaner, wetback, go back to where you're from, and also kind of, like, fruity. And I remember some parents at school saying, it looks like that kid has sugar in his tank. And I didn't understand it until now, but there was. But it wasn't until age 14, in high school, 15, 16, I would still get bullied, but you couldn't do anything to me. I didn't care about it. And I didn't care about it because if I didn't care about it from my own family or father, you're just a kid in school. And so that empowered me. Dennis Neill: How did the school authorities react to these issues that you were facing? Jose Vega: My high school counselor for the bullying aspect, she stood up for me. And I just…my friends, too. I remember Martha, my best friend, she stood up to these bullies, too. She was a tough cookie, and she would sometimes fight my fights. So she was, and what I love about it, because she was one year behind me. We would have graduated the same year, but because I jumped a year, her senior year, and I was in college, she started the first GSA at Webster High School. And she said, I did it for you because there's more gays…there's more LGBT people at school. And now that you're gone, I don't know who to protect. And that's who I'm gonna protect. She became…she was an ally. But during that time of high school to college, yeah, there was bullying, there was wordage, but you couldn't do anything to me because if I didn't accept it from my dad, I couldn't do anything. Dennis Neill: Did you experience that, even at TCC �11 Jose Vega: ? No, not at TCC. I didn't experience that at TCC. But workwise or anywhere else, growing up, yeah, you couldn't say anything to me. I didn't care for it. Toby Jenkins: But you did hear it. Jose Vega: I did hear it, but it didn't, it was likeToby Jenkins: So you're at TCC, you're on your own, you are in a relationship. Was it this time that you chose your career path? I mean, you had… tell us kind of some of the different places you worked, because I know you worked in, you worked in multiple places, agencies. Was it there that you developed your passion for public health? Jose Vega: Yes, so it was there. So I chose the dental hygienist program, but then I moved it to health administration, or just medical terminology, because I wanted to help our community and learn more about health care. My first official health care job was Saint Francis Hospital as a patient transporter on the weekends, and I would move patients from the emergency room all the way up to their room or from the room to the x-ray room and so forth. That was every weekend and it wasn't until I was translating, because there wasn't a translating system or somebody wasn't there to translate from English to Spanish. And I was translating for this patient and this doctor, this Orthodontist, sees me translating. And then he offers me a job and he's like: well, why don't you come work for me? I was like, well, I'm still in school and I enjoy doing this. And he's like: well, you'll work on the weekdays when you don't have school. And so, yeah, I worked for him for a while. He paid for me to go to get my dental x-ray certification, my dental sterilization equipment certification. And this was me during TCC, going through the dental hygienist. But then, after that role- that's when I switched work, switched to something else, to health care, but that was that's what I did for a while and then after that, and what made me do the switch was when I worked for Nova Health, which was the abortion clinic here in Oklahoma, and at that time it helped me understand more for women, understand more for also part of my religion, where we know that, where they were, in my Catholicism, where they say abortion is evil, is bad and so forth. But working there helped me understand what women go through, from assaults to their body, their choice. Everybody has a reason why they do what they want to do, and it helped me understand that these women need help as well, and I worked there for about 9 to 10 months. I learned a lot from that experience. I'm very proud to have helped those women who would come from the street to the clinic while protesters would chase them, show images, and I would go out there with umbrellas, with coats, and just give them access to health care when they needed it the most. I did that for a while too. Toby Jenkins: So TCC, living on your own with your partner or your boyfriend, did you complete your program at TCC? Jose Vega: I did, yes. It was medical terminology and a minor study like medical science, and then I went to University of Phoenix and finished it online because work was starting to pick up and I was like I need to switch online. I can't take off work or do it �12 in person and so forth. So I finished my degree online on health administration and hospital management and that's kind of where my health aspects started. Mary Bishop-Baldwin: Is that your bachelor's degree? Jose Vega: That is my bachelor's- health administration, hospital management- and that's because I was a record technician and an administrative medical administrator at the Nova Health where I'm helping these women self-pay for these protocols and workflows and they didn't have an electronic medical record so logging all of their files. Toby Jenkins: Did you do any translation work? Jose Vega: I did do translation work too. I was able to do medical translation documentations- medical and legal. I did all of that and that's kind of where my career, through health aspects, started and that's why I graduated with that degree. Toby Jenkins: Somewhere in there you ended up the Tulsa World. So school, and you were still with this partner… Jose Vega: Yes. And then the ten months at the Nova Health Center is when the Tulsa World opportunity came. And well, hold on very shortly- sorry, backtrack- I worked at a medical imaging center- sorry, from Nova Health Center- for 10 months, then I worked at a medical imaging center and at this medical imaging center- it was a faith-based medical imaging center and I was let go after six or seven months, when they found out I was gay and they just said, Jose, we just we terminated, we just don't accept your lifestyle. And I was doing so good, I was translating their medical paperwork. I was translating their…I was helping with their records to electronic and I helped so many Spanish-speaking patients. I managed their schedule, but just because of who I was, I was let go and I was never back in the closet until that moment. And I remember going to the Tulsa World. I remember going to several interviews and they all asked what happened at your last job and I just said, just decided to move, just decided to do another role or something. It put me back in the closet. It wasn't till I was at the Tulsa World and I was interviewed by Susan Ellerbach and she asked me the same question that every interview asked me: what happened at your last job? And I broke down and I cried and I said I was let go for being gay and I've been holding this inside so much and in every interview they've asked me I've said for personal issues or something else, but I don't want to be hiding anymore. And she hugged me and she offered me the job right then and there, and that gave me the strength again. That gave me the I don't need to be, I don't need to be sure who I am anymore. I was very happy again because, she gave me the job. I was the newsroom assistant, I was her executive assistant and I enjoyed every moment and I helped with obituaries. I helped Mary and Sharon, everybody there at the Tulsa World. I loved it because it felt like I was working with, I was working for like…I think at that time the movie Devil Wears Prada had come out and I feel like Andy, you know just oh, yes, Susan, I'm ready to go, Susan, here's your coffee and so forth, but I loved it, but she was nothing like that, okay, �13 nothing. That's later on when we move into the center. But I, that was one of my favorite roles, yes. Dennis Neill: How long were you in that position? Jose Vega: Oh, that was about a year, some change. But during that time, I was the happiest I could have been because I was finally having a good, stable job. I wasn't ashamed of myself anymore. I had a boyfriend and had friends. But I wasn't active out in community. Toby Jenkins: Can I just ask you, were you having any kind of communication with family, your father? Jose Vega: No, I was still alone. Dennis Neill: When was it that you're at the Tulsa world. Jose Vega: 2012, 2013. Toby Jenkins: You are at the Tulsa World. And when you say you weren't active in the community, you mean the LGBTQ community. Jose Vega: Yeah, the LGBTQ community. And I say that because we would go to this club. We go to the clubs and you know, I was a young man… Toby Jenkins: Most of your friends and the community, the gay people, it was other Latino, Hispanic, immigrant community. Jose Vega: Yes. I had met in the Latino community, a lot of, a lot of LGBTQ, Latino, undocumented individuals- and that's who my community was- and a lot of Dreamers in Tulsa, and so I had my little posse and we would go out to the bars and clubs and I remember going out. They showed that you know, they didn't have documentationOklahoma documentation- but they had their IDs and passports from their country. We ended up going to a bar named Renegades. That's where we enjoyed going. And so we go, we show up, I give my Oklahoma ID and they give their passports and we're at the door and then they tell them: well, where's your Oklahoma ID? I'm like, what are you asking? This is an ID that tells you their age. And they're like: no, we need to show proof of their citizenship. And that's got started feeling like what are you doing? This is a real proof of ID. And they said: nope, we can't accept this and if you don't leave, we're gonna call immigration. That destroyed my friends. That happens a lot in the Latino community and document community is that they don't any kind of discrimination like that. They're just like: okay, okay, we're sorry, and they just leave. Toby Jenkins: It never occurs to them it might be illegal. Jose Vega: Exactly, and- and it still happens to today. �14 Toby Jenkins: Their first thought is: not my rights, treat me with respect, they just assume… Jose Vega: But they also don't want to cause trouble and they're afraid of immigration. Many of these people are running away from countries or neighborhoods or areas in their town or city where, for them, being gay, it's a death sentence, so they don't want to ruffle feathers. And I see that in my family too. When my stepmom or my dad or anybody was discriminated, they just bowed their heads and leave and just never came again. But I was so tired. I grew up like that and I was like how can a marginalized community marginalize another community. Toby Jenkins: And how can the gay community marginalize immigrants, undocumented individuals? Jose Vega: I thought this was a safe space, a safe place for all. This is why we have these safe places and especially like they're LGBTQ too. Doesn't matter where you're from or your skin color or your language, you're LGBT. I was very upset. I was very, very upset. This happened on a Friday night. I was very upset and I remember calling the LGBT Center the next day and leaving a voicemail and saying: how could somebody do this? Why would this happen? There needs to be some education on what IDs, identifications are acceptable, but also, how can this, how can this happen? And my friends were like Jose, just leave it, leave it. I'm like no, no, because I'm not that kind of person to leave anything like that. I didn't leave it when I was 15, 14 and Susan empowered me. So that happened during the weekend. I submitted a report, an incident report at the LGBT Center in Tulsa and through the helpline. And then that Monday I came in and I cried to Susan, I told her what happened that weekend and she was frustrated. She's like: how dare they do that to you too? She said, if they don't apologize by the end of the week, we'll run a front-page story on the Sunday newspaper. And I called the center and I said, hey, I really want to work this out. There needs to be an apology and there needs to be some education. But also I don't want any bad news for our community, but they need to apologize and they need to apologize to my community. So, Toby- and at that time it was Stewart the lawyer, Stewart Ashworth, and I think you both helped a lot in that aspect of legal and so forth- and so you, Toby, talked to the Renegade team and it wasn't till Thursday. They come around and we're like: okay, okay, we'll set up a meeting. And so we did. We met at Renegades. My friends didn't want to join. They're like no, no, we're just, we're never touching a foot there again. We're too scared. And I was like, okay, then I'm gonna represent you guys and I'm gonna represent all of those that came before us, because if they did it to you, they probably did it to other people and I don't want that ever to happen again. So I show up with Toby and this is kind of, I think, one of the first time we met, and it was a two-hour back and forth of no, we would never do that. We did not do that, this and �15 that. And we were very calm and collected and after two hours I just said: you know what? That's fine, I'm done here. You know what you did. Just know that you did it to the wrong person this time. And I'm going to be more active, and I'm going to create a committee and educate the bars and make sure that all of these LGBTQ places are safe places for everyone. And they ended up apologizing. And that Friday I came in, Susan, they apologized. Everything's good. And that's when I started getting more involved with the LGBT Center. Toby Jenkins: I think it was during that time, just while we're here, do you feel like racism and prejudice against immigrant communities is it an issue in the LGBTQ community? Jose Vega: I believe there may be some, but everybody has a personal experience. And as much as we've seen, I can speak on my behalf. Have I seen it? Yes. Have I spoken out towards it? Yes. Is there something we can all do about it? Yes. Because the LGBT community is so inclusive and intertwined that as long as you fall under the umbrella, you're part of the community, regardless of what your skin tone documentation is. But there is, so there's still a lot of education needed to happen. But why have inner fighting? Why not stick together instead? And that's kind of what stems my work with the LGBT Center and our DACA recipients. So in 2015... Toby Jenkins: So let's make sure of your... So you went through this experience and you said you wanted to get more involved. So we ask you to serve on our board of advisors and specifically create programming for immigrants, community, and Hispanic and Latino, Latinx individuals, basically becoming the liaison on this particular portion of our community to make the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center more inclusive and its programming more targeted towards our immigrant community and for specifically Hispanic Latino people. You had been asked to serve on that advisory committee. So that's kind of... You were on the board of advisors, so there we went on with that. And so you go ahead. Jose Vega: Yeah, so on the advisory board, I represented our Latino community, was more active. I was still involved with DACA students from TCC because during my time at TCC, I was involved with them. Even though I'm not a DACA recipient, I saw the need that they had. Toby Jenkins: And for our viewers, what does DACA stand for? Jose Vega: Dream Act... Deferred Action [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]. I just know that the group was called D-A-O-K, Deferred Action Oklahoma Group. This was for individuals, some immigrants who were raised here, not born here, but were raised here. They're practically citizens, right? They're paying taxes. They're working. They're trying to live the American dream. And so they were at TCC. I was very involved with them, helping them, supporting them. During my time here, I said, well, why don't we collaborate and bring them in? And I had the opportunity to bring their support group here and do some intertwined intersectionality education. The LGBT community to learn about Latino cultural, the homophobia within the Latino and the LGBT community to learn more about the Latino �16 backgrounds and support of their communities. So that's the first few active things I did. And then it wasn't until the opportunity to work... Toby Jenkins: Were you still with your boyfriend at this time? Jose Vega: Yes. Toby Jenkins: What was the next step? You're still working at the Tulsa World. Jose Vega: Yes. And then I had the opportunity to apply for a role, program coordinator at the LGBT Center. And it was a hard day because I came to Susan. I said, Susan, I'm thinking about applying. And she's like, Jose, do you really want to go? I was like, it's not that I want to go, but I really feel a calling. And she said, okay, that's a great place. So I went from the Tulsa World to the LGBT Center. But Susan was always supportive throughout that as well. I started as a program coordinator. And that's kind of where Toby and I were two partners in crime. Batman and Robin. Because he really took me under his wing. Gave me the professionalism, the guidance. He saw the Latino passion and fire that I had. Because I wanted to help those LGBTQ youth, LGBTQ Latinos, everybody under the LGBTQ umbrella, and to feel welcome. Because I saw the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center as the home that I didn't grow up or have. Or the home that I dreamed of. Because this center does mean a lot to me. So that's kind of where our role started here. And then we did a lot of programming. Dennis Neill: Jose, do you remember what year and how old you were when you joined? Jose Vega: 2015. Dennis Neill: And how old would you have been? Jose Vega: 22, 23. Dennis Neill: When you joined, how many staff were working here at the center? Jose Vega: Probably like a handful. Just three. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. And I think it was him and we had one other and a janitor and me. Jose Vega: Very small. We managed a lot of programs. Toby Jenkins: The center was packed. It was. Jose Vega: We kept it packed. Toby Jenkins: So you came on board and I remember you had a very good aptitude for public policy and engagement of our elected officials. You just naturally took to that. I know that's when you reconvened the Mayor's Youth Commission. Jose Vega: Yeah. I love that you brought that point because the Mayor's Youth Council really prepared me to talk about local politics and city officials. Every step of my world and life has got me to the point where I am and prepared me for the next. During that time, working on programming, developing new programming and events, �17 collaborating, helping take over the Equality Business Alliance. I loved the Mayor's Youth Council so much and the impact that it had on me that I was like, how can I help our youth? How can we grow the next generation as well? So I brought back the Mayor's Youth Council and we had our first cohort and it was great. We did get a lot of GSA leaders from it. That's another part that I like. Toby Jenkins: Explain what GSA is. Jose Vega: Gay Straight Alliance. A lot of those students from that first cohort developed GSAs at their school. And then that's kind of where we also collaborated and partnered with the Tulsa Youth Services and they started developing GSAs and so forth. Toby Jenkins: Campfire. Jose Vega: Campfire. The Mayor's Youth Council was really impactful. We did that, I did that every year from 2015 all the way to my last year in 2020. Toby Jenkins: So you also, two things, I've got to make sure we talk about this. Hispanic Affairs Commission, you were appointed… Jose Vega: Yeah, I joined the Hispanic Affairs Commission. I was the youngest to be appointed, and I was there for about a year and a half, and then I became the chair, also the youngest to run the Hispanic Affairs Commission for the city of Tulsa. And I worked in collaboration with city officials, our Latino partners, our Hispanic businesses, and we really helped move forward a lot of issues that our Latino youth and families go through from school to neighborhood aspects. Toby Jenkins: Okay, so you were appointed to the Mayor's Hispanic Affairs Commission. You started the Mayor's, and you were working with our allies that we work with here at the Equality Center. All of a sudden, I noticed you began to get some attention, and we began to convene and host Dream Act, would meet here. Sometimes we'd have 60 or 70 Hispanic young adults in the building. You were working with the Tulsa Metro Chamber on Mosaic and the Equality Business Alliance. Somewhere in there, some people began to notice that you could get the job done, and they started recognizing you, and you began to get some awards. Yeah. And the next thing I know, your dad is by your side, and your family's back in your life. Where in that time did you reconnect with your family? Jose Vega: It was at the age of 24 when my family came back around, and they had seen all these stories coming about. I was being reported on the news. Why are we at the Capitol today? We're here to fight for LGBTQ rights. Why are you doing this program? Because our Latino community needs access. And then my story was also being shared. Why are you fighting for homeless youth? Because I'm a lived experience of homeless youth. And my family came back around, and they apologized, and they asked for me to stop sharing my story. They said, Jose, we're sorry. We really want to try to reconnect but stop sharing your story. You know, people are looking at us, and they were seeing what they had done. And I said, you're more than welcome to come back into my life, but you cannot stop me from sharing my story. Because even today, it is still happening, and people need to know that there's a safe place, safe home. There �18 are programs out here. There are people fighting for you, so they need to know. And they said, okay. It was like, perfect. And so I'm not one to hold grudges, so we just forgave, and we learned to continue on. And my dad is by my side now. He starts showing up at Pride. He showed up one time, and I'm in tears. I'm like, oh, I thought you would never come around. And so he comes back. He comes around. I win my first award, 30 Under 30, and we had to go to Oklahoma City, and he's very proud of me. And then I win the Gracias Latino Award, and then I win the Tulsa Young Professionals, because I got involved with the Tulsa Young Professionals. And then the last one I won before leaving was the Leadership Oklahoma Award. Toby Jenkins: So you got involved with Leadership Oklahoma. They recruited you, and then you went through that, and they wanted you to create a Latino. .. Jose Vega: No, they had a Latino one already. Toby Jenkins: So you went through that cohort. Toby Jenkins: And then you said, why is there not a LGBT one? Jose Vega: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Oh, gosh, this is good. So you created that program through Leadership Tulsa. Jose Vega: Yeah, so I did the Hispanic one, and it was so impactful. It really prepared me for the Hispanic Affairs. It really helped me get the tools that I needed for my Latino community. It made me great contacts too. And I saw how impactful it was. I was like, there needs to be a specific one for our LGBTQ communities. And in collaboration with them… Toby Jenkins: You almost had to force them to do it, didn't you? They were pretty resistant. Jose Vega: There was a little bit of resistance, but we showed them from the LGBT Center. We showed our data. We showed our community people that they needed it and wanted it. Toby Jenkins: And who funded that program? Jose Vega: The Schusterman Family Foundation. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Jose Vega: And so we had two programs. It was called Lead Together. Toby Jenkins: And if I'm not mistaken, that became the first LGBTQ specific cohort in the entire nation in the leadership Oklahoma Leadership program that was networked across the country was the first one, yeah, where somebody had said, oh, we need to have one that raises up LGBT young professionals to serve nonprofits- okay. �19 Jose Vega: And we did get many people from that cohort joined the center, from volunteering to… Toby Jenkins: Went on to become on, get on the staff and serve on the board, yeah, okay. So you mentioned Tulsa Young Professionals. I just want to say how profound I am that you included that your family reconnected and that you forgave them. That is an incredible testament of your personality and your character. You were connected to Tulsa Young Professionals and you got it in your head that we needed to have a rainbow crosswalk. So with Tulsa young professionals and the mayor's office, Mayor Bynum and the City Council tell us a little bit about our rainbow crosswalks in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jose Vega: As I was involved with Tulsa Young Professionals with the diversity team and we always did pride together and then they did one year the chalk, they did a crosswalk chalk that year and we saw how impactful it was for the community. They loved it. I would scroll on Facebook and see so many photos, and then you could see it from a mile, from down the street, on 4th Street, as you're crossing over the bridge you could see it and to me I was like we need this permanent. Tulsa Young Professionals had a grant to make Tulsa better and to what can we improve in Tulsa, and so forth. So I had applied for a crosswalk to get that funded and we won. It got approved. But we were getting pushback from City Hall. No, that is not traffic regulations, and so forth. So we got a lot of pushback and I I encouraged city officials like please help me, we need to write a letter, we need to do this. So this is where more advocacy came in. But at the end of the day, they said no. Toby Jenkins: Let's stop right there. The reason the answer is no is because crosswalks must comply with federal regulation, which also includes ADA specific. They have to be a certain color, they have to be a certain width, they have to be at certain areas. So we were mad about this. Jose Vega: We showed data from all this…from Dallas, Miami, New York, Sacramento has one. So all of these had them. So I'm like: what are you talking about? Just because it's federal, we as city officials we can decide what we want in our city and town, but no, I understand the regulations. So as I'm talking with Tulsa Young Professionals, they're like: well, Jose, what else can we do? And as I'm thinking and thinking and thinking, I was like: then we shall take over the street and called it Pride Street then. And that's when 4th Street became Pride Street and we got these pride signs and that's what, right down the center, you know? Toby Jenkins: Good, now, the reason I want to specifically talk about this is right now, while we're having this interview, all across the United States, cities are being forced to remove their rainbow crosswalks because of pushback from the Trump administration and federal regulations, and state after state governors have said we're removing them in their own homophobia and transphobia. But yet, for some reason, Tulsa's safe because we have street signs because street signs are controlled- a part of municipal code, not federal code. The lesson I want this interview is: ask big and grab what you can get. �20 Jose Vega: Yeah, well, how I word that is: shoot for the moon and if you land among the stars. Toby Jenkins: Okay, very good. I've got a bunch of other things. Any questions, Mr. Neill? Dennis Neill: Let's talk about your growth within OkEq, your changing positions, and then also we want to touch on your hate crime or hate crimes during your experience as an adult. Jose Vega: I started as program coordinator, and then we've had such great success and growth. I had the opportunity to get a promotion and become program director. And then deputy director. I ran pride. I loved it, every moment of it. We fundraised for pride. I loved the Gala, all of those aspects. And then I was learning everything from Toby, and he shared with me on how we need to be more active within the Capitol. Take students, take youth out there, their voices, write letters. We did a lot of letter campaigns and so forth, that I said, Toby, how can I learn more and take a more leadership role? And I had the opportunity to become deputy director, and I helped make executive decisions within the organization to make visible, to make our spot and space even more visible in different areas. So, that's when we were very active in that portion, you know. Toby Jenkins: Tell us a bit about the hate crime incident that you had happen. Jose Vega: There was a moment where I, it was during flu season, because I was so sick, and I go to Walgreens, and I go pick up some medication as I'm waiting in line… I have this Revolution shirt that I love, because, you know, it is, we were trying to take back what the state is taking away from us. And even to today, they're taking even more away from us. So, that Revolution shirt, I still have it. It doesn't fit me anymore, you know, it got a little thicker. I know, the Revolution continues. I remember working on that video, too. Pride t-shirt, the pride rainbow flag. And as I'm waiting in line, this man just turns around and calls me fucking Mexican faggot. And he starts getting pushy and trying to cause a reaction from me. And I'm like, just please leave me alone. I'm just trying to check out. He's just picking and picking and picking at me, and I ignore it. And that's kind of what we do with, we encourage our constituents, that if they're being bullied or targeted, do not... they're just trying to get a reaction from you. Try to get somewhere safe. So, the safe place where I was trying to run to, because nobody was doing anything, was to my car. So, as this person's just nitpicking, picking me, and calling me names, homophobic slurs and racial slurs in the Walgreens drugstore. I walk out, continues. It's not till I start unlocking my car that where he attacks me. He starts hitting me inside the car, and I'm pushing him out. Grab the door, lock it. He starts spitting and then breaking my mirror. But just the adrenaline, the fear of, I could probably, something really bad could be happening to me right now. And we've seen, during our time here at the center, a lot of lives lost in this way. From getting attacked, assaulted, just for being who you are. So, I thought that was my time. �21 And he left. We called the cops, and something that struck me was, the only reason we will consider this a hate crime is because they did racial slurs. I was like, what about the homophobic slurs? He called me faggot and started spitting at me, assaulting me. He's like, that's not a protected class. But because he said, Mexican and go back to Mexico and all that, that's how we'll classify this as a hate crime. And to me, I was like, how is only half of who I am protected? No. And that's kind of where we started to do more advocacy from municipal to capitol. Toby Jenkins: Okay. So how did the cops handle the issue? Professionally, or were you disappointed in the response by them and any other legal authorities? Jose Vega: No, I was not. I wasn't disappointed at all. They really handled it well. Dennis Neill: I believe he got arrested, didn’t he? Jose Vega: They did get caught. Years later on. Years later. But the thing is that they kept that case open until years later on he was associated with that hate crime. Dennis Neill: And with regard to that terrible incident that you experienced, you were very visible with OkEq these five years that you were there. How about other incidents of both the good and the bad? E-mails, calls, threatening you, threatening friends. Did you experience any of that or was this kind of a one-off, this one incident? Jose Vega: No, no…Working at the center, you are visible as a target. Toby and I would share a lot of fearful moments. You know, when the bullets came through the center, when there was a drive-by, that was a scary time. What if that happened while we were here? I'm very glad that we had bullet resistant… Toby Jenkins: We installed that later. Jose Vega: But that's scary. And then also my car being vandalized multiple times. Dennis Neill: While parked here? Jose Vega: Not while parked here. But parked at home. Slashed tires. Toby Jenkins: I think that happened at a gay bar. Jose Vega: At a gay bar. I knew the risk that it came. But I also knew the reward of what we needed to do. Toby Jenkins: One of the things that I want to make sure we include in this portion of the story, we're talking about the incident, and I don't remember the exact date, when the center, someone shot up the front windows and the front door. Dennis Neill: March 6, 2017. There's the door [leading into the archives]. Toby Jenkins: Olivia caught her ride at work that morning, and she got here at 8 o'clock and called it in the police. But what was hanging up on the porch? What was hanging on the sign? Jose Vega: Immigrants are welcome here. �22 Toby Jenkins: So we never know for sure if they targeted us because we were the LGBTQ center or that we were advocating it's a safe place for the immigrant community. Jose Vega: Regardless of which one it was, it's the Equality Center. The Equality Center is for everyone. Race, orientation, gender identity, or documentation. Toby Jenkins: We were doing a lot of work at the Capitol, and we would take how many students to the Capitol? Jose Vega: Like two busloads? I think one time it was. Toby Jenkins: We'd take over 100 kids, and you would march them through the Capitol. And legislators would just run for cover. They wouldn't have to talk to us. Jose Vega: I do remember us chasing one down. I was like, no, no, no. Where are you going? Toby Jenkins: Now, I can't remember. Were you with us when we were up there and they sent out the memo that there's cross-dressers in the bathroom? See if you can tell a little bit about that story. Jose Vega: Oh, yes. So we all arrive, and every youth is like, oh, where do we goto the restrooms? We show them where the restrooms are. Then, I think a little before, after lunch, they send a memo saying there's cross-dressers in the building. Watch out. They're using the restrooms. And do not use the restrooms. Go use these private ones. And it was offensive for the youth. Toby Jenkins: And that's the image I will forever remember. Jose and a bunch of young people chasing the Lieutenant Governor across the rotunda of the Capitol, demanding an answer. Jose Vega: They were avoiding us. Toby Jenkins: And, of course, by the time we got on the bus to come home, when we arrived in Tulsa, the streets were full of TV cameras and news sources. And within two days, one of the persons who's running for governor had issued an apology to the community. Jose Vega: They saw the mistake they made, yeah. And they apologized. Toby Jenkins: Now, how did you feel about that situation? Did you feel we're not putting up with it? Jose Vega: What was going through my mind during that time? Yeah. One, I love the youth taking charge. And we put them in front of the cameras. They expressed their feelings. So, to me, it was a proud moment to see the youth come together and see the change that they could create. And, yes, we accept apologies. But there's a lot more work needing to be done. So, thank you for the apology. Now let's create that apology into policies. Toby Jenkins: Okay. So it was during this time that we kept getting phone calls on the helpline from all across the country or all across the state. So we were getting as many �23 phone calls locally on the helpline as we were from rural communities all across the state, and so you were instrumental in rolling out our chapter establishment. Jose Vega: But part of that I want to share, the story of when you and I were working late one night, because that that that was what ignited my fire even more. It's like you already have a fire and just pour more gas into it. It was when Toby and I were working late, and there was many nights we worked late. You know, prepare the next thing. Toby Jenkins: It was like midnight. Jose Vega: Midnight, it was around midnight and as we're walking out of the center, on our right corner, on the right, I see we see a young man with his bare footed, bleeding and crying, and we look over. They share their name and they said: I just turned 18, and my family has kicked me out for being gay. And I walked from the [Oklahoma] Panhandle to the center because I saw on the internet that there was this place, and I just got here walking from the Panhandle to me and then we bring him in, we bring them in, we give them water, and to me I'm like we need to do something for all the LGBT people in Oklahoma. We need to let them know that there's something here but there's also made something in their hometown, because seeing that, we needed to do something. So that's kind of where we started doing these chapters- OkEq chapters- and we had one in Norman, in Stillwater, McAllister, Bartlesville. Toby Jenkins: We traveled all over the state. We went to Altus, Oklahoma. Jose Vega: Yeah, we wanted to make sure that every Okla queer, I think, and we came up with a logo too for that too. They knew that there was a home here. Toby Jenkins: And that they could organize in their own communities. You were there when we organized the chapter in McAllister, Oklahoma and on January 1st, 2020, Dustin Parker, who was one of the members- founding members- of our chapter in McAllister, Oklahoma, he was murdered and they just recently arrested his murderer. Yeah, and do you remember traveling…I think you traveled with Dennis down there for the memorial service, where a thousand McAllister folks were standing in a field outside of their little gay bar across from the prison, behind the prison cemetery. Jose Vega: Dustin was a staple in his community and he really showed what activism looks like- grassroots- and shared his story. Toby Jenkins: I can remember that night. What was your thoughts? While we're standing in that field with Dennis, the founder of Oklahomans for Equality, in McAllister, Oklahoma, to see how that city was grieving and also showing their support for LGBTQ people, did you have thoughts? Jose Vega: Yeah, as much as there's much more love in Oklahoma than hate, there's much more love, and love trumps all hate that there's out there. So seeing this small town come together for a community member- they didn't care about their gender, their identity, they came together for somebody who helps the community- come together show me that we need to do more for our state. We need to help our communities. They �24 made the- it's a small percentage- that are against LGBTQ community members. Because Oklahoma is about love. Our community is about care and support. That's why we have that southern love and charm. And we, I love that you always said, we're the prairie gays, you know. We have our lesbians chopping wood and helping build homes. And our gays churning butter to make sure we are fed and taken care of. And I see that, that's what we are. And all of those quotes stay with me. And I do share it still in California. And I was like, and in California they always tell me, oh that's a flyover state, who's all there? And I was like, there's prairie gays there. Our lesbians building homes, chopping wood, and our gays churning butter. That's my stomping ground. Toby Jenkins: That's funny. Let's go ahead and catch our viewers up. Because the pandemic comes. And then you eventually made some career choices. Before we talk about you going to do missionary work among the heathen in California... we sent you as a home missionary to California. You also, through collaboration with our foundations, created some programs that allowed you to travel nationally, internationally, and see LGBTQ people around the world. Jose Vega: Yeah, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Schusterman Family Foundation, they support our LGBT community. They supported our cause. They allowed us to go to Creating Change, which is a conference that helped us prepare, you know, and learn what other people are doing and create change in Oklahoma. I did have the opportunity to join the Schusterman Reality Program. Toby Jenkins: Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation Reality Program. Jose Vega: Reality Program. And their first one was on LGBTQ pride. Bringing LGBTQ leaders from across the country and going to go to Israel and get to see the great work that they're doing on LGBTQ aspects. And they have an LGBTQ elected official helping. And it was a beautiful experience getting to hear stories, sharing their cause, what they're doing to advance, and then get to see Tel Aviv Pride, which is one of the largest prides, come together and share that it's one love that we're trying to build here. Toby Jenkins: In your experience with these opportunities that you were allowed to travel internationally, because you always went to represent our center at International Pride, InterPride. So you went to several of those international conferences. Your thoughts when you've traveled internationally and all the divisive things humanity has that make us hate each other and... Jose Vega: We're fighting ourselves. Our inner selves. Each other. To me, that's not what the cause is. We have enough people that are not part of our community fighting us. Why should we fight among ourselves? We should focus our energy elsewhere. Toby Jenkins: If our panelists have anything else, jump in here. You decided to go to California. Jose Vega: But during my time at Oklahomans for Equality, I've had many opportunities. I have great opportunities to travel, to see things, to create change. I love every moment of my life that during my time here, it's become maybe the man I am today. But there was one thing where I've never experienced living somewhere else. And I felt in my heart of hearts that I need to have that experience. I've traveled, I've seen, I've done, but I've �25 never lived anywhere else. And I'm the first to come out as gay in my family. First to graduate high school. First to get a bachelor's, and now to get a master's. In 2019, I told Toby, I want to experience living somewhere else. I may come back, but I need to have that experience. And so I started sending my resume everywhere. And COVID came, February, January, offers started getting pulled out. We didn't know what was happening. And I had two offers, the LGBT Community Center in Albany, New York, and the LGBT Community Center in Sacramento. And then in August, I made the decision and I got the Sacramento offer, moved there in October, and I've been there ever since. I've had multiple opportunities out there too. So from the LGBT Center, I focused on COVID. Our LGBT community members didn't have access to COVID testing, vaccines, and so we were focused on that. But also, HIV rates were going up because people were not getting tested. But also, we're now staying six feet apart and we're still having sex. And so we focused on at-home HIV test kits. We opened a new LGBT Center out there as well. Toby Jenkins: Medical Center. Jose Vega: Yeah. And so I helped facilitate that conversation. So everything that I did in Oklahoma prepared me for that because we opened a new center. We created little chapters. I helped with pride. I was there for two years. And then I had the opportunity to think and see, you know what, I think I'm ready to come back home. And there was a moment where I came home and wanted to apply and applied for the role to run the center. And at that time, you had already retired. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the cards. And I decided to go back. I said, okay. So I went back. Dennis Neill: And just from perspective, this is June of 2022, correct? Jose Vega: Yeah. June of 2022. That was the last pride year and we talked about it. And I said, Toby, I loved everything I learned out here. I saw what programs and policies and things that we could do. I think I'm ready to take the reins. Due to other factors, it didn't happen. But I had the opportunity to go back to California and work with the Office of AIDS, the state public health department and work with the Office of AIDS. And I worked there for two years and a half helping across the state to develop programs to enhance their HIV testing, education, and capacity building. Toby Jenkins: You also got involved in their public broadcasting system. You want to talk a little bit about that. Jose Vega: Yeah. So my master's is in public health promotion and education. And I'm a firm believer that education is key to getting community involved. And so I started working with PBS and NPR and access channels to build educational programming in English and Spanish. And so we built, we did, it's called County Edition. And our first episode was on sexual health. And it was such a big success that they were like, let's replicate it. But now it's completely in Spanish. And it consists of a host, of a doctor out in the public getting information. �26 And from that, I collected data. And it's shocking that so many people still believe that you can get an STI from sitting on a public toilet. And it's 2026 now and people still believe that. So to me, education still needs to continue growing as STI and HIV rates continue to go up. And all of these fund cuts that are happening at a federal level where HIV prevention and STI prevention are getting pulled out, we're going to see a high rise on HIV infections and even co-infections with a rise of syphilis. And that's going to hurt our mothers. And I say mothers by childbirth because the rate of congenital syphilis has been skyrocketing. And those are little young ones. Toby Jenkins: And so you talk a bit about your master's. What was your master's on? You just completed it. That's why we're getting this interview. Jose has come home for a family celebration to celebrate his graduation from his master's program. So he wanted Pebbles to see what Oklahoma looked like. So he brought his companion dog. Talk a little bit about your master's work there. Jose Vega: Yeah, so my it was a focus on HIV education within Latino communities and what I love about it is the program that we've developed is PrEP 15 years ago next year It'll be 15 years where PrEP was the first medication to be approved to Prevent HIV and I'll share a little bit of my work about PrEP here in Oklahoma. As a gay young man I know that I was even more highly potential exposure to HIV, so I started advocating for PrEP and talking about PrEP that I wanted to be on PrEP. Many doctors here in California would say I would come in to the office and say hey, I want to get on PrEP medication What is that? Mary Bishop-Baldwin: You mean here in Oklahoma? Jose Vega: Here in Oklahoma, so this was before…taking you back into back into time during my time here at the LGBT Center where I was like, I want to get on PrEP Many doctors said no, I don't feel comfortable with that. I don't understand it. I don't treat AIDS patients. And I said well, this is before before I get HIV and this is to prevent it. Nope, I don't accept your lifestyle It was constantly and it was during my time here at the center because I had Community Care insurance at that time and no doctor would accept me or see me for PrEP. There was many times where I needed PrEP postexposure so having access to that too. That's kind of what drove my master's degree and advocate for that because that still happens in California even totoday. As an Oklahoman, I would think that Oh, California is more liberal, more open, more accepting. There's more access. The honest truth is it's not, there's still a lot a lot to do. My program and proposal and project development was - PrEP was approved in 2016-2015 15 years ago. So let's give PrEP a Quinceanera, It'll bring Latino communities together. It'll bring trans communities together. It'll bring youth together because as a Latino man, there's I was in about 15 Quinceaneras growing up. My cousin. Toby Jenkins: And a Quinceanera is… Jose Vega: Quinceanera is a coming-of-age for a young woman that they are from childhood into womanhood at 15 and my cousins did one. There's gonna be one tomorrow for my nieces. So I was like, let's give PrEP a Quinceanera. And so we're �27 building this program in California in the Central Valley where every Latino will be like, why are they giving this medication a Quinceanera? I had one like we're about to do one for my daughter. It starts the conversation and said perfect. Let's tell you about this medication because our Latinos make the highest population on HIV in California of new infections So prevention is key and that's kind of what I do and that's my role because I know the barriers I had to access in Oklahoma so that's the work of my masters. Toby Jenkins: I don't think we're really able to talk about the company you work for. Jose Vega: No, but what my role - I'm the HIV community liaison For Sacramento and Central Valley. I've now been promoted to the Northern California Region where I come into organizations and clinics to help with their protocols, their workflows, education, support their program capacity, building evaluations, collect data. But also bring the community together to help end HIV. Toby Jenkins: Okay So I guess you're organizing chapters again. Jose Vega: Exactly from everything I learned from Oklahomans for Equality prepared me. Toby Jenkins: We're coming to the end unless our panelists have any other questions for you. Dennis Neill: Jose, where do you see your future going? What's your passion in the next five to ten years? Jose Vega: My passion is to help elevate and grow others, you know, and what was done to me what in support for me I want to give it back. That's always been my love and passion. I had the opportunity to do The mayor's Youth Council at high school, so I wanted youth to have that opportunity. I had the opportunity to grow and develop at the LGBT Center, so I want to help other youth other LGBTQ professionals grow and develop. I had the opportunity to move of California and help with HIV elimination. I'm doing that too. My goal in life is to continue doing that prepare the next generation because there's only so much I'm gonna be able to do or get to that we need to prepare our next LGBTQ warriors. I tell Toby we're in a slingshot era where yes, they're pulling us back. But the moment they let go they're gonna catapult us forward where we're better prepared now. Of all the rights they've taken from us, we're better prepared to learn how they went around it to build better policies and procedures. A better understanding of what we need to do to prepare our next generation because they're going to continue attacking us. I want to create a space where every LGBTQ person can live, thrive, and be happy. And during this time, it breaks my heart to hear all of our Oklahoma prairies move and leave away, and that leaves no voices out there. So I want to give back to community. I want to continue doing what I'm doing and help every aspect of our population. Dennis Neill: So you see yourself professionally staying for the foreseeable future within the LGBTQ community doing this work? �28 Jose Vega: In the LGBTQ movement, yes. I will continue to dedicate my life to the LGBTQ movement, at one capacity or another. Toby Jenkins: Any questions? Mary Bishop-Baldwin: No questions. I just want to say that your story is the most incredible that I think I've ever heard. How you've come from such beginnings and had to overcome so much trauma and adversity, and you stayed with it until you achieved goals every time. You never took no for an answer, and you knew your worth, your personal worth, and you weren't going to let somebody else establish boundaries for what you could be. And look what you've done. I admire you so much. Jose Vega: Thank you. Thank you. And that's what I want. I want to inspire others. I want them to see you can do it. There's still more to you. Something that we always told our youth, you know, it gets better. Keep at it. It keeps getting better. Toby Jenkins: Sometimes. It may get tougher, but it also can get better. While we think about that, let's say, do you have a message for the future, for people who come after us and for people who may review this and are just starting out? Do you have a message for them? Jose Vega: Continue believing in you. There's people that love you. There's home here. Believe in you. You have to believe in yourself. It may seem tough right now. It may seem like the world is against you. It may seem like there's no safe spaces. Come together. Come together and create it. Come together and join forces. Find your people. Your people are out there. You just need to find them. And where you can find them is here at the center. I'm a firm believer of the center. I love it. There were many times where I wanted to give up, but I found community here and purpose, inspiration. Every single person here in this room has inspired me one way or the other. From Dennis in a little closet behind the bar doing the helpline. From Toby helping lead the charge for creating change and sharing that his first job was the portapotties at Pride and helping with trash. And from Mary advocating for our marriage equality when the time seemed that we could never achieve it. These are all stepping stones. This center was built from block to block. We need you to be the second layer of block and glue. Toby Jenkins: You've been joining us today. If you'll say your name the way you like to say it. Jose Vega: Jose Emanuel Vega. Toby Jenkins: And his sidekick Pebbles. Pebbles, you did a great job during the interview. You've been joining us today here in the Joe and Nancy McDonald Rainbow Library and the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, headquarters of Oklahomans for Equality that sits on Pride Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dennis Neill, founder of Oklahomans for Equality, Mary Bishop-Baldwin and Toby Jenkins have been your interviewing panel. Thank you so much, Jose. And congratulations on your Master's, your promotion at work. And thank you for not forgetting us and your family in Oklahoma. �29 Jose Vega: The revolution will always continue. Addendum: Top photo: Sign hanging at the Equality Center on March 6, 2017 when the windows and door were damaged by 13 pellet shots. Bottom Photo: Mayor G.T. Bynum, Jose and others celebrating the dedication of Pride Street on June 1, 2018. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2026] Jose Vega Interview Subject The topic of the resource Jose Emmanuel Vega Oral History Project Interview from May 22, 2026 Description An account of the resource Join us for an inspiring interview with José Emanuel Vega, a dedicated LGBTQ+ advocate from Tulsa, Oklahoma, now making a difference in California. He shares his powerful story of overcoming trauma, fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, serving as Program Director and Deputy Director at Oklahomans for Equality, and building community through advocacy, education, and leadership. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jose Vega, Toby Jenkins, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 22, 2026 2026 advocacy AIDS/HIV AIDS/HIV prevention California coming out community conversion therapy Dennis Neill hate crimes HIV prevention HIV/AIDs human rights immigration interview Jose Emmanuel Vega Jose Vega leadership oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript Toby Jenkins transcript Tulsa video Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2005] Jack Waggoner Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource December 3, 2005 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Laura Belmonte on December 3, 2005. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Born in Western Kansas in 1936, Jack graduated from Pawnee Rock High School and then joined the Navy in 1954. He attended University of Kansas and began his professional career in Kansas City, Missouri and became involved in the gay community. Upon moving to Tulsa, he became an interstate truck driver. In the interview, he discusses the various gay bars, his eleven year relationship with a bartender and other activities and interactions in the Tulsa gay community. Subject The topic of the resource Jack Waggoner Oral History Project Interview from December 3, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jack Waggoner, Laura Belmonte, Dennis Neill 2003 available at Center bar life gay bar Gay Bars interview Jack Waggoner Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript transcript University of Kansas video https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/9c370c2ade14307e6a1b7cac51fd997a.mp4 8c86d9871f18be29287a1c8d06288d8e https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/6100ee390b88b4e5687d17fa8a967f00.pdf c25b26bcfe904aa3a2707aed1621f55c PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Sue Welch and Marcy Smith Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins Date: Jan 16, 2026 Transcribed By: Dennis Neill using Reduct.Video, February 28, 2026 Restrictions: Interviewee requested: N/A Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 historyproject@okeq.org 1 �About Sue Welch and Marcy Smith Summary In this engaging conversation, Marcy Smith and Sue Welch share their personal journeys, highlighting their experiences growing up in Oklahoma and navigating their identities as members of the LGBTQ+ community. Marcy recounts her childhood in Tulsa, her education at Oklahoma Christian College, and her early awareness of her sexual orientation. She reflects on the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in a conservative environment, including the need for stealth and the importance of finding community. Sue, on the other hand, shares her upbringing in Ponca City, her academic journey at OSU, and the pivotal moment when she realized her feelings for her best friend. Both women discuss their relationships, the evolution of their identities, and the significance of community support in their lives. As they delve deeper into their experiences, Marcy and Sue recount their involvement with Oklahomans for Human Rights and the development of the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center. They reflect on the challenges of coming out to their families, the societal pressures they faced, and the importance of creating a safe space for LGBTQ+ individuals in Tulsa. Their stories are filled with humor, resilience, and a sense of belonging, showcasing the power of love and community in overcoming adversity. In this episode, Marcy Smith and Sue Welch share their inspiring journey of establishing a community center for the LGBTQ+ community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They recount the grassroots efforts that began in the late 2 �1980s, during the AIDS crisis, when they faced skepticism and pushback from within their own community. Despite the challenges, they successfully organized fundraising events, such as house parties and the Wild Hearts Ball, to raise awareness and funds. Their determination led to significant milestones, including securing a $10,000 grant from a New York foundation and eventually purchasing a permanent space for their community center, which became a hub for support, celebration, and activism. The conversation highlights the importance of physical spaces for community gathering, especially in a time when virtual connections are prevalent. Marcy and Sue emphasize the need for ongoing support and engagement within the community, particularly in light of recent political challenges. They reflect on the center's role in pivotal moments for LGBTQ+ rights, including the legalization of same-sex marriage and the repeal of discriminatory laws. Their message is clear: maintaining a physical home for the community is essential for fostering connection, support, and resilience against adversity. Keywords LGBTQ+, Tulsa, Oklahomans for Human Rights, coming out, community support, Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, personal stories, Marcy Smith, Sue Welch, LGBTQ+ history, LGBTQ+ community, Tulsa, fundraising, community center, activism, AIDS crisis, grassroots efforts, Wild Hearts Ball, same-sex marriage, community support Takeaways ● "I knew pretty early probably 10 or 11 years of age." ● "You just find your people and can do things." ● "It was kind of a cover, right?" ● "I felt like I was living in the 1950s." ● "It was a pivotal thing to see that." ● "I think they were upset that they were having to deal with it." ● "My family has always been very progressive, very liberal." ● "We moved into a duplex that I had previously moved into." ● "We developed a campaign for a permanent visible presence." 3 �● "It was fantastic because I think we had such a large group." It was a very grassroots campaign, one person at a time. ● We had to prove ourselves first before getting large donations. ● We wanted to bring disparate groups together behind the same cause. ● The community bought into this; it was a beautiful thing. ● We had to create a physical space for gathering and support. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 01:16 Marcy's Childhood and Education 12:10 Sue's Upbringing and Early Relationships 24:00 Finding Community in Tulsa 38:55 Coming Out to Family and Friends 46:58 Involvement with Oklahomans for Human Rights 48:21 Grassroots Beginnings: Building Support 52:28 Creating Community Events for Fundraising 01:00:10 Challenges and Triumphs in Fundraising 01:08:50 Finding a Permanent Home for the Center 01:18:31 The Grand Opening and Community Impact 01:25:42 Reflections on Community and Future Challenges __________________________________________________________________ ____ 4 �Sue Welch and Marcy Smith Oral History Interview Jan 16, 2026 Toby Jenkins: Today's date is Friday, January the 16th, 2026, at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. And we have Marcy Smith and Sue Welch. For our archival purposes, would you please give us your name, your age as today's date. Marcy Smith: Me, Marcy Smith, 62, gonna be 63 this year. Sue Welch: Sue Welch, 64. Toby Jenkins: Joining me in the interview today is the founder of Oklahomans for Equality, Dennis R. Neill, and Amanda Thompson, who is the archivist at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, which houses the Nancy and Joe MacDonald Rainbow Library [where this interview is being conducted]. Marcy, tell us a little bit about your childhood and your family. When were you born? Marcy Smith: October 10th, 1963, right here in Tulsa. Toby Jenkins: What hospital? Marcy Smith: Well, I thought I was born in St. John, but recently, I found out I was born in Hillcrest. Toby Jenkins: And so your family was from Tulsa? Marcy Smith: Yes, my mom's family eventually was from Tulsa, but they had spent some time in Texas for quite some time. And then my dad was a sales rep for Skelly Oil Company and moved around a lot. I was born in Tulsa, and then 11 months later, my sister Karen was born in Joplin. And then 18 months after that, my sister Cindy was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Then we hung out in Arkansas for a little bit and then came back to Tulsa, so yeah. Toby Jenkins: Did you go to school? Marcy Smith: Went to- yes, went to elementary school, where the center now is for- at 11th and Utica, went to Jefferson Elementary School, which does not exist anymore, because of the center now, so. Toby Jenkins: The center for those with physical challenged? Marcy Smith: Yes, yes, not Oklahomans for Equality Center. 5 �Marcy Smith: So went to school there, and then we moved way out south in 1971 to Jenks, which was- Woodland Hills Mall didn't even exist. That 71st and Memorial, it was a gravel road still. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, and it was called Jenks USA. Marcy Smith: That's right, it was Jenks USA, and it was way the heck out there. So we moved out to Jenks and then finished school at Jenks High School, and thenToby Jenkins: And what year did you graduate? Marcy Smith: Graduated 1982. Toby Jenkins: 1982. Marcy Smith: Then went toToby Jenkins: How many were in your graduating class at Jenks? Marcy Smith: I think there were 482 people, something like that, yeah. And then went to Oklahoma Christian College for a couple of years. Toby Jenkins: Which is locatedMarcy Smith: In Edmond, Oklahoma. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Marcy Smith: Still is. Toby Jenkins: And it's a disciple’s college? Marcy Smith: It's Church of Christ. Toby Jenkins: Church of Christ, okay. And that's where you went for your undergraduate degree? Marcy Smith: Couple years there, and the reason I went was that my best friend from high school was Church of Christ, and I didn't have a- it's like, "Okay, I'll go there, that's fine." And ran into probably one of the largest groups of gays and lesbians on the planet. It's kind of a joke. Anyway, although it was not a veryToby Jenkins: At the Christian University? Marcy Smith: At the Christian College. 6 �Toby Jenkins: Right. Marcy Smith: Lots of gays and lesbians, lots of people trying to escape their parents in the small town. So it was kind of a- I guess it was what you would call a beard, right? It was a cover. So they're like, "Oh yeah, we're gonna go to a Christian's college and fix ourselves." But that was not happening there. So anyway. Although when they caught someone, it was pretty brutal how they dealt with getting rid of students at the college when they found out they were gay or lesbian, so. Toby Jenkins: So you went thereMarcy Smith: I was there for a couple years, and my best friend was in love with a guy back in Tulsa. She just couldn't finish- she had to come back to Tulsa. So there really wasn't anything for me to stay there for, so I came back to Tulsa and finished my degree at the University of Tulsa.Graduated in 1986 with an MIS degree, which was one of the very first computer science and business majors at the University of Tulsa. We were the second class, and I think there were only about seven of us. Toby Jenkins: And that would have been what year? Marcy Smith: That was 1986. Toby Jenkins: Okay, and how big was the computer in those days? Marcy Smith: Well, soToby Jenkins: It wasn't on- it couldn't be on your desk yet, could it? I think- yeah. Marcy Smith: Well, no, no, yeah. No, but it was heading that way. It was heading that way. So, no, they were pretty big, pretty big computers. But I pushed it as long as I possibly could, so that I didn't have to use punch cards to do my programming. And thankfully, I got out of that, so. But computers as we would know them are desktops. I think that was around 1991-1992, or something like that, when that became kinda mainstream. Toby Jenkins: And did you go work for a company, or were youMarcy Smith: Fresh out of college, I ended up- I had two job offers. One was to be a tape hanger for American Airlines in their computer room. The other was to be a programmer analyst for Tulsa County. My dad thought I made a really horrible mistake by not working for American Airlines on the third shift hanging tapes, which was like an aerobic exercise job at the time. 7 �You can imagine their processing center and imagine their processing center today. But yeah, he thought I was silly for- 'cause I would've gotten fine benefits and stuff like that, so. But I never looked back on that. It's not what I wanted to do, so. Toby Jenkins: And how long were you with Tulsa County? Marcy Smith: About 18 years. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Toby Jenkins: And so are you gonna be able to draw your Tulsa County pension? Marcy Smith: As a matter of fact, in November of 2025, I got my first retirement check. Marcy Smith: So yeah, I'm happy about that. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. They didn't pay us much, but we've got pension. Marcy Smith: No. But yeah, the benefits are really good. Yeah, but when I left Tulsa County in 2004, that rule of '80, I thought, there's just no way I'm gonna reach that, right? So that was 22 years ago. But as it got closer and closer, I was really happy about it, so we'll have some fun on that. Toby Jenkins: So you encountered other lesbian and gay students. Is that when you begin to realizeMarcy Smith: No, no. I knew pretty early, probably 10 or 11 years of age. Marcy Smith: And then, just because of the climate, dated- in quotes, dated guys in high school and got asked in high school because there was some stuff going on with the girls' basketball team, which I was on the basketball team. There were several lesbians on the basketball team. And so there got to be a kind of an uproar at some point. People were being questioned. And so my parents sat me down and I just lied straight to their face, 'cause I didn't wanna be in the middle of it. So thankfully, got out of that without a whole lot of issues, so. But it was a- Jenks back then, it was a pretty rural school. A lot of bubba's running around, a lot of individuals threatening people and some violence and vandalism of cars and stuff like that going on, so. So I didn't wanna call attention to it. Toby Jenkins: At college, even at your Christian college, I mean, did you hang out with those individuals and y'all just kind of were stealth atMarcy Smith: Well, yeah, you know how we are. We find our people, right? And so you hang out with your people. And so yeah, it was just a matter of just figuring out what you 8 �can and cannot do. But I will say- yeah, Oklahoma Christian College was smaller than my high school.When we went there, and I felt like I was living in the 1950s. When we got on campus, the girls dorms were locked at night, the guys were not. The guys could do whatever they wanted at night after hours on the weekend, stuff like that. I knew I wasn't gonna be long for that. It was just like, well, I'm just going here because my friend was here. And once that started happening, I just felt like I was caged in and so- but it was kind of odd environment. It kinda felt like you were in a bubble, this Christian bubble, and everything was wonderful and fine and all of that. Who knows what the administrators thought, but that wasn't what was going on behind the scenes with the students and stuff, so you just find your people and can do things. I ended up getting a job at a really nice restaurant there in Edmond called Joe Kelly's and it was a steakhouse, and people would have their high school events there and graduation and stuff like that. But I was the first- it was called a barback, so you're a bartender's assistant. Here I am going to a Christian college and I'm working at a bar, and when I would come home at night after doing my shift at the restaurant, I was literally covered in alcohol and smoke, 'cause you could smoke back then, right? At 02:00-03:00 in the morning, I had to wake up the resident assistants, this woman who took care of us at the dorm, had to wake her up at 02:00 AM in the morning, coming in just covered in alcohol. So anyway, that was kinda funny, people would do that. Toby Jenkins: Did you start socializing with this group of students who were in hiding, or did that happen when you got to TU? I mean, when did you create a clique of friends, whoMarcy Smith: When I left Oklahoma Christian College which was in Edmond, obviously, and came home to Tulsa, I really didn't stay in touch with most of them. They were from all over Oklahoma and all over the country, actually. So when I came back to Tulsa, I came back to Tulsa because I had a relationship with a woman at the time. We ended up moving in together and I finished out my degree at University of Tulsa at that point, and then just kinda started hanging out with everybody here in Tulsa, so really kinda through the softball chain of- I mean, just kinda how it was. Toby Jenkins: Lesbian day, or? Marcy Smith: Yeah, yeah, that's right, softball stuff. And then, the bars at the time and line dancing and all that kinda stuff. So you're going out to the bars andToby Jenkins: Do you remember what bars you went to? 9 �Marcy Smith: Oh. Well, I can't remember the name of the bar that was on Memorial there at 15th Street. Toby Jenkins: TNT's? Marcy Smith: No. Well, it wasn't- no, it was prior to TNT's and where people were playingyou know the name of the bar? Sue Welch: The Club. Marcy Smith: The Club, it's called The Club. So anyway, you had to knock and they open up the window and let you in, and all that kinda stuff. Toby Jenkins: And that was at 15th at Memorial? Marcy Smith: 15th, right, yeah, yeah, 15th Street, dead-ended, right into Memorial. And then, The Club was there and it was like a little house, actually. It wasn't very big. But they had an outdoor space, so volleyball and have fires and stuff like that. You can hang out outside The Club. Sue Welch: Jodie and Mary owned it. Marcy Smith: Yeah. So thenToby Jenkins: And it was a girls club? Marcy Smith: Yeah. And then you had the star, Silver Star, right? So that was 15th and Sheridan, and then TNT's. And then, theMarcy Smith: Off of Yale, what was it? 34th and Yale. There's also a club called the Crash Landing at the time [Crash Landing was at 5th and S. Lewis], that was a pretty coolToby Jenkins: So is Zippers closed by this time? Marcy Smith: No, Zippers- was it always called Zippers? I don't know if it was always called Zippers or not, but that was another place that we would go to, so. Toby Jenkins: So softball. Marcy Smith: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And these are clubs. Marcy Smith: Yes. 10 �Toby Jenkins: Did you know anything about Oklahomans for Human Rights or pride, or? Marcy Smith: I guess it was probably real early 90s when I got involved with OHR, TOHR. That was kinda the transition time, I think, when it was moving from those names and stuff over. Specifically, I believe it was when we were over on Peoria, I think. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Marcy Smith: So that's kinda the first access in trying to assist and volunteer and stuff like that, so. Toby Jenkins: Let's put Sue on the hot seat. Marcy Smith: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And see how similar her story is or how different it is. Before we do that, I wanna ask you, tell me about meeting Sue. Marcy Smith: It was a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house. Lots of people there, I don't know, probably 30 or 40 women, maybe more than that. And this will date us- so it was all about Trivial Pursuit. So we're playing Trivial Pursuit, it's pretty competitive. She walked in with her then-partner, and I was around a coffee table or something like that, knee-deep in the Trivial Pursuit. And I just looked up and she walked in with her then-partner. And it wasI don't know how- maybe I said something to someone like, "Who's that?" They were like, "Sue Welch and Darlene." So anyway, that's how we met, but there was something at that just initial glance. And so anyway, I'll let her tell the rest, but it was just a party. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Beautiful. Sue, where were you born and where are you from? Sue Welch: I was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma on April 30th, 1961. Dennis was born there too, it's our hometown, both of us. Marcy Smith: It's in the water. Sue Welch: Yeah. A nice, sweet little, small town, a great town to be born and raised in. Not a great town to stay, but a great town to be born and raised in. Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Were you born in the hospital there? Sue Welch: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And what was the name of that hospital? Sue Welch: Ponca City Hospital. 11 �Toby Jenkins: Okay. And tell us about your family. Sue Welch: My family, my mother's Cherokee and my dad is English. And they had a great love affair and were married till they passed and were wonderful parents. But my dad is a third-generation brick mason. Hiss grandfather, before statehood, had a brick yard in Ponca City. And he built the first brick home. So from my great-grandfather to my grandfather to my father and his brothers, it was a third-generation brick mason company, Welch Masonry Construction. Toby Jenkins: So they've been there for a while. Are there still- if you were to go to Ponca City today, are there still buildings that they built? Sue Welch: Oh, dozens and dozens, yes. Buildings and homes, yes. Yeah, you could have a Welch Masonry tour of Ponca City. Toby Jenkins: So did you go to school in Ponca City? Sue Welch: Yes, I went to Ponca City High School. And it was- we actually had a very large graduating class. It was 415 people for our graduating class. And I thought it wasToby Jenkins: So you all probably played Jenks in sports. Sue Welch: I wasn't really into sports. I don't know that. Could be. But I studied a lot. Sue Welch: Well, it may have been a little too far away. Toby Jenkins: Oh, okay. Sue Welch: Maybe at state and regionals, but not on a conference level. Sue Welch: I wouldn't have known. I went to the football games just for fun. So don't ask me any of those stats. Marcy Smith: Too popular. Sue Welch: I was the prom queen. So there's that. Toby Jenkins: Says so much. Sue Welch: But not the football queen, so. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. So what year did you graduate? Sue Welch: I graduated in 1979. 12 �Toby Jenkins: And did you go to school after that? Sue Welch: Yes, after that, I went to OSU. And in 1983, got my degree in natural sciences, my bachelor's degree in natural sciences. Loved OSU. That was great. That was where my best friend and I started having deeper feelings about each other, so…in high school and throughout a large- oh, the first half of college, my boyfriend from high school, the wrestling star, we became engaged. So in high school- in college, we were going to be married right after college. My best friend and I started becoming very, very close, and I just kept thinking, "Oh my God, I can't graduate and leave my friend. This would be horrible." And we just kept getting deeper and deeper feelings, and I thought, "What is going on here?" Sue Welch: And so I talked to my mom about it, and I said, "I think I'm going crazy or something." She said, well, honey, I can't believe that any love is wrong. And I never looked back. So I left my fiancé. Toby Jenkins: And that would've been- you would've been ... Marcy Smith: She called off the wedding. Yeah. Sue Welch: Yeah. Sue Welch: The dress was all done. The invitations were ... - yeah. It was on the way. Marcy Smith: The colors were picked, all the stuff. Toby Jenkins: The runaway bride. Marcy Smith: Yes. Sue Welch: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. How old would you've been? Sue Welch: So that would have been, let's see, right when I graduated, right at 1983. So 21, 22. Toby Jenkins: So you had this discussion with your mother. I'm just guessing there probably weren't a bunch of lesbians in Ponca City to help mentor you. Sue Welch: There may have been, but I did not know them. Toby Jenkins: Okay. 13 �Sue Welch: I didn't know anyone in the community. I didn'tToby Jenkins: It's 'cause you weren't going to softball camp. Sue Welch: That's right. My gaydar was not tuned at the time, so yeah. Toby Jenkins: You went to OSU. What was that experience like for you now that you had ended that relationship and probably were figuring out? Sue Welch: We moved into a house together, and we had a few friends, both of us. We were each other's first experience, and so neither of us knew of any community per se, but we did find a few friends, half a dozen, 10 friends that we hung out with a little bit. Then we broke up, and someone introduced me to a woman in Tulsa. And when I left OSU and came to Tulsa to establish my practice here, there was a huge community. So many people. I was just like, "Wow, this is amazing." So much so that my partner was a teacher, and my sister, when she would visit, she said, "Well, are all teachers lesbians?" So such a great, huge community. So that was fantastic to experience. Marcy Smith: Well, and you have gay guy friends to this day from OSU. Sue Welch: Well, not from a- well, they were gone at the same time. Yeah, but we didn't hang out a lot. We found each other kind of after. In Tulsa. And I was like, "I knew you in OSU." So we kind of, all of us were in hiding there once I did come out of OSU. Toby Jenkins: So you didn't really connect to the LGBTQ community at OSU. It was when you came to Tulsa. Sue Welch: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And when you say there was a huge community, what did that look like? Sue Welch: Oh my gosh. Toby Jenkins: Were there just house parties, or people went to eat together, or? Sue Welch: House parties, going to the bars, dancing, potlucks, softball. My partner was a well-respected softball umpire, so lots of softball. Of course she was. And so yeah, just a lot of socializing. A lot of socializing. Toby Jenkins: Did either of you ladies ever interact with the flag football team, the girls' flag football team? Sue Welch: No. 14 �Toby Jenkins: Okay. Well, that's who helped me come out. I always say I was raised by wolves, because the girls' flag football team. So it was a huge community, and you were in a relationship. Sue Welch: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And what was your career at this time? Sue Welch: I was licensed by the medical board as an electrologist. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Sue Welch: And I did that for 22 years in Broken Arrow and in Tulsa. Toby Jenkins: And you were in a relationship. Do you remember kinda what the environment was like for you in Tulsa, what it was like to go to gay clubs and, as you said, find so many people? Sue Welch: It was fantastic. Because I think we had so many- such a large group, I didn't recognize feeling a lot of threat. I knew some of our male counterparts were threatened. But we just didn't go to places that allowed us to be threatened. We didn't go out unless we were in big numbers. We only went to certain places. The Club was very private, very protected. So that's kind of what that was like. Toby Jenkins: And what was that like? You hit the parking lot, and the minute you walk through the doorSue Welch: Yeah, it's freedom. Yeah, freedom. Toby Jenkins: You could hold hands. Like, cheers, hey. Sue Welch: Absolutely. Toby Jenkins: You could hold hands? Yeah. Sue Welch: Yeah, freedom, absolutely. Sue Welch: But not out at work, not out to any clients, not out to friends who were not LGBT. Toby Jenkins: So I'm gonna ask you both this question, but tell me about the first time you saw Marcy. 15 �Sue Welch: So it was a party, and my partner and I walked in, and there were people playing at a table. And Marcy has these beautiful brown piercing eyes, and so I noticed her naturally. And it was probably another year after, and it was a New Year's party, and it struck midnight. And I'm a pretty private person, private physically. I'm very demonstrative, but kissing on the lips was really a personal thing for me. And it struck midnight, and Marcy just planted a kiss right on my lips. And I was like, "Wow." Marcy Smith: She wasn't the only person that I kissed. Sue Welch: Well, no. Marcy Smith: I mean, it was New Year's Eve. Everybody ... . Sue Welch: Marcy wasn't as protective of her lips as I was. So but yes, I was like, "Oh, my God." That was sparky. So yeah. And then our partners, the four of us became close friends, and you know the story. So we could not- we were inseparable. And we all four worked on our partnerships. We knew there were some feelings. But we were inseparable and just in so much pain not being able to see each other that the partnership split. AndToby Jenkins: For you all to be together? Marcy Smith: Yep. Toby Jenkins: Okay. That would've been what year? Marcy Smith: '92. Toby Jenkins: '92? Marcy Smith: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Sue Welch: In the 1900s. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Sue Welch: In the 1900s, we got together. Toby Jenkins: So I asked both of you, and you said you found community here. You found that because you got on the Internet, right? And you looked up where the gay bars were. Marcy Smith: Oh right, because the Internet existed. No, the Internet didn't quite exist yet. Well, I guess 1992-ish is about the time it started taking off. Those were chat rooms. 16 �Toby Jenkins: Do you remember any public officials or movie stars or rockstars, who were out in open who you could look at and see, oh, this is how you- this is what it is? Sue Welch: Eventually, Lilly Tomlin came out. Eventually, through the horrible AIDS crisis, we saw stars, Rock Hudson die, whether they'd come out prior or not. But no, there were no authority figures, people that you could look up to, to have any kind of guidance that way. Toby Jenkins: Social media non-existent. Sue Welch No. The Gay Yellow Pages, literally a book that you would look in to find places. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Couldn't text people messages. Marcy Smith: Nope, nope. Sue Welch: No. Toby Jenkins: Couldn't send them pictures. Marcy Smith: No. Toby Jenkins: Okay. So we've talked about you meeting each other. Could you just real quickly emphasize to us and our viewers, what it was like when you had the discussion with your families to say, I'm a lesbian, I have a partner. Or can you kind of tell about those experiences, if you had those experiences with your parents. Marcy Smith: My family is kinda the 'don't ask, don't tell' family. Don't mess with my stuff. I'm not gonna mess with your stuff. We're not gonna have a lot of drama. So all this time, I was just kinda living my life, but wasn't really putting it in my parents' face, so to speak. Obviously, I wasn't bringing any guys home. And then Sue and I had been together for a little bit. But so what happened was, well, same-sex marriage didn't exist. So there was a company, a travel company called Olivia Travel Company. They were also a record company at the time that was promoting lesbian artists. And so it's an all-women's cruise, which is really neat. So Sue and I were gonna do that. And on these cruises, because you could not get legally married, they would haveSue Welch: Union ceremonies. Marcy Smith: Unions, yeah. Toby Jenkins: Commitment ceremony. 17 �March Smith: A commitment ceremony. So that's how my family found out, because we sent out announcements to my family that Sue and I were going to have a commitment ceremony in Mexico, and that's how my family found out. It was kind of ripply, quite frankly. And it was kinda like, I guess, how people can be like, how could you not know that Sue and I were a couple, but sometimes straight people don't really see things. So it was a little bit rough. We timed it pretty quickly before we went to the- so we could hurry up and get out of town and get on the cruise and let my family deal with it. So that's kinda how my family found out, which was literal announcement. Toby Jenkins: So you said it was rough. I mean, were they upset, or were they questioning you, or just mad that you hadn't told them before? Marcy Smith: Yeah, yeah. I think they- I don't know, 'cause I didn't really sit down and talk with them quite honestly. It was like, just y'all deal with it. Sue Welch: I think they were upset that they were having to deal with it. Marcy Smith: Yeah. Sue Welch: They were being forced to deal with it. Marcy Smith: Yes. Yeah, and this was something that they probably had pushed down for decades, obviously. It's like, "Oh my gosh, now they have to come to terms with it." I think my parents probably thought, in some form or fashion, that they had failed, and all those things that you hear. But ultimately, my mom embraced us and kinda became the mom down here at the center. So mom spent at least 10 years, I think, or more volunteering down at the center and baking brownies for people and things like that. So she committed to that once, I think, she came to terms with it. And so that was really neat. Sue Welch: She was great. Toby Jenkins: Sue, what about you, your family? I know you'd had the conversation with your mother. Sue Welch: Well, my family found out about our commitment ceremony in the same way, with the announcements. But all through Marcy had been my third relationship. And all through…they knew about my relationships, accepted my partners, and were very loving and accepting. Accepted them as family, they came to family reunions. So when we sent out the announcements, I got calls, "That sounds nice, honey. Well, good for you." 18 �Ohe worst one, or the most uncomfortable one, I guess, was from one of my sisters, and she just called and said, "Well, I just wanna call and tell you I got your announcement about your thing. And just wanna tell you I got it." That was about the most outside effect. But my family has just always been- I've been so fortunate, the way they've accepted me. Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Do you think your family's had issues with religion and sexuality? Were those any kinda struggles or politics? I mean, they were super conservative politically. Did they seem to show concern about how this was gonna make them look in their business or around, don't tell your grandmother. I mean, was there any kind of those? Marcy Smith: I think, from my father's perspective, that he was concerned about his reputation and his business reputation and the country club stuff and all of that. I remember in particular, he wanted a trip to Paris and through his company and he's like, "I don't wanna go to Paris. And I said, "Well, I'd like to go to Paris. I'll go on that trip." And it was an oil company trip thing and- so before it got too far down the line, he made it very clear to me that I was not to take my partner with me to on this trip. And so it was like, "You can take your mom." And so I said, "Okay, I'm gonna go to the city of love and take my mom." I mean, I love my mom, but. So anyway, so that was made very, very clear, that I was supposed to basically behave, in front of his peers and cronies and stuff like that for that trip, so. Toby Jenkins: Were you able to bring girlfriends home to your parents’ houses, your mom or dad's house for gatherings? Marcy Smith: So I mean, like Sue said, it's not like I was this dating feen. We had two- one, I had one, but I had a high school relationship but that was not, quite frankly, ever gonna go anywhere, but anyway. So two basic relationships before I got with Sue. Sue and I have been together for 34 years now, so it wasn't like there were this a bunch of women that I was bringing home. Toby Jenkins: Okay, what about you, Sue? Did the family feel any- I mean, were you able to take… Sue Welch: Oh yeah, yeah, from the get-go. My first relationship, second relationship, Marcy, they were all included in holidays, gatherings, accepted by my family and my sister that has lived in Oklahoma for- not currently, but for most of her life. Yeah, they were just part of the family and my partner. 19 �Marcy Smith: And I would agree with that. I don't want it to sound like my family was wanted me to not bring. ..I mean, they were- whoever I brought home, part of the family. My mom was one of seven children, so everybody was welcome. Toby Jenkins: No political pushback, no religious pushback? Marcy Smith No, because we are the 'don't ask, don't tell' family. So we didn't really bring that stuff up at all. Toby Jenkins: What about you, Sue? Sue Welch: No, no, my family's always been very progressive, very liberal, although we were raised in a fairly strict Lutheran Church, my family's never been that linear. Their Christianity really is what would Jesus do and love everyone. Toby Jenkins: Fortunate. Do you both feel fortunate that you were born into the families you were born into? Marcy Smith: Yes Sue Welch: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: 'Cause we're about to change gears just a little bit here, because surely, as you were hanging out at what places identified as the community, you were encountering people who did not have those experiences, could not take partners home, hadn't spoke to their families. I know that was something you probably were saying. So you're together…You're building your life together. I mean, did you move into an apartment together? Was there a U-Haul involved? We've always heard- I meanSue Welch: We moved into a duplex that I had previously moved into and we- then Marcy, moved in. Then we purchased the duplex and then we purchased a home in Midtown. Marcy Smith: Well, no, we purchased a second duplex. So we had two duplexes. Sue Welch: And then we purchased a home in Midtown, which we were renovating while we still lived in the first duplex. And when we moved to Midtown, it's kind of when we started finding more out about the gay pride parades and the center on Peoria and going to the center on Peoria, and seeing a little gift shop. And just- but for me, all the kids, the young kids that were there, and thinking, "Gosh, had I known about that sooner, I may have come out sooner, I don't know." but it was just- it was a pivotal thing to see that. Toby Jenkins: And of course, were you- at this time Marcy, you were still working for Tulsa County. Did they know? 20 �Marcy Smith I did not come out to- I mean literally say this to my peers, but I didn't hide my relationship with Sue and whenever we had- if we were doing chili cook-offs or whatever we were doing forToby Jenkins: Holiday parties. Marcy Smith: - fundraisers or things like that, it was just assumed that Sue would be there. So- but no, I didn't literally say to my boss, "This is who Sue is." Toby Jenkins: So you don't feel like you've experienced discrimination, justMarcy Smith: I don't know if I did or not, I just head down, get my career going and all that kinda stuff. So I don't know. Toby Jenkins: Just out of curiosity, would you have had a desk and would on your desk, would there have been a picture of your partner, and would you've had somebody ask you, like a new employee might say, "Are you married, do you have husband, do you have kids?" I meanMarcy Smith: I- to be honest, I cannot remember if I had a picture of SueSue Welch: You weren't out that much. Marcy Smith: No, no. No, I did not push that. No. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Okay. Sue, you had your medical profession. And what about with your clients? I mean, were youSue Welch: No, not out all. Toby Jenkins: You guarded that very carefully. Sue Welch: I may have had two clients that I was out to, but that's it. Toby Jenkins: Okay. So you've moved to Brookside, the Rainbow Ribbon, as it's called. And the center, as you call it, was just down the street. And what did that center look like? Sue Welch: It was small. It was small. It wasn't well appointed. I mean it was fantastic 'cause it served a great purpose, but just in comparison to where we're sitting now, it was small and not greatly appointed. It was hidden. Toby Jenkins: Wasn't accessible. 21 �Sue Welch: You had to go in a small door, climb some stairs. There wasn't signage, so that's kinda what I remember. The store was very, very small, maybe just one cabinet, some jewelry or something, as I recall. Toby Jenkins: And you would go to pride? Sue Welch: Yes, at that time, at least for a couple or few times, the pride parade went down Peoria, which was fantastic. So we started doing that and then we would go to pride every year beyond that. Toby Jenkins: Okay. When did- I mean, did you volunteer or did you just support it? Sue Welch: We mostly just supported at that time. And there were starting to be visible churches that were supportive, and there was one on Peoria also, and so we'd usually stand at that location. Toby Jenkins: That would've been All Souls ... ? Sue Welch: No, further south... . Toby Jenkins: Southwest Presbyterian, or? Sue Welch: Probably that Presbyterian one, yeah. Marcy Smith: It wasn't Southminster. It's not there anymore. It's right there where the green space is across from Charleston's. Sue Welch: Mm-hmm. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, the United Methodist Church. Marcy Smith: Yes, it was the United Methodist Church. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, I know. I forget the name of that, but. Okay, so you'd watch the parade. Sue Welch: And we'd join in at the end of the parade. At that time it was small enough, you could just walk with it. Toby Jenkins: Now did you ever attend the events like before the parade, where we had to walk down the sidewalks? Sue Welch: I don't know that we knew about those events. 22 �Toby Jenkins: Prior to that? Okay. And so the center was the headquarters of Tulsa Oklahoma for Human Rights, right? Correct? That y'all had already branded by that? Okay. Dennis Neill: Since '85. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. And, so you were there. I know that somewhere along the line, you got into the cause, got drafted, recruited, or fell into it accidentally. The desire for us to have a more permanent home because we weren't at- the center was not at that location very long, was it? Sue Welch: No. Toby Jenkins: And then it moved. Marcy Smith: And that happened at least three times within a fairly five to six year period of time. Because somehow or another, we got a lease signed but eventually the landlords weren't really happy about the clientele. Not that it was rowdy or outrageous or anything like that. So then we moved to, or TOHR moved to the space at 21st and Memorial by TNTs, the bar there. Toby Jenkins: Above TNT's. Marcy Smith: Above TNT's. And not a very, in my opinion, positive space because the smoke was seeping through the cinder block. It got to the point, I couldn't spend much time there because of how- it just was not a positive space. And that's kinda where the rumblings of the capital campaign happened. But yeah, we got recruited at a party by Nancy McDonald. We didn't know why we got invited to this party. Sue Welch: It was actually more surreptitious than that. We started having more friends, and so we got invited to this party. She was there but she told someone after that party, "You need to call those girls and get them involved." So we got a call and were asked to get on this group to help develop and work on a capital campaign for a permanent equality center. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Sue Welch: Found out later, Nancy was the impetus for that. Toby Jenkins: And so, you got asked to serve on that? Toby Jenkins: And what were those early days like? 23 �Sue Welch: So we did have, before moving from Peoria, we did have a couple, the very first meetings there. And Marcy and I are really organized and conducting meetings, let's get something done. So I think we exhibit our leadership pretty quickly. And a lot of people don't want to be in charge. So I became the capital chair at the time. And we developed a campaign, the United Way always has a name of their campaign, so we thought we need a name for this. And so we developed the Pyramid Project. And this was a beautiful little book telling everyone about it and how it would be such a wonderful thing to have our own center, where we wouldn't have to move, a permanent visible presence. And so we just went from there and from each place we would move, we would have more meetings. We did, thanks to Dennis and Nancy as I recall, we had training from the Gill Foundation that was a weekend long. And we brought in a lot of people to that and helped develop our focus a lot more about what amount we'd be raising, how we would do that. They had some really great booklets about fundraising. And again at the time, there were no foundations in Oklahoma, much less Tulsa, who would support us until later. So it was a very grassroots campaign. It was one person at a time, one gay person in Tulsa at a time getting them on board, having them donate funds. And then we got- I remember sending out a really sappy tear-jerky letter to a foundation in New York City, who I had heard reading through these manuals with Nancy, gave money to gay causes. And they gave us our first check from a foundation, a $10,000 check from a foundation. And after that, a friend called me from the George Kaiser Foundation and said, "George was looking at the newspaper on his desk about you all and the money you're raising, and he'd like to talk with you about this and see if he could get involved." And I was like, "Okay." Dominoes, so the dominoes started. The Schusterman Foundation. But we had- before any of this large money that way, we focused on house parties, individual people, really telling them how this could happen, would happen, and it would be amazing. We had our main donors. And Dennis helped with that group and really helped us get going. So it was a house party at a time. Marcy Smith: Then again, we're still in the midst of the AIDS crisis at this time. I mean, it's still kind of going on in the late 80s and early 90s as well. And when this kicked off, I will tell you, we got some pushback from the gay guys in the community that here are two women, two- that they didn't even know. Like, we're on the D list. They don't even know who we are. Stepping up to do this. And also, at the time, there had been at least one other nonprofit 24 �organization who had a capital campaign and the funds were misused. And so of course, the thought was like, "Well, this is gonna go the same way, even though it had nothing to do with it." It was really difficult to convince, I guess you'd call them the movers and shakers at the time, in the gay community. And then, of course, trying to pull the lesbian community into it was tough. But kind of being told to our face and also hearing what was being said behind our back gave us-Fuel…some fuel to kinda set this up. And we had to do it differently, like Sue said, because we weren't in L.A, we weren't in New York, we're literally- Ford Foundation would cut a check. We didn't have that here. And so, the way we had to do it here was totally opposite. Usually, you got these big donations at the beginning that kickstarted you. And here we had to prove ourselves first. Toby Jenkins: Public dollars. Oh, the public dollars in those places. Marcy Smith: And- yeah, there's not gonna be anything from the state. Nothing was going to happen like that here. But because of that, I think it really built this incredible foundation and support for the purpose of it. And again, it was about building this home, a permanent visible presence here. Toby Jenkins: Sue, talk a little bit about how y'all used social events to create buy-in and raise money at the same time. Sue Welch: I think there were disparate clubs around town and kind of cliquish groups around town. But we wanted to really bring everybody together. So we had- and in years past, there was a large party called the Black and White Party that was hosted by gay guys in Tulsa, which was a really nicely well-attended party. But it was just a party. So we wanted to bring this disparate group of people together behind the same cause. And there had not been a citywide gay party, LGBT party in decades. And so, we developed what we called the Wild Hearts Ball. And the first one we had was at the, then Brady Mansion. And there were so many people there. And this was the first big thing that had happened in Tulsa in a long time. And so we would show a big party, nice music, nice food. We'd show a video about this and ask for donations. And it was just so compelling for people to see so many people there joining in and know that we could all do this together. Toby Jenkins: And everybody could be invited to it. Marcy Smith: Exactly. Sue Welch: Oh yeah. Toby Jenkins: It wasn't an exclusive party. 25 �Sue Welch: Exactly, it was not exclusive. Toby Jenkins: It wasn't a girl party, a boy party. Sue Welch: No. Exactly. Yeah, it was the entire community. And that was really super because of our- we would send out a quarterly newsletter. Marcy Smith: This was postal mail about ... . Sue Welch: Postal mail. This is in sizeToby Jenkins: This one's an email. Sue Welch: This is in size 11 point font. See all these names? These are $10 donors to $10,000 donors. The entire community bought into this. It was a beautiful thing. Toby Jenkins: And it was all very smooth and unified, wasn't it? Seu Welch: Yes, yes. Everyone got along. Marcy Smith: Well, no. When we look at itSue Welch: Well, behind the scenes, we had to fight to get where we were, but everyone was just really pushing in the same direction. It was great that way. Marcy Smith: And again, it's tough to get- I'm sorry, lesbians onboard, 'cause they like to do their sports, they like to do the softball and all that kinda stuff and go to the bars. And so kinda pulling them out was a little difficult. So we did- so we- so it was like how many different ways can we slice this pie and serve it up to people to get people involved? So then we came up with the concept of the Women's Tea Dance. And also supporting women owned businesses and also provide nonprofit organizations the ability toSue Welch: Showcase. Marcy Smith: - Showcase their businesses to women. So imagine that, okay? So you got an all-women Women's Tea Dance, right? We are contacting, I don't know how many places we contacted and got no after no after no after no. No, we are not going to rent to you for a bunch of lesbians. I don't know what they thought it was gonna be. Some, I don't know, orgy or something like that. So we got turned down how many times and then we finally approached Frances. Sue Welch: So the last place I went to was the Greenwood Cultural Center. And I've been everywhere. Physically, meeting face-to-face with people. And so I met with Frances, told her who we were, what we were doing, that it was for ... campaign. 26 �Marcy Smith: She's director. Sue Welch: Frances Jordan, the Executive Director of the Greenwood Cultural Center. Marcy Smith: She, by the way, is still the Executive Director of the Greenwood today. Sue Welch: So I gave all my spiel and she said, "Well, Sue." And I expected a no. "Well, Sue, here at the Greenwood Cultural Center, we do not discriminate. So we'd be happy to have you." I was like, "Yay!" So at that first one and subsequent ones, we had 300- more than 300 lesbians from all across the city. And that was fantastic. Huge gatherings. Toby Jenkins: Now to pull in women, you also did the calendar girls. Marcy Smith: So yeah, there was a movie. I don't even know when the movie was, in the mid 90s or something. It was based on a true story. The calendar girls, which was an older group of women in Great Britain, who were trying to raise money for a wing to be added on to their very small hospital. So they came up with this idea to basically have a nudie calendar. Sue Welch: A boudoir calendar. Marcy Smith: A boudoir calendar. So we did the same thing, but what we did was- and I was really proud of these women that did this, 'cause we were partially Sue Welch: We were surprised by the women who said yes. Marcy Smith: Yeah, I mean, there were some pretty revealing photographs in this calendar. So what- so we didn't know if anybody was gonna- we didn't think anybody would buy the calendar. So we had them get sponsors. So they had to recruit as many people as possible to donate a minimum of like $250 or $500 or something like that to sponsor their month. That's how we raised. I mean, we were just happy to raise $5,000 at a time. $5,000 here, $5,000 there, to start building toward this million dollar, which was a monumental amount of money. When it was determined that that's what we were gonna need to do this, I mean, the community's likeSue Welch: Can't do it. Marcy Smith: "There's no way. You will never do that. Never do that." Sue Welch: The end point was $1.3 million. Toby Jenkins: And so there were naysayers, and there were people who were divisive, and there were people who may have been difficult. You had that, right? 27 �Sue Welch: Yeah, but not for long. Marcy Smith: And once the momentum started, itToby Jenkins: So I think I remember garden parties, the garden tour. Sue Welch: We did, we had a home and garden tour. Marcy Smith: Yeah, we did. Sue Welch: We really tried to model things that- the firemen did a calendar for United Way, so-and-so did a home and garden tour for whatever. So we try to model things that would make sense. That people would kind of already know how that worked and go, "Oh my gosh, so the gay community is doing that, great, let's get on to that." Toby Jenkins: What about the LGBT film festival? Was that alsoMarcy Smith: OUT OK. Sue Welch: So OUT OK, that was really progressive for the time. That was the first LGBT out film festival. Phillip Oh and Mark Bonney were in charge of that. They brought films from everywhere, amazing films, and all the proceeds went to the capital campaign. Marcy Smith: Yeah, talk about being ahead of its time. Sue Welch: Yeah. Marcy Smith: Now there's like gay film festival all the time. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. So it was a long lengthy process of raising the money, but you were also creating community and building a unified vision. Very impressed that you were able to do that. But at the same time, you still had to be take care in the community. So there was community centers, yet during this time. We still had community centers and you wanna talk about some of the locations andMarcy Smith: Well, I think where we were, we were at 21st and Memorial, and I think that was a very difficult landlord. It ended up being a very difficult landlord situation. But for me personally, I was glad we got the heck out of Dodge out of that location. I think it was an oppressive location, just because of the color of it and the smell of the smoke. I mean, it just was not- it didn't feel healthy. Toby Jenkins: And it wasn't accessible there. Sue Welch: No. 28 �Marcy Smith: It wasn't welcoming. Toby Jenkins: You had to steps to go up. Sue Welch: No. Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And then, got up there and the meeting room was downstairs, the bathrooms were downstairs, but we were- it was our center, and we were proud of it. Sue Welch: Yeah. Marcy Smith: Oh yeah. So the next location was the shopping center at 41st off of Yale, right across from Ricardo's Mexican restaurant, which is still there. And so that was, I would say, the best place we had been. And I'm gonna guess it was maybe 3,600 square feet, maybe. Sue Welch: Sounds about right. Yeah, maybe- 3,500. Marcy Smith: - 3,500, So it's give or take, right? And pretty much an open space, so not a lot of segregated space, where people could have private meetings or whatever they might've been doing and so but same kinda thing. We were there for a while, and then the landlord got a little weirded out and stuff. We were just trying to bide our time to get this going, so that we could own our own home instead of being kicked out eventually. And I say that- they just didn't wanna renew the lease. Or they just decided, given us notice and whatever, so. Toby Jenkins: What were some of the services that were being offered at the center? Sue Welch: Well, I'm glad you're bringing that up, Toby, because behind the scenes, while all this was going, certainly, Dennis and other people and the volunteers- Dennis was getting the Gill foundation to set up computer labs and all ofToby Jenkins: The Bohnett Foundation Sue Welch: Yes, the Bohnett. And all the services continuing, grief groups and game nights andToby Jenkins: HIV testing. Sue Welch: Yes, and counseling and all those things were still going on. Toby Jenkins: I can remember, just wanna throw this out there and get your thoughts on it. I can remember at that Center, at in the Highland Park Shopping Center, volunteering on a night where it was first time I'd ever been interacting. We had a transgender support group. 29 �So do you remember- we've talked about lesbian and gay men. Do you remember being an intentional outreach to transgender persons, or? Sue Welch: Not as far as with fundraising, because I don't think at that time we had a large group for the fundraising aspect. But certainly in the service, we established town halls finding out what people wanted, what we needed, so that we could provide that in this new place that was gonna be our permanent home. So absolutely in the services. Toby Jenkins: So you assess the community? Did y'all have surveys, or? Sue Welch: We did, at each Pride picnic, we had surveys. We had a large gathering at the library and we handed out surveys and collected information about what they want in the center, specifically as far as even rooms, art gallery, that sort of thing, kitchen, services they might want, locations they might want. Toby Jenkins: And so y'all were being paid to do all of this and you had a full-time position, right? Marcy Smith: No. Sue Welch: We had full-time positions at our jobs. Marcy Smith: : So every fundraising event for the Pyramid Project started off with a budgetSue Welch: Zero. Marcy Smith: - which was zero. That was what we started with. You're gonna donate this, you're gonna donate your time, you're gonna donate the goods, all that kinda thing. So our goal was that a lot of capital campaigns had budgets that as much as 25-30% would go to administrative overhead of what was being raised. Toby Jenkins: Paid to development workers. Marcy Smith: So our goal was to have 95% of the funds that we raised, go directly to the capital. So that meant 5% to do all this. And I think, ultimately, we ended up being aboutSue Welch: I think about seven. Marcy Smith: - 7-8% or something rather than 5%. So we were right around 92% of all the funds that were raised, stayed right there in the community foundation. That was the other thing. It was a big milestone, was going to Tulsa Community Foundation because it was about credibility. And so we needed to have our money at a place where it was managed for a place of credibility. So that was a huge milestone when we were able to have those 30 �funds placed at the Tulsa Community Foundation which they are still at today. So that was a big deal. That added some ... . Sue Welch: Yeah, through Dennis and Nancy, they introduced us to people there and got all that set up safe and safeguarded. So then, donors would feel even more comfortable. Toby Jenkins: So about how many years was the fundraising part of it? Marcy Smith: Six. Sue Welch: 6-7. Marcy Smith: Yeah, six, 2007 when we did it. Toby Jenkins: Did people grow fatigued from that? I mean, did theyMarcy Smith: Oh yeah. I mean, it didn't take too many years that when Sue and I would show up at a party, people were turning away. I mean, they knew we were gonna be pressing the flesh and, hi, how you doing? We haven't seen a donation from you in a while. But I mean, it just kinda got to be a joke. We were like, "Are we gonna get invited to anything this year?" Toby Jenkins: So I'm gonna take you back. This is your life. It's January 1st, 2000, the night after the Y2K fear. What were y'all doing on January 1st, 2000? Do you remember? Marcy Smith: Well, I can tell you what I was doing. I was head of the Y2K project at Tulsa County. So I spent that New Year's Eve in the computer room doing one of these. And it was a five-year project that I led. And I had the same budget from my boss which was, you're not gonna spend any money on this project. We weren't able to do that because of software costs, but it was a very small budget. So that's where I was. So I was in a computer room in Tulsa, Oklahoma that night. And it went perfectly, by the way. Sue Welch: Are you remembering a house party? Toby Jenkins: Yeah, on New Year's Day. Sue Welch: On New Year's Day. Marcy Smith: Oh, New Year's Day? Okay. Marcy Smith: New Year's Day, we had a house party at our house. Marcy Smith: Yeah, and invited several people. And I think we'd seen you peripherally, but this was your first time to really31 �Toby Jenkins: Be pulled into the project. Sue Welch: Yeah, yeah. To be ... . Toby Jenkins: My point isSue Welch: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: - I can remember getting invited to that on New Year's Day after we had all survived. And that was my first time to hear about it. The project to raise money for our permanent center. Now, I was very familiar with the center. Sue Welch: Sure. Toby Jenkins: But it was the first time I'd ever been included in that. And I had no money, but I was able to make just a little bitty tiny gift. But you made me feel like my little tiny gift was as important as the people who were writing the big checks. Sue Welch: It was. Toby Jenkins: So you spent five or six years raising this money and keeping the community focused on the prize. When did we buy the building? And do you wanna talk a little bit about the effort to finally purchase property? Sue Welch: So as we were getting, we set a goal that we would have a certain amount of money raised before we would even look at property. And we were reviewing a dozen or more properties over and over, as we got to that point. And Dennis called and said, "Hey, have you looked at this place at 4th and Kenosha?" And we're like, "Okay, we'll go look at that one." And so we called up the realtor who was listed there and I said, "Okay, great. I'm gonna have to talk to another realtor and tell him who we are and what we're looking for." And so went to his office and on his wall was a big picture of John F. Kennedy. I was like, "I think I'm okay." And so I met Max Tankersley and told him about who we were and he said, "Okay, great. I'd love to show you this". So we walked in and at the time, it had been a communications company, so there were wires literally everywhere. It was just full of communications things. But it was so solid because it used to be an oil company's building, where they built explosives to dig oil wells before they had the bits. So the walls are about 12 inches thick. It is just so solid. So walking through, it's really solid, it's not dirty, it's not dank, it's bright…Lots of windows, lots of space. We're thinking, "Oh my gosh, there's so much space here. But from these surveys, we could do this, we could do that, we could do all the 32 �things that the people are wanting." And so I think we probably called Dennis first and said, "Dennis, this is a really neat place." And we had a key group of donors who just kept donating, were donating substantially. And so, we rented two trolley cars. We had a nice little reception at a house in Terwilliger Heights. And we said, "We're gonna take you all to a place we want you to see that we believe this is gonna be our center." And so we got 'em all fed and liquored up and got 'em on the trolleys. And so we came in and several of them were like- because it wasn't rough compared to the things we've been looking at, but it wasn't fancy by any means. Marcy Smith: And grey. Sue Welch: And it was downtown, which was one of the locations people wanted, but not everyone. And so I think several of them went, "Oh, wow, this is really great, great vision." And some of 'em went, "Ugh, this is what you're picking? It was a little effort in getting people on board with that. So we created- we got together a group of designers and if you want to haveToby Jenkins: Gay designers. Sue Welch: Gay designers. And if you want to have fun, get a group of gay designers together and tell them, we're not paying them anything and everything they develop needs to come in free, all the accessories, all the furniture. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, but they have to raise the money to furnish the room. Sue Welch: And so that was fun. Kirk Holt, I appointed him as the chair, 'cause he's great at getting all those people together. So we developed these vision boards for each of the rooms and we had more people come and more people look, and that really helped with donations. This was, of course, after we bought the building, and that helped also engage people for volunteerism, if they couldn't give or if they wanted to do more, to physically work at the building in renovations. I served as the general contractor for the renovations and we had a ... . Marcy Smith: And she got paid zero. Sue Welch: And we had literally hundreds of volunteers working thousands of hours. The things we had to hire, have electricians, licensed plumbers, that sort of thing. We certainly did that. But I mean, so many people learned how to sheet rock, insulate things, tear down walls. Some of my happiest memories are remembering these guys and looking at you Dennis, doing that work, that heavy, hard work. 33 �Marcy Smith: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: So the building was purchased, let's talk about that morning after years of fundraising and this was the- you're trying to keep everybody rowing in the right direction. Tell us about that morning, when you invited the community to come and look at it and we raised the first rainbow flag. Sue Welch: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: From our flagpole and we had ... Marcy Smith: Talking about the Field of Dreams? Sue Welch: Nope. Marcy Smith: Oh, okay. Toby Jenkins: No, I'm talking about the morning we ... Marcy Smith: Oh, the grand opening. Toby Jenkins: Well, it wasn’t the grand opening, it was the morning that we ... Sue Welch: That was our first flag. Toby Jenkins: The building was ours, and we raised the flag for the first time. Marcy Smith: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: You had a bagpiper on the roof. Sue Welch: Yeah, yep, had a bagpiper on the roof, we had Rick Hollingsworth give us a blessing. Toby Jenkins: Probably, a thousand people showed up. Sue Welch: The first time so many people had even been in the building. And I remember it was so loud downstairs in the main hall. I was looking around, I'm not a loud speaker and I thought, "I've gotta find somebody, I've gotta get up on these stairs, I gotta find somebody to get the attention of this crowd. And I saw Rebecca Ungerman out there and I said, "Rebecca." And so I got Rebecca up on the stairs and everyone was milling about, crammed in there and just excited. And so she got the crowd's attention and we just had a little, here's your new home people, let's complete this project. Toby Jenkins: Yep, first time34 �Sue Welch: Yep. Toby Jenkins: - this was ours, it belonged to us. Sue Welch: Yeah, people were so excited. Toby Jenkins: Wasn't leased, wasn't rented, no landlord could take our mortgage away. Sue Welch: Exactly. Toby Jenkins: And we were able to raise our rainbow flag. Sue Welch: Yep, show who we were, know that we'd have signage on the building that it couldn't be taken away because that was a problem with so many of the places, moving so often caused breaks in services, not being able to identify our building, our storefront, where we were leasing, caused difficulty in people's access. And so now, we had a place we could put signage, have our flag, we had a corner in downtown Tulsa, in the heart of Oklahoma. Marcy Smith: And as most neighborhoods go after the gays move in, this area of Tulsa and downtown has exploded with development, exploded. Toby Jenkins: And here you have it, we can verify documentation that the gay folks revitalized downtown Tulsa you now at this point. Marcy Smith: Absolutely. Marcy Smith: This Pearl District, you have- absolutely right. Sue Welch: Absolutely. Toby Jenkins: 'Cause it was the truth. Sue Welch: Absolutely. Toby Jenkins: Because it was just, mostly downtown was abandoned buildings that were boarded up. Sue Welch: Yep. Toby Jenkins: Nobody lived down here. There weren't any stores or you didn't have people walking their pets, so. Sue Welch: Yeah. 35 �Toby Jenkins: But it's what we could afford and we got it. Tell us about that year we spent working on it, but at the same time, we were operating the centerSue Welch: Sure. Toby Jenkins: - with all of its servicesSue Welch: Sure. Toby Jenkins: - at its old location. Sue Welch: Marcy had a good job that allowed me to spend a lot of time during that time away from my practice. And so every Saturday and Sunday, we would have volunteers. One of my cohorts would help check 'em in and we give assignments. Some people would just be sweeping, some people would be putting up walls. Toby Jenkins: Or ladders. On ladders. Sue Welch: Yeah. Oh, on ladders, painting, cleaning, taking up tile from the floor. You name it. Tiling new bathroom floors, from A to Z. So volunteers full out Saturdays, Sundays, weekend after weekend after weekend to get this accomplished on a shoestring, but properly and still involving people. That was as much part of it as anything. It's one thing to pay for everything to get done and come on in. We created this beautiful jewel box for you. But it's another thing to have people go, I created this. I helped open these doors. I painted this door. That was huge. Toby Jenkins: So tell us about the grand opening, and the Field of Dreams, dinners, andSue Welch: So the Field of Dreams, we did have requirements because we were changing the use from what it was previously to a public space. So we had to create more accessible ramps, elevators, doorways, things like that, and all that added up to quite some expense. So our first official event here was called the Field of Dreams. If we build it, they will come. And so we had volunteers in softball uniforms, and we had teams thatToby Jenkins: Cute gay boys. Marcy Smith: Yeah. Marcy Smith: We had team captains. Sue Welch: Not girls in softball uniforms. Marcy Smith: We had team captains, so it was baseball teams and it was a competition. 36 �Sue Welch: So they were bidding against each other. There was nothing they were gonna win. There were no prizes. There were no auction items. This was full-out cash. They were playing against each other, and we raised all the money, over $130,000 cash, that night without any auction items to do all of the ADA requirements. Marcy Smith: And it was adopting rooms. So these were concept drawings of what the various spaces were gonna be. So if you were a kitchen person, or you were interested in the library, or the art gallery, the theater. That was really great to have those concept drawings, so that people could visualize what this incredible space was gonna look like, based on the town halls, and what they said they wanted in the space. So we were able to give 'em pretty much everything they asked for. The other thing I remember, too, is the size of the building, okay? So we were at 3,500 square feet. This facility is 18,000 square feet. We got so much pushback from, are you kidding me? You're never gonna be able to fill that space. Sue Welch: We don't need that. Marcy Smith: .. We don't need that space. And here we are, nearly 20 years later, and in my opinion, we could add on a few places, but. Toby Jenkins: So any details about the grand opening? I'm trying to remember. Sue Welch: I remember, we did balloons, 'cause at that timeMarcy Smith: We did an non-environmental thing. Sue Welch: - we were not that environmentally conscious. I'm sorry, I apologize. Marcy Smith: We released balloons. Sue Welch: But we did have a bagpiper on the roof, which was really cool. Everyone was just so thrilled, and walking through the place. It was just giddy, giddying us, it was wonderful. Marcy Smith: Smudging, blessing the building. People laying hands on the building. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Marcy Smith: Good energy. Sue Welch: It was. Toby Jenkins: ... American blessings. 37 �Marcy Smith: Yes, yes. Sue Welch: It was good energy. Toby Jenkins: And then we moved in. Sue Welch: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And the programs began. Sue Welch: And the programs began. And yes, if you build it, they will come. It's absolutely true. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Sue Welch: Given the proper leadership, and we had such great leadership then, and people pushing for great programs. Toby Jenkins: And so prior to this, we would have these huge meetings or events. We would have to rent space, or we would have to cram into whatever place we had. I can remember many, many things that we would use in those other spaces. Or when the sodomy laws were struck down, we didn't have a big enough space, so we had to use a restaurant on Cherry Street. But then this building finally had enough space that if we could mobilize and fight for our communitySue Welch: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: - Celebrate, remember those. I mean, it became a place where people did their funerals, their commitment ceremonies, and where we met for meetings to fight for our rights. Sue Welch: Yeah. Yeah, we could celebrate and mobilize and honor each other in our own home. Toby Jenkins: Do you remember some of the major events that this building was here to witness and testify to? Marcy Smith: Well, legalized same-sex marriage for number one. But also it becoming a hub for pride. So that we could centralize pride activities, which was really pretty cool to be able to do that. Otherwise, we were renting, leasing space to try to do pride events. We're not without negative things happening, and one of the things that wasn't publicized at the time that we did it but we did it for safety was, we put bulletproof glass in this building because we felt that at some point, unfortunately, that may be needed. And so we had a 38 �drive-by shooting in this building and thankfully, the bulletproof glass did its job. So never more thankful to have that particular decision to save people ... – [Bullet-resistant glass was not initially installed. It was added in 2017 after a drive-by shooting from a pellet gun made 13 holes in the front windows and front door. Wes Smith, an OkEq member, challenged the community to send in $13 each to replace the glass. The challenge went viral, people across the country and world sent in money. In total, more than $33,000 was committed which allowed OkEq to replace all downstairs windows and the front door with bullet-resistant glass.] Toby Jenkins: So do you remember when the sodomy laws were struck down, we celebrated at a restaurant, but the next major event was when gays were allowed to be in the military ... . And do you remember the events around that? Sue Welch: So yes, we were able to celebrate that in a fantastic way and we actually created the veterans lobby here, top second floor, off the elevator. And then another pivotal time ... Toby Jenkins: And we ... - just a minute. We invited military recruiters to come to this ... . Sue Welch: That's right, that's right. Toby Jenkins: And they came all the way from where, the Pentagon. Sue Welch: Fantastic, yes. That's right ... . Toby Jenkins: And we became the very first place in the United States where gay people served, signed up to join the military. We were the face of that on the front page of 1900 newspapers the next day in the heartland, in the middle of the country. Sue Welch We were also because of Mary and Sharon and Gay and Sue and were able to celebrate the pivotal gay marriage right here, in the center, with those ladies here in Tulsa. So yeah, so many pivotal things here. Toby Jenkins: Remember when the White House came to visit, when we got behind the Affordable Care Act cause we knew we needed to sign people up so that Obamacare, and they sent a representative here 'cause we had signed up 147 people in one day. Sue Welch: It's fantastic. It's fantastic, yeah. Toby Jenkins: So Sue, you called it the field of dreams. Why did you call it the field of dreams? Sue Welch: Because if we build it, they will come. 39 �Toby Jenkins: And did they come? Sue Welch: They did, and actually even more, in more numbers than I dreamed. I mean the programming and Toby, I know you're greatly responsible for a lot of that programming that started happening. And the people upon people, upon people who came and had fun or had a service or were recognized and seen or just got to be able to be with their family, their LGBTQ+ family, just people fill this place the whole entire time, all the time. I know I would get update calls from you saying how many people had come and what pivotal help had been given to certain people that day. Just incredible. Marcy Smith: Well, saving lives. Sue Welch: Absolutely, saving lives. Marcy Smith: People who were at the end of their rope. I mean, just needing a place to come where they can literally walk in the door. Sue Welch: ... you're safe. Marcy Smith: Yes, this is a safe place. Sue Welch: A safe affirming place. Toby Jenkins: So you spent a lot of work for the community to make this happen, and on behalf of the community, the LGBTQ+ community, I wanna say thank you so much for that. Any regrets about it? Sue Welch: None. Marcy Smith: None. Sue Welch: None. And I have to say there were so many hundreds of people behind us who really made it happen, who made it a success. We were just able to drive some of it. Toby Jenkins: So this is a- in 2026 and you ladies are moving into your middle age years. Marcy Smith: Thank you for that. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: There were some difficult times, 'cause just because we had the building doesn't mean- I mean, we've had some vandalism, we've had physical threats, we've had some deaths, some heartaches, and we've had some other challenges too. You just didn't 40 �hang up your hats and say, we're done helping the community or being involved. What have you had to do in the last few years? Sue Welch: So things were rocking along really great for a while. We got some breathing time and just having fun with friends and things. But there were some individuals, boards, leaderships, that didn't go through what all of us went through. They didn't go through the turmoil and the trial and the difficulties that all of us went through. They're a younger generation, they grew up being able to be married, they grew up with less offense to them, they grew up being able to put their partner's picture on their office desk. Just so different from us. When some younger leadership, I think I'll just categorize it that way, came in, I don't think it was- they had less ownership. So, COVID came and that changed everything for everybody. But generationally, I think we're significantly different in that. We like to gather physically together and COVID made that really difficult. So coming out of that, changes started happening. We noticed we weren't getting notices about things happening at the center, even post-COVID. It seemed there was less going on. People weren't gathering at the center. We didn't reactivate those activities and events and things for people to physically gather. As the world did, we all became a little more siloed. So I think we lost a lot of interest, funding, relativity during that time. In February of 2024, we got a notice saying that the organization needed to raise $100,000 to keep the doors open. We were in shock. And so we met up with some people and said, "What's going on here? What's happening?" And so Marcy and I, thanks to some people, we were asked to be on the gala committee that year. We were generously given the leeway to co-chair the gala. And fortunately, we kinda did our thing. We've done a lot of galas. Well, by the gala committee, we were generously offered to co-chair the gala. We had leadership difficulty. I was coming in, again, as old lesbians going, "What do you know?" I mean, that was an old time. You can't do anything for us. And we had a hard time not going ... listen to whippersnappers. This is how it was. So ultimately, that gala was the highest grossing and highest net gala in OkEq’s history. And we were able to really build up our coffers again, and keep us open and keep the center going and alive. Marcy Smith: In 90 days. Sue Welch: Yeah, in a very short time. Marcy Smith: There was no one chairing this. It was not gonna happen. 41 �Sue Welch: Yeah, there was not gonna be a gala. We even had foundations tell us, "You should not be having a gala right now." And we said, "For two reasons. We have to have a gala. We must have a gala. One, of course, for the fundraising. And, we know we can do this. Two, for the community. Because our community has scattered to the winds. And we need to bring them back together." Toby Jenkins: So we talked about the pandemic, and we talked about the financial challenges the organizations have, and we've talked about generational differences, andbut we also have political issues that are impacting our community. It's 2026, so as your sign-off message, I've asked you to think about this. Do you have a challenge, or a message, or a final words that you'd like to give to people who might see this, and either feel the motivation to get involved, or maybe even have an explanation of how important it is? Do you have any final words for our viewers? Sue Welch: You go first. Marcy Smith: I would say that don't discount having a place, a physical place. I have an IT background and we're in a virtual world at this point, but there is so much in life, especially in a human experience, virtual stuff cannot give you and provide you that connection that you have to have by just being in the same space with people who support you, and that you can provide fine services. The whole point of this Center was for it to be a resource center for people. We didn't think that we were gonna be all things to all people, but we wanted to have a hub, a place where the organization could also work with other organizations to provide services to people, and to have a gathering place for us, and we're seeing this. We are seeing this in the world now. We are seeing psychological studies coming out about how this isolationism, and being at home, and this whole virtual reality, if you will, it's not. It's not real. What is real is being with people, engaging with people, celebrating with people, having really hard times with people. It's a human experience. It cannot be replaced with technology. That's my background, and I know that. And so it's about having a home and a place to come back to. And supporting an organization that's going to help our community be a better place. Not just the LGBTQ+ community, but other members in this community we call home, we call Tulsa, reaching out to other organizations to help in that effort, because it's a tough time, and funding is getting ripped out from non-profits. They are literally facing their demise. National public Radio… all of these things that we held to be, assumed that it was always gonna be here, always thought we would have public funding for the arts, really. 42 �Always thought we would have freedom of speech, thought we would have freedom of the press. The press is what is gonna hold our elected officials accountable, in addition to us. So we are at a really, really tough time, and it has been set on fire because of technology. Because we are not gathering together. Because we're holed up in our respective places, and we've got to come together again. We've got to support each other again in a physical way, in addition to a technological way. And having a home that is a place where we can gather, where we can rally, where we can figure out strategies to do this, is really important because if the decision is ever made to lose this space, then we become invisible again. They, whoever they are succeeded. They don't have a place to call home anymore. They don't have a place to gather anymore. They don't have a place to rally. They don't have a place to celebrate our artists. They don't have a place for our performers to come. They don't have a place to have counseling. Transgendered individuals don't have a place to have health care. We don't have a- we're burning books, and we're banning books. We don't have a library anymore to celebrate that aspect. All of these things are here for anyone who wants to come in and celebrate LGBTQIA+ individuals as a community, but as a community, as an accepting and affirming community that we call home. And that's Tulsa. It's so much more than a physical building, and that's where I would say, generationally moving forward, I hope that you all can understand how important the space is to maintain. Can we change the space? Absolutely. Can we change up the different things that are here? Absolutely. That's what a home's all about. It evolves and it changes as we need it to change. But I am hopeful and lay this on the table for folks coming behind us, please keep it. Please figure out how to keep it. Make it your own, make it evolve and change as our needs change. But allowing it to go away, I think, will be a grave mistake for our community. And I'm not saying that it is. I'm not saying that it is. But I think there are individuals out there that feel that we don't need a space to call our own, where we can celebrate each other, a physical space. And home is a really big word, encompasses a lot of things. Sue Welch: I really couldn't say any better than that, but just to say that, when you lose something that so many people have identified with, you lose your identity. When you don't communicate to every group, not just the current generation, but every group, about what's here for them. When you don't have physical group meetings, people physically gathering in large groups, that sounds scary to some people now, just because of COVID, but we have to have face-to-face large groups to support each other. 43 �The harder it gets politically, financially, the more we need to physically gather and we have our home to do it in. So let's not lose that, let's not take it for granted, let's use it. Toby Jenkins: This is perfect. So while you're the CP's ambassadors, called them the Iron Lady, Madam Prime Minister, was my nicknames for them. What are you presently doing? I mean what do you- your careers and the work that you do now? Sue Welch: Well, we are entrepreneurial. We own a business together called OsteoStrong, which is a wellness center that focuses on increasing your bone density, your muscular strength and your ligament and tendon strength. That's healthy for everybody. We have over 300 members. We're loving it and we do have some of our community members who are also OsteoStrong members and we do love that. We garden, we travel, we've loved that forever. I serve as a trustee again on the Board of Trustees for Oklahomans For Equality. Toby Jenkins: In your medical practice there, you're focusing a lot on issues with the emerging, growing older adult population, so that you're still serving a community, every aspect of it. Sue Welch: Sure, sure. Toby Jenkins: Anything else for us and our founder. Do you have any other things or archivist any things, before we bring our interview to a close? Sue Welch: I just wanna say thank you to all of you for all the work you're doing and have done, because we could not have done anything, any of this without you. Amanda Thompson: Yeah, no, it's great. And thank you guys for sharing this. And as the one youngster in the room, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you're saying and the stuff you talk about is really important. I'm personally very lucky and very happy to be a part of furthering those connections and helping people just get the word out, how important these things are. Sue Welch: Thank you, Amanda. Marcy Smith: We have to pay it forward. Amanda Thompson: Yeah. Marcy Smith: We do. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, thank you so much. You have been listening toMarcy Smith: Marcy Smith. 44 �Sue Welch: Sue Welch. Toby Jenkins: - here at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center on January the 16th, 2026. Addendum: Sue Welch requested the following be added to the transcript. "My Dad, Lloyd Welch was a 3rd generation brick mason and builder. He helped with the initial renovation when we bought the building for the Dennis R Neill Equality Center. He taught volunteers and various friends many skills that we needed during that time to get the building ready. He taught and worked with Stan Smalts, Dale Tune and Marty Steinmetz, replacing and hanging exterior doors; David Hoot patching interior plaster walls; Norm Kopp tuck pointing worn brick exterior wall joints of the building, as well as many other tasks with other volunteers. He had a great time with the guys and they with him. They all really appreciated learning from him. Some of them even took the skills they learned from our volunteer efforts into their own lives later as well. My Mom, Joan Welch provided moral encouragement and cheerleading support during that time filled with physical work. We would all break for lunch in the garage, now the Lynn Riggs Theatre. Nancy McDonald, everyone's Mom, brought cookies for snacks every weekend for the volunteer crew. It was a fantastic time of camaraderie, hard work and joy!" 45 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2026] Sue Welch and Marcy Smith Interview Description An account of the resource Sue Welch and Marcy Smith share their personal journeys, highlighting their experiences growing up in Oklahoma and navigating their identities as members of the LGBTQ+ community. Marcy recounts her childhood in Tulsa, her education at Oklahoma Christian College, and her early awareness of her sexual orientation. She reflects on the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in a conservative environment, including the need for stealth and the importance of finding community. Sue shares her upbringing in Ponca City and her academic journey at OSU. Both women discuss their relationships, the evolution of their identities, and the significance of community support in their lives.<br /><br />Marcy and Sue recount their involvement with Oklahomans for Equality and the development of the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center. They reflect on the challenges of coming out to their families, the societal pressures they faced, and the importance of creating a safe space for LGBTQ+ individuals in Tulsa. Their stories are filled with humor, resilience, and a sense of belonging, showcasing the power of love and community in overcoming adversity. In this episode, Marcy Smith and Sue Welch share their inspiring journey of establishing a community center for the LGBTQ+ community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They successfully organized fundraising events, such as house parties and the Wild Hearts Ball, to raise awareness and funds. Their determination led to significant milestones, including securing a $10,000 grant from a New York foundation and eventually purchasing a permanent space for their community center, which became a hub for support, celebration, and activism.<br /><br />The conversation highlights the importance of physical spaces for community gathering, especially in a time when virtual connections are prevalent. Marcy and Sue emphasize the need for ongoing support and engagement within the community, particularly in light of recent political challenges. They reflect on the center's role in pivotal moments for LGBTQ+ rights, including the legalization of same-sex marriage and the repeal of discriminatory laws. Their message is clear: maintaining a physical home for the community is essential for fostering connection, support, and resilience against adversity. Subject The topic of the resource Sue Welch and Marcy Smith Oral History Interview from January 16, 2026 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sue Welch, Marcy Smith, Toby Jenkins, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January 16, 2026 2026 AIDS AIDS/HIV Dennis Neill Dennis R. Neill Dennis R. Neill Equality Center Equality Center Equality Center Opening Gay marriage HIV HIV/AIDs interview LGBT marriage Marcy Smith OHR OkEq Equality Center OKEQ Oral History Project Oklahoma Christian College Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahomans for Human Rights Oklahomans for Human Rights - Tulsa Chapter oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU Pyramid Project same sex marriage Sue Welch Toby Jenkins TOHR transcript Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) video Wild Hearts Ball https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/af3892e1009ef4a72953531bd8ad6948.pdf 29efab7deeeaeb7fa7bc7ad295dc2341 PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Carolyn Wiley Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins Date: 2009 or 2010 Additional Interview conducted on May 26, 2026 and included as an addendum Transcript Edited by Dennis Neill – May 30, 2026 Restrictions: Interviewee requested: Video for Onsite Review Oklahomans for Equality History Project 621 E. 4th Street Tulsa, OK. 74120 918.743.4297 1 �About Carolyn Wiley… Screenshot from 2009 or 2010 Interview. Photo taken on May 26, 2026, when Toby Jenkins did an additional video interview with Carolyn. The transcript is included as an addendum. Toby Jenkins - Bob, who is our translator today, Carolyn's partner, is hearing impaired and in this video she wanted to make sure that her partner would be able to see the whole interview. And then of course, Glenna, who does a lot of work with us here at the center and teaches sign language classes and all sorts of things like that, she is also hearing impaired. And 2 �her daughter is in charge of the GSA group at Owasso, so give Glenna a hand. We're very proud of her. Alright, if you're ready, I'm ready. Okay, we're ready. Alright, I'm Toby Jenkins, Executive Director of Oklahomans for Equality, and we're here in the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center with our Vintage series. Vintage captures the stories of those who brought us to the place where we're enjoying incredible freedom and acceptance in this part of the country and helped us build what we have today here at Oklahomans for Equality. We're interviewing Carolyn Wiley, who is a former educator, an advocate for many issues for the gay community, who can tell us a side of the story that you may not know, so I look forward to you hearing about a little Oklahoma girl who made it big. And Carolyn, now this is just like the Jerry Springer story. We like to come up with some secrets, so be thinking about that because I'm going to let you tell some little tantalizing details for us to do also. Carolyn, thank you for being with us today so much. We're very honored, and I've known you for years and always admired you, so I feel very fortunate to have you with us today. I want to start at the beginning, not the beginning of the earth, but at the beginning of your life. And this little baby doll right here in this picture was born where? Where were you born? I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma. Duncan, Oklahoma. Way out on the prairie. Yes, and then taken even further out on the prairie to the farm where I grew up. An old farm girl. And this right here is a picture of your mom and dad? This is a picture of my mom and dad, and they were older. They were both in their 40s when I was born, and I was adopted, so they wanted a child very bad. And yeah, they ended up with me. Well, I think they probably were proud of you because the pictures seem to say that. This is a wonderful picture of, I believe you said this is your mother's parents? My mother's parents, along with my parents. This was taken down in north central Texas, just west of Wichita Falls, at my mother's uncle and aunt's store at Four Corners Mankins. All that was there was a little filling station, their little filling station, grocery store, which is where that was taken. And they had a post office, and there were about two houses, and that was it. That was it. That was it. Lots of rattlesnakes. 3 �Well, I love this picture right here. It says Lincoln Valley District 79. And this is your school picture, and Lincoln Valley would have been around where? Lincoln Valley was located about six miles outside of Walters, little community school, little one-room schoolhouse. So yes, I can tell the story of going to a one-room school. That was the entire school, grades one through eight. I was a whole five years old in the first grade. Needless to say, I was too young to go into a proper school. But the teacher said it was okay, invited my mom. And there was another family with a little boy, five. And so we got to be in first grade together. Hi, everybody. Thank you. It was quite an experience. And yeah, what can I say? That was where I got all of my whippings that I ever got in school. Oh, and you got several? I got four that year. Four whippings in one year by the teacher because I liked to play in the water. Every time it rained, there would be water puddles out there. Couldn't get wet. Right. So we'd start walking way around and get closer and closer and I'd get wet. Now, how old are you in this picture right here? Oh my, that is third grade. Third grade. Little freckles. Seven years old. Beautiful blue eyes. Very curly hair. Very curly. And would you love that? Would you love to have your hair brushed? I think you told me. Oh, I hated having my hair brushed. Because it was long hair. I was very tender-headed because, well, I was always with my dad. Wherever my dad was, that's where I was. Whether it was riding in the back of the pickup or I was riding on the tractor or on the drill or whatever at the time. And my hair would get tangled and mother wanted to brush it out and it was not very gentle and it hurt and I tried a lot. Where were you at school? Because your little one-room school house had closed. The one-room school house closed after the one year and I had to go into town to Walters to school. All of my schooling was in Walters until I went to college. 4 �Now in this picture, I believe you cut your hair. Finally. This was the day at the beginning of your hoodlum years? Yes, as a matter of fact it was. And believe me, I talked for the longest time I wanted to get my hair cut, as I said. Because I was so tenderheaded and I wanted to get it cut. And the style was short. This was early days of Elvis Presley and rock and roll. And I wanted short hair and finally after many years, I was allowed to cut. And so I had the old-fashioned, what was then called a duck tail, which was very, very short. So yes, in a little bit I realized that it was the beginning of my hoodlum years. In this picture though, you look like you “femmed up” quite a bit. This is a beautiful bouffant hairdo. What year did you graduate? I graduated high school in 1963. 1963 from Walters? From Walters, high school. And you were a beautiful young woman. Thank you. Thank you. Now let me tell you, we're going to rush on to college. Here you are, I believe this is maybe your graduation picture from college. That was my freshman year. There's one year between those two. Little country girl and you went to school where? What college? I went to, started out at Oklahoma College for Women, which was all women way back in the day, which had I known, really known back then, I could have had them all. And going back through all of the pictures and realizing all of the lesbians there were. Yeah, I said I could have had them all. And where was the school? 5 �The school was in Chickasha, Oklahoma College for Women, which after two years, my junior year, they decided to let boys into the school and it became Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts. And what did you study? Let's see, the first two years was music, voice, women as voice major. Then switched over to music education. Then switched to business, spent a year as a business major. Then went back to music, I missed it too much. Then I transferred to colleges for a year, went out to Weatherford, and then came back and in 1969 graduated from Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts with my bachelor's degree in music education. And became a school teacher. And became a school teacher. Now where was your first assignment? What was your first school to teach at? The very first school I taught in was in Bartlesville at Madison Junior High. And from there you went? Then I moved back to Duncan so I could be closer to my parents because they were getting older and being an only child, I felt obligated to them or wanted to be closer. So I moved back to Duncan, taught there for eight years. And then moved to Locust Grove, Oklahoma. You told me an interesting story, I want to cover this. This is in Duncan, Oklahoma. Now let's real quickly, you have finished college. Had you had any kind of romantic relationship with another woman prior to that? I was getting ready to go out and do my student teaching. I finished the class work. Went out to do my, was getting ready to go do the student teaching. There was a young lady I had met there at college playing bridge with. And she had worked in the cerebral policy center in Norman the previous summer. And I kept wanting to go visit her kids that she had that summer. And so she finally agreed to allow me to go see her children, her kids as she called them. And she was a paraplegic, which meant she was in a wheelchair. She had polio. The cerebral palsy kids really related to her very well. They did things for her that the other teachers were trying to get the kids to. But because they responded to it, they could identify with her. They did things for her that they wouldn't do for others. So anyway, didn't go there. We ended up spending, as a celebration of finishing all my class work, ended up spending the night. Went out for a fancy dinner, went to Oklahoma City, spent the night. And when I awoke the next morning, I had some souvenirs on my neck, 6 �also known as hickeys. And I had to get back to Chickasha to move out of the dorm and back home to my parents to do my student teaching. I took a lot of makeup. And thank goodness for the old days of hand stick that covered it very well. So that was your first relationship. That was my first relationship. And from there, we continued on and I was with that person for five years. And then what I want to bring out is in this story, you were in Duncan. That was the scandalous part that we wanted to hear. So very good. You ended up in Duncan. And I believe you mentioned to me that you were in a relationship. You had a companion when you were teaching at Duncan. And then you tell this story about a young man who also taught. Yes. Now tell us a little bit about that in this picture here. Here, Carolyn is in front of an AIDS quilt. And I want her to tell a little bit about her years at Duncan and about her relationship and then her relationship with another colleague who also was gay. Yes, I was very proud of this picture. I was very proud when the AIDS quilt was brought here to Tulsa and I had the honor, knew someone who could ask to bring a certain panel in. And I wanted to see Joe's panel. The panel was for Joe Dodson that I had taught with in Duncan. He was gay. I was a lesbian. And back in those days, one could not be out. So that was one of the reasons you could lose your job. You could be dismissed as a teacher without anything had to be written up. I mean, they just let you go. So it was on the books. It was definitely on the Oklahoma education books. Not just on the local level, but on state level. (Editors Note: Oklahoma removed its ban on gay teachers in 1985) Anyway, Joe was a science teacher. I was a music teacher. And when I first saw him, I thought, yes, I could tell. The gaydar went off. And as I said, became acquainted with him. We had quite the relationship as far as the straight teachers community went on in that we were considered more or less a little couple. And when we could invite guests, I mean, when there would be occasions, you know, we bring your spouse or whatever, I would invite his boyfriend as my date. He would invite my girlfriend. So we double dated a lot. And then he died of AIDS. And then he changed schools. And unfortunately, yes, he did pass away from AIDS. 7 �And you specifically wanted his quilt brought to Tulsa? I wanted his panel brought in and to read on his panel and to see where the teachers from Moore had finally come around and they signed his panel. They were very supportive later on. But in the early days, it was completely unknown. You were in Duncan and then we have lots of pictures here that I believe these were schoolteacher pictures. And you left Duncan and eventually you came to... Locust Grove. And how many years were you in Locust Grove? I taught school in Locust Grove for 17 years. Seventeen years. And is that where you began to get connected with the Tulsa gay community? When you were living in Locust Grove? It was. In the fact of, as I referred to it quite often, the hinterlands. After being in Duncan around auto money, where the children drove a lot better cars than the teachers did, naturally. It was like stepping back in history 70 or 80 years because this was a very small community. We had more student enrollment was larger than the town's population because it's an auto recreation area. Everybody lives out in the country. They don't live in town proper. As I said, there was nothing to do out there. So you come to Tulsa. It's only 45 minutes. Well, back in those days, it was an hour because they didn't have the turnpike like they do now. It was the old highway 33 with all the crooks. Curves from Locust Grove to Chouteau. She goes many times. Once even in snow and ice. Now you came to Tulsa and you got involved in the gay community. I understand that you were really involved at MCC, Metropolitan Community Church. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yes, I was very fortunate. I was raised, my mother was Pentecostal. I was raised Pentecostal as in Church of God, Assembly of God, the old 8 �fashioned holy roaders as they had been called or you would hear of. But anyway, I was excited to find out that there was a church that accepted gays and lesbians. There was a huge, I mean, we had all been raised in a church, whether it be Baptist, Presbyterian, Christian, Catholic, I don't care what religion. We had some sort of religious background. I had mine. Fortunately, I had been given the opportunity to think for myself and accept the others. And with my college and my music, I had already been associated with Christian Church as choir director. I had been an organist for Methodist Church. I had been choir director for Presbyterian Church. So, I mean, it all came down to we all had a same belief. We all believe in the higher being, whether you call it Buddha, God, whatever. And I just had this openness. I was fortunate enough to be able to open my mind and say, OK, we're all believing the same thing. And we're not going to, anytime you get two people together, at some point, I don't care how much alike they are, you're going to find differences and accept differences. Know that we can agree to disagree. We don't have to go to this city over it. Very good. So you got involved. You got involved in the MCC church and were involved in their music program. Yes. Being the musician, either singing or playing the piano or sometimes the organ. Anyway, yes. We directed some choirs and y'all did some traveling. We would travel. I just had the opportunity with my music to be involved with church, go and sing, go and play, fellowship. Met many wonderful people and just, it's been great, it's been an opportunity to meet people from around the world. And with MCC I did have the opportunity to go not only to regional conferences, but to go to the international conference one year in LA. And that particular year they decided, I said they, meaning the immigration service decided not to allow some of the representatives from foreign countries who were HIV positive, they would not allow them into the country. (Editors Note: In 1987 the US added HIV to its list of contagious diseases and instituted a travel ban for all travelers with HIV. It was officially lifted on January 4, 2010) To attend the international conference of the MCC? Right. The fellowship. And here you are, this is in a picture in Los Angeles where they're picketing in the streets. We, they arranged and hired some buses, took us by bus from the hotel downtown to the INA, the immigration services, and we staged a protest. And it was wonderful and I felt, and I still feel very honored to have been 9 �there, to go through that experience of knowing that we were standing up for people who were not HIV positive. We were not allowed in our country. Here we are supposed to be so free and so accepting. And yet these, there were people held out of the country from coming simply because they had AIDS. It didn't matter, they had their medication, so on and so forth. They were not contagious. And most of these would have been ministers, wouldn't they, coming from foreign countries? Yes, a lot of them would have been ministers. In this picture, the signs say, let my people in, don't test our guests. Carolyn, you realize that this protest, it was the first year they had the ban, wasn't it the federal government banned anyone from coming into the country? It's the first one that I know of. And you do realize that it took decades for that ban to finally be lifted. President Obama was one of the first things he did as the president of the United States of America. He lifted the ban, the travel ban. So now people from other countries who may be HIV positive, they are able to visit our country and attend the International Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches and many other congregations that are finally opened up to gay people and their ministry within the church. So when you think about that and what you would want to say to young people about that and the feeling you had that day when you marched in the streets, what would you like to say about that to young people? If you believe in something, have the guts to stand up for it. As I said, when you invited me here, I didn't feel like I had done that much. I was not out in the forefront. I wasn't the ones out marching. I couldn't or I didn't think I could. Now that I'm older, I realize that I can. And I try and support the youth in every possible way I can. Anyone. As I said, we've all got to start somewhere and I wish I had had the background, someone to support me. I remember the first year, and it was before the OKEQ, going to the Human Rights Banquet. It was during Pride and coming to hear the guests that year. The grand marshals that year were Olympic Gold Medalist Greg Louganis and Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer (Editors Note) . And to hear all of a sudden, they were recognizing high school students for forming Gay and Straight Alliance. To have that in the school, the children, and they didn't have to be gay students, but there was friendly people there to support them. Going back to Duncan, one note. I remember one student, and back then there was also not only gay-straight, but racial. There was strictly the black community and there was a white community. The blacks would walk as a group. They would walk to school. And I mean, they were always in a group. There was one young man who, unfortunately I never had the opportunity to, but yes, looking back, he was very gay. And he was not 10 �feeling well and he got permission from his teacher to go to the principal's office and wanted to go home. I was told, no. He said, why do you need to go home? I have the cramps. Excuse me, a guy doesn't have cramps, as in menstrual cramps. I'm sorry, but just to know that there was someone there now who had moved to the point where there were people who would support more than just black, white, or racial differences. But straight people, knowing they could be friends with a gay person or a lesbian. And the young people just have no idea. They're used to having that around. That's a very good point. Now, you talked about how in the early days, tell me about how your first time to be in a gay pride parade, where was that and what did that make you feel like? And why were you there in that specific place? Again, I went with, I did a lot with churches or ministers. My first gay pride parade was in Oklahoma City. I had the opportunity to go with, there was a group from the church, MCC, even though at that time here in Tulsa we had two MCCs. There was the regular church or the founding church, and then there was a branch-off group, Family of Faith. I was going there with the minister to Oklahoma City for their pride parade and to ride in the car representing a northeast part of Oklahoma. And I felt safe in going to Oklahoma City. Even though there would be cameras there, I knew that the news coverage or the cameras, they would be shown in Oklahoma City. There wouldn't be people from Locust Grove that would be able to see that. So I knew I was safe in my job, but I felt very proud just to see people lined up up and down the street knowing that they were supporting gay people. Then I got to go to the first pride parade in Tulsa back when we gathered down on Brookside, which is 33rd, 35th part of Peoria. And I was honored in carrying the banner in front of the pick-up saying, our church. And I got to walk all the way from 33rd, wherever we started there on Peoria, up to 31st, then we turned and went over to Riverside, then up to Riverside all the way to Veterans Park. And it was the first parade. It was great. And during the walk, happened to be along on the sidewalk, there was a person that I sang with that had no idea I was a lesbian. And she came running over, she was so excited that I was marching in the parade. And gave me a big hug, and that meant the world, knowing that I had a straight person that was willing to come and support me, and did support me. And it took a lot of courage in 1999, and this organization fought for several years to try to get permission from the city council to let us have a parade, and every year it was voted down, and sometimes they would just have a parade where they'd walk down the sidewalks. 11 �And so finally they got permission, and this is 1999, you were there, even in 1999, was there a little bit of apprehension that maybe if somebody found out about you, it would affect your... Oh yes, it could have been dismissal, although I had tried to instill in my students and fellow teachers, etc., the feeling that just because you were in some sort of a march did not mean that you were gay, or like in a pride parade, did not mean that you were gay, but that you had sympathy for someone else. And also I want to mention during this parade, there was quite the protest from Fred Phelps Church. I mean, there were lots and lots of pictures, and we were told endlessly, do not make comments back to them, do not let them get to you. Just smile and say, God loves you, I'll pray for you, or whatever. Did not get in any kind of confrontation at all. All right, so those were some early days, and we've talked a little bit about, want to talk a little bit about when you first began to hear of AIDS in Tulsa, and maybe some of the things that you were involved in in those early days. The first thing I remember, of course, was through church being an MCC, and we would hear a lot about all different places in the country. There were starting to be, even though I was not aware of that legend here in Tulsa for several years, that we had lost people. I can remember the early days when we used to have a gay softball tournament, and supposedly that was how many of our first members contracted were infected with AIDS. And the fact that some of the outof-town guests, when they came in, supposedly this was how it was spread. So they would have came from larger urban areas, had intimate relationships with local persons, and they were infected that way. So there was this theory that that's how AIDS came to Tulsa, is what you're saying. That's, yeah. In that, or when the people here, and unfortunately it was men, would go to other cities such as Dallas or San Francisco or LA or Miami or New York, where the larger communities where there was more chance of being infected. Yeah, and unfortunately we lost many, many good people. So it happened here quick, and then what was Tulsa's response? Do you remember, did y'all come together in organized groups? The main thing I remember was the forming of the RAIN [edit comment – Regional AIDS Interfaith Network] teams, people to go out. For those who were infected here in Tulsa, to go out they would form huge RAIN 12 �teams to go out and help care for them. Most of the time these people were, of course, turned away by their families. They were having trouble finding a place to live, having someone take care of them. If they were in any type of relationship, their partner many times just up and left. They couldn't be associated with it. So they were isolated. They were totally isolated. And abandoned. Definitely. Fortunately, a lot of different churches, not just MCC, but the different churches would form the RAIN teams to go out and help care for these people. Did you, were there lots of funerals in those days? Oh my. And did you get asked to sing at several of those funerals? Did your choir suffer with those funerals? Yes. Yes to all of those. There were funerals, oh mercy, at least once a week, sometimes two or three times a week. You mentioned Leslie Penrose earlier. Bless her heart. I remember one year in between when they was on AIDS Day when they would just mention the ones who had passed, the reading of the names for that one year and present new panels that were being made for the AIDS bill. And she had lost 40 people in that one year. And that can be devastating, not only to the immediate family, but I don't care how you are intertwined with someone. Our lives constantly get together. We overlap, whether it be young, old, black, white, any type of ethnicity. We do interact with each other and we must be accepting of one another, whether it be the, back in the early days when it was more or less the war between the gay men and the lesbians. We have finally learned to come together. And I mean we were all fighting for the same thing, we were constantly fighting each other. And I always thought that was such a shame, but we finally did get our acts together so that we can. And today it's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and young people today like to call themselves queer, which is quite a bit different than what we grew up with. That was a term of derision, wasn't it? Oh, if you were called a queer back then, I mean that was highly insulting. Now, what do you think when we were talking about the AIDS and you losing so many people in that day, what do you think about when I tell you 13 �here in the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center on the other side of these cameras, we hang on permanent display the AIDS quilts. What do you think about that when you can see that right here are Oklahomans, we always request that they feature Oklahomans. What do you think when you walk into this room and see those? I mean, often reminded, I mean I love to look at that quilt because it has special memories. Some of the people that are on the panels on the quilt are people I knew. Do you realize that sometimes we have young people under I would say 35 who come into the building and have never heard of the AIDS quilts. They have now lived for 10 or 12 years with medication and not being so common for it being a death sentence that it's a manageable disease, and they don't realize that there was a time it was an epidemic. So how do you feel about us making sure these young people know the story behind these quills? They've got to know. They've got to be told. They need to be made aware. They need to be made aware of what they need to do to be safe. We all need to be safe. I have a nephew, which unfortunately, and one of the flyers that was sent out, whether by email or whatever, the picture used in me was from the AIDS service last year. (Editors note Carolyn was featured on the front page of the Tulsa World attending the World AIDS Day memorial service) World AIDS Day. World AIDS Day. And yes, I was in tears. Not having any brothers or sisters. I have a cousin whose youngest son, who is the one of the few white heirs that has unfortunately been forsaken by his father, who I'm happy to say has just been given an opportunity for medication and for help, and he's moved to Hawaii. He is HIV positive. He has AIDS. Full blown. He's stage four. But it's so interesting. I mean, so wonderful, not just interesting, wonderful and makes me so happy to read on Facebook of how he's just gotten back from the hospital and getting help. And they just started his new medication regimen and to have to be able to read and hear him say, instead of having four years to live now with this medication, he's been given 40 years. The progression and the success as we learn and things progress, the advances we are making in medication now that they are finding ways of helping people. As you said, in the early days, there wasn't any help. They tried, they didn't know anything about it. Medications had to be made. I mean they had to find some way, just like finding a cure for the common cold, which I know basically they haven't done. But advances in medicine or any type of advances take time. It takes a lot of preparation. It takes a lot of study. It takes someone 14 �stepping out, whether it be a medical researcher stepping out, taking that extra step to think, well maybe this will work and try. And yes, it is a series of trial and error. And back in the early days, there just wasn't the medicines there. Thank God we have them today. I appreciate you emphasizing. Young people need to see these AIDS quilts and be reminded we still have a high rate of infections among young gay men in Oklahoma. And this concerns me here at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center. Thank you for challenging me. I want to, as we come to a close, I want to show this very, very elaborate picture of you dressed and very formally. And tell me about this picture and why you're dressed in such a dapper outfit. Oh, dapper. But the old term for a big look. This picture was taken. I was asked to sit and have my portrait made. This was when I was director of the Women of Council Oak. I was the founding director. I was given the opportunity to be the founding director of an all-women's group. Well, no, we weren't an all-lesbian group because we had straight women. We tried to be an open group. And bisexual women. And bisexual women, inviting everyone to come in. And I think you had some transgendered women in that choir also that I'm aware of. No, not in the early days. Okay. But we were very open. And yes, we would have accepted some transgendered women. I probably would have had to find a few. But it was just a place for women to come together and sing. The Council Oak Men's Choir, which I admired for many, many years. I still admire and they have been great things and traveled and represented Tulsa. Some wonderful musicians, wonderful friends. Were you involved when they had the joint choir and did the Sing for the Cure, came together for Breast Cancer? That was how the formation of Women of Council Oak started. I heard about it from word, spread word, mouth, inviting women to come and join. And we did, we rehearsed. And it was wonderful. And because we did have the women, sorry, thought I had to shut up. I'm sorry. Anyway, the women came together. And not only was the Council Oak Men's Choir the women that we rounded up here in Tulsa or 15 �surrounding areas. There was one woman, a man and a woman that drove from, shoot, I can't think of the name. Anyway, they drove great distance, drove in to sing. Then the Turtle Creek Men's Choir from Dallas and the Women's Choir from Dallas drove up and joined. And we had this massive choir. At the Performing Arts Center? At the Performing Arts Center. And it was truly wonderful. And the story, the Women's Choir of Dallas is the one that originally created the score Sing for the Cure. They had it commissioned. And it tells the wonderful different stories, different women, different stages of women's lives as they were diagnosed with cancer. And sometimes the family expressions, what they went through or getting a sentence or the diagnosis by the, a lot of times it was like a sentence to be told, a woman to be told that no, you're not responding to any kind of medicine or treatment. It's going to be automatically loss of breast. And anyway, if you haven't read that book, I would suggest that you do read it because it is a wonderful story. And lesbians have a higher rate of breast cancer than most women. Do you remember the thoughts of how the gay choruses were stepping outside of the normal causes like AIDS and equal rights, and we were aligning with the straight people finding a common goal to support? What was your thoughts about that being a part of that? Sing for the Cure was very special for me in that this same cousins whose son is AIDS positive, has AIDS, his mother died from cancer. Breast cancer. She had breast cancer was diagnosed while he was in the military. They were sent back stateside, which I had known her all through school. And having lost her and singing for her funeral was very special, very hard emotionally. But yet I wanted to do Sing for the Cure in her remembrance. And that was my passion for doing that. Music has wonderful life. I mean, it's opened up so many things for me. I can go on with all the, which we won't even have time to go into any of that. But music is such an opportunity. So many different areas. I don't care what your desire is. I mean, what kind you like. You can always find something that can be meaningful. And I believe me, I don't understand all the rap music. But all I can say is that it is important to the young people. It says something to them. Carolyn, it has been incredible today to be with you. You're my prettiest guest. Because up to this time, I've always been interviewing men. Now, you don't have them on today, but you are known across Tulsa for your fingernails during Pride. And what do you always have your fingernails done? How do you have them done for Pride? 16 �My fingernails are always done in the rainbow colors. And you not only share those with Tulsa. You go to Wichita. You went to Wichita. Travels regionally. Now, Carolyn, there's something I want us to, as we close, I want us to think about. And this just came to me. You were an educator for decades. How do you feel when you're in the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center visiting with me yesterday and one of your former students from Locust Grove is sitting around the corner in his office and comes in and now he's an adult, openly gay man serving on the Board of Oklahomans for Equality seeking equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Oklahomans and working closely with our allies. How does that make you feel? He walked in. I just want to share with our audience. He walked in. He saw you. You just grabbed each other. He was in my office. And you didn't realize that Matthew DeCamp was right around the corner. How does that make you feel to know that your students have grown up and taken their place in this fight for equality? It makes me very proud. And I'm just so happy they had the opportunity to be able to go out and say, yes, I'm gay, I'm lesbian, I am proud of who I am because I was not given that opportunity. I wish I had known. I wish I could have encouraged more people. And speaking of that, and former students, there's a young man in Dallas who, which when they sing for the Cure in Dallas, and we had gone out after rehearsal to one of the bars, Sue Ellen's, and was sitting out there and all of a sudden, sitting there with a former high school classmate that is a lesbian, yes, and with my partner and the others that are someone else that had gone down with us to sing, and all of a sudden in the open area you hear, granny! And it echoes out. And it was one of my former students, a younger man, who was part of the group that called me granny from the time I was in my 30s and 40s, many years ago. But, and yes, he had gone through school, graduated from Locust Grove, got married, had children, came around and realized that he wasn't happy in that situation and decided to come out as a gay man and to be so accepted and to know that we could still sing. And one of his statements, and I was, why didn't you tell me back then? And I'm saying, oh honey, there was no way I could have. Yes, I knew back then. Certainly he had all of the signs, he was very fashionable, he didn't catch his hair, he always had to have a certain type of shoes or he had to be dressed a certain way. He was very fashion conscious. Oh, extremely fashion conscious. Which is not always an indication that someone's gay. And I'm going to point that out, not anything else, but back several years ago it was, you had to have a certain shirt or you had to wear a certain kind of, you had to wear certain name brands to be considered fashionable or be part of the in-group. But he kept saying, why didn't you tell me back then? 17 �And I'm saying, honey, I couldn't, there was no way. I couldn't even say that I was gay or lesbian. It would have been my job. I could not have mentioned it in the classroom. And now, as I said, the first time I heard him say there was a gay-straight alliance in school, I was so excited they could even talk about it in school. And today in Tulsa Public Schools and in Union Public Schools, openly gay teachers can, if they see a young gay student, they can make sure they're aware of where they can get helps and resources. And you may have a gay teacher talking with one of their gay students about, are you going to Pride this weekend? How does that make you feel to see that we've come that far where the teacher can actually now help their students as they think about their life and their career and being open about who they are? How does that make you feel? I wish I had the opportunity. I think it is wonderful because there's enough pressure still, particularly here in Oklahoma, from the mindset of our people that it's still wrong. You can't be gay. You can't be a lesbian. You're never going to amount to anything. All the negative things that are done. There is no support, or there has been in the past, so little support for gay and lesbian students. And to have someone knowing that you could go and say, hey, I think I may be gay, even to question. Have that opportunity. And it's much the same way, it's like, well, and I'm going to get back into the religious part of it, but to have the churches where you could go and say, I may be, I'm really attracted to this person of the same gender, and say, it's okay, you can still be a Christian, or you can still be a member of the faith. And it's the same thing in school, just to have that person knowing that you can go and talk to them about anything. That was what I always tried to prove to my students. I don't have to agree with what you're doing. I don't have to, I know some of the consequences, but yes, unfortunately you're going to be like the two-year-old that has to go up and touch the stove when it's on and learn that hot and no means that it's going to hurt if you touch it anyway. You've got to have that experience. And just to know that there might be a gay or lesbian teacher that they could go and talk to about, I think I might be, or I'm really attracted, or I had this problem because of. I'm so inspired by the bullying, because there for so many years has been so much bullying, and so anti-bullying. I want us to get that started. I mean, it's the same thing like our early years, when people, whether it be the living with AIDS, so many deaths caused by AIDS, or just the bombing of churches back in the early days. Gay churches. Gay churches. It had to start somewhere, but it's also had to come around and someone had to stand up and say, stop. And the young people now have so much, fewer things, but yet the opportunity to say, no, that's wrong. We had to listen to the queer or the off-color jokes about queer, about 18 �homosexuality, about lesbianism. We couldn't say anything, and now it's like, no, no, no. I find that offensive. And we must do more for our kids who are being bullied in schools. Definitely. Loss of one life is too many. Carolyn, thank you so much for being with us here today on Vintage. You are a vintage. You are a special creation, greatly treasured, and you'll never go out of fashion, right? Thank you so much for being with us today, and thank you, Bob, for being our translator today, for those of you who are hearing impaired. We've been broadcasting from the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, and this has been Carolyn Wiley, our special guest. You didn't have to keep me going. You didn't go yes or no. I just loved you. All right, thank you so much. Addendum: Carolyn Wiley Oral History Interview May 26, 2026 Toby Jenkins: Carolyn Wiley on May 26th, 2026. Today we're interviewing Carolyn and I want her to talk a little bit about her experience with the Imperial Court. Carolyn, what was your official title with the Imperial Court? Carolyn Wiley: With the court itself, I never had a title other than when I, after I ran for, as a candidate to be the Empress for all of Oklahoma. And that meant that I was represented as when we went to court functions, I could be recognized as the head of the Imperial Court of Oklahoma Toby Jenkins: The Empress of all Oklahoma. And do you remember that year? Carolyn Wiley: I'm thinking it's around 65 to 70. Toby Jenkins: So would it have been about like 2013 and 2014? Carolyn Wiley: Before that. Reign VI Absolute Empress Carolyn “Cougar Anne” Wiley 19 �Toby Jenkins: Okay. Right. I'll research that and find out for sure. And we'll make sure that's a part of your record. Carolyn Wiley: Well, to find when I took Bill [Francisco] and we went to New York. Toby Jenkins: Well, I know when that was. That was in 2019. I just was trying to remember when you were crowned the Empress of all Oklahoma. I was there. So I remember that night when you were crowned. It was at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. And you had, do you remember you had fallen and broke your arm? Carolyn Wiley: Yep. Toby Jenkins: And you went ahead through the whole coronation with a broken arm and did not go to the hospital. Carolyn Wiley: Until after it was over, we had things to do. Toby Jenkins: People to see. And so what were your duties as Empress? Carolyn Wiley: Just to represent the court wherever I went. Whether it be here in, now Sand Springs. Tulsa, Oklahoma City. To say nothing of all the courts I visited in Texas, there are nine courts in Texas and I went to all of them. Toby Jenkins: And so for our viewers, can you tell us what the Imperial Court is and what its mission is and how it was started? Toby Jenkins: It was started by Jose… Carolyn Wiley: No, it was started by Kris Kohl. Toby Jenkins: Well, here in Oklahoma, we're talking about the Imperial Court National. It was started by a person in California. Carolyn Wiley: Yeah, Jose's great poohpah. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, I'll look that up. So you became the Empress, and so if you went to other courts. Carolyn Wiley: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Traveled to other cities, you represented Oklahoma. Carolyn Wiley: Traveled everywhere from New York to LA. 20 �Toby Jenkins: I think you used to go to the Equality Gala, didn't you? And have to represent the Imperial Court at the Equality Gala? Carolyn Wiley: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Jose Sarris founded the Imperial Court System in 1965 in California to raise money for LGBTQ activism. And he was known as Mama Jose or is that what it was? Mama? He had been the first openly gay candidate to run for public office in 1961. Carolyn Wiley: No, he was just how he did it. Toby Jenkins: The Widow Norton. And he founded that. He was a performer. And it's modeled after the European court system. So it has kings and queens and empresses and ladies and lords and dukes and duchesses. And Carolyn was an empress for Oklahoma. Carolyn Wiley: Okay, I was Empress Number Six. When the court was founded, I was number six to run for the top position. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, and Kris Kohl founded it. Famous drag queen here in Oklahoma who now lives in Missouri. So we talked a little bit about how you would travel to other places. Tell us about when you and Bill Francisco went to New York City for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall and the New York City pride parade. Talk about that. Carolyn Wiley: Oh, wow, what a weekend. Of course, the main basic part was: just what do you take? I mean, there's just so many clothes and so much. Of course, being a part, as a part of being of the court system, you were required, or it was preferred, that you wore a crown, that you had a sash or some sort of identification where you were from. Basically I just went as myself and they couldn't figure out I was from Oklahoma. Heck with them. I didn't have my Texas drawl which I could have, and I have used the drawl a few times when I'd go to Texas to some of the different court functions which I still miss now. Toby Jenkins: You were in New York City and you were with Bill Francisco, I was there. Many people in New York City for that event, oh, just a few thousand. Toby Jenkins: Talk about a million closer. Carolyn Wiley: Yeah, that too. But as far as going to the reception itself, it was held at one of the big hotels. They had made that all, made all those arrangements, so everything was set up for it and you just had to introduce yourself or let it be known who you were. So you get in and, as Empress, I got to say I'm here. 21 �Toby Jenkins: Did you get to visit the Stonewall Bar and the Stonewall Memorial? Carolyn Wiley: Oh, that's where it was held. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, oh, very good. Were y'all in the parade? Did you get to be in the parade? Carolyn Wiley: No, but we walked several blocks just to go so that we could see it and we had gone into... I mean Bill and I had gone from the hotel down to that place. There were people everywhere, they had all the roads, all the streets blocked off Bill had forgotten something, left something in his room, so we had to go back to the hotel and get his room key so he could go get whatever and just had a good time. I think I of course got to meet people like I would meet anyone new, just doing what came naturally. Toby Jenkins: Representing Oklahoma, the Imperial Court of Oklahoma. And you were there for that 50th anniversary. Your thoughts about being there at the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. What were your thoughts about that? Being a person from Oklahoma who had been a schoolteacher, who did work with young people, what were your thoughts about how significant that moment was? Carolyn Wiley: It was actually a wonderful moment and many thoughts went through your mind just to know that you were in New York, that I was in New York, not necessarily that I was representing Oklahoma, but knowing I was representing Oklahoma, but just to be there. And, of course, Queen Mother was there. It was so good and they had different people and from all age groups. They're talking about their experiences within the LGBT etc. community and what they had done. There was one young man there and he was like in high school, representing and he had just done wonderful things. It was set up towards running or we were trying to represent just like they did in England. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, European Court. We were joking that Empress Wiley, I guess is Carolyn Wiley, Empress Six. We think she looks a lot like Queen Elizabeth when she wears her crown. So is it heavy? Carolyn Wiley: No, not really. After you're sitting in a court function, whatever it is, wherever you are, it gets heavy after a while. Toby Jenkins: Who made your crown? Do you remember? 22 �Carolyn Wiley: No, I ordered it out of the booklet where you could get crowns. Toby Jenkins: So it wasn't somebody that made it special for you? Carolyn Wiley: No. Toby Jenkins: All right. So you were talking about being in New York City for Stonewall and the Imperial Court and you got to meet a lot of people. Any other thoughts about that moment in 2019 when Bill Francisco, who I guess we would call him your sidekick. He was your what? Carolyn Wiley: My escort. Toby Jenkins: Your escort. He was your escort. I think they call themselves royalties, whenever they have an escort, they call them their consort. He was your consort. Carolyn Wiley: Yeah, okay. We did a lot of consorting around. Toby Jenkins: So your thoughts about the Imperial Court, do you stay in touch with those folks? Do they come see you sometimes? Carolyn Wiley: There are a few of them that I do see quite often. I know we had a coronation, although it's been about almost a year since I went. It was just good to see people all over. I mean, that's one of the functions as even a current or a past Imperial Court member. You get to go and you get to see all these people that travel from all over. They've been invited throughout the years or however long it's been. Hopefully your royalty, the current or past members of Emperor and Empress do travel and get to go and meet other people and invite them to your coronation. Toby Jenkins: What do you feel like the strongest, most important part of the court system is, the Imperial Court? Why do you feel like it's so important to the LGBTQ community? Carolyn Wiley: Well, as I said, the Imperial Court was set up to invite people or get to know people from all over the world, from wherever. They come in and they get to tell you a little bit about their court system and invite you to their facilities. And the one invitation that I got was...actually several times, but to go to their coronation and be with their people was Hawaii. And I never got to go to Hawaiian coronation. But I certainly got to know some of their people very well. 23 �Toby Jenkins: But you traveled all over the country, didn't you? I mean, you went from coast to coast, because you went to California, didn't you? Carolyn Wiley: Oh, yes. Toby Jenkins: And you went to New York, so that's coast to coast. Carolyn Wiley: Well, it was just what was available at the time of what was scheduled. I mean, everything is set up throughout the year, so you get to pick and choose where you want to go or where you want to go. Toby Jenkins: Now, do you feel like it was helpful as we all are fighting for equality even harder today, because we may lose it? Did you feel it was important for you to build strong relationships with other states, other cities, other areas? Carolyn Wiley: Well, particularly those close by to Oklahoma here, because it was so easy to hop in the car and away I go. Knowing there are seven courts within the state of Texas, which is a good-sized amount of property, to make all seven courts and their coronations was a great experience. Toby Jenkins: So, as we finish, I wonder, do you have any message for your friends who are still in the Imperial Court, those who come after you, the young people who are now the emperors and the empresses? Do you have a message for young people today that you'd like to give them? Carolyn Wiley: Yes, be active and don't ever feel like you're meeting a new person, because it's only by meeting new people that you get to make new friends. And personally, I would say one of my greatest experiences was being a member of the Imperial Court and traveling all over. Because not only did I make all seven courts in Texas, I've been to California, Colorado, Arizona. I got to go around. Toby Jenkins: Well, thank you so much for making time with us today and that we got to see Empress Six with her crown on. Carolyn Wiley: Oh, yeah. Woppie. Toby Jenkins: It's May 26th, 2026, in Sand Springs, at the palace of Empress Six, Carolyn Wiley. Carolyn Wiley: Also known as the nursing home, but it's okay. Yeah, and away I go. 24 �Toby Jenkins: So we were talking about how hard we are fighting. We just didn't ever dream we would have to fight so hard for our rights again. What were your thoughts? You said something that was really profound. Carolyn Wiley: Wow, I said something profound. No, never did we realize, and even I at my age, which is getting closer to 80 all the time, never did I realize, even in my advanced age as one of the older members of the Imperial court system here in Oklahoma, that, as you said, everything is toward the younger people, getting them involved. And yes, we want to get them involved because we want someone to carry it on. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, but we've got such a hostile government that's trying to take away our rights again. And you said, what did you say about that? Carolyn Wiley: I don't know, what did I say? I forgot. Toby Jenkins: You told us that we're just going to have to keep fighting, and you're willing to fight even at your age. Carolyn Wiley: You bet. Always willing. I can’t get around as much as I used to, but it's like, get out of my way, I am coming through. Toby Jenkins: Very good. So we've got to keep fighting, don't we? Carolyn Wiley: We must keep fighting. There are too many people involved. It would impact them, with them not even being able to fight. We must go ahead and fight and win our battles. 25 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2009-2010; 2026] Carolyn Wiley Interview Description An account of the resource Transcript of oral history interview with Toby Jenkins in 2009 or 2010 as part of the Vintage Series of interviews, alongside an addendum interview recorded on May 26, 2026. <strong>Video available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Born in Duncan, Oklahoma, Carolyn graduated from Walters, Oklahoma High School in 1963. In 1969, she graduated from the Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts in Chickasha. She begin a teaching career at Madison High School in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, followed by teaching stints in Duncan and Locust Grove, Oklahoma. While in Locust Grove, she begin commuting to Tulsa to become involved in the LGBTQ+ community and was active in Metropolitan Community Church. She was the founding director of the women’s choral group, Women of Council Oak, which later became Sisters in Song. She discusses her involvement with the AIDS Quilt and other outreach in support of those dealing with HIV.<br /><br />Physical tapes not yet located. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Toby Jenkins, Carolyn Wiley Subject The topic of the resource Carolyn Wiley Oral History Project Vintage Series Interview with Addendum Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 2009-2010; May 26, 2026 AIDS AIDS Quilt AIDS/HIV available at Center Carolyn Wiley HIV HIV/AIDs interview Metropolitan Community Church NAMES Project NAMES Project quilt OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript Sisters in Song Toby Jenkins transcript video Vintage Vintage Series Women of Council Oak Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2005] Murrel Wilmoth Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 22, 2005 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Laura Belmonte on October 22, 2005 (Laura misspeaks at the beginning of the interview and says it is the 21st). <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Murrel was born on April 4, 1932, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. At the age of four, his family moved to Tulsa, graduated from Daniel Webster High School and attended Oklahoma A&amp;M (now Oklahoma State University) for 2 years and then joined the Coast Guard for four years, serving in California. He completed his degree at OSU, then returned to California for seven years before coming back to Tulsa in 1965, after which he started his coming out process. Murrel worked in the Tulsa Planning Commission office, became involved with the Metropolitan Community Church and Prime Timers, an organization for older gay men. He discussed his network of friends and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” environment in Tulsa in the 1970s, 1980s. At age 92, Murrel passed away on February 25, 2025, in Tulsa. His obituary is included in an addendum to his transcript. Subject The topic of the resource Murrel Wilmoth Oral History Project Interview from October 21, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Murrel Wilmoth, Laura Belmonte, Jensen Bridges, Matthew D. Williams, Dennis Neill 2005 available at Center Dennis Neill Dennis R. Neill interview Jensen Bridges Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte Matthew D. Williams Matthew Williams Metropolitan Community Church Murrel Wilmoth Obituaries Obituary OKEQ Oral History Project Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU Prime Timers Primetimers transcript video Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Series] Oral Histories Project > Interviews Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br />Box 7, Folder 7 - Dr. Leisa Meyer Program<br />Box 7, Folder 8 - Interviewees Materials, Original Series 2003-2007<br /><br /><strong>Digital Media:</strong> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [2004] Ken Youngblood Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 22, 2004 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Laura Belmonte on August 22, 2004. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Ken was born November 22, 1949, in Vinita, Oklahoma. From sixth grade through high school, he played the piano and organ at the local Baptist Church. He attended high school in Jay, Oklahoma, married in 1971, went to Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and obtained a degree in Music. He divorced in 1973 and came out soon after. Ken attended graduate school at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. In 1975, Ken moved to Tulsa and attended a hairstyling school and later opened a flower shop after working in the floral department of a local grocery. Ken discussed his early experiences in the gay scene in Tulsa and his first drag appearances, including participating in the Follies fundraiser for Oklahomans for Human Rights. In 1994, the well-known Tulsa artist Pat Gordon asked Ken to model in drag as part of a series of such works over the next few years. He discussed his awareness of AIDS and its impact in Tulsa and his volunteer work with the helpline maintained by Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights. In 1992, Ken and his long-time partner had a well- known “wedding” attended by some 300 gay and straight people. Subject The topic of the resource Ken Youngblood Oral History Project Interview from August 22, 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ken Youngblood, Laura Belmonte, Dennis Neill 2004 AIDS AIDS/HIV available at Center follies HIV/AIDs interview Ken Youngblood Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte Northeastern State University Northeastern State University (NSU) NSU OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OU Pat Gordon TOHR transcript Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) University of Oklahoma University of Oklahoma (OU) video