Family and Relationships

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...

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

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...

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February 5, 2015

Brent Weaver was born in Corning, New York but primarily grew up the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area. Although his parents grew up in conservative Mennonite families, Brent and his brother were raised Presbyterian, and Brent recognized that he was...

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

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...

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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

Suzanne Kohr
March 25, 2015

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...

Barbara Darkes
March 26, 2015

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...

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March 27, 2015

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...

Louie Marven
March 29, 2015

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 McIntyre
March 29, 2015

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,...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

Topics:

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View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 080: Laury McIntyre

Cindy Lou Mitzel
March 29, 2015

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...

Eva O'Diam
April 6, 2015

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...

Eric Selvey
April 9, 2015

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...

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April 20, 2015

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...

Shaka Hudson
August 3, 2015

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...

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