Collections of college and personal papers, as well as a select number of individual documents, have been briefly described in entries available for browsing and searching on this site. All collection and document descriptions contain a representative image and a summary of the contents.
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Kathy Fillman was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania to an Irish family that had their own business. Although she describes her childhood as idyllic, Kathy lived with her grandparents and three cousins due to her mother’s alcoholism and attended a...
Mary Nancarrow grew up in a suburb of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 1960s with divorced parents and two siblings. After graduating from Shippensburg University, she became prominent in the women’s movement and the LGBT movement in...
Maria Warren grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, in a religious family with both her blood-related and adopted siblings. Maria was very involved in her mother’s church, attending Sunday services, Bible study, and choir rehearsal, but realized that...
David Walker was born in 1946 in Lancaster County, where he grew up in a strict Presbyterian family and always knew that he was different. He studied to be a teacher at Lebanon Valley College when the school was more fundamentalist, but after...
Peggy Allan grew up in Oregon, where she attended Northwest Christian College for a year before marrying and having two sons with her first husband, Gary, a pastor. After 10 years of marriage, while the two were living together in Northern...
Paul Foltz grew up in Steelton in a very Catholic household, a background to which he attributes his unawareness of his sexuality until later in his college years. It wasn’t until he went to England to complete his graduate-level theatre studies...
Delma Welch was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Cardiff, Maryland as a Catholic with her three brothers and one sister. Delma began going to NOW [National Organization for Women] meetings in 1975 after becoming interested in feminism from...
Lindsay Snowden was born in Pittsburgh on March 15, 1976. Lindsay worked a bunch of odd jobs and has had an entrepreneurial spirit since a young age. Lindsay joined the military when sirb was 17. Lindsay realized after moving to Harrisburg that...
Peg Welch was born in December of 1951 near in Chester County, Pennsylvania to her father, a carpenter, and her mother, a candy maker. A young mother to two children, Peg did not graduate from high school, but received her GED and worked at...
The interview performed on March 23, 2015 is with Oral History project volunteer, Michele Metcalf and long-time LGBT activist and self-identified gay man, Phil Wenger. Wenger was born and raised in Ethiopia in a large Mennonite missionary family...
Suzanne Kohr, formerly Ott, was raised in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. She is now 60 years old, and resides in Newberrytown, Pennsylvania. Suzanne had two children with her first husband, and has been married to her second husband, Tom Kohr, for...
Growing up in the conservative Lebanon County of central PA, Barbara Darkes attended grade school through the beginning of her pre-law college career without experiencing any attraction to women. It was at her summer job at the local YMCA during...
Walter Heiliger was born in 1944 and grew up in rural Carroll County, Maryland, the second of three children. Walter, who describes himself as “severely hearing-impaired,” encountered difficulties in school and in connecting with others growing...
Cindy Lou Mitzel was born in April of 1942 in York County, Pennsylvania as the youngest in a big family. Growing up, Cindy knew that she felt attraction towards women but married a man just after graduating from high school and had three children...
Louie Marven moved to central Pennsylvania from his hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York to attend Messiah College in 2003 and has lived in the Harrisburg area ever since. The school’s conservative values and prohibition of “homosexual behavior...
Laury was born in New Port Beach, California on March 20, 1961. She is the middle child with two brothers from a Presbyterian home. Laurie and her current partner Jan are not married and do not live together. She currently resides in Harrisburg,...
Eva O’Diam was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1953 to her mother, a school teacher, and her father, an engineer. Growing up in conservative, rural Ohio, Eva lost her father at the age of 12 and moved to Covington, Ohio where she graduated from high...
Dr. Eric Selvey was born and raised in Harrisburg, PA. He attended optometry school in Philadelphia, but returned to the Harrisburg area after graduating. In his interview he discusses his relationship with his mother and grandmother — and coming...
Ray Davis was born on April 30th, 1954 in Bethlehem, PA. After attending Catholic school, Ray went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in ornamental horticulture from Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, PA. After moving to Harrisburg in 1986, Ray...
Joy Verner was born in 1963 and grew up in Franklin Pennsylvania near Erie, Pa. Joy was one of three children and a mother and a father. She relocated to central Pennsylvania during graduate school where she attended school near Shippensburg. She...
Joy (Ufema) Counsel was raised in Altoona, Pennsylvania. After completing high school, Joy began studies to become a nurse at the Altoona Hospital, and later completed a nursing program at Harrisburg Area Community College. Joy worked in numerous...
Lori Hatch-Rivera was born in Rockville Central, New York on Long Island in 1958. After Lori’s family moved to South Florida, Lori enrolled into what is now Palm Beach Atlantic University and graduated in 1989 with a degree in history. After...
Daniel Maneval was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on October 3, 1947. In this interview, Daniel speaks frankly about his experiences growing up as an only child, homophobic violence he has experienced, and the gay organizations he has lead...
Shaka Hudson was born in 1949 in Harrisburg as the middle of five children. An artist his whole life, Shaka attended John Harris High School and Penn State University before unenrolling in college and leaving Harrisburg to join the Washington D.C...
Lorraine Kujawa was one of the co-founders of the Lavender Letter in Harrisburg during the late seventies and eighties. The Lavender Letter was created to provide events for the lesbian community to attend in Pennsylvania. She started the...