She set her lit cigarette in an ashtray that was piled high with a pyramid of butts. The way she looked, and the way she looked at me, was a little intimidating. She peered at me from behind thick coke bottle glasses, giving me the once-over. Her hair was mostly gray and cut in a flattop style. A young woman in cutoff shorts and a tank top answered the door and led me to a sunroom at the back of the house, where Shirley was seated in a large wheelchair. It was a warm, humid fall day when I arrived on the doorstep of Shirley’s one-story house in a working-class neighborhood of Key West, Florida. I’m thinking farther back, to Shirley’s life in 1940s Chicago and how anger inspired her to make change and force people to do the right thing-or to at least try. I interviewed Shirley back in 1989 because of her role in the early homophile movement where she served as national president of the Daughters of Bilitis, an organization for lesbians founded in 1955.īut that’s not the part of Shirley’s life that’s on my mind now. Shirley was a nurse who saw firsthand what happens when the people we care about die because of incompetence and inequality. So, what to do with that anger? As I talked with my brother, Shirley Willer came to mind. My brother is understandably scared-and angry. One of my brother’s colleagues was just diagnosed and is recovering at home. The doctors and nurses are thankfully well-supplied, but my brother and his administrator colleagues aren’t considered frontline workers, even though they’re in close contact with patients arriving in the emergency room. Night before last we had a long, anguished conversation about how he and his co-workers aren’t getting the proper gear they need to protect themselves from getting sick. In an almost-daily ritual now, I talk with my brother after he gets off his shift at the hospital where he works, about five hours south of New York City. From what I’ve been reading, the wave of infections here in New York City seems to be cresting just as the threat mounts in other parts of the country. And just a few days since the coronavirus likely claimed the life of a 40-year-old next-door neighbor. I’m recording this fourth episode in our Revisiting the Archive series on Thursday, April 8, four weeks to the day since my partner Barney and I started sheltering in place. Episode TranscriptĮric Marcus Narration: I’m Eric Marcus and this is Making Gay History. Visit our Season Two episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources. Shirley channeled her anger into activism in the early homophile movement-let’s listen to her story as we face the challenge of what to do with our own anger during this pandemic that has upended our lives. “I’ve spent a large percent of my life being angry.” That was Shirley Willer, reflecting on the death of a close friend and fellow nurse who in 1947 received fatally inadequate hospital care because he was gay. Shirley Willer in the mid-1960s at the beach in Atlantic City, where she and her partner, Marion Glass, had gone to scout a location for a Daughters of Bilitis outing.
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