2016

The Pride Festival of Central PA is an annual event celebrating the LGBTQ+ community in the Central Pennsylvania region. Founded in 1992, the festival takes place every year on the last Saturday of July in the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Each July, approximately 5,000 individuals travel to downtown Harrisburg and attend the Pride Festival. It is the largest Pride celebration between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The Pride Guide was the official guide of all activities and events of Central PA Pride Festival (PrideFest) held at South RiverFront Park in Harrisburg, PA on July 30, 2016.

Hannah-Smith Brubaker was born in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, and spent most of her childhood in Port Allegany, McKean County. She began to identify as a lesbian at the start of college, and she entered the political sphere for the first time when she participated in the Second National March on Washington in 1987. While on a study abroad program in Europe for about four years, Hannah worked for Onlywomen Press, a lesbian separatist book publishing company based in London. There she met Eileen, with whom she stayed for 16 years and had a son and daughter. Four years later in 2010, Hannah met Deborah, a Mennonite, with whom she is now happily married and maintaining a farm. In this interview, Hannah details her experiences of coming out as a lesbian to her friends and family, focusing upon her father, a Methodist minister. She chronicles her path of political activism, including a formal interrogation she experienced when departing from England on a plane. She also discusses the challenges of going through second parent adoption, and the importance of community, love, and acceptance in transforming the society of today.

Mark Segal is a gay rights activist, author, and journalist for the Philadelphia Gay News. In this interview, Mark discusses his political involvement in the gay rights movement in Pennsylvania in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Particularly, he focuses heavily on his work with Governor Milton Shapp, the first United States governor to publicly support the LGBT community. While discussing his life as a gay rights activist, Mark recounts many personal stories and memories such as disrupting popular television talk shows, working alongside Walter Cronkite, and signing up to become a Pennsylvania state trooper as an act of political resistance. Throughout, Mark stresses the important but often understated role Pennsylvania played in advancing civil rights for the LGBT community, while emphasizing that his state still has a long way to go.

Sabrina Valente was born in Baltimore, MD and lived most of her childhood and adolescence in Littlestown, PA in Adams County. She attended Eastern University for an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies and Wagner College for a Master’s degree in forensic psychology. Sabrina has spent all of her career in the mental health field, working in various organizations to help people with behavioral problems or crisis management. She is currently working for the non-profit organization TrueNorth Wellness as a clinical supervisor. In this interview, Sabrina discusses the how her liberal arts education helped to lead her to the LGBT community and her struggle with balancing religious beliefs and her identity. Sabrina emphasizes the importance of being open to change and fluidity in one’s sexuality and lifestyle.

Amy Skillman talks about her childhood growing up in Michigan in a large Episcopalian family and the influence of spirituality in her life, both as a teenager and an adult. Amy went to an all-girls school where rumors circulated about certain boarders and a book they were reading. Amy believes that this was likely her earliest introduction to LGBT alternatives to heterosexuality. Even before coming out and joining the LGBT community, Amy had frequented gay bars as a young woman and lost many friends to AIDS. However, it would be many years before she herself would come to terms with her own identity. Amy discusses falling in love with a woman for the first time at the age of forty. She describes coming out to her parents and siblings as both a challenge and a relief. Amy also discusses her activism and her interest in folklore, which is rooted in witnessing inequities as a child in the African American community in Detroit. While a graduate student at UCLA, Amy raised money for AIDS charities and for the people of Nicaragua. Amy also talks about the play she helped produce about and starring LGBT youth. Currently, she is the Director of Goucher College’s Masters Program in Cultural Sustainability.

The bulk of the collection consists of buttons, ribbons, and t-shirts from LGBT events. It also contains documentation of the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard of Harrisburg and Dignity of Central PA. Several of the items in this collection relate the story of Dan Miller, a Central PA accountant who was fired for being gay in 1990. This collection also contains program materials from the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, as well as Hershey, PA and NYC play performances. In addition, this collection includes items relevant to noteworthy LGBT Pennsylvanians. These items include an autographed photograph of Nancy Jane Kulp (born in Harrisburg, PA) who played Jane Hathaway on the television series Beverly Hillbillies; a photograph, publicity material, and an LP record album of T. C. Jones (born in Scranton, PA), well-known female impersonator; and an engraving of Bayard Taylor (born in Kennett Square, PA), who wrote Joseph and His Friend (1870), believed to be the first U.S. gay novel.

Altland’s Ranch was the first official LGBTQ+ bar in the York area, and was the longest running LGBTQ+ bar in the county. It was known for hosting drag balls, discos, and particularly Halloween parties. Altland’s Ranch closed in 2016.

Jude Sharp was born in November of 1947 in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania and graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She then attended the Tyler College of Art and studied the art of making jewelry. When she was 21, Jude married her first husband and moved to Denver, Colorado, where she opened her first jewelry shop. Upon ending her relationship, Jude moved back to Lancaster where she met her first girlfriend. Jude has been working with jewelry for nearly 50 years since, and currently has her own business, J. A. Sharp Custom Jeweler. In this interview, Jude discusses the roles her relationships and artistic visions have played in her life. In her childhood, she and her family frequently moved from town to town as her father, a Methodist minister, was transferred to different churches. She speaks of a pervading feeling of ostracism that was assuaged when she came out as lesbian, finally being able to be true to herself. Jude marvels at the changes her community has seen, and laments at the continuing problems with drug and alcohol abuse that face many LGBT individuals today, relating to her own experience. She reflects upon her desire to put creativity to a good purpose and form relationships with others through the medium of crafting personalized jewelry. Additionally, Jude discusses how her own sexuality has played a role throughout the rise of her career.

Nikki Knerr was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1945 and attended York College and Pennsylvania State University where she studied mass communications. In 1967, Nikki opened her first graphic design business which ran for 25 years in Camp Hill, before she retired to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. When the HIV/AIDS crisis emerged along with negative social stigma in the late 1980s, she organized the Unity Festival to raise funds and awareness for those infected, as well as for the greater LGBT community around Pennsylvania. In this interview, Nikki discusses the joyful moments and struggles of belonging to the gay community. She emphasizes the role gay bars such as D-Gem and Altland’s Ranch played in uniting LGBT individuals, as well as the compassion and perseverance demonstrated by the thousands of volunteers that participated in the Unity Festivals. In the interview, Nikki touches upon some of the amusing highlights involving the organization of the festivals. She marvels at the modern progress of LGBT rights and opportunities to unite in settings of merriment, yet admits that ostracism and societal barriers still exist in other spheres of life.

Nancy Helm was born in Lancaster Pennsylvania and graduated from Manheim Township High School in 1981. After graduating she worked for a printing company and did other odd jobs before opening a hair salon with her partner. Not long after that she opened a book store across the street called The Closet. She opened the bookstore as an outlet for the gay community of Lancaster so they could meet and hang out and shop. But, the bookstore was eventually the target of anti-gay crime in the 1990s. It was bombed twice and received multiple threats, including from the KKK. In this emotional interview Nancy gives her story about how she dealt with this and how it affected her life as well as the life of the gay community.

Joanne Carroll was born in Alberta, Canada in 1940 as John Carroll. She spent the first 60 years of her life as a man, marrying twice and having two children. She worked a number of jobs throughout the country, primarily in the Air Force but also in hotel management and security. She transitioned in the 90s at around 60 years old, moved with her mother to Lancaster, and got heavily involved in trans advocacy throughout all of Pennsylvania as the president of TransCentral PA. In this interview, Joanne discusses a number of subjects relating to her experiences as a trans woman, including mental health, the transition process, and her experiences in coming out as trans to her family and friends. She also discusses issues of race, politics, white and male privilege, the current political climate (as of November 2016), and the importance of faith in her life.

Anthony Silvestre was born in 1946 in the Bronx in New York. He grew up in a working-class, Italian neighborhood and is familiar with stigma. He began identifying as gay in the sixth grade, but went through school still in the closet. After high school, he entered a Catholic religious group in the Boston area called the Holy Cross Brothers. He left after three years due to his disillusionment with the church, not his sexual orientation. He finished his final year at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and then attended Penn State as a graduate student.

Silvestre was introduced to LGBT rights while at Penn State, where he remained as student for five or six years. While there, he became active in an organization called the Homophiles of Penn State [HOPS], and, as president, met many of Pennsylvania’s leading activists. He was appointed Chair of the Pennsylvania Council on Sexual Minorities and became a leader in the Pennsylvania Rural Gay Caucus, which supported numerous groups across Pennsylvania. He was appointed Chair of the Pennsylvania State Council and supervised all of the subcommittees, one of which worked with the State Department of Education to create a gay high school in Philadelphia for the young gay kids from the Cuban Mariel Boatlift.

Silvestre worked with the department of Children and Youth Services to ensure that non-straight populations were not short-changed in the bureaucracy. He became executive administrator of the Eromin Center. Eromin [Ero: erotic, and min: minorities] is a center established to provide culturally competent mental health services.

Silvestre discusses how the State Office of Administration during the 80s effectively handled issues related to the AIDs epidemic, including writing policies and conducting sensitivity training around gay issues in various agencies such as the State Police. He interacted with the Governor and made policy with the governor’s aides, adding LGBT language into contracts and policies and requiring reports be generated concerning their efficacy, especially in regard to complaints that were made. He helped establish a community advisory board, probably one of the first in the country dealing with HIV.

Silvestre was hired at the University of Pittsburgh at the Pitt Men’s Study program to supervise their six-month grant sponsored by the NIH—and he still works there, thirty-plus years later. He is now working on non-discrimination policy and education for HIV individuals in nursing homes and home health care.

Silvestre is married and a practicing Buddhist. He has created a group for young LGBT Buddhists, and has organized HIV services through the Ball community by supporting SILK, which is a group for African American young, MSM and trans kids who are members of the Ball community.