LGBT Oral History

Alanna Berger (L) and Blaise Liffick (R)
July 22, 2014

Alanna Berger and Blaise Liffick are the co-founders of the Silent Witness Peacekeepers Organization. Alanna was born in 1954 in Hummelstown, PA. Before committing full time to Silent Witness, Alanna by profession worked as a systems analyst...

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July 29, 2014

Ann Van Dyke was born in a farming community in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, where she was raised in a devout Methodist home. After moving to Mechanicsburg to work at the Methodist Home for Children at age 19, Ann was exposed to the more...

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August 2 and 29, 2014

Abstract for Interview 1 (August 2, 2014): Lawrence von Barann was born on June 26, 1928 in Queens, New York to an American mother from New York City and an immigrant father from Germany. Lawrence spent the majority of his upbringing living in...

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August 9, 2014

This is an oral history with David Payne. It was recorded on August 9th, 2014. David Payne was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Temple University in Philadelphia as a communications major. The focus of his career has...

Arlene and Jacquie Bogle Ackerman
August 17, 2014

Arlene Ackerman was born in San Francisco, California, then adopted and raised in Lodi, California. Jacquie Bogle Ackerman was born and raised in northern Minnesota. Arlene became licensed as clergy with the Metropolitan Community Church in 1977...

Nancy Datres
August 27, 2014

Nancy Datres was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1948 and first moved to Harrisburg to pursue computer science after becoming blacklisted by the Altoona Police Department when she was just 27 years old. Thereafter, Nancy moved through several...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 020B: Nancy Datres

Sharon Potter
October 10, 2014

Sharon Mahar Potter was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, commuting to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for the first time when she was offered a position to build the early intervention system for disabled children in the...

Emily Newberry
October 11, 2014

Emily Newberry was born in June of 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri, shortly thereafter moving to West Haven, Connecticut, and then Schenectady, New York, after her parents got divorced—a shameful and hidden family secret—and her dad remarried. Emily...

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October 13, 2014

James “Jim” Bortzfield was born in Lancaster, PA in 1934. He received his undergraduate degree from Elizabethtown College as a business major. Upon graduation, Jim moved to Harrisburg to work as a buyer for Pomeroy’s, but after several years he...

Joseph W. Burns
October 15, 2014

Joseph "Joe" W. Burns is an LGBT activist who actively participated in LGBT organizations, marches, and protests especially throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In this interview, Joe discusses his involvement in several of those LGBT and women’s...

MJ Dougherty
November 22, 2014

MJ Dougherty was born on May 20, 1956 in Syracuse, New York. As a child of parents who traveled extensively for work, MJ had moved around quite a bit before settling into Williamsport, PA where she attended middle school and high school. Upon...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

Topics: 9/11

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 030: MJ Dougherty

Becky Boone
November 25, 2014

Becky Boone, who identifies as heterosexual, was raised in a religious family that was accepting of homosexuality, although they rarely discussed it. Her involvement with the Pembroke United Church of Christ in Harrisburg and as a parent of a...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 008: Becky Boone

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November 25, 2014

Mr. Boone is interviewed as an ally of the LGBT community. From a young age, he encountered members of the LGBT community but never judged or discriminated against them. He later joined the board of a Community Center, and through this Center...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 009: Tom Boone

Jerre Freiberg
December 3, 2014

Jerre Freiberg was raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His family has close ties to the Lutheran Church, and he has remained affiliated with the church throughout his life. Jerre attended Elizabethtown College for two years...

Kathy Fillman
February 10, 2015

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...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 033: Kathy Fillman

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February 24, 2015

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
March 8, 2015

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
March 19, 2015

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
March 20, 2015

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
March 20, 2015

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...

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March 22, 2015

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...

Delma Welch
March 22, 2015

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...

Peg Welch
March 22, 2015

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...

Philip ''Phil'' Wenger
March 23, 2015

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...

Joy Verner
March 24, 2015

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...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 119: Joy Verner

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