Kameny
Memories by Denny
Meyer
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The
neocolonial
gabled house of Dr. Frank Kameny, gay rights pioneer, has
just been designated a Washington D.C. Historic
Landmark.
A living legacy of modern gay history, Dr. Kameny
is one of those rare people who, having made
history, has been fortunate enough to live to see
his work receive rightful recognition. And
least there be any doubt, he continues to speak
out to this day, forcefully, for our progress
towards full American rights.
Several
years ago the Smithsonian Institute had requested
Dr. Kameny's early protest picket signs and
other historical items, which he had kept all
these years in the attic of his home. Those items were subsequently
received in a solemn ceremony. Speaking of
the Smithsonian's request, at the national
convention of American
Veterans For Equal Rights (AVER)
in Cleveland in 2007,
Dr. Kameny said something to the effect that
"when he and his compatriots sat on his
living room floor, in 1960, making the placards with magic markers, if someone had
suggested at the time that someday the Smithsonian
Institute would want them, everyone would have
laughed and said the idea was crazy."
He told this story with modesty and yet conveyed
his own sense of fulfillment at seeing how far we
have come collectively in his lifetime.
His
paper archives, documenting the history of his
life's work in the LGBT rights movement, recently
went to the Library of Congress. According
to a 2006 press release by the National Museum of
American History, Dr. Kameny said at the time,
"Nearly fifty years ago, the United States
Government banned me from employment in public
service because I am a homosexual. This
archive is not simply my story; it also shows how
gay and lesbian Americans have joined the American
mainstream story of expanded civil liberties in
the 20th century. Today, by accepting these
papers, the nation preserves not only our history
but marks how far gay and lesbian Americans have
traveled on the road to civil equality."
And
now his house and that living room floor are
themselves an official part of American history
(the house has also been nominated for the National Register of Historic
Places).
What must it be like to reach for
one's favorite old coffee cup and suddenly realize
that it is a historical artifact not to be
dropped? Imagine peering at your tattered
rug on the floor for the first time in decades and
realizing that it is now a historical textile; and
that if you wanted to replace it or have it
cleaned you might first need to get the permission
of some preservationist bureaucrat. Speaking
to the Washington Post on Feb. 27th, 2009, Kameny
himself lamented, "Now the house, I haven't
been able to maintain it as adequately as I'd
like," he said. "The lawn is a mess, it
needs to be put in order. The gutters, the
heating, things like that." According
to the Post, it is indeed "unusual to designate a site as
historic while its occupant still lives there."
Frank
Kameny enlisted in the US Army in 1943, three days
before his 18th birthday. He served in Europe, in
WWII, in an 81mm
mortar platoon, the 58th Armored Infantry
Battalion, 8th Armored Division. At New Years,
1944, his unit crossed the English Channel,
landing at Normandy France. In February 1944
he and his unit encountered their first combat in
Roermond, where the Ruhr meets the Rhine, near the
German-Dutch border. According to a 2006
interview with Gay Military Signal, Dr. Kameny
recalled, "We then moved eastward into the
Rhineland. For much of February, we were in
Grefrath. At that point we had no way of crossing
Rhine until the Remagen Bridge was secured. Once
we got that bridge, our troops moved over and
fanned up and down into Germany, for the first
time in the north. We secured the east side of the
Rhine. I remember, we crossed the Rhine late at
night with hails of antiaircraft artillery flying
across the sky in brilliant colors. We fought hard
and got into Ruhr Pocket, it was not pleasant. And
eventually we closed the Ruhr Pocket and went east
into the Hartz area. By May we were in
mid-Germany." Even after the war came
to a formal end in Europe, he and his unit moved
onward, in June,
into Czechoslovakia, to Bohemia as an army of
liberation. He was discharged honorably in
March of 1946. (The full interview may be
seen at:
http://gaymilitarysignal.com/061107Kameny.html)
Dr. Kameny, originally
from Richmond Hill, Queens, in New York City, went
to Queens College as undergraduate. After the war
he went back to school in 1946, graduated in 1948,
and went to Harvard for graduate work. In
1957, when he was an astronomer, he was fired due
to homosexuality and began a lifetime of
campaigning for gay rights.
Frank Kameny's
home and
works are priceless treasures that future generations of
Americans will now be able to see as a segment of the
dawn of modern gay rights history.
And
finally, Frank Kameny himself, as he lives and
breathes, is a legacy for us all. May he live
and breath for many years to come.
©
2009 Gay Military Signal
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