3 20 681 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/36abeea08430c8f39650f48b7da1e24d.MOV eb1572adf4b3bf18f1f47c11e90ef2b0 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] Kevin Lovelace Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/9aaefe23c50b8136e1ed7e24d9c9d898.mp4 1b5aa0179d697ac638be3a4f2011a766 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] John Coffman Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/4d63c6816fa2a71ba7ca0dfee00aeeb0.MP4 0538f3e0181536b6fee0319911ada6b6 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] Julia Clayton Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/68f629a3a99a1a975e547e9b59dca447.MOV 516d3e792efcbca6165a3226f5de7a7e 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] Tori Bock Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/9412165f4a234a41ee1ebdd9c91696b2.MP4 72dcbb43213916554236bd2b5c2ffff2 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] Amesha Barlow Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/5a2d5f174609df9930fd7f67a9e17d7f.MOV 27c980e2a1a1047ad6c3ab7d2035ec21 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] Whitney Cipolla Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/eadf1c072db2c6688196bb39138060b2.MP4 8d7290b2bda1a56fbb71cbbe81374bec 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] Oklahoma LGBT+ History > Our Community Photoshoot and Storytelling 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 [2025] Joan Bjornsgard Interview https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/c9d67df35090fb846d82e38728243423.jpeg 3f7500dd0ec1f26bfe646192d40da5e3 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 [Collection] Oklahoma LGBT+ History Description An account of the resource <strong>Physical Media:</strong> <br /><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] Veteran's Wall https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/b418b81f6d3161bea3adbd38969f2ee7.mp4 6ef8807e5b1b421285ba179ca06e3042 https://www.history.okeq.org/files/original/56ba85886deb39b4fd73cb848661163a.pdf 9d05b88c5606cc5f8d604ff051d3c330 PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Kelly Kirby Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins Date: April 9th, 2025 Edited By: Dennis Neill using Reduct.Video February 17, 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 Kelly Kirby Keywords LGBTQ, equality, inclusion, military service, advocacy, personal journey, Kelly Kirby, Oklahoma, history Takeaways ● Kelly Kirby shares his journey of self-discovery and acceptance. ● He became aware of his sexual orientation at a young age. ● Military service provided a unique perspective on identity and acceptance. ● Kelly faced challenges in relationships due to societal expectations. ● He became an advocate for LGBTQ rights in his community. ● His experiences shaped his views on equality and inclusion. ● Kelly's family played a significant role in his life and advocacy. ● He faced threats and discrimination for being openly gay. ● Kelly's involvement in various organizations highlights his commitment to advocacy. ● His reflections on life emphasize the importance of authenticity and acceptance. Summary 2 �This conversation with Kelly Kirby explores his life journey, from his early awareness of his sexual orientation to his military service and subsequent advocacy for LGBTQ rights. Kelly shares personal stories about his family, relationships, and the challenges he faced as an openly gay man in Oklahoma. His commitment to equality and inclusion is evident through his involvement in various organizations and his reflections on the importance of authenticity in one's life. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Kelly Kirby and Background 02:53 Early Life and Education 06:08 Family Dynamics and Community Influence 09:08 Awareness of Sexual Orientation 12:07 Coming Out and Early Relationships 15:00 Military Experience and Identity 17:50 Life in the Military and Relationships 20:53 Navigating Identity in a Conservative Environment 40:01 Exploring the Diversity of Gay Bars 44:00 Life in the Military: Relationships and Identity 46:57 Awareness of Military Policies and Purges 50:13 Navigating Personal Identity and Family Dynamics 53:48 The Impact of Religious Beliefs on Sexual Identity 01:00:00 Transitioning from Religious Constraints to Self-Acceptance 01:05:01 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Acceptance 01:09:59 Building a New Life: Career and Family Dynamics 01:14:59 Reflections on World AIDS Day and Personal Advocacy 01:20:57 Coming Out and Embracing Identity 01:21:54 Leadership in LGBTQ+ Organizations 01:29:15 Media Representation and Advocacy 01:34:09 Challenges of Visibility and Advocacy 01:39:08 Recognition and Legacy 01:46:06 Family Life and Personal Relationships 3 �01:48:12 Final Thoughts and Community Involvement Kelly Kirby Oral History Interview 2025 Toby Jenkins: Good afternoon, can you tell me your name? Kelly Kirby: Kelly Kirby, K-E-L-L-Y-K-I-R-B-Y. Toby Jenkins: And we're here in your beautiful home, and we wanted to be in front of this beautiful portrait back here that you have, I just love it, kind of fits with our theme today, we're talking about equality and inclusion and LGBTQ history in this part of the country. How old are you, and when were you born? Kelly Kirby: I'm 71, I was born in 1953. Toby Jenkins: And where were you born? Kelly Kirby: Pittsburgh, Kansas. Toby Jenkins: Pittsburgh, Kansas. How did you, what brought you to Oklahoma? Kelly Kirby: Well, after grad school, college, Philips Petroleum recruited me, and so I came to Bartlesville, and then, after a year, I was like, I don't want this kind of a career, and so I went to a tax accountant down in Oklahoma City, and worked for him for a couple years, and then I hung out my shingle, and that was in 1982. And, yeah, and that was in Oklahoma City, and ultimately, in 1986, I moved up here because I had more clients in Tulsa than Oklahoma City, and I've been here ever since, 1986. Toby Jenkins: And that would have been, you were a CPA. Kelly Krby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Where did you graduate high school, Pittsburgh? Kelly Kirby: Well, so Pittsburgh State University is one of the state colleges, but they had a teacher school when it was first started, and so I went to a, what I would call, guinea pig school, because we were on the campus, and I went, my kindergarten through my master's in business administration in that same campus. Toby Jenkins: Now, were, was this open to everybody, or did you have to have some kind of unusual academic achievement, or did they see promise in you that you were allowed to attend this particular school, this private school on this campus? Kelly Kirby: Right, well, it was the balance of the students, which were almost, I would say, in any given year, 30 students on each grade level, from K to 12, and about half of them, I would say, were kids of somebody that had something to do with the university, professors, et cetera, kids, and then the other half was from the community of Pittsburgh. So, Pittsburgh is 20,000 people, but we also had 7,000 students on that campus. 4 �Toby Jenkins: Now, what did your parents do in this community? Was this where they had always lived? I mean, were they associated with the university? Kelly Kirby: No, my dad actually grew up in Iowa on a farm, and he, in World War II, he came to Pittsburgh, Kansas to a flying school, and then when he was there, he met my mom, and then he went off to war, and then came back and married her, and she was there, that was her home at Pittsburgh where she was born. Toby Jenkins: And what did your father do for a career after he got out of the military? Kelly Kirby: Well, he actually stayed in the military reserve as an officer. So he had, I don't know, one weekend a month that he had to go a couple of days or something like that, and then a couple of weeks once a year. And he did that for twenty-five or six or seven years. I forget exactly how many. But then also, he went on to become a postman. And that thing came from my mother's side of the thing, because her dad, her uncle, her mother, my grandma, my grandpa, my uncle, great-uncles, and all that, were all in the Postal Service. So my dad retired in the mid-'60s from the military and in the mid-'70s from the post office and had two pensions. Toby Jenkins: Now, did your mother work outside the home, or did she? Kelly Kirby: Well, so my mother was a telephone, what do you call it? Toby Jenkins: Operator? Kelly Kirby: Operator, yeah, exactly. And this was, you know, is this Mrs., you know? If you think Lily Tomlin, that was my mother. Toby Jenkins: One ringy dingy. Kelly Kirby: Yes, exactly, exactly. They started having kids. They had three together. My older sister Susie was born in 47. And so six years later, I came along. And then Linda was the last, and she was born in 56. Susie now still lives in Joplin. Linda's in Wichita, and I'm in Tulsa. So we're still, none of us are still in Pittsburgh, but we're, it's an easy way to see each other. And we have good… Toby Jenkins: Now, I'm just curious, what year did you technically graduate from high school, even though you were going to this school on the Pittsburgh campus? Kelly Kirby: 1971 was when I got my, and I want to just put a little piece in here. My mother died when I was five. And, you know, Linda and Susie being the same amount of, she had cancer, and she died at the age of 36. My dad remarried three years later to a widow whose husband had been killed in a fire. And she came along with a son, one child. It's 10 years older than me. So I have a brother also, although he is now deceased. But so that was four kids, and we just meshed. And so I just wanted to put that in there. Toby Jenkins: Now, did your father and your stepmother have any children together? Kelly Kirby: No. 5 �Toby Jenkins: OK, well, I was going to ask you, you graduated in 1971. You went to this school that was on Pittsburgh State University's campus. Was it integrated? Kelly Kirby: Yes, I would say. I don't think that I could say what their policy was. But the kids that were in my classroom, you know, they might be from the Far East or the Near East because of the university. And there was a Black family back across the alley from where in our house was six blocks from the university. So I mean, we just I didn't really know what integration was. It just was, looking back. We're going to get to this, but I, in 1972, after one first semester of college, I enlisted in the United States Air Force. Vietnam was going on, and anyway, and my dad was military, so it was kind of that, and I was going to, my dad flew, actually, because that, I told you before, and so I thought, oh, well, I want to go be in the Air Force and be a pilot. Then I went into the Air Force, totally integrated, I mean, I don't know, somebody may have other, I don't want to make it all whatever, but for the time, I guess, I don't know, but it was just, color was blind to me. Toby Jenkins: So you had gone to school, even though you had gone to school in the 60s, you don't remember integration being an issue, unlike it was here in Tulsa, where they were threatened if they didn't integrate, they were going to force them, they were going to force them to. Kelly Kirby: I don't think that the university would have to have done that. I don't know what, before me, or whatever, and there was, Pittsburgh had two other schools also, one was the public school, and they also had a Catholic school, so there's, there were three, you know, full K through 12 in town. Don't know about, I had some friends from the other schools, but I don't really, I couldn't say what it was like for them, but for me, I, when I really, I guess maybe, probably in the latter 60s, I became aware, I suppose, of people that were being discriminated against. Toby Jenkins: So we talked a little bit about how you came to Oklahoma, I'm just curious, when were you aware of, how do you, what is your sexual orientation, how do you identify? Kelly Kirby: I'm gay. Toby Jenkins: Gay. Kelly Kirby: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: When did you become aware of that? I mean, were you in high school, college? Kelly Kirby: Well, I'll tell you what, I would say, a light went on that I couldn't decipher of what it was, when my cousin got his elbow, no, he had his arm broken in a football field and during a game, and I went with my dad and my uncle and into the, the locker room, yeah, which I had not been in one of those, and this would, I would have only been 11, and yeah. Toby Jenkins: So the awareness of male bodies. 6 �Kelly Kirby: Yes, exactly. Toby Jenkins: So you would have had that awareness, you went to college there, and you were in the military and all of these, you were still quite young. Any awareness, like, on the campus, on the college campus, were you aware of other gay people? Kelly Kirby: Well, the first time, actually, that I was, I was around them, but I didn't actually know that that was what was going on until...I'm trying to think about when I want to say that. Let's see, Christmas of 1970. Susie left Pittsburgh and went to live in Omaha for three years. And after she was partway through her college as well, her college, because remember she’s six years older than me. So, we all got degrees from that university as well. And but she had a layout period and she came back at Christmas. And I had been going into this bar in Pittsburgh, Kansas, I think I started going in 1969. And it was like a pizza place. And it was just called the Alley. And it was like a downstairs thing in the in the downtown. Twenty thousand people. Kansas and not only for Kansas, you know, but anyway, I started going in there. It wasn't until I said I'd been, maybe 68, 69, 70, but in the 70, Susie and I, we went out and I told her I had this little bar that I could get into because it was Kansas was 18 beer. Although I was not I was going in there when I was 15. But but because of the pizza, it was kind of like a little…. it was Susie and I, we wanted to go out just and just have a time for ourselves. And so we went in there and in the bar was not very busy and we sat at the bar and the guy that was behind the bar Susie graduated from high school. And as as we drove home, to my parents home after we came out of the Alley, she said, do you know that this man is gay? I don't know exactly what words, but the bartender? And so, you know, it's kind of like, where do you get the information in that young place and, you know, no Will and Grace. No, none of that. You know, there really wasn't much of anything good or bad. It was just there. Toby Jenkins: But when she said this to you, I'm not sure exactly what your age was, you said it was Christmas 1970. Kelly Kirby: So I would have just turned 17. Toby Jenkins: So you hadn't went into the military yet. When she said, did you know he's gay, you knew what that meant or you had more questions about it? Kelly Kirby: I can't be that really exactly what that is. But yeah, I don't know that I could pinpoint, but it started something that it was to me. I'll tell you what, I think this is probably the best way to say it. It was I was curious. And so I started going down to the Alley. Sometimes I'd been going with buddies or whatever, whatever. But I just went down there by myself. And I went several times. I don't know. I did probably when I could get out to that place. I went down there. And so about….It was March, so not quite three months, a guy came and sat down by me in the bar and he had seen me in there. He was also a friend of my sister's from the university. And I guess I had a date. I didn't know that that's what it was, anything to call it. But we went to the movies. Went with this guy. We went back to the bar on Saturday night. And then on Sunday, we got in my car and went out in the country just outside of Pittsburgh or whatever. And and then my car. So something happened. I don't know…I ran out of gas or something. My car 7 �quit. And so we went to a farmhouse and got somebody to one of his friends to bring it back to Pittsburg. And so the friend, I don't remember the name, Larry. Larry is the guy that was I was talking to. I don't remember the other guy's name. But anyway, we went back to this guy's house. This guy disappeared and Larry got me in bed. Toby Jenkins: That was your first… So you had car broke down and you that was your first same sex intimate romance. Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: OK. So Pittsburgh, Kansas. Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Kelly Kirby kissed a boy and decided he liked it. Kelly Kirby: Yeah. And a little bit more than kiss. Toby Jenkins: So you were there and going to school. You left school to go into the service military service. Well, I want to know about that. Kelly Kirby: March of 71, I met Larry, and I sent Susie a letter and said, told her that I had a boyfriend that it was, and it was him, Larry. And she came back from Omaha for just for a weekend and just to see what's going on with Kelly. And so, you know, we, in the long run, my sisters were just so helpful. And, and we were three kids with, we lost our mother. And, you know, there's a, there's a stepmother and all that. But, but we were just really, we were tight. I mean we're still very close. And so Susie and I talked to Linda about it. Susie must have told me it might not be good to tell our parents. And there's a long story about that, and that's not necessary. That's, that's enough said about that. So I didn't come out to my parents then, but I did go back to school, a senior, 17 years old, and I started telling some of my friends that I was gay. I don't even know really what the hell that was, but I did kind of. And Larry was a two or three weeks thing. I was like, I clutched to him and, and it was like, he wasn't ready for clutch. He stayed nice to me and all that stuff. But I was going down there [the Alley]. I didn't know, but I went in there on like 10 o'clock on Saturday night. And there's men dancing and in Pittsburgh, Kansas. So I came out to a group of people at that time. I didn't know a hell lot, a lot more than, than what they did, but most of them were interested. And like my whole class knew that I was gay, Whatever they were saying behind my back, I don't know, but nobody punched me in the nose or called...Well, I actually did have a, one guy called me a queer and that was when I was 16 and it was in school showers, guy here in the, in the shower. And I'm looking at him and he said, what are you looking at queer? So that was the first time I know that, that word even, you know, anyway, sorry, sidebar. Toby Jenkins: No, but important. Kelly Kirby: Yes. Yeah, exactly. 8 �Toby Jenkins: First time you really felt public shame or, or him trying to humiliate you because he, so I think that's an important part for all of us. First time we felt public humiliation because of something about us that we don't even realize people can see.. Remarkable that you, your sister may not have understood it, but supported it and that you were out to kids in your high school. Kelly Kirby: Well, Susie, I obviously had some friends that were gay and from college. Toby Jenkins: Now question, do you feel like perhaps the fact that you were on an academic campus, a university setting, which would have emphasized liberal arts and probably more progressive thoughts? I mean, I keep saying this, Kansas, Pittsburgh, Kansas, middle of the country. You think you probably were in a bubble of awareness that maybe somebody else living in Kansas wouldn't have even… Kelly Kirby: I don't know. I know that I can say I had a really good education. I didn't know that's what I had. I just figured everybody that went to school got what I got. And you are right. It was liberal and inclusive. I don't know about homosexuality, but at least it worked in race and those sort of things. Maybe not the whole town, but the campus was largely that way. Toby Jenkins: So you went into the military. Kelly Kirby: Right. Toby Jenkins: I know it was the Vietnam War. Were you drafted? Kelly Kirby: No.Drafting then was kind of like a bingo where the letters come out and they put all the birthdays in the bucket. And the order that the numbers come out were the person who was most likely to be drafted. And the year before me, the highest one, it was 90 out of 365, of course. That's everybody's birthdays, actually. Toby Jenkins: But you weren't drafted. Kelly Kirby: I was not. Toby Jenkins: Were you in the ROTC at the university? Kelly Kirby: I enlisted. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Kelly Kirby: I enlisted because my birthday was pulled out of the hat by number 25. And so it was imminent that I would be, would be… my brother had been drafted. My two cousins had been drafted and all older than me. And I wanted what my dad did. And that wouldn't be Army or Navy. One of my cousins was in the Navy. But what I wanted was, I wanted to fly. I wanted to be a flyer. Toby Jenkins: Right. Kelly Kirby: And anyway, so I went in the Air Force. 9 �Toby Jenkins: I have a question. So already you are kind of aware that you are sexually attracted to your own sex. You're homosexual. You've already had some gay intimate moments. And you decide to go into the military. Was there, and surely you're aware that at that time you were going to be questioned about your sexuality as an induction? They were going to ask you, were you homosexual? Kelly Kirby: Well, I did. They did. I didn't know they were going to, but they did. Toby Jenkins: Oh, you weren't aware. Kelly Kirby: Yeah, I wasn't aware they were going to do it, but they did. And I just denied. You know, I said no. I answered the question no, and then they went on. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Well, that was, you weren't aware that they were going to ask that. So you get into it. Kelly Kirby: Right. Toby Jenkins: Where did you go to basic? Kelly Kirby: Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. I was there for a couple months. Then I went to Keesler, it's in Mississippi, on the coast. And I knew some guys in basic that were gay. I knew some people in, and actually what I would call have boyfriends in training for a couple of months or a little over that. All clandestine…That was it. I was strictly from 17 to 21, and we'll get to that. But I was only dated men. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. So you went through basic, then did you become a pilot? Kelly Kirby: Well, no, actually they had too many. Because it was kind of running, winding down a little bit. What they needed was more, they didn't need white boy me. I couldn't go to flying school. They needed blacks orToby Jenkins: Or Latinos. Kelly Kirby: Yeah, because they did have actually integrated the military at that time. And… Toby Jenkins: So they saw the importance of diversity and, yeah. Kelly Kirby: Or there was, I mean, you look at Johnson and Nixon. Those were the years where a whole lot of thatToby Jenkins: Affirmative action programs. Kelly Kirby: Exactly. Toby Jenkins: So where did you get assigned? Kelly Kirby: So I got, I had a desk for the Air Force. I was administrative, and I was in assignments. Basically, I was, my job was to do, assign other people to do whatever. So my first duty station was Vandenberg in California. It's on the ocean. And so there was a gay guy in my little pod there. And so we kind of had friends. And an hour away was 10 �Santa Barbara. And so I would go on the weekend to the gay bars down in Santa Barbara. And I had some boyfriends or whatever. Toby Jenkins: And did you go with another group of gay guys from your base? Like y'all had made friends, or did you just drive down there by yourself? Kelly Kirby: Mostly myself. Toby Jenkins: And when you got down there, Kelly, did you ever see other military personnel who were down in Santa Barbara? I mean, did you, because that's what, about 45 miles away? Kelly Kirby: Yeah, it's about an hour, yeah, so. Toby Jenkins: I mean, was the purpose of going there, was so that you could put some distance between you andKelly Kirby: Well, it's where the gay bar is. I was aware, particularly, too, for the women. The lesbians, you know, we all had to hang together and be helpful to each other and put up for each other and be damn quiet about it. Toby Jenkins: So you knew lesbian women in the military? Kelly Kirby: Oh, yeah, in my office. Toby Jenkins: Wow, impressive. And you kind of covered for each other? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Did you have a boyfriend when you were in the military? Kelly Kirby: I had several. Toby Jenkins: Okay. I got, I just, out of curiosity, that gay bar that you went to, kind of describe what it was like, the environment. Kelly Kirby: I mean- You're talking about back in Pittsburgh or in- Santa Barbara. Toby Jenkins: Santa Barbara. Because to me, you're in a larger urban area. Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: It's on the West Coast. Kelly Kirby: Where the age was 21, which I was not, but I could still get in. Toby Jenkins: So we kind of, in our mind, we kind of imagine what a gay bar looks like today. So was this an integrated space? Were there people of all races in this bar? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: What about genders? Were there female persons, male persons? Did you see cross-dressers, transsexuals, transgender persons? 11 �Kelly Kirby: As to the latter two, that was not a thing that you knew that somebody was. I mean, who is it that was? There was somebody in, went to Sweden, or, and that's 1969, is that right? Toby Jenkins: Christine Jorgensen Kelly Kirby: and that's 1969, is that right? Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Kelly Kirby: It's not as big a thing. Toby Jenkins: So would there have been cross-dressers in the bar? Kelly Kirby: Maybe. Toby Jenkins: But male persons and female persons were in the same bar. Kelly Kirby: I think they were probably the girls had one bar and the guys had about three in Santa Barbara at that time, and that's probably where they- but that doesn't mean they didn't go into the other. Toby Jenkins: Or were there drag queens performing? Kelly Kirby: No, not that I recall. Toby Jenkins: Okay, what about leather fetish, kink identities? Were those playing out in the clubs at the time? Kelly Kirby: A man from Los Angeles came into the bar in Santa Barbara and I had an office job, so eight to five, got my weekends off. This guy said: you know, would you like to come down to…You know you want to come down and spend the night and I'll show you around on Saturday. I think he was probably 40, and I was 18 or 19 by that time. I couldn't tell you his name and I was the only one who probably saw him maybe once before, but I got exposed to some of the leather king, fetish and and probably the drag queens and and some of that. I don't know how much. Toby Jenkins: You're in the military. And then how did the rest of your life play out with that, your career, your military career, your, your relationships? Kelly Kirby: So I was at Vandenberg for a year and a half. I was in a short assignment of, I think, about four or five months in Omaha and by that time, I was at the place where I went to the bar in Omaha and met a guy there. And, we just kind of hit it off, and three months we were going on. And then when I was going back to Vandenberg, he came with me, and we were going to get an apartment. And so, that's where I was. In the end, that didn't really work out. My next assignment, after another four or five months in California, I went to Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, Alaska. So that was my last place, duty station. And I was there for 13 months or something like that. Toby Jenkins: Were there gay people in Alaska? 12 �Kelly Kirby: Yes, yes, there was a gay bar in Fairbanks, a town of 40,000, which was the second biggest town in Alaska at the time. The pipeline, I don't know if you know that or have any… So they were building it, and it went across the base. So there's all these men that go or were here and going up the line. And, oh, I had a boyfriend that was an Eskimo. I mean… Toby Jenkins: An indigenous person. Kelly Kirby: Yeah, exactly. At least I had some dates with him. And he took me around up to the Arctic Circle. And, you know, we went to a hotel and stuff like that, spent the weekends and everything. Toby Jenkins: Now, Kelly, I'm curious. To me, you sound like your life was pretty comfortable. Were you aware e of people being kicked out of the military because they were gay? Kelly Kirby: Oh, yes. So there was an officer who got caught fucking an airman, and he got sent to Leavenworth, like prison. So, yeah, I was aware of that. Toby Jenkins: Because of the rank? Kelly Kirby: Because of the rank and because you don't fraternize, the enlisted people and the officers. They're, you know, whatever. But so, yeah, I knew what was out. And after, let's see, I left Vandenberg in June of 74. And in August of 74, they had a clean house witch hunt. And 110 people male and female were purged from the with bad dishonorable discharge. Toby Jenkins: This would have been what year? Did you say 74? Kelly Kirby: Yeah. Toby Jenkins: And that was in San Diego or? Kelly Kirby: It was Vandenberg. Vandenberg. Yeah, that's where I was. So, you know, I could have been swept up into that, except I was three months gone. Toby Jenkins: Do you think some of the people told on the other people for reduced sentences? Kelly Kirby: Yeah, there might be. Actually, I think there were plants and things like that, or somebody that got caught. They want them to get to tell on other people. And they will give you this or I'll give you a general instead of an undesirable or a dishonorable. Yeah, there's also there was those four that they can… Toby Jenkins: So just curious at this time when you were living your best life, were you and you were interacting with so many LGBT people. And also you were dealing with the military's…You could not be in the military. I mean, it was the express rule. It wasn't Don't tell you just could not be in it at all. Kelly Kirby: Yes. 13 �Toby Jenkins: Were you also aware of stuff going on nationally? I mean, like, had you heard of the Stonewall riots? Kelly Kirby: Oh, I knew that. Toby Jenkins: Have you heard of gay pride parades? Kelly Kirby: I knew about Stonewall from Pittsburgh, Kansas, at the Alley Bar. So, yes. Toby Jenkins: So you were aware of it? Kelly Kirby: Oh, yeah, I was. Toby Jenkins: Nationally, LGBT people were beginning to resist and demand. And even within the military, there was a strong advocacy to try to pressure Congress to change the rules. Kelly Kirby: Yeah. Well, OK, so let's there's one thing that I wanted to say about six months going back to when I had Larry, the boyfriend in 1971, when I was still in high school, six months in there…. I got drunk and I went home at two in the morning and my dad was sitting up waiting for me and I had a card that I had somebody given me in the Alley that said gay pride or gay… It was something gay pride or something, something I don't remember. It was gay something. Anyway, I remember. And it was like a calling card, you know. And so he's like, where have you been? What you've been doing? And I've flippantly threw the card at him. When I did that, it was like the first time I told my dad I was gay. I want to say I'll capitalize it as five minutes, 30 seconds for me to blurt it out, four and a half minutes for him to yell at me. And we never talked about it again until 20 years later. So. This holds over me through that 20 years. So, I know what's in me, but…'ll be thrown away from my family and I don’t want to say go too much about Susie. Other than she didn't go to Omaha by choice. It was by force. Toby Jenkins: This is your sister. Kelly Kirby: Yes. Kelly Kirby: And so and that was why Susie told me, don't tell your parents, because that's why she was coming back down just to see me. To just help me out and whatever. And I actually lived after I graduated from high school, I moved up to Omaha for the summer and lived with her in an apartment. Toby Jenkins: And so how long were you in the military? Kelly Kirby: Three years, one month and 21 days. Toby Jenkins: I wish you could remember the details of that. So you get out of the military, go back to school. Kelly Kirby: OK, there's a piece of this in the latter part of the going to Alaska. I had Mark, a boyfriend that I met pretty early since when I went in there and maybe a couple of weeks after. There was actually even the day that I got there, there was this guy at the gas station on base. And I was you know, I drove up there. And so I went and this gorgeous man. I just knew that he was hitting on me. And and so this first guy, my first 14 �friend, even whether or not he was gay or not, I was I was really my gaydar went like this, and I kept seeing him in the chow hall and around the base, and then he invited me to come to a, I don't remember how he encapsulated it, and what I didn't know then, until for a long time afterwards, what was going on, was a, it was a cult. It was the Way. Toby Jenkins: A religious cult? Kelly Kirby: Yes, religious cult. I went into one of some guy's room, and there was about eight or ten or twelve guys, and they had Bibles and whatever, but this guy invited me to this, and I was like, I would have done anything to get in his pants, you know, and I thought that's what he had in mind, and otherwise, it was the Way International. And so, from there, I'm 21 now, I go over some of that through my Alaska, and then, when I came back to Pittsburgh to go back to college, they had the Way, they had the chapter, and I stayed from 75 to 77. I just gradually stopped fucking guys, and, can I say that? And I started dating women. Toby Jenkins: So it was through this, this guy invited you, you had an attraction for him, but he was interested in recruiting you and proselytizing you, and so you began to buy into the Bible study and their programs and the things they were saying, had you told this group that you had been intimate with men, had you told them you were gay? Kelly Kirby: Not while I was in Alaska, but when I was in back in Pittsburgh, within the first semester, I told somebody, you know, and, you know, their thing is, if you're, if you're homosexual, you have a devil spirit, and they are making you do what you're doing, and you know, I'm, you know, why am I, why am I gay? You know, that's what, you know, that's what I have been up to that, even though through four years, I just wasn't like the Kelly Kirby that you know. I was still scared, my family…you're not going to, you'll never get a job, you'll, you know, whatever, all that stuff, and anyway, so he said, this guy that I talked to from the Way… Toby Jenkins: Okay, so you have came back to Kansas, is that right? Kelly Kirby: Right. Toby Jenkins: And you've connected to a religious group, and began to kind of discover perhaps maybe you're not going to live as a gay person. You're adopting kind of their position and I think earlier you mentioned the Way they identified it is if you act on your sexuality, if you are intimate with somebody of the same sex, it's a demon forcing you to do that, trying to control you and so the... Kelly Kirby: Right and so it's not me that's getting pleasure from this, it's the devil spirit that's in me and the devil spirit will give you some little bite of something, something that keeps you on a hook and so the only thing you can do is... I don't know exactly how the words work. I don't remember. Essentially, you get the devil spirit out of you. Toby Jenkins: Resisting. Kelly Kirby: Yeah. So, I got married. I had... 15 �Toby Jenkins: Was the person you married, were they a part of this religious group? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: So you met your wife... Right. ...through this religious group? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Now, I think I asked you earlier, but I just want clarification. Had you communicated to anybody in the group that you struggle with same-sex attraction? Kelly Kirby: Well, one of the guys that I, like I already said, he was the one that had told me all of this stuff. And I don't know if I told everybody. I don't think I did. I really don't, but I might in some somebody. I don't really remember exactly. I know some guys that were same thing as me. I mean, and in fact, I had some lesbians as well, but all of them were... Toby Jenkins: Ex-gay. Kelly Kirby: Yes, yeah, exactly. Toby Jenkins: So, did they dangle a carrot over you that, you know, maybe you had this issue with your father not being supportive, and you knew that society didn't support it, and that the Bible didn't support it, and God... I mean, did they dangle this carrot that there was a way that you could be normal, you could just be regular? Kelly Kirby: It wasn't the other, all of other things you said. It's just God. God will help you, and you have to be strong, and... Toby Jenkins: So, was your wife, was she from Pittsburgh? Kelly Kirby: She was, and she actually knew that I was was gay before we got married, and I'll say, and to give her some... I don't know what to say, what an adjective. She knew that I was. I was not the one to tell her. It was somebody else, and I... She knew that I was trying not to be. Let's put it that way, and I didn't have sex with a man for 13 years. I was monogamous with her. The one and one time only, I found a porno magazine that I... I don't remember how I found it, and then I was like, ah, and I was like, I was taste, taste, you know, it was like, this is like 10 years into my marriage, and I hid it, and I looked at it, and I, and it just ate me up, and I threw it away, but it's still, that thing was there, and... Toby Jenkins: Do you remember the magazine? Was it Blue Boy? Kelly Kirby: It could have been... Kelly Kirby: Playgirl? Toby Jenkins: Maybe a Playgirl magazine. Kelly Kirby: That's possible. Toby Jenkins: They had started showing full frontal nudity. 16 �Kelly Kirby: Yes, yeah. If you want to know what was the turning point for me was... The head of the Way died in 1985. It came apart. A lot of the people that I knew, in fact a whole lot of people that we socialized and all that started seeing that we had been lied to and et cetera. Some of them may split off and have still that kind of... But about a year or so after he died Joyce and I pulled out of the Way and we went to go to a… Toby Jenkins: Counselor. Kelly Kirby: Thank you. A while we went for couples and the guy that was doing it once, he was on 35th and Harvard at one of those... Is it a Methodist church there? They had some kind of a bunch of... You could get counseling there for a small amount of money. And basically he said you've got a good marriage. I don't see that you really need this. And we of course had to undo a lot of the not just the gay, but just the whole thing of the Way. But... In the end the thing that I got to was after about 12, 18 months is here's what…I mean if somebody told me that this is how you get out of being gay and you'll never be and you'll be fine. And if they lied to me with that, then what about everything else? What did they do to me? I got into my own... Not with Joyce, but just me in counseling. And over a three-year period I just figured out that first of all I said instead of... I went from it's not okay for anybody to be gay to gay is okay for some people, just not for Kelly. And then I went to a different person and then that's when I just really could pull out what I was and said I'm gay. And there's nothing wrong with it. Not for anybody. There's people that are bad people, but that's not the point. I went to some support groups, SSA and things like that, and that was like, okay, that's not me, it's not, it's, I'm not a sex addict. I'm a very... Toby Jenkins: SSA is Sexual Survivors, Sexual Anonymous, Sex Anonymous. Kelly Kirby: Sex Addicts Anonymous. Yeah. Toby Jenkins: It's like AA, but it's for... Kelly Kirby: Yes, exactly. Toby Jenkins: For people who feel like they have sex addictions. Kelly Kirby: Yes, exactly. And I, some of my gay friends in town here, I met in a group. Toby Jenkins: And so you had come to Tulsa, you started out in Oklahoma City, came to Tulsa. Had you already started, established your CPA firm by then? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And you, how many children did you have? Kelly Kirby: All of them. Toby Jenkins: Four. You had four children. Kelly Kirby: Yeah, yeah, four children. Yeah. 17 �Toby Jenkins: And you're married, in your business, and you're going to get help, professional help. Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And you, in a course of three years... Kelly Kirby: The reason is I had more clients here. There was one big client that I had, a client that I had had almost for 10 years or eight years. When they had five people on, they had up to now 100 employees, and they were just…was just going wild. Anyway, in terms of getting big, the owners then decided that they wanted to sell it, and I was their accountant. I was in their building, and I was doing accounting work for them two days a week. And three days a week, I have an office, and I can do taxes and whatever. So, that's kind of how I got to Tulsa. So they wanted to sell it. Three of the five that were there eight years ago…these three guys came to me and said, Charlie wants to sell, and I said, yeah, I know. And he says, well, we'd like to buy it. Do you think we could do that? And I was like, yeah, you could. There's capital here. I mean, the kids, these three men, they didn't have any more money than I did. They had kids and a house, but they probably lived week to week or whatever. But I found a way for them, and they said to me, they went out and came back and said, if you can make this work, then we'll give you 10%. So, they had each one of those three got 30%. I got 1%, or 10%. So, going on, that was 89. In 91, I'm out of the house from Joyce and whatever. Toby Jenkins: So, y'all separated or divorced? Kelly Kirby: Yeah, well, yeah. I left the house in 90, November. It took 15 months to get the divorce done. Toby Jenkins: How old were the kids? Kelly Kirby: So, when I went out, let's see, nine, eight, five and four. Toby Jenkins: Oh, Erin, this one was four. Kelly Kirby: Yeah, Erin. Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Kelly Kirby: And anyway, jumped forth two years. No, it was one year. December 1st of 1991, World AIDS Day, I went down the road to 5th and Main… it was a candlelight... [service starting at] Bartlett Square. But it was sleeting and there was about 50 people there and we got candles, we had a little bit of something there and then we walked to the Episcopal Church, the Cathedral... Trinity. All I was doing there was just being there and walking a candle and I got my picture taken by the Tulsa World and I was on the next day's second page. And my three partners in this... I'm not going to say which company in town this is, okay, and I'll tell you why in a bit if you want. They saw the picture and the president, the new 18 �president there, we've been two years [since the sale], Charlie's gone and whatever, he said, see your picture in the paper. And I said, yes. And he said, okay. And then he came back, he left and he came back to my office a little while longer. This was all in one day. He said, there's a lot of talk coming in the office. There's a hundred people working there and they're talking. By the way, these three men are... well, actually, Charlie is also Southern Baptist. They all went to the same church. So, he came back to me again and he said, can I ask you a question? And I said, sure. And he said, Kelly, if you had an opportunity to make a statement for... If you had a chance to talk, to speak about this, of your cause, was what he said, your cause, would you do it? And I thought, hmm, that's an interesting thing. And I don't remember if he left and I went to him or whether I told him just right then. I don't know exactly. I don't remember exactly, but within hours, at least, I went back and I said, you know, I think I would. And I did. Oh, God. I wasn't going to let anybody push me anymore, and I'm not going to have any clients that don’t know that I'm gay, because I don't want to be that vulnerable, and I mean, I didn't say they had to be gay to be my clients. I just wanted them to not discriminate against me or make their questions, to be answered in a way that they don't want, and all right, let me think of this right. I came into, let's step forward a little bit. I, in the summer, or I think September, I guess, when the elections were, they asked me to be on the board, and… Toby Jenkins: For Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights. Kelly Kirby: Yes. TOHR. Toby Jenkins: Today it is known as Oklahomans for Equality. Kelly Kirby: Exactly. I went on the board as, and treasurer, because I'm an accountant, and so, 93 to 94, I did that, and then they made me president, and I was for two years from 94 to 96, and then my third, or my fourth year, I was on the board. I was back to being treasurer I went back to the Disciples of Christ, Christian Church of Disciples. That was what I was raised. I was the president of District 8 for the state of Kansas of the CYF my senior year, and that includes when I came out, and I went from there to the Way, and I came back, and it's my family. The first one I went to when I came back here was Forest Park. Mike, I can't think of his last name as a minister there. Joyce and I went there with our kids, and then when we split, I wanted Joyce and the kids to have Forest Park, and I went to see where I could go, which ended up to be First Christian downtown, and that's the time that I met Richard Ziegler, and of course, you know, his son is gay. When I had a boyfriend then, Rick, we wanted to make a civil union. So, we went to Richard Ziegler and said, would you do this for us? And he said, I've never done one, but I've been waiting for somebody to ask me. We're still close. He got kicked out. And that's a whole other thing. Toby Jenkins: So, he did, he blessed your civil union. 19 �Kelly Kirby: At Harwelden. My family, my dad and my stepmother came to that. And Nancy McDonald was helpful to getting me to get my parents to come to my civil union. That's where I came from. At that time, I picked up PFLAG. Toby Jenkins: And so, Nancy McDonald was the president of PFLAG locally, but also. Kelly Kirby: She was on the [national] board. And then, she was, she, and I think by 95, I'm going to do a timeline, but I'll try to not make it, let's give you some snippets. Anyway, so I went into office of TOHR. And 20 days later, Bill Clinton got inaugurated. And on the next day, he made an executive order that being homosexual was not a reason to get kicked out of the military. And of course, he had to back down, way back down. And, you know, people say, oh, he was just, the man took the big step. And yeah, it took another two or three, however many different presidents…Took three. Well, it was him, and then George, and then Obama. The media [called the TOHR Helpline] and somebody, whoever it was, got the message and called me. And so, I called back this reporter, and I met him in Sam's Club parking lot, and did an interview. Between then and the next 15 years, I probably did 200 interviews. I did those interviews because nobody else would do it. Now, you know, if there's a, you know, 100 things to be said, it should come from 100 people. You know, instead, I was the face. I was the face of Tulsa and Nancy. Kelly Kirby: TOHR 91 to 95. In 93, the disciples contingent that had a, they have a different name now, but tell me, tell me what it was. Toby Jenkins: Disciples of Christ, they're affirming inclusive. Kelly Kirby: Yes. I went on a national board. And I did that for four years. So that was from three to 93 to 97. In 95, Nancy asked me to come on the national PFLAG, and I was, I came on as a board member in the 95, and then in 96, she became the national president. And I was a treasurer, and I was doing that for, so for seven years. So I was on the board for PFLAG. Another of the things that I've done, I hate saying that. I feel like I'm trying my best. I did this because it needed to be done, and I wanted to do it. So, anyway, maybe that's why people ask me. I don't know. Toby Jenkins: Well, at that time, visibility was critical to our survival, as it is today. And for someone to be visible in Oklahoma, they could either lose their jobs, be disowned by their families, or kicked out of their church, and you had already traversed all of that. You were self-employed, you were in an affirming church, and your family already was aware. So you had those credentials that made you be able to be more visible. Was it during this time that you served on the ACLU board in the state of Oklahoma? Kelly Kirby: So, no, I was on PFLAG, then…Another church, it was another Disciples they did camp, they sent people into camps and summer camps for youth. And you know, that was like any kind of a cause that the church should be cognizant about and it was like that. And I was on the National Board for 8 years on that one. It wasn't just gay and whatever, it was a lot of other things. 20 �And then they sent me to the ICCR, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility. And that's out of New York. I was on that national team, as a representative of the whole Disciples of Christ denomination. You know, millions of members. Toby Jenkins: Let me ask you a few questions. Kelly Kirby: Okay. Toby Jenkins: So, during this period, you had come out, you had divorced, you had your children, you had your partner, and you became kind of the person that they threw out in front when they needed a spokesperson. So, I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions. Toby Jenkins: Did you ever have to give any public interviews on marriage equality? Were you ever interviewed for that? Kelly Kirby: Oh, yes. Toby Jenkins: Were you ever interviewed for gays in the military? Kelly Kirby: Well, yes, I did. I did it in 93. Toby Jenkins: Were you ever interviewed for discrimination policies? Kelly Kirby: Absolutely. Toby Jenkins: Were you ever interviewed for LGBTQ health care issues, such as HIV, AIDS? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Were you ever interviewed for faith and spirituality and sexuality issues? Kelly Kirby: Yes. Toby Jenkins: So, we've just covered, what about, were you ever interviewed whenever the sodomy laws were struck down? Kelly Kirby: Yes, yeah. Toby Jenkins: So, Kelly, I'm going to ask you, and this is not a court of law, but I want you to testify faithfully. Have you, to the best of your ability, for the last 20 years… Kelly Kirby: 30 years, 35 years. Toby Jenkins: Stood up and stood step forth and advocated for LGBTQ plus individuals and with a clear conscience? Kelly Kirby: Well, I got recognized for it. And I said, you know what? Toby Jenkins: You know you did your part. Kelly Kirby: This is in 2010. 21 �Toby Jenkins: Yeah. Kelly Kirby: It's 15 years later now, and I said, you know, this lifetime achievement [shows Lifetime Achievement Award from Oklahomans for Equality], I said, my life is not gone. I'm going to be here, you know, and here I am. Toby Jenkins: You, earlier in the interview, acted like you were a little bit embarrassed because you felt like you were touting your achievements. But I want to? Weren't you? Were you proud to represent the LGBTQ community? Kelly Kirby: Yes, yeah. Toby Jenkins: But it came with a cost, didn't? Kelly Kirby: Well, yes. Toby Jenkins: Were you threatened? Did you lose clients? Kelly Kirby: There was on my porch ... .If you're going shooting range and they have the [target] on the house and on the car, scratched in the paint, threatening life-threatening to me. I called the police. What was the question? Toby Jenkins: Did it come with a cost being visible? Kelly Kirby: Yes. So, because I was on the board of the Human Rights Commission, I know who to talk to, and I talked to that person and he said: I can't do this, but I know who in the police department can and will. It was a kid at Edison High School. They took him out of high school and suitably told him, you don't do that and you better not do that. And here's why you need not to do that and no more, no more trouble, Toby Jenkins: In 2010, you'll kind of hold that up and face towards the camera so we can….Okay, so you receive that Lifetime Achievement Award at the Equality Gala that year. So a couple of things. I know, you have always to my…. As many years as I've known you, and that's been since 96- you've always been a pretty family man and you and your partners at the time, were very involved in your children… Kelly Kirby: You know well, Charles and I were together 17 years. His twins are three weeks older than my second born, Rachel, and when Charles and I met in 1999, he moved from Edmond to here. The kids were most well, they were junior high and high school and middle school, and we were six kids and two gay dads and we were this, the Brady Bunch minus Alice. So, yes, Toby Jenkins: And I remember your partner, Charles Johnson, may his memory be blessed- I know that he also did some interviews for us in the media over issues over books being banned in our libraries when legislators are trying to ban those, an interview on kids being bullied in school because of their sexual orientation. Because he was an open out schoolteacher for Union Public Schools- was it Union? Kelly Kirby: Yes, yeah, 22 �Toby Jenkins: And was famous for every year he would take how many students to see the opera, the grade school kids? Kelly Kirby: Every kid in his school of the fifth grade. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, did that every year for years. Kelly Kirby: Yes, sadly he died for something that was probably there when he was born, but it just didn't anyway, at 58 he died, and so that's been nine years. Toby Jenkins: And you have a husband now. Kelly Kirby: Yes, Rod Benham. Yeah, so I've had three marriages and only one was a divorce. A divorce, a death, and a man who loves me now still, Toby Jenkins: And your children kind of following your footsteps, their advocates for equality. Kelly Kirby: Yes Toby Jenkins: If you were, let's say, you know you had a tombstone and you had to write something on it that you want to say about your life. Do you have a motto that you'd like to put on a tombstone, or do you have an epitaph? You know, some people have things like that. Is there something like that? As you, you know, think about life, careers, serving others, serving our country, defending our country, raising your children and all the things that you've done. Kelly Kirby: It's already on the tombstone in that cemetery down on 91st Street and it's got Charles and my name is there, with no date and…but yes, it was like you can just there's a, there's a row of those things in some succinct but yeah, Toby Jenkins: Anything else you want to make sure we have as a part of this history archive. Kelly Kirby: Another alliance, the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry. I was on that board for four years. But you ask about the ACLU. That was in the latter part of the like, maybe 2007 to 2011 or something like that. I don't know, that's not something in that neighborhood. Toby Jenkins: So, in closing, I just want to tell you one of my favorite memories. You were the gay convertible, and by that I mean you were one of the guys who I knew had a convertible and if I needed somebody to ride in the Oklahoma City parade or the Tulsa parade I would call you, and many times you were the escort driver for whatever Grand Marshal or whatever bride, king or queen we had, and in Oklahoma City parade and Tulsa parade. Kelly Kirby: And one time, even just on two hours notice, it was somebody else that whatever happened to them, you know, I don't know, it was probably something that was on and I'm just like, okay, I'll be there. What time do you need me? Toby Jenkins: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you spending this time with us all right. 23 � 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 [2025] Kelly Kirby Interview Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kelly Kirby, Toby Jenkins Subject The topic of the resource Kelly Kirby Oral History Project Interview from April 9, 2025 Description An account of the resource This conversation with Kelly Kirby explores his life journey, from his early awareness of his sexual orientation to his military service and subsequent advocacy for LGBTQ rights. Kelly shares personal stories about his family, relationships, and the challenges he faced as an openly gay man in Oklahoma. His commitment to equality and inclusion is evident through his involvement in various organizations and his reflections on the importance of authenticity in one's life. Interview conducted by Toby Jenkins on April 9, 2025, transcript edited by Dennis Neill on February 17, 2026. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 9, 2025; February 17, 2026 2025 advocacy AIDS AIDS/HIV coming out community Dennis Neill equality Gay Bars Gay Rights HIV/AIDs interview Kelly Kirby LGBT history military military inclusion OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project representation sexual orientation discrimination Toby Jenkins video Visibility World AIDS day 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/fe275c248ba0dbafa7183acaf093ec10.pdf 4d660208dae603563b4e8c3a5a02f83a PDF Text Text Oklahomans for Equality Oral History Interview with Warren Ray Duvall Interview Conducted by Toby Jenkins Date: February 10, 2026 Transcribed and Edited By: Dennis Neill using Reduct.Video AI, February 23, 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 Warren Duvall Summary This interview with Warren explores his life story, from growing up on a family farm in Oklahoma to his military service and his journey as a gay man. Warren shares personal insights into his experiences with sexuality, military service during Vietnam, and navigating life in Oklahoma and Florida. This interview provides a deep insight into the life experiences of a long-time LGBTQ+ community member, covering personal stories, community involvement, and the evolution of LGBTQ+ rights and health issues over decades. Keywords Oklahoma history, LGBTQ+ journey, military service, Vietnam era, personal stories, Oklahoma farm, gay life, military healthcare, social change, personal growth LGBTQ+ history, community activism, AIDS awareness, gay rodeo, bear clubs, senior LGBTQ+ support, Tulsa Key Topics ● Family farm history in Oklahoma ● Military service during Vietnam era and Japan ● Journey of sexual identity and coming out Personal stories of LGBTQ+ life and community involvement ● The impact of AIDS on the community and healthcare responses ● The development of gay rodeo, bear events and community events ● Support for LGBTQ+ elders and seniors Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 02:02 Family Farm History in Oklahoma 03:53 Growing Up in Muldrow and School Life 2 �08:01 Experiences with Segregation and Community 12:01 Post-High School Education and Military Draft 14:53 Military Service in U.S, Navy in the Vietnam Era and Stationing Japan 19:58 Reflections on Military Service and Vietnam Memorial 21:02 Realization of Sexual Orientation 24:57 Exploring Gay Identity in the Military and Florida 29:54 Relationships and Coming Out to Family 40:08 Life in Tulsa and Connecting with the LGBTQ+ Community 48:04 First Experiences in Gay Bars and Social Life 54:59 Personal Relationships and Life Changes 02:29 Meeting the First Partner and Early Community Life 06:55 First Encounters with AIDS and Healthcare Response 14:53 Community Involvement and Fundraising Efforts 24:57 The Role of Gay Rodeo and Cultural Identity 34:55 Support for Elders and the Impact of COVID-19 45:11 Reflections on a Life of Service and Activism 54:59 Advice for Younger Generations and Future Outlook Warren Duvall Oral History Interview Feb 10, 2026 Toby Jenkins: All right, this is Toby Jenkins and Amanda Thompson, the archivist at Oklahomans for Equality, and Dennis Neill, the founder of Oklahomans for Equality. Here we are in the Joe and Nancy McDonald Rainbow Library for our archival interview with a wonderful person. Your name, please? Warren Duvall: Warren Ray Duvall. Toby Jenkins: And you live here in Tulsa, Warren? Warren Duvall: I live here in Tulsa, I've returned. I've been back for six years. I lived here for 33 years. Had to go back to the farm for 13 years. And we sold off half of it, but that included the house. Toby Jenkins: And where is the farm? Warren Duvall: It's south of Muldrow, Oklahoma. The farm's about two miles from the Arkansas River down there. Toby Jenkins: Oh, wonderful. So, in Tulsa, and I'm still- What county is that? Warren Duvall: That's Sequoyah County. Toby Jenkins: But you're still in Oklahoma? Warren Duvall: Yes. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, Sallisaw and Sequoyah? Warren Duvall: Yeah, Sallisaw is the county seat. 3 �Toby Jenkins: All right, so Warren, where were you born? Warren Duvall: Well, I was conceived in Oklahoma. I was the first member of my siblings, and there was four of us. My mother and my three siblings were all born at home in the same bedroom. I was the first one that they took my mother to the hospital, and I was delivered in St. Edward's Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Toby Jenkins: I know it well. That's where my son was born. Toby Jenkins: So, are you from down around that area? That's where your farm is? You told me. Is that a payor's farm? Warren Duvall: Yeah, it's 15 miles east of the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. Toby Jenkins: And so that's down by Muldrow, as we talked earlier. How long has the farm been in your family? Warren Duvall: It's my mother's father. He came there in 1900 and started buying land from some of the Indians that, at that point, had been allotted 160 acres or whatever they gave back then. And so he started buying up land. At one point, he had about 500 acres. So he was a big farmer. I wouldn't say he was a rancher, but he ran a dairy also. So he was a pretty big-time farmer over the years. Toby Jenkins: So this farm has now been in your family over 100 years. Warren Duvall: Yes. Toby Jenkins: And your mother was born there, your siblings. But they took you, she went to the hospital for you. Warren Duvall: For me. Toby Jenkins: And what year would that have been? Warren Duvall: That was, my Lord… Toby Jenkins: Your date of birth. Warren Duvall: December 20th, 1947. Toby Jenkins: 1947, right after the war. Warren Duvall: Right, I’m a post-war baby. Toby Jenkins: So you were born there in Muldrow. Did you grow up there? How long did you? Warren Duvall: I grew up on the farm just south of Muldrow. The only part of being in Arkansas was, that's where the hospital was. So I went across the border and was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas at St. Edward's Hospital. Toby Jenkins: Did you go to school in Muldrow, or was there? 4 �Warren Duvall: I started out in a little country school called the Lee's Chapel, which is the Lee's Chapel community. When I started, they had eight grades there. And probably, I'd say 35 students. And after a couple years, they went down to one teacher because the population started reducing, it was worse for the students. And so for probably the third and fourth grade, we were just sixth grade. And then we just were part of the Muldrow. Toby Jenkins: You were consolidated with Muldrow? Warren Duvall: Consolidated, well, yeah, yes. Toby Jenkins: Did you go to high school in Muldrow? Warren Duvall: Did everything else outside of a very short period of time in Oklahoma City for two weeks in the fourth grade. I did that when I left Lee's Chapel and went to Muldrow in the fifth grade, all the way through graduation. Toby Jenkins: So you would have graduated from high school in 1966 from Muldrow? Warren Duvall: From Muldrow High School. Toby Jenkins: Okay, now did you, y'all lived on the farm. Did your family farm? I mean, is that what your parents did for their careers? Warren Duvall: Well, by the time, I don't know exactly when, but when I was a very small child, they had to, dad was farming the farm. Dad had a drinking problem and it was my mother's farm. She would never sign him over to it because she always said he'd just lose it. And so anyway, we farmed it. We started leasing out the bottom land, which is the farm land, crop land, the upland, the pasture land. We still kept that, kept cattle. And my brothers and dad and mom all had horses. I never had a horse back then. I rode behind my dad a lot. Used to, you know, he'd start galloping some and I was about to go, bouncing. Hanging on for dear life. Toby Jenkins: You lived out in the country. Did you ride a school bus? Warren Duvall: School bus. Toby Jenkins: What were your interests in school? Warren Duvall: In school, recess. Warren Duvall: Geography, history. Actually, I didn't enjoy history in school. You learn to enjoy history after Toby Jenkins: So were you in like school activities? Warren Duvall: Well, at least chapel, the school, there really wasn't much school activity. Field trips and things like that. But there were no active sports for us. We just did, I guess you'd call it intramural things on the playground. Toby Jenkins: So when you got to Muldrow, were you involved in school activities there? 5 �Warren Duvall: In junior high, I played basketball and football in the summer of the eighth grade, or in the spring. Two weeks before the school year was out, I came down with a rare disease called infectious mononucleosis. It was also, the nickname of it was the kissing disease. I don't know if you've heard that, but that's because the soldiers picked it up in Europe and brought it back to the United States. I was one of two people in the county that had it that year. I have no idea where it came from. Toby Jenkins: Were you kissing soldiers? Warren Duvall: Not yet. Toby Jenkins: So that was there in Muldrow. Warren Duvall: So after that, they wouldn't let me play sports for three years, and by the end, I didn't feel like it. Toby Jenkins: Were you in choir, or in a band, or? Warren Duvall: No, boys didn't do that in Muldrow High School. Toby Jenkins: But you worked on a farm, so you had to do chores. Warren Duvall: Rigorous farm chores. Toby Jenkins: And you had to do all that before you went to school? Warren Duvall: Oh yeah, got up at the crack of dawn and milked the cows and fed the cows. Toby Jenkins: Just out of curiosity, you said you graduated in 1966. Integration would have been an issue that would have been happening all around you in Oklahoma. Do you remember if your school class was an integrated school in Muldrow? I mean, were there black students? Yeah. Native American students? Warren Duvall: The Muldrow had a one through six black elementary school. For black students. Toby Jenkins: Segregated. Warren Duvall: Segregated. But then once they came to junior high, it was integrated. And I, it was before I graduated, they closed down the elementary school, so the black elementary school. So they were fully integrated. Toby Jenkins: By the time you were in high school? Warren Duvall: Yeah, I would think so. Toby Jenkins: Now, I know that Fort Chaffee's not far from there. Warren Duvall: Correct. Toby Jenkins: So there's kind of a large population of Cuban refugees, Vietnamese refugees. Did you go to school with any Vietnamese or Cuban? 6 �Warren Duvall: No, because that was after. Toby Jenkins: That was later. Warren Duvall: Yeah, that was much later. Toby Jenkins: So you graduated from high school in Muldrow. Now, did you go to the north side high school or the south side high school, or was there just one high school? Warren Duvall: Just one high school. Yeah. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. And still that way. Warren Duvall: My class graduated 103. Toby Jenkins: Well, now, that's a big class for an Oklahoma. That was the biggest class. Warren Duvall: Well, it was the biggest class they ever had. Warren Duvall: It was several years before they exceeded that. Of course, it's a lot more now. Toby Jenkins: And you graduated in 1966. Just out of curiosity, do you remember anything about our times, like your favorite music or your favorite movie star or your favorite... Warren Duvall: Well, I loved to dance. We partied a lot. This is junior high only. We didn't do that particularly in elementary school years. I don't know. Toby Jenkins: You remember your favorite music, your favorite musician? Warren Duvall: Just, you know, rock and roll, bebop, whatever you want, swing dance and all that sort of thing. And then by senior high, we had a little group of guys for a band and we had picnics and we'd... fill up one of those covered picnic areas. We did that a lot in my senior year. Toby Jenkins: Were you in the band? Warren Duvall: No, no. I have no musical talent. No one in my family does. Toby Jenkins: Just danced. Warren Duvall: But loved to dance. Toby Jenkins: Now, you get finished with high school. What did you do after that? Warren Duvall: I went almost directly. I graduated at the end of May, and I went into the radiology program at St. Edwards Mercy Hospital in July of 66. It was a two-year program, hospital based. Most nursing programs and lab techs and radiology students and so forth, the hospital owned back then. Even OU had a program, but it was a certificate program. It wasn't a degreed program at that time. So, I have a graduation certificate in licensed radiology for 40 years. 7 �Toby Jenkins: Through St. Edwards in... Warren Duvall: That was my school. Toby Jenkins: And was that where you went to work right after that? Warren Duvall: For a short period of time. Toby Jenkins: And then what happened? Warren Duvall: Well, we graduated in July and in August I got my Selective Service Physical Request. So, I went down, well, with Dad and Mom's advice, go join... Dad was in the Navy. So, he said, go down and join the Navy. I don't want you in infantry. Toby Jenkins: So, you had your certification in radiology. So, you had a medical background. Warren Duvall: Correct. Toby Jenkins: And you got your draft notice. What war was the United States fighting? Warren Duvall: The Vietnam War. Big time. Toby Jenkins: Do you remember your feelings when that happened, when you got that notice? I mean, by then you're a young man, you're already having a career path. Do you remember... Warren Duvall: Well, back then, the Selective Service, once you got out, whoever you were employed with, they had to hire you back. I don't know if it's still a policy or not because it's voluntary now. But, so when I got out, and I did radiology in the Navy, that typical military. The Navy had programs in schools, so they had A, B, and C as you went up the line. So, they had their own radiology program. So, they made me go, obviously through boot camp, and then they made me go to a core school for six months, even though I was a radiographer. And then when I got... I joined the Naval Reserve, and that was an obligation for six years, minimum six years. Two years active duty. And I did about, of six years, I did about half of it active and about half of it active reservist. I had to go to meetings during the week and summer camps. And that was from 68 to 74. Toby Jenkins: Now, were you ever deployed into Vietnam? Warren Duvall: I wasn't deployed to Vietnam, but I was sent to the US Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan. We got medevacs every day from Vietnam, which was mostly Marines, all kinds of shapes. Some of them didn't make it. Some might get a little emotional here. You know, these guys came in all kinds of shapes. Some of them didn't leave the hospital alive. You would have incidents like you would maybe doing a portable x-ray in ICU. And let's say the patient was, you know, lost his legs and one arm. And he was delirious and had a fever. I was trying to do a portable xray on him. And he kept calling for his mom. He kept wanting me to scratch his foot. He 8 �didn't have legs, you know. So those kinds of things. Now, a corpsman on the floor wouldn't be directly involved with patient care. As a radiographer, I just dealt with them when we were performing some kind of radiology procedure on them. We had a separate unit upstairs for the officers. They were cared for separately. Got more care, more specific one-on-one type of care than the ward guys did. Some of the guys would come down with diseases in Vietnam. The U.S. Naval Hospital was the Navy's Far East Hospital. So we were the primary hospital for, you know, let's say a soldier or a sailor was injured seriously or moderately. They would come to us. We would do triage. The triage initially took place in Vietnam. And then they sent them to us for a lot of correcting surgeries and things. Then they were sent to the state side, to the military hospitals for major repairs. Additional medical care. Toby Jenkins: So you had to stabilize them. So you were in a trauma unit, basically seeing people in trauma.. Warren Duvall: Well, the hospital was basically a trauma. You could also serve civilians, dependents. There was housing on the base. Not a lot for dependents And then there was a place about, I don't know, 20 miles off the base where they had a unit just for civilians of the military housing. And I don't know how many, let's say a few hundred there. So we took care of them. And the World's Fair was taking place. Let's see, I went there in February of 1970. It was actually February 20, 1970. And I got out on February 20, 1972. So it had been two years to the day I left for it. I returned home. Toby Jenkins: And that was in Japan. You were stationed in Japan. And what was the name of the city again? Warren Duvall: Yokosuka, Y-O-K-O-S-U-K-A. Toby Jenkins: OK. Well, on behalf of our staff here, we want to thank you for your service to the American people. Warren Duvall: We weren't treated very well back then coming home. Toby Jenkins: No, there was such a, it was a volatile time in our nation's history. Warren Duvall: And you didn't wear your uniforms off base. You just didn't talk about your military openly unless it was just someone you knew or whatever. So the way we're accepted now was so foreign in the beginning it took me a long time to put on a cap or whatever. And I do that regularly ever since, ever since I guess Iraq and Afghanistan. Conflicts and so forth. Then people started thanking you for your service. Toby Jenkins: Well, I think probably just my thoughts. There began to be a strong advocacy that the Vietnam vets had done their duty. They did what they were told and required to do. They didn't make the decision whether we were in or not. And don't you feel like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. began to change the nation's attitude? 9 �Warren Duvall: It was such a- Well, I'm sure it had a lot to do with it. Such a moving and meaningful- Yeah, if you've never been there, it's extremely moving because you have the Wall. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, and they have a replica of it that travels around the country. It's been in Tulsa at least twice. Warren Duvall: Yeah, I've been to it in Oklahoma City and in Tulsa. Toby Jenkins: So how old were you when you got out of the military? Warren Duvall: How was I? I was 24. Toby Jenkins: So you were just a young man. Were you married? Did you marry? Warren Duvall: Never married. Toby Jenkins: Okay. Now, during this time, how do you identify? What is your sexual orientation? Warren Duvall: Well, I'm a gay man. Toby Jenkins: You're a gay man. Warren Duvall: I've been gay all my life, but I didn't know it. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. So when did you become aware of your sexual orientation, you had attraction to your same sex? Warren Duvall: So there was a, yeah, there was a, I guess. Toby Jenkins: When did you, when were you aware that you were attracted to men and that others were not? That the other boys didn't have those things? Warren Duvall: Well, I battled that, let's say in high school. Cause, you know, my best friend, I mean, you know we were growing up and slept together and everything. So it was very comforting for me to snuggle up with him. He was just about as straight as you could ever be. But that sort of thing, because I started realizing that, you know, that I was more interested in my same sex than I was in the opposite sex. Toby Jenkins: So in high school, this wouldn't have been, were you able to tell anybody you had those feelings? Warren Duvall: No, I didn't admit that to myself at that time. I was always under the impression that I would, you know, this was an adolescent thing, and that I would like to grow out of it. Toby Jenkins: Okay. So you went off, you got out of high school, you went over to school in Fort Smith, to radiology as an adult, now. Did you pursue that then? I mean, did you… 10 �Warren Duvall: I did get offered one after I graduated, and I was solo working the night shift. I had a student with me part of the time, but this guy that was in the, he was orderly in the ER, and he started getting extra friendly with me. Toby Jenkins: Okay, so he flirted? Warren Duvall: Yeah, and actually talked me into taking him into a room and locking the door. Toby Jenkins: So he was your first intimate? Warren Duvall: No, my cousin. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, okay. Warren Duvall: Eventually, we were little then, but eventually in junior high and into high school, so now we would still… Toby Jenkins: You were a young adult. You knew what you… Warren Duvall: When I started realizing and accepting, it was when I was overseas in the Navy, and you're around men everywhere. The only women were nurses, basically, young officers. They had male and female nurses, but it started in my attraction. Some of my friends are just someone that I physically was attracted to. I realized in high school that I was extremely fond of some of the male…The Big Valley, you remember the half-brother, what was his name? Anyway, he was always shuffling his shirt. It was a country and western. I was very attracted. Toby Jenkins: Bonanza? Warren Duvall: No, it wasn't Bonanza, but I think it was the Big Valley, but anyway. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Toby Jenkins: So you definitely liked some of the guys on the Big Valley. Big Valley was a TV show. Barbara Stanwyck was in that. Toby Jenkins: In the military. .. Warren Duvall: Didn't do anything in the military. Toby Jenkins: But you became aware. Warren Duvall: Became very aware. Toby Jenkins: Were there other gay men? Did you meet other gay men in the military? Warren Duvall: Not until, well, I was around them, but I didn't learn to just, I don't know. The last month or two I was there, I found out there was a group of gay guys that lived off base that leased a house, and there's about six or seven of them. But I never had any contact with them. Toby Jenkins: Any relationship. 11 �Warren Duvall: There was one guy that was, he was a lab tech, and he was very feminine, and he was very expressive and everything, and a voice that went along with the stereotype, so he was pretty obvious. Nobody said anything, well, I mean, they may have, but not in the general population of the hospital. Toby Jenkins: So you said you never explored that while you were in the military. Now, when you left the bases, while you were deployed, did you ever go out and find gay clubs in Japan, or? Warren Duvall: I knew of one off base, which we went into. I mean, they would be straight guys, and some of them might have been gay, but you know. We went as a curiosity of going into a gay bar, that sort of thing. Before I left the active duty, I'd made up my mind that I was going to explore my gayness when I got back to the States. I didn't know it was all around me. But so I went exploring sooner if I don't make it. Toby Jenkins: Finished with your deployments, and you returned to the United States, and where was it, did you go directly back to Oklahoma? Warren Duvall: I went back to Oklahoma, and went back to work at the hospital where I trained, because they had to hire me back. And then a friend of mine, a good friend before, went to a neighboring community, Roland. Of course, we were adversaries in school, but Roland was, at that time, much smaller, it really wasn't even much, a couple service stations. Then Interstate 40 came through, Roland, and Roland just exploded. Toby Jenkins: So you had come back, decided that you were gonna explore your sexual orientation. Warren Duvall: So this guy graduated from Rowland, but when the fall semester started and my fellow classmates were going off to school, he was in Wilburton, junior college in Wilburton. Okay, some of my fellow students were down there and they met him and when they came home on the weekends and the partying and stuff, that's how I got acquainted with him and we had particular fondness for each other. Toby Jenkins: So y'all developed a relationship? Warren Duvall: Not an intimate relationship, but over time. He showed up after I had come back. One night he showed up, he'd become a teacher and taught in Ponca City for a year before he came back. He was going to Florida, he had two fellow female teachers that had gone to Florida and found jobs down there and he said, why don't you go with me and let's look for work down there. Well, that was just an ideal thing for me because I was going to get away either to Florida or New York State. The only gay cousin that I know I had, but probably not, but he was older than my mother because his father was my grandfather, Tidwell, mom's father. His first wife died from one of those diseases they had back then, consumption or whatever. And then he was single for many years. So he had one son and the one son got married and had two kids, one girl, one boy. Well, Fred was actually four years older than mom, but mom was his aunt because there was a long gap between when my grandfather married the second time. 12 �Toby Jenkins: Was he gay? Warren Duvall: Well, yeah, he was gay, but no one knew that. He went through the military during the war. He was an officer, he had a doctorate in business, so he taught at universities and things in California. When I was getting out, or let's say the last six months or so, he started writing to me. He'd come home because his parents were in California and they were dying one at a time and his sister took care of them. I don't think she ever married, but I didn't really know her. I don't know if I probably saw her when I was young. Toby Jenkins: And where did he live? Warren Duvall: When he started contacting me, he was in New York City. I think he taught business at New York City University, I believe. So he started writing me letters because he'd come home, stopped spending time with mom, either going or coming from his parents, and they died pretty close together. So mom put him in my old bedroom, and so he started writing to me. He would tell me, well, your mom put me in your bedroom, I just, you know, I felt really comfortable there and I felt like I needed to write you a letter if you'd wanted me to communicate with. So we communicated back and forth until I got out and he wanted me to come and see him. He told me that he had this young man that lived with him. That's as much as he told me. So when I got out and then my friend came along and went to Florida, so I was gay, he was gay, and after we moved to Florida, Roy and I got an apartment and then the night I pulled in with my U-Haul, my motorcycle, my U-Haul and my few possessions, I saw this huge man because I pulled into the parking lot and the back of our apartment had sliding doors and I could see this huge man in there. So I, you know, I went in, and Roy introduced me to Gary, and Gary was the nicest guy. He was a school teacher. We both got jobs down there, so he hadToby Jenkins: You got a job in a hospital. What city in Florida? Warren Duvall: In Florida it would have been...The hospital was in Cocoa, which is on the mainland from Cocoa Beach, and the name of the hospital was Wusthof, a 200-bed hospital. So that's where I went to work. But anyway, after a while Gary invited me and Roy to move in with him because his roommates were leaving or whatever. I think he had a couple of roommates and so, to make a long story short, there was three gay guys living together, none of us talking about gayness, and there was a TV series, gosh, I can't remember the name of it. It was the first thing I saw in a TV series where this guy was a married man and realized he was gay and came out. And that story was the big thing because it was the first thing on TV that talked about being gay. I don't know if you remember it or not, and so that kind of opened us up, you know, because we were very interested in that and so forth. But when I went to work at Wusthof, there was this gorgeous Italian man who was a respiratory therapist... And when I'd see him in the cafeteria, you know stealing glances, never talking to him personally or anything. And so time went on and I had just gotten me a, I had just ordered me a new car and I was going into the bank, you know, to get my loan and everything, and I was in my cut13 �off jeans and you know, and I come out of the bank and this car was sitting there and the sun was to my back so I couldn't see who was in the car and he had pulled up and rolled his window down and yelled out at me. So you know, I really couldn't see him. So I walk over to the window and I say it's this guy, you know. And he's like, do you live around here? And I'm like, yeah, a couple miles down in the Atlantic. And he said, well, I just live a few blocks from here, but we'll have to get together, that sort of thing. He had two kids, his wife worked on the base, there was an Air Force base- St Patrick Air Force Base, I think, which was south of Kennedy Space Center, and anyway. So one thing led to the other. And then he showed up as a patient one day for an IVP, which is a kidney x-ray procedure that you did back then with contrast with the kidneys and bladders would show up, ureters and bladders would show up. So he came in for that. So we got real friendly while I was doing the procedure on him. That happened just before I ran into him at the bank, but anyway he made arrangements for me to come over when his wife was working. That was my first affair of sorts. The guy was nuts. Toby Jenkins: They usually are. Warren Duvall: First thing he wanted to do, he wanted to move out and he wanted to, he insisted on me telling my roommates that I was gay, which was very hard for me to do because we'd never talked about it. Toby Jenkins: But your roommates were gay. Warren Duvall: Yeah. But they didn't particularly react to that. Roy seemed to be quite jealous of this guy. I can't think of his name right now. I don't think he's with us for several years now, but anyway, so we moved out. He always changes his mind from day to day, and so I didn't know anything to do except run away from him and come back home. At the same time, my mother was complaining that dad was falling off the wagon and that was her excuse to get me back home too. Well, when he found out that I was going to leave, he packed up and came to Oklahoma with me. I can't get rid of this guy. Toby Jenkins: So this was the Italian guy. Warren Duvall: This was the Italian guy. Toby Jenkins: And he had left his wife and his kids. Warren Duvall: At that point, he had left his wife and kids and came to Oklahoma with me. Toby Jenkins: And that wasn't the plan. Warren Duvall: That wasn't the plan. I had job interviews in Oklahoma City and job interviews in Tulsa and one interview in Bartlesville. He was a respiratory therapist. I don't know if I said that. So he interviewed, he didn't have any appointments or 14 �anything, but he interviewed in some hospitals in Oklahoma City, I guess in Tulsa too. He got accepted for a job in Bartlesville was the only place he got an offer to go to work. So that worked for me because he had to go to Bartlesville and I was intending on finding a job in Tulsa anyway. So I found a job at Doctors Hospital at 25th and Harvard. I worked there 27 and a half years for a variety of routine procedures, thoracic procedures, surgical procedures, emergency room procedures. CAT scan came along. I worked with CAT scans in the early stages, so I really didn't like it. That's more one-onone with my patients. CT was, you know, you stuck them in this unit out there and you were in a separate room. Warren Duvall: So back in Tulsa, did that relationship end? Warren Duvall: Yes, but it was very difficult because I could not get rid of him and he kept coming down and said, I'm gonna move in with you. And I'm like, no, you can't do that. So when he saw that I wasn't going to do that, he called his wife, sell the house and came up here. So she came up there. Of course, he was always wanting me to come to their house on the weekends and things. She was very nice, very innocent, and from a big family. They were, you know, they were fromToby Jenkins: Was she aware that he had relationships with men? Warren Duvall: No, she might've suspected. She never asked me directly. But he was very belligerent to her once she came there and they bought a house and everything. But he kept trying to come back into my life. So, you know, I just, it was a very uncomfortable situation. And I would take him down to my parents. He wanted to go down... that thing. And the first time I took him, my brother was down in the field and they were cutting greens, I think, spinach. Warren Duvall: And mom said, oh, we'll take him down. Jerry's down there. Made him see a farm, you know, what goes on on a farm. So I took him down there. Well, I swear to God, he was so self-conscious of whether he was butch or not that he literally had a friend film him walking to see if he swished too much or, I meanToby Jenkins: So he had a lot of internalized homophobia. Warren Duvall: He had all kinds of….He was, I don't know, he was bipolar, I think. Toby Jenkins: Now, did you take him down with you, did you come out to your family as gay? Warren Duvall: No, no, no, still had not come out. After him, I decided, well, I'm not straight. I mean, I'm not gay, because this is nuts. So I tried, I came back to Oklahoma and tried to come to Tulsa, tried to play the straight game for two or three more years. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, that almost broke you, huh? So you're in Tulsa. Let's speed along, because that was all fascinating to me. So you're in Tulsa, and this relationship, you got away from that. Did you begin to connect with the community here? Warren Duvall: Well, so my friend that we went to Florida with, he stayed down there for that two or three years, and then he finally came back and was in the Muldrow, 15 �Roland , Fort Smith area. He was a school teacher, but he wound up going to EMT school down in Florida and worked for their ambulance and worked in the hospitals and things like that, even though he had a, he was a math major. He came back. Toby Jenkins: Well, you're in Tulsa. I'm just curious, when did you start connecting with the gay community? Warren Duvall: Okay, he showed up, and we went to an adult movie theater downtown on Main Street on about 5th, and the Taj Mahal was around the corner. Well, I knew that that was a gay bar, even though I was still doing the straight scene. But anyway, he brought a fellow school teacher who was obviously a feminine gay man. They wanted to go to the Taj Mahal, and I was like, oh no, because my thought was every family member and every person I work with is gonna be outside the door watching me walk in this gay bar. I mean, that was my mindset. I was so scared to do it, so they were kind of put out with me. But anyway, that was kind of the opening. Then this girl came to work at Doctors, a fellow tech. She was a really attractive, pixie girl, and we got along really well, and then she got what wound up being her roommate, a job there in radiology as an aide, getting patients and helping running in the dark room, things like that. So I got really, we got closer and closer and ran around with them and everything, and slowly got around to the point that we were both gay. So lesbians brought me out. They took me to, it was before Queen of Hearts on Main Street. It was, what was it, it was a drag bar. What was the name of that one? And they took me to another bar that was on Utica and what's that, 4th Street. There was a TG&Y there, and now it's a County Medical, some kind of department there, but right on the north side of the parking lot was this bar that was a gay bar. That's the first place they took me. So we go up and we sit down at the bar, and here's these two or three floozy gals in there, and this black one walks up and sits down on the barstool beside me and strikes up a conversation with me, and I'm just talking to her, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and she goes about her way. And one of the girls leaned over and said, you know, that's a drag queen, don't you know that? Toby Jenkins: Thought they had you in a lesbian bar. Warren Duvall: I just thought she was a, you know, a floozy gal, you know, trying to put the make on me. Toby Jenkins: So did you ever start going to the bars by yourself? Warren Duvall: So this continued, you know. I would talk to them while going out, and they, of course, there was a lesbian bar on Memorial between 15th and 21st. Toby Jenkins: Do you remember it? Shotzi's, or the Club? Warren Duvall: That was the later name of it. Toby Jenkins: The Club. 16 �Warren Duvall: The Club, yeah, the club. It was really a girls' bar, but the guys would go in early there. Back then, you know, it was liquor by the wink, you know, you had a brown bag, you know, and so forth, but, so they'd take me there, and they had to introduce me to some guy here, and nothing happened, you know, and one night I wanted to go out, and, uh. Susan said, just go out on your own. Oh, I'm afraid to do that. Well, you know, come to the Club, you know, some of the girls in there and everything. So I did. I struck out on my own and I was just having my drinks and smoking and that sort of thing. And I got this other mixed drink. I'm like, I didn't order that. Well, there's a gentleman over there that bought you this drink. And I said, well, who is it? And I looked around and there's this big old guy over there and he was just grinning. So that was my first introduction to the gay community. Because he introduced me to all his gay friends and I became part of their group. Back then, gay Tulsa was kind of cliquish. I mean, if you weren't in a group, you know, you didn't have much of a gay social life. Toby Jenkins: Now, did you eventually end up with a relationship? I mean, you… Warren Duvall: Well, for once I came out and that was a whole new experience for me and everything. So I was partying hard, meeting lots of tricks. And at some point along about the time it was about like 1980 or so, there was this little one paragraph article in Tussle World about these gay men in New York City and L.A. that were coming down with this strange disease, you know. Of course, that caught my attention. And then you start hearing more and more rumors about that. And I thought in my mind, I need to settle down with someone. Well, about four of us went to Oklahoma City for one weekend and I met this cowboy down there, Roger. And we were at one of the bars up on 39th Street, a smaller bar. Of course, it changed, and had many names. I don't remember what it was called back then. But anyway, he caught my eye when he came in and we were back in the pool area, playing pool. So he caught my eye and I commented on him to my friends. Well, why don't you go up there and talk to him? Well, I'm very shy, very shy back then, especially gay shy. But finally I got my nerve up and went up there and he was sitting there by himself. It was early. There was just us and him. All that was in there at that time, the bartender. So I sat down with him at a high table and we struck up a conversation and people came in, people came in. And he kept, he would say, well, I'll buy us another round if you'll go get it. So I'd go get it. So I sat there with him for two or three hours and finally he said, I'm gonna have to go to the bathroom. He says, I've got a cast on my leg. And he did get a cast on his leg. So he'd gotten into a wreck. He was a druggie. He had a wild gay life in the Navy on board ships that I knew nothing about. Anyway…. Toby Jenkins: So you all ended up together. Warren Duvall: So we ended up together that night and the next weekend I called him and I went down. And some of my friends were there too. Anyway, we went out to dinner and he was high as a kite. And anyway, we spent the night at the new gay club at the hotel in Oklahoma City, the Habana Inn. I haven't been there since the new owners, but. 17 �So we ended up, he came up the next weekend and I took him out to Zebra's to play some, about 33rd and Yale. Toby Jenkins: Zippers. Warren Duvall: Zippers. And anyway, before the weekend was over, he told me, well, you know, I'd like to have a permanent relationship with you. And he was starting to, he had just went through a treatment program at the VA, but he was falling off the wagon and the reason he broke his leg was because heToby Jenkins: Sobriety program. So y'all ended up together. Warren Duvall: Right. And he was from Oklahoma City. So he moved to Tulsa with me. And that was 82, early 82. Toby Jenkins: And how long were y'all together? Warren Duvall: 10 years. Toby Jenkins: You said that you were in the medical field and you had seen the notice about some of the first AIDS patients in New York. What did that begin to look like in Tulsa? Warren Duvall: Well, it was, you know, it started to be a general conversation when you went out, you know, guys talking about it and so forth. And of course you got more and more information. And then the first gay patient we got was this big old man. You know, like any big straight man. I mean, no sense of being gay. Of course, the rumor was he was in ICU coming in sick. And the rumor was this guy's gay, you know? And so he was, I don't think he got out of there. I think he died in the hospital after a couple of weeks. So he was the first AIDS patient that I dealt with. Toby Jenkins: What was the hospital’s…Y'all were dealing with your first AIDS patient. What were the general policies? Warren Duvall: Well, I mean, they just put him in isolation. So just a typical isolation patient, you know, you had to get on up and mask up and everything. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, you were afraid to work with him. Didn't really know, did you? Warren Duvall: Didn't know very much at all. But he was very, he wasn't a stereotypical type gay guy. You know, and so our staff couldn't believe that that man was gay, you know? But anyway, that was my first time working with a gay patient. Toby Jenkins: When did you get involved with the community, the gay community, and their response to AIDS? Warren Duvall: Okay, when the guy bought me the drink at the club, I got acquainted with his circle of friends. I would be with him. We'd go over here and do that and go out to dinner and all the things you do. And one weekend, we took a long weekend and went to the [horse] races in Arkansas. Hot Springs is that down there? I can't think of which Springs it is. Anyway, we rented a Winnebago, and there's about eight or nine of us in this Winnebago. So we drove down to Eureka Springs. 18 �Toby Jenkins: Hot Springs. Warren Duvall: Hot Springs. So we drove down there. Toby Jenkins: To the horse races. Warren Duvall: Yeah, spent the weekend at horse races and things. So that's how I got acquainted with the gay people and going to parties and going out and so forth. Toby Jenkins: But when did you get involved with, like I know we have this picture here, you're in the Follies. When did you begin to get involved with the gay community's response to people with AIDS and your caregiving? Warren Duvall: Well, once I read that article, I'd be concerned about my own health, you know? Which is, like I say, when I decided I needed to settle down with one person, so, and Roger came along and I settled down with him. So, a year or so later, might have been two years, we'd been together for some time. This guy showed up that was a past friend of his in Oklahoma City and he was a scrub tech that had come up to work with one of the doctors that worked at Doctors Hospital, a plastic surgeon. But anyway, we got acquainted with him. He was an old friend of Roger's and he got really sick. And we went up to see him and his mother was there and he was from Ardmore originally. So, he was in the latter stages, you know, his skin and bones and she had had problems with so-called his friends taking things from his apartment and stuff like that. And so, she gave us the 9th degree and then when she figured out that, you know, we were coming to visit him, his friends, she was very happy that we were there. And so, we would spend some time with him and, you know, he was at the end, and said he had diarrhea all the time. And like I say, he was skin and bones. And I would clean him up, you know, because I'm a medical person, you know, you gotta keep cleaning people up. He didn't survive more than a week from the first time we went in to see him, I don't think. And then, they took him, so he was, I guess he was at Hillcrest. They took him to the old Moore's facility on 14th and Peoria, somewhere around there. Well. The funeral home. The funeral home. After he died. Well, the big funeral home is south of the cemetery off of Memorial. They were used to taking care of AIDS patients. They were scared to death. They took him and put him in a garage out back when his family came to see his body. Then they had to drag him back in. But that's how scared they were. He had AIDS, they stuck him out there, butt naked with the sheet over him. So, we went through all that rigamarole and everything with his family and him. So, that was a good introduction. That's when we went down and joined SHANTI. Toby Jenkins: Okay, and tell us what SHANTI was. Warren Duvall: Well, you were assigned an AIDS buddy. Of course, we were a couple, so we were doing it together and we went through the training program. That's when I met David Parsons. He was going through the, he had just started out. I can remember David, I can remember distinctly, we're sitting there in this classroom setting with just 19 �the two of us right then, and then David walks in, real friendly, how are you, gets his chair, drags it right up in front of us, and... yadda. He was going through, or he was starting one, I think. I think he was starting one because, anyway, so that's how we met David. So, I knew David off and on, over time, and got better and better acquainted with the times. So, we got assigned this guy, and then we split up. Uh, and thenToby Jenkins: You and Roger ended your relationship. Warren Duvall: We did pre-Christmas in 91. Anyway, so, you know, we started taking this guy out and doing things with him and everything, and then we split up. Roger stayed here for a while, and then he moved to Oklahoma City with this little nelly guy. I'm like, Roger always thought he was butch and everything. He got caught in drag driving, and they took him to the hospital, and his parents came in, and he was in the emergency room in drag. Toby Jenkins: But So you had the AIDS patient and Roger and you had split up, so did you continue to get more involved in SHANTI? Warren Duvall: Well, SHANTI had gone by the wayside pretty much, because, you know, one person couldn't handle an AIDS patient by themselves, so they came up with—what's that called? Toby Jenkins: RAIN [Regional AIDS Interfaith Network}. Warren Duvall: Okay. Anyway, that took over. I continued—Roger and I split up, but I continued to— Toby Jenkins: Be a part of the RAIN team. Warren Duvall: To be a part of this guy. Toby Jenkins: This patient. Warren Duvall: This patient, yeah, and Roger moved off to Oklahoma City. Toby Jenkins: So what was it like in those days? You're doing the RAIN team, and you're a medical— Warren Duvall: No, I'm not doing the RAIN team. I didn't even join it. But I was still taking care of this guy Toby Jenkins: So the community—you were a medical professional, so you were seeing it from a different angle. And then you were seeing the community's organization. We've had multiple people who've interviewed and talked about that period. It was a difficult time, because people, as you said, you'd be diagnosed, and then you would be gone quickly. There was no treatment to save your life, and yet some people would get sick, and they would survive and still would be living with it, you know, 30, 40 years later. What was the mood in the community, and you as a medical professional, what was it like? I mean, was it— 20 �Warren Duvall: Well, it was very cautious. People became much more concerned and cautious about their sexual habits. Toby Jenkins: Right. So it transformed the communities. Warren Duvall: It definitely transformed the community. You still, I mean, you still socialized and so forth. But the worst thing was you would have, let's say, you'd have a social friend that came down with it and there would be no time until they were gone. So you went through that over and over and over and over and over. Toby Jenkins: How many funerals do you think you went to during the time of the pandemic? Warren Duvall: Probably a dozen. Toby Jenkins: Of close friends who died? Warren Duvall: Socialized friends. I never had a really super close friend until much later. I had a friend that came down with it much later after they were starting to have some successful treatments. Toby Jenkins: We've talked about this. You've talked about how you liked to dance and things like that. Were you involved in what we call the Follies and some of the fundraising efforts? Warren Duvall: I was in the, Roger and I, in the picture. We did the Follies the first two years, did that dance routine with that group there. I think it was almost verbatim, there was only one or two that weren't in that picture that was in the first year. Then I stayed active with Linda and them, but I didn't do any kind of active work on stage with them until her final year, the 10th year, and of course, Roger was long gone by then. Toby Jenkins: What were the Follies? It was an annual fundraising event for those living with HIV and AIDS. Linda started it. Toby Jenkins: Linda Stevens? Warren Duvall: Linda Stevens. Toby Jenkins: Who's recently deceased. Warren Duvall: I didn't know that. Toby Jenkins: Yeah. We just lost her in the last— It's been almost three months now. Warren Duvall: Oh, man. I wanted to get to see her. I went to their house one time to knock on the door, but nobody came. Man, I knew she was in really bad health, but I didn't know that. Toby Jenkins: You talked about you being involved with some other affinity groups, community organizations. You mentioned you were part of the Drillers Bears. Was this a socialization group for men who identified as bears? Warren Duvall: Yes. 21 �Toby Jenkins: Tell us kind of what a bear is. Because you've talked about this a lot in your interview about the flamboyant, effeminate, all the different— Warren Duvall: Right. To me, Roger and I's first introduction to it was when we were on vacation in Florida, and we were in Orlando and there was a gay hotel there in Orlando [Parliament House], kind of like the one in Oklahoma City. So we went there. Anyway, there's this group of big guys, big burly guys, and they were in this bar that was next to the hotel, and I think it was called the Blue Moon, maybe. It was kind of a Levi Leathers kind of bar. So there's all these guys in there. My conception was that a bear was a hairy man. Toby Jenkins: More masculine, more hairy, working class. Warren Duvall: Beer gut, whatever. Toby Jenkins: Wasn't the typical Hollywood depiction of slender sleeves, muscle-lift gay guys. Warren Duvall: Yeah, just the common guys. Toby Jenkins: So you became a part of that group, Drillers Bears here in Oklahoma. Warren Duvall: Well, I became part of that. That was after Roger and I split up, but the initial group in Orlando, which I think, I was told that was the first time that a group of guys had met and formed a bear group. Of course, and then it spread nationwide and worldwide in a very short period of time. So I was active in that, and then we would go to gay rodeos all over, in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and actually, Roger and I split up when I went to Arkansas, but Missouri and stuff, and then once he left, I got acquainted with Rick Poston, and he was trying to form a new gay rodeo division in Tulsa because you weren't a real close part to the OGRA, particularly. Toby Jenkins: And OGRA stands for what? Warren Duvall: Oklahoma Gay Rodeo Association. Toby Jenkins : And that was basically based in Oklahoma City. Warren Duvall: Yeah, it was statewide. Toby Jenkins: And so when you say gay rodeo, for our viewers, explain what that means, gay rodeo. Warren Duvall: A gay rodeo, well, it was a typical rodeo version, the gays' version of a rodeo. Toby Jenkins: So people who like Country and Western music… Warren Duvall: Western living, and like to ride horses and do all the things, and there were different organizations and you were all affiliated with IGRA. 22 �Toby Jenkins: Our viewers might be familiar with the explosion of interest when you had Urban Cowboy come out and Gillies, and where country and Western were people who were not farmers or cowboys or ranchers. They dress as cowboys and go out in twostep dancing. So this is theWarren Duvall: Right, kind of a popular thing. Actually, the first time I started going back to what I grew up in, it was still in the straight bars. And then after I was going to the straight bars and dancing, I started my gay paraphernalia, up again. Then it morphed right into the gay scene real quick. So I just, I returned to my roots, still in straight life and then morphed into the gay scene. Toby Jenkins: So you weren't playing or role-playing the role of a cowboy because, for our viewers, there were gay country and western bars, and there'd be country and western bar nights, country and western nights at our clubs, but it was kind of almost like a culture where you dressed up in cowboy boots and wranglers and you looked the part, but you had never been near a horse or a rope-to-cow. Warren Duvall: Common name for it was Drugstore Cowboys. Toby Jenkins: What'd they call it? Warren Duvall: Drugstore Cowboys. Toby Jenkins: Drugstore Cowboys. But you actually were a part of the group that became, what was it called here in Tulsa, the? Warren Duvall: It was Sooner State Rodeo Association. Toby Jenkins: So it was. Warren Duvall: We were the first organization that separated from an existing state organization, the IGRA. And we were the first that split our state. Toby Jenkins: And so these organizations would have been all over the country. Warren Duvall: Yeah, they're all affiliated with the IGRA, which is International Gay Rodeo Association. So we applied for a new membership, and so that involved us going to meetings and things. I think it was probably the second annual meeting that I went to, and that was, let's see. We got accepted, not exactly sure what city we were in, but anyway, we were the first to put in to separate from, to be separate from OGRA, Oklahoma Gay Rodeo Association, which it was basically, it was a state organization, but it was 90% Oklahoma City metro area. Warren Duvall: Once they accepted us, there were two or three other groups in different states that were right there wanting to put their application in. So I don't know where, then I got separated from the Sooner State Rodeo Association kind of on a political situation. Toby Jenkins: So this group came together, and one of the things they did is they hosted a yearly rodeo. Warren Duvall: Yes. 23 �Toby Jenkins: Just like you would have, which was very common in our culture here in the middle of the country. Warren Duvall: And it didn't have to be a big rodeo. It could be in somebody's barn. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, and what would y'all do at the rodeo? What kind of entries would there be? Like, name off the different things. Warren Duvall: Oh, well, calf roping. Toby Jenkins: Barrel racing. Warren Duvall: Bulldogging, barrel racing, and there's another rehab pole, line of poles. You didn't do this in the straight. You need to zigzag through them. I can't remember that term. They had bull riding, horseback, bareback, saddleback, and then they did more kinky, campy things, just fun things. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, they'd have drag queens perform. Warren Duvall: Yeah, they had, what do we use the goat for? You had to tie a ribbon on the goat or something. But anyway, there were fun things to do, but the other was semiserious. The livestock class of livestock we did, it's about university-type stock. Maybe you'd say high school and university. That's probably on the same level. There's not many high schools, but there are high schools in Oklahoma that have a rodeo program. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, so you would have these big rodeos that would be a full-blown rodeo, but it would be imprinted with being LGBT proud, being out and proud. So for our viewers, it must have meant a lot to you to be able to return to your childhood and your experiences and blend those two together. Warren Duvall: Back when we were just a little kid... the rodeo in Fort Smith every year, which was a big thing. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, I will say this. I want to make sure our viewers are aware of this. This was an extremely successful, what I would call community crossover. Every gay rodeo that I personally attended- and I've been to Oklahoma City, I've been to them in Wyoming, Texas- half the crowd is straight. Yeah, it was a very good environment for people outside of the community. Allies like these gay cowboys would have their families there and you allowed straight people to enter the competitions. Warren Duvall: As I remember right there weren't any restrictions on it. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, it was a very good way for people to mix with the community and get to know us. Did you enjoy being a part of that? Warren Duvall: Very much so, yeah, I was very active and held health officer positions and then one year I was a rodeo coach. I was a rodeo director, which was the first rodeo we had here which actually was sponsored by the OGRA. And I had told you earlier that Rick and his boyfriend at the time started putting this Sooner State Rodeo Association together. So since we were working to separate and since Rick got that in Tulsa from his membership and officer in the OGRA in Oklahoma City, they were not happy with him 24 �but he'd already signed up and everything. Our first rodeo here was sponsored by the OGRA but the Sooner State did 90% of the involvement in putting it together and so forth. They might disagree with that percentage. But even before we became an active, accepted member in the IGRA, we put the rodeo on- I think that was 2003,, maybe 2002.. Toby Jenkins: And hosted the international here in Tulsa. So the International Gay Rodeo Association came here in Tulsa and your Sooner State Rodeo as a part of the Oklahoma Gay Rodeo Association. Y'all served as the host. Warren Duvall: Yeah, well, OGRA served as the host, but the majority of the staff came from the Sooner State. Toby Jenkins: People came from all over the country, didn't they? Warren Duvall: Yes, right, and it was a three-day event. Toby Jenkins: When did you get involved with Oklahomans for Equality? I mean, I know, would you have cowboys and horses in the pride parade? I mean, was this something? Warren Duvall: Yeah, sometimes, yeah, and we put on a float every year, back when I was active in it. And, yeah, I think I remember some people were. .. Toby Jenkins: And when did you get connected to this Oklahomans for Equality year at the Equality Center? Warren Duvall: Probably not until I, really not until I came back in 2019, just before COVID. I came back at the end of October and by early 2020. Toby Jenkins: Because you had gone home and lived on the farm for a while… Warren Duvall: Right, yeah, for 13 years now my mother had died, and my brother, who had a home on the farm. My mother had given him three acres to build him a house. He was in bad health too. He started early in life with cardiac problems. He had a bypass at age 40 or 42. But anyway, she had died in April of 2004, and he died in May of 2005.. So my oldest brother and my sister- there's four of us, two boys and then my sister, and I was the youngest, and I was nine years younger than our oldest brother. Toby Jenkins: So we're kind of coming towards the end, so I just want to, so you move back to Tulsa and then you begin to get involved here at the Equality Center. Warren Duvall: With the two senior citizen organizations. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, Prime Timers. Warren Duvall: And SAGE, which we got more into. Toby Jenkins: For our viewers, kind of tell us what Prime Timers is, what kind of organization is it for? Warren Duvall: Prime Timers is an organization for gay, bisexual men. 25 �Toby Jenkins: Older. Warren Duvall: 50 and older, typically. If you were a partner of someone and you were much younger, you could be a member because of your relationship to your partner that was a member of the group. Toby Jenkins: And then the SAGE, it was called, which is Services Advocacy for Gay Elders, what SAGE stands for. But eventually, SAGE's program began to be called the OkEq Seniors Program, and so you began to get involved in that. Now, earlier in our time together, you talked about David Parsons, who you first met at a training session, with SHANTI, where you're gonna take care of people living with HIV-AIDS. So he's been your friend all of these years. Warren Duvall: Yeah, and we've gotten closer and closer after Roger and I split up. I think Roger and I used to have a Christmas party every year, and I think after we met David, I think he came to a couple of those. This was before his partner Al. But anyway, Roger and I had bought a condo out on 51st between Memorial and Mingo. It's called Idlewild II. Toby Jenkins: Well, you've been connected with David Parsons all of these years. Warren Duvall: Roger and I split up. I got left with the condo because he wanted to sell it right away and it was worth, it priced for 15,000 less than what it was. And I said, well, I'm not gonna take that loss. So I ended up taking over the whole thing, which put me in a financial bind until I sold it. So, early on, I had moved downtown when I had come out and actually met another married man and had a short affair with him. That's when I pulled the floor off of having any kind of relationships with married men. Not a good thing. Because they just don't, they don't work out basically because they're doing a double life and you're kind of always the secondary part of that relationship. Well, that was my experience with it and most people that I've talked to, same thing. Toby Jenkins: So you were getting involved with the seniors program here and you and David, you'd bring David to the program. Warren Duvall: Yes, well, when I sold the condo, I moved just off of downtown on 17th and Carson. You know, what I call the Jetson building. We were on the south side of the street behind the Mansion. In fact, the duplex I was in was owned by the owner of the Mansion, what I call that law firm that had that Mansion back then. So I sold the condo and lived there for four or five years and that's when mom died. And my brother was, I had just moved back to the farm. Well, the reason I did that was because I became physically unable to keep my job when I ruptured my L5-S1 and I'd already had my first hip surgery and had ruptured my neck, moving a patient. So I had so many medical things going on with me and it just became too hard for me to work and do my job properly and everything. So I wound up, initially I planned on semi-retiring at 57 and I wound up retiring at 57 because of my physical injury. So, I was just a few blocks from David and Al. So, you know, we intermingled and it was over because, you know, they had, after he met Al, you know, they had gatherings at their house and dinners and parties and things like that. So, we came closer and closer and then I moved off for 13 years. And when I came back, which was the end of 26 �October, 2019, I had called David and I would come up and we'd go out to dinner when I was on the farm. And I'd come up and go to doctor's appointments up here. I would get in touch with them and, you know, we'd go to eat and sometimes I spent the weekend here. So, we became pretty close before, in fact, I was at David and Al's house when I got the call that my mother had died. So, we became good friends. Some of my friends came down when I first moved to the farm. Some of them came down and about five or six of them came down to see, you know, where I was living and what was going on down there. David came, I don't know if Al came or not, probably so, they got a big kick, because they wanted me to show them around the country side. And like I said, as a crow flies, I was a mile from the river, but I was about three miles from it to get to it from either the upper side of the dam or below the dam, which was Locking Dam 14 on the natural part of the Arkansas down there. So, we had about, well, we had about 90 acres of farmland. 75 or so of it was good, productive farming land where you grew different crops. Typically, over the years it changed, but in recent years, pretty much in that part of Oklahoma you grew corn one year, next year you put in winter wheat and when the winter wheat came off, you combined that and then you put in soybeans. So, you had three crops in two years. That's what it was, all the, it was already that when I moved. Toby Jenkins: And so, these boys would come down here to see that. Warren Duvall: So, I'd take them down into the corn field and you go down this road, it's actually an extension of the county road, but the county didn't take care of it anymore and we were on one side and there's another owner on the other side of this road. But, we got down to a 90 degree turn and they had just put up street signs out in the country down there and there was a street sign in the corner of the corn field. They got the biggest kick out of it. They couldn't believe that there was a, of course, it didn't take long for them. .. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, that's called urban sprawl, you know. So, I know that you, and we're gonna wrap this up, you, I know you would, you and David would come to Sage because your good friend, he was diagnosed with dementia and for several years, you were his ride or die. You took him to Prime Timers. Made him. Took him everywhere I went. And allowed him to be able to continue to participate. Warren Duvall: Right, be active. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, and so, I was always so impressed with that. Could you maybe speak to that? Why did you feel that was important? Warren Duvall: Well, when I came back, I initially called him and he was okay then and then COVID came along and I didn't, basically, I only had one friend that we spent, you know, in contact and together but I didn't really call anybody during that first year or so. And so, when I called him back after COVID, I left a message and then I got a message from him and he seemed very excited to talk to me, you know. When I got the message, I called him back and he proceeded to tell me that he had had this, as David said, I 27 �drank a quarter of wine one night and went to bed and the next morning, I couldn't get out of bed. Couldn't do anything. And he thought it was all to do with the quart of wine. And I said, well, that and many others helped you get to where you are now. But he told me that the doctors had told him that he had Alzheimer's, dementia, Alzheimer's is another form of dementia. But they specifically said, I, observing him in the beginning, I didn't really think he had, because it gets misdiagnosed a lot, Alzheimer's gets diagnosed when somebody's got another form of dementia. He could no longer drive, he couldn't even ride a bicycle, and he had limitations, but he still had a brain, and he walked daily, walked with his dogs, and then he lost a dog, and he walked with his other dog. So he was just at home all the time, Al's working, so he's, you know, and he can't go places because he can't drive anymore. So I started taking him with me and coming down here and we joined up. I was getting ready to join when COVID came along and he didn't join. After it became where we could get out and get around again is when I came down and joined and brought David down. So I took him to all the meetings and I took him out to eat a lot. I took him down all the trips that I would take down to the farm and had a couple of doctors down in the Fort Smith area that I like so well, like my dermatologist. I go down there. Toby Jenkins: So you kept him active. Warren Duvall: So I kept him busy, and, you know, that was good for me too, because I had not made really good contact with my old friends. I don't know if they're all dead or moved away or what, but I just haven't been able to, just, besides David and Al, there's only one other couple that I've had anything to do with and they seem to be content with retiring and sitting at home. Toby Jenkins: And recently, we lost David. He died. And, um... Warren Duvall: Within the past year, he'd gotten to the point that he really couldn't communicate. You could talk to him and he might, you might ask him something and he would answer you or tell you that he didn't know. Toby Jenkins: So I've always been grateful that you kept him involved. Warren Duvall: As long as I could to keep him involved. Toby Jenkins: I just wonder, as we finish up, this will be my last question for you. You've lived a long life. You've served your country. You've had an active career. You've lived in multiple places. You saw the world. You've lived in other countries. Warren Duvall: Been to the gay games. Toby Jenkins: Yeah, so, which is like the gay Olympics. But you saw things change over the last 30 or 40 years. Do you have a message for younger people or people who come after us? Do you have a message for the future? 28 �Warren Duvall: Be active as you can. Be aware that the political situation in this country is bad and gonna get worse for the LGBTQ group. I mean, they've already singled out the trans, you know. That's just the first step. If the public doesn't succeed in getting this group out of the White House and the Senate and Congress and the judges, I mean, it's just, never in my life would I ever assume that that would happen in the United States. It just never entered my mind. It concerns me greatly. So my advice is you fight it and you fight it and you never give up. Never give up. For many of us, it took a lot to come out and it was a lot. Some gay people knew all their life that they were gay. Now, I can look back and know that I always was, but I didn't know that. I didn't know what gay was for many years. Probably first started getting some conception of it in high school. I remember this group of future farmers. We'd gone into Fort Smith. We were probably trying to do some fundraisings or something. And this one guy, I don't know how they got on the subject, blowjobs, this one guy. He said, well, you know, these homosexuals, and he probably said faggots. He says, you know, their sexual organs are in their throat and that's why they blow each other on that. And I'm like, oh my God. He was a weird son of a bitch. Toby Jenkins: But that's the homophobic culture we live in. Warren Duvall: My first thought was, the sexual organs in my throat? Toby Jenkins: Well, this has been very helpful and very informative. And thank you so much for your service. Warren Duvall: And I have one other person I want to talk about briefly. Bart Elwell. He's a guy about my size. Pretty bald, wore a beard a lot. He had a degree in clothing design. He specialized initially in children's clothing. He was from the Oklahoma City area. He grew up in Moore. And I met him much later in life. This is after Roger and I had split up. And I'd seen him at the Silver Star dancing. He was a good dancer. But anyway, I met him again when we were forming the Driller Bears. He came to that, and we started talking, and getting acquainted, and became really close friends. And he came down with HIV late. I mean, he came down with two, three years after we'd gotten acquainted and been really good friends. So eventually, he came down with it. And I won't go into any detail. And just that he became positive. He worked just all kinds of fabric. And he never could get after his initial job. He came to town for this little children's clothing factory. That's how he came here. And then it got closed down, and couldn't compete with the international market, I guess. But we became closer and closer. He's the only one that would come down and spend the weekend with me, all the 13 years I was on the farm, after the initial guys came down the first couple weeks I was there. But he started, oh, about my last two or three years on the farm. So prior to October of 1919, he was a Christmas baby. My dad was born on Christmas Eve, and I was born on December 20th. And my half-brother was born on December 10th, I think. Lots of friends and had other friends and family that were December babies. 29 �I tried to get in contact with him over the Christmas holidays and didn't hear from him. Sent him a birthday card, didn't hear from him. And so finally, I got a call from him. I think it was probably early January of, I don't know how many years ago that was, about four or five. Anyway, he proceeded to tell me, oh, last year that I would come up and I'd go out to lunch with him, he kept complaining about stomach problems. He couldn't keep food down. He couldn't eat, but just a little bit, blah, blah, blah. And this went on, and they did tests on him and everything. And finally, they told him on Christmas Eve of that year, I'll say 2020, I'm trying to think, was that before? No, he died before I moved up here, I think, the disease was pancreatic cancer. Well, by the time they diagnosed it, it was almost already stage four. From the time he called me after, I didn't hear him remember the Christmas holiday, they told him the day before Christmas that he had it. So he went down to his family for Christmas Day to tell them that he had pancreatic cancer. But anyway, he went down like a rock. The time he called me and the time I came up the very next time, he was just, when I went to pick him up, he was just skin and bones. Didn't have a hair on his head because he was in chemo and everything. He didn't have a hair on his body. Wasn't very hairy anyway, he had a nice beard. But I wouldn't have known him. You know, you could have told me he's gonna be coming down the sidewalk here in 30 minutes and he could have walked right by me and I wouldn't have known it was him. That's how much he was just skin and bones. And he had a long-term relationship lover who was also HIV positive from down in the Dallas metro area. They were together, that long distance relationship for about the last four or five years of his life or more, maybe. But anyway, it was just a shock Okay, so he was never financially real secure because of his career and trying to stay in and so forth. But anyway, he wound up kind of being the office manager of an independent children's clothing store that was out at 81st and Harvard in that little shopping center and it's on the southwest corner. So he worked there the last few years. He gave me this picture of a cowboy that he had picked up at a garage sale or something and it was in this horrible frame. And this cowboy's bare-chested. He's got his saddle over his shoulder. Really good picture, watercolor. He said, I want you to have this because I know you'll do something good with it. So it's a great picture. I had it professionally framed and everything. Spent $300 just getting it framed. I was gonna take it to him so he could see what I did with it one weekend. And then I had to back out. The next weekend, by the time we got there, his lover had called me to say he had died. I hated it he never got to see it because he would have been so happy and proud that he gave that to me. Toby Jenkins: And that beautiful story is a reminder…. Warren Duvall: One of my very best friends ever and I've had lots of good friends over the years. Toby Jenkins: We can't delay, we can't put off. We gotta seize the moment and see the moment. All right. Warren Duvall: Tomorrow may be too late. 30 �Toby Jenkins: Well, thank you so much. Warren Duvall: Thank you. Toby Jenkins: This has been beautiful. We've covered areas that we've never covered. We talked about things that I don't think we've ever talked about in any other interviews. Warren Duvall: I could talk to you for two weeks. Warren Duvall: I mean, I've had an interesting life and amazing experience. Today I came through it. Toby Jenkins: This has been Warren Duvall on February the 10th, 2026. Warren Duvall: Thank you very much. Toby Jenkins: Thank you. Addendum: 1989 Follies Review Cast. Follies was a fundraiser for AIDS Programs. Warren is second from the right. 31 � 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] Warren Duvall Interview Subject The topic of the resource Warren Duvall Oral History Project Interview from February 10, 2026 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Warren Duvall, Toby Jenkins, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 10, 2026 Description An account of the resource This interview with Warren explores his life story, from growing up on a family farm in Oklahoma to his military service and his journey as a gay man. Warren shares personal insights into his experiences with sexuality, military service during Vietnam, and navigating life in Oklahoma and Florida. This interview provides a deep insight into the life experiences of a long-time LGBTQ+ community member, covering personal stories, community involvement, and the evolution of LGBTQ+ rights and health issues over decades. <strong>Video available for on-site research at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center.</strong> 2026 activism AIDS available at Center bear clubs coming out community gay rodeo healthcare HIV/AIDs interview LGBT history military OKEQ Oral History Project Oklahoma oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript seniors Toby Jenkins transcript Tulsa video Vietnam Warren Duvall 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 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 [2019] Laura Belmonte Interview Subject The topic of the resource Laura Belmonte OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview from February 13, 2019 Description An account of the resource Laura was interviewed on February 13, 2019, by Oklahoma State University as part of its Diverse Sexuality and Gender Oral History Project. <strong>A copy of the OSU transcript is on file at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Born in New York, Laura attended the University of Georgia and finished a graduate program in American History at the University of Virginia. In 1996 she joined the faculty 7 at Oklahoma State University as an assistant professor of history and became head of the history department at OSU. For six years starting in 2003, she served on the board and then as president of Oklahomans for Equality and its predecessor, Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights. Later, she joined the national board of The Equality Network and founded The Equality Network. In 2019, she became dean of the Liberal Arts and Human Sciences College at Virginia Tech. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Laura Belmonte, Angus Henderson, Micki White, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 13, 2019 2019 Angus Henderson available at Center Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Equality Network interview Laura A. Belmonte Laura Belmonte Micki White OkEq Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahoma State University Archives Oklahomans for Equality Oklahomans for Equality (OKEQ) oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU OSU Archives OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project TOHR transcript Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) 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 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 [2019] Dwight Kealiher Interview Subject The topic of the resource Dwight Kealiher OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview from February 13, 2019 Description An account of the resource Dwight was interviewed on February 13, 2019, by Oklahoma State University as part of its Diverse Sexuality and Gender Oral History Project. Dwight discusses his early life, experiences at Oklahoma State University (the Oklahoma A&amp;M College) in the 1950s, his marriage and family and later coming out. As a CPA in Tulsa, he reviews his long-time association with Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (now Oklahomans for Equality,) Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN), Tulsa Cares and Health Outreach Prevention Education (HOPE). Dwight was born on August 15, 1937, in Checotah, Oklahoma and passed on August 15, 2024. <strong>A copy of the transcript is on file in the History Project Archives at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center.</strong> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dwight Kealiher, Angus Henderson, Allison Richmond, Micki White, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 13, 2019 2019 Allison Richmond Angus Henderson available at Center Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Dwight Kealiher H.O.P.E. Health Outreach Prevention and Education (H.O.P.E.) HOPE interview Micki White Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahoma State University Archives oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU OSU Archives OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project RAIN Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN) TOHR transcript Tulsa CARES Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights (TOHR) 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] Donald Fruechting Interview Subject The topic of the resource Donald Fruechting Oral History Project Interview from November 20, 2020 Description An account of the resource Video recording and transcript of oral history interview with Morgan Allen on November 20, 2020. <strong>Video and Transcript available at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong><strong> </strong>Donald discusses his early life, family background, military service, personal relationships, and experiences living with HIV. Donald shares insights into his identity as a gay man, the challenges he faced, and the importance of community and family support. He reflects on his journey through love, loss, and spirituality, emphasizing the blessings he has received throughout his life. Donald was born on July 4th, 1938 in rural Owasso, Oklahoma and passed on August 21, 2021 in Tulsa. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Donald Fruechting, Morgan Allen, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 20, 2020 2020 AIDS/HIV available at Center Donald Fruechting HIV HIV/AIDs interview Morgan Allen OKEQ Oral History Project oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript 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 [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 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 [2019] Tommy Chesbro Interview Subject The topic of the resource Tommy Chesbro OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview from April 24, 2019 Description An account of the resource Tommy was interviewed on April 24, 2019, by Oklahoma State<br />University as part of its Diverse Gender and Sexuality in Oklahoma Oral History Project. In this interview, Tommy discusses his early life in Blackwell and Stillwater, Oklahoma, his experiences at Oklahoma State University, and his long-time leader as an HIV educator and counselor. <strong>A copy of the OSU transcript is on file at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tommy Chesbro, Ryan Dyer, Angus Henderson, Ashlyn Ruley, Micki White, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 24, 2019 2019 Angus Henderson Ashlyn Ruley Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project interview Micki White Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahoma State University Archives oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU OSU Archives OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Ryan Dyer Tommy Chesbro transcript 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 [2019] Al Carlozzi Interview Subject The topic of the resource Al Carlozzi Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview from June 6, 2019 Description An account of the resource Al was interviewed on June 6, 2019, by Oklahoma State University as part of its Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project. In the interview, Al discusses his early life, service in the Air Force and early outreach to the LGBTQ+ community for mental health. In 2006, he became director of the OSU-Tulsa Counseling Center (now named the Al Carlozzi Center for Counseling) until his retirement in 2019. He has been a long-time consultant with Oklahomans for Equality regarding its counseling services. He collaborated on the book “Transgender and Gender Diverse Persons: A Handbook for Service Providers, Educators, and Families.” <strong>A copy of the OSU transcript is on file at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Al Carlozzi, Angus Henderson, Allison Richmond, Matthew D. Williams, Micki White, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 6, 2019 2019 Al Carlozzi Allison Richmond Angus Henderson Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project interview Matthew D. Williams Micki White Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahoma State University Archives oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU OSU Archives OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project OSU Oral History Project transcript 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 [2021] John-WaKo Hawk Co-Cke' Interview Subject The topic of the resource John-WaKo Hawk Co-Cke' OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview from March 18, 2021 Description An account of the resource John was interviewed on March 18, 2021, by Oklahoma State University as part of its Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project. In the interview, John discusses his involvement in the LGBT community and as a two-spirit leader and elder at Oklahomans for Equality and for the Muscogee Nation Behavioral Health. <strong>A copy of the OSU transcript is on file at the History Project Archives at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center for on-site research.</strong> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource John-WaKo Hawk Co-Cke', Arlowe Clementine, Matthew D. Williams, Micki White, Dennis Neill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource March 18, 2021 2021 Arlowe Clementine available at Center Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project interview John-WaKo Hawk Co-Cke' Matthew D. Williams Micki White Muscogee Nation Muscogee Nation Behavioral Health Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University (OSU) Oklahoma State University Archives oral history oral history interview Oral History Project oral history transcript OSU OSU Archives OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender in Oklahoma Oral History Project OSU Oral History Project transcript two spirit two-spirit