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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...