Social Reform and Advocacy

LGBT History Project Logo
March 22, 2014

Barry Loveland was born December 28th, 1956 in Schenectady, New York. After graduating from high school, Barry attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he obtained a Bachelors of Science degree in Architecture and Building Sciences....

John Folby
March 26, 2014

John Folby was born in Pittsburgh in 1947. He was the oldest of five children in an Irish-Italian Catholic family. He relocated to Harrisburg in 1975 with his partner. John continues to live with his partner in Harrisburg in a relationship...

John Johnson (L) and Charles Maser (R)
May 8, 2014

Jon Johnson was born in Southern Lancaster county, Pennsylvania and lived on his family’s farm in his early life. Charles (Charlie) Maser was born in Brownstown in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Jon spent most of his life in Pennsylvania. He went...

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...

LGBT History Project Logo
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...

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...

Joseph W. Burns
October 15, 2014

Joe 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 rights...

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

Topics:

Organizations:

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

LGBT History Project Logo
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...

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...

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...

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...

LGBT History Project Logo
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...

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...

Joy (Ufema) Counsel
April 29, 2014

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...

Dan Maneval
July 24, 2015

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, about the homophobic violence he has experienced, and the gay organizations he...

Lorraine Kujawa
October 28, 2015

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...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

Topics:

Organizations:

View Item: PDF icon Transcription of LGBT Oral History 061: Lorraine Kujawa

Cathy Nelson
November 11, 2015

Cathy Nelson was born in Brooklyn, New York, and moved to Staten Island, New York, at the age of two with her strict Italian-Swedish family. As a child, Cathy loved music and did well in school. She also participated in Catholic youth group...

Collection: LGBT Oral History

Topics: Coming Out

Organizations: Central PA Womyn's Chorus

View Item:

Gretchen Little
November 19, 2015

Gretchen Little was born on October 26, 1958 in Elmira, New York. As a child, Gretchen was interested in sports and experimented with wearing women’s clothing in the home. While studying Media Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas,...

Benjamin Dunlap
November 23, 2015

Benjamin Dunlap was born in Lancaster County Pennsylvania on December 23, 1957. He was born to a family with a mother, father, and sister ten years older than him. Throughout his life he was highly involved with LGBT community life and in...

Pages

Subscribe to Social Reform and Advocacy