Oral History with Lorena Russell and Kitty Hancock

Libby Ward: Don't mind me. I'm dyslexic, so it's hard for me to read sometimes.

Lorena: That's fine.

Libby Ward: But all right. Thank you for sharing your time and the gift of your stories. I've set aside two hours for our interview, but at any point we can take a breaker in the interview. My name is Libby Ward and I am a UNC Asheville student working with two other undergrads and faculty mentor.

Kitty: Star.

Lorena: Okay. Okay, keep reading.

Kitty: Hello? Star?

Lorena: Keep reading.

Kitty: Hey, we're in the middle of something. Working on-

Libby Ward: My name is Libby Ward and I'm a UNC Asheville student working with two other undergraduates and faculty mentor, Doctor Amanda Wray, to record oral histories from elders and representative members of the LGBTQ community. Our goal is to document alternative histories and foster intergenerational connections. Collected data will be used to develop a needs assessment and asset map for LGBTQ people in Western North Carolina. With your permission, all 00:01:00stories will be archived for special collections at UNC Asheville. I have an oral history release form for you to sign that gifts your oral history, and other archives you may have to special collections with or without restrictions. Research participants can remain anonymous if they prefer to select a pseudonym. Right.

Kitty: No pseudonym. We're fine.

Libby Ward: Okay.

Kitty: Thank you, we agree.

Lorena: Yes, thank you. We agree.

Libby Ward: So how long have you lived in Western North Carolina?

Lorena: As a child, my family had a summer home up here in Highlands. Really I was born in '55, so every spring we'd come up here and stay probably through August, so I knew the area. And then through my childhood I used to go to summer camps in Brevard. Kitty and I as a couple moved to the area in 1981. I spent a 00:02:00year in Highlands before we moved to Asheville.

Kitty: '82, wasn't it?

Lorena: Was it '82? It was '82 we moved to Asheville, I think. Yeah.

Kitty: Yeah, yeah.

Libby Ward: So what brought you here?

Lorena: For me, I grew to just love this area from being here. In part, it was the mountains themselves. It was so different. I grew up in Florida and never really liked the climate or the typography. And so I think in a way it was the mountains, but also it represented the summer to me, it represented camp. And I think camp, since this is the GLBTQ interview for me, going to a girls' campus, the first place I saw women who didn't shave their legs, or could perform outside of the extreme femininity that I saw down in South Florida in Palm 00:03:00Beach. So it I think had multiple appeals. And then of course, Asheville, we had a community of friends here. Kitty can speak to that as well, but because we met at a summer camp actually in outside Brevard, North Carolina. We both worked as counselors there. And so it was not just us alone, but probably a group of five or six or seven folks who all moved to this area in the early 1980s. So we had a built in community from having worked in Brevard for all those years together.

Kitty: Yeah. So I went to prep school in Chatham, Virginia, and they had horses, so we both were horseback riders and taught horseback riding. And so then the horses all went to this camp in Brevard, so we all followed in terms of being 00:04:00counselors and that kind of thing. And Lorena actually worked at the school after she graduated. So, that's how we all met and all. We all moved to Asheville.

Lorena: Yeah. So it was the '70s, I guess. '78 and '79 we worked at Camp High Rocks, and then by the early '80s, we'd moved here to Asheville.

Libby Ward: Okay. So what's your most memorable childhood/general memory that you guys have? Either working at camp or just chilling out?

Lorena: My most outstanding childhood memory? That's interesting. Probably the trauma of breaking my arm, I guess, is a vivid ... Having a serious compound fracture, falling off a horse as a kid when I was 11 years old at Rockford Camp. 00:05:00So, I don't know.

Kitty: I don't know.

Lorena: Yeah, in terms of-

Kitty: Say that again?

Lorena: The most memorable-

Libby Ward: What's your most memorable childhood/general memory?

Kitty: I guess just having fun with my family, and horseback riding, and ... I can't think of anything.

Lorena: I know for me it's the trauma.

Kitty: For me it's the fun. I was very blessed and had a wonderful childhood. Yeah.

Lorena: Yeah. Camp in general was vivid for me too. It really was a significant time for me as a child.

Kitty: Because I didn't go to camp. I went after school. I mean, after high school, as a college age. I was a counselor, but I never went as a child. But probably horseback riding and going to horse shows and loving my horse, that 00:06:00type of thing.

Libby Ward: If you could ask your ancestors one question, what would you ask?

Kitty: Gosh. This is hard.

Lorena: These are toughies.

Libby Ward: I'm sorry.

Lorena: These are toughies.

Libby Ward: We can come back to that one if you want.

Kitty: By ancestors, do you mean my parents or do you mean my grandparents, my great grandparents?

Lorena: Going back in time. Yeah, it's pretty open-ended.

Libby Ward: Anything you want.

Kitty: I don't know. I have to think about that one. Well, would you-

Lorena: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there are a lot of factual specific things that I would be curious about. Because I have on my maternal side Australian ancestors, so I'm curious about the history of were these convicts ... Because I heard a certain story as a child, that I'm quite sure what the 00:07:00story was, how these people ended up going to Australia. So that would interest me. And then I've just found out that the father was raised with is not my father, so on my paternal side then, they ancestry is a blank.

Kitty: Oh, that would be one to ask. We've done the ancestry DNA and Lorena's birth father was not her birth certificate father. But everybody's dead so that we can't talk to anybody about it, and-

Lorena: Yeah, so I guess I'd be a little bit curious about the affair that this man had with my mother. And I suppose that's pretty immediate history, but it's a big question mark for me. Not too big a question mark. I can imagine.

Libby Ward: So are you both comfortable talking about coming out narratives?

Lorena: Very much.

Kitty: Yeah.

Libby Ward: Okay. So what was coming out for you guys like?

Lorena: I'll let you start.

Kitty: So I went to Hollins College, that's in Roanoke, Virginia, and then there were a lot of lesbians there, but I'd always had boyfriends and had not identified as a lesbian. But then I fell in love with a woman, and she was at camp, her name was Kathy. And knew Lorena at camp, and I would tell Lorena about Kathy, and how we were breaking up or getting back together again and all that stuff. You were my confidante. But I just adored Lorena. I just adored Lorena. And we would laugh and laugh and laugh. We still smoked cigarettes then, and we'd go sit out at camp where you would smoke cigarettes, and we would laugh and 00:09:00talk and talk and talk.

Kitty: And I was just smitten. And all my friends said, "Don't mess with her because she's not out as a lesbian. You'll just break your heart because it's not our thing." And then I remember deciding I just didn't care. I would just be with Lorena, and share time and that kind of thing. This is fun. We have a really sweet ... We started traveling because we had a good friend that was in Germany. So we went over to Germany. And so we actually started having sex together really in Europe, in Paris. So it's real sweet, real sweet.

Lorena: I recommend it. If you want to [crosstalk 00:09:52].

Kitty: And so, Lorena was slow to come around, but then she did. Yeah.

Lorena: Yeah. So I was, that she says, slow to come around. I identified as heterosexual. I think growing up, I've thought about it a lot. I was growing up in the '60s, I was born in '55. And even though my family preached what I'd call a social conservative family ... Actually my mother's fairly progressive, I would say. She was a progressive woman in terms of sexuality. But I had internalized enough, I think, this notion that lesbians were bad people, and still had a sense of myself as a good person, so I think I was just reconciling. That's a very basic way of putting it. So I had clearly ... I mean, if you look at pictures of me, I was always wore boots like this, sometimes with dresses. I mean, I was always very butchy, and it just was obvious to anyone but me.

Lorena: There're pictures of me as a little girl dressed in a football uniform. I was just your typical tomboy. But there's a social allowance for being a tomboy that doesn't translate as you mature it. So I knew Kitty at campus, she says, and in the late '70s, and we were great friends. We got along beautifully. And I don't know when I started ... I know it was by the time 1981 and that I was teaching horseback riding as a profession. I think I was in DC when I met Kitty, and then, as she said, I worked for a while at her alma mater in Virginia, and then had taken this job at Goucher College. And when I was at Chatham, Kitty was at Greensboro, stuck.

Lorena: And we got to know each other pretty well at Chatham. And then when I 00:12:00went to Goucher, my heart was just broken. I couldn't stand not being together. And I was there about a year. We wrote letters every day and threw them all away. I wish we had them stacked back in archive. Yeah, we watched, and talked a lot on the phone, but yeah. And then it was during that year, that I decided I was just going to throw it aside. And because of my work situation, I could not ... [inaudible] with you, you might want to move that foud. I hope you are a dog person, he cannot go up there to ... Let me see what he wants.

Kitty: So, [crosstalk 00:12:41].

Lorena: So at any rate, we were friends and I fell in love. And we decided to move into my parents' home in Highlands together, did this trip to Germany.

Kitty: We were going to move together.

Lorena: But I had to quit my job in order to do that, because my housing was such ... I was on a woman's college campus, Goucher college. And in those days 00:13:00you couldn't ... Nor at Chapel Hill-

Kitty: I didn't want to go to Baltimore, no. We didn't want to be-

Lorena: No, no. I was ready for a career change too, so we just really through our lot in together. And in terms of coming out, I did not ... It took me a couple of years, even after we lived together, moved to Asheville, all our friends treated us like a couple, but it was 1986 before I was willing to sit down with people I'd known for 10 years and say, "I'm a lesbian and we're a couple." So it took me a long time to get to that. And my education was a huge piece. I was a college dropout and went back to UNCA, and for me intellectually getting a grasp on things in terms of gender and sexuality really helped me come out. So when I did come out I really came out.

Kitty: Came out. Big.

Lorena: Yeah.

Kitty: So one of the jokes was that Lorena decided she wasn't a lesbian, that 00:14:00she just loved me because I was so special.

Lorena: Yeah. I lived with that myth for a while, because I wasn't comfortable being a lesbian. That's right.

Kitty: Right. Then she was like, "Kitty," and scared I'm a lesbian. She was like, "Kitty," and that [crosstalk 00:14:17].

Lorena: Yeah. I mean, I was slow. It took me years to really work it out. We'd shared a house off of Merriman Avenue, and I had rented this house, and I remember I kept the facade of having a separate bedroom. I used to keep a bottle of NyQuil on the bedside table in case people came over, so it would look I've been ... until she was just-

Kitty: And then when we told our friends, it was that classic sitcom, they were all like, "Oh, we knew that. What's for dinner? And what's the big deal - "

Lorena: Yeah. It was the open secret.

Kitty: Yeah. Was so, "We're a couple." Anyway.

Libby Ward: Was your family accepting of your coming out?

Lorena: Yeah. My mother knew Kitty of course when we moved to the house in Highlands there. And yeah, she was quite accepting. My father was deceased at that time. I remember my sister that I'm closer to, said things like, "Oh, I should have been a better sister. Too Bad. This is so sad that you've turned out this way." There was some of that, she felt guilty that I hadn't become a heterosexual somehow. So I think it took her a little while. But everyone loved Kitty and they appreciate my happiness, and what a good thing this was for me I think. So I didn't have the family pressures and was able to come out to my mother pretty quickly.

Kitty: And my parents were pretty good. I mean, my father used to question. He would say ... I had a friend who was a physician, "When are you going to see 00:16:00Michael?" Implying when was I going to settle down and get married-

Lorena: And this is after we'd been together for 10 years or so. So he never really went there.

Kitty: He called Lorena my running mate. "You and your running mate." But they always projected us into the future together, and they always were very good about giving us money, like when we bought this house. There was never any of that kind of thing.

Lorena: Exclusion.

Kitty: Exclusion. And then my mother I had one-

Lorena: You talked to your mother.

Kitty: I had one conversation with her. Of all things, one. She had a really good friend whose son started dating a black woman. And the friend said, "If he does this, I'll not have anything else to do with him." And she thought that was 00:17:00just horrible, "How could you do that? It's your child," yada yada. And then it was natural to say, "Well, here, your child is a lesbian." And she just, well of course, and whatever I wanted and needed to be myself that she understood. The one regret she had was that I wouldn't have any children, and that she always wanted me to have children. But I didn't want a child from the time I was little. Before the lesbianism even came into it, I'd never wanted a child. And she knew that, so that was a moot point. And she, I think too, just loved Lorena, Lorena's such a quality person, and saw how happy I was and we were doing well. And so that's all that mattered to them I think. Am I being too generous?

Libby Ward: No, no, no.

Kitty: No. Spud. My father's name was Spud. I don't know about Spud a few times. 00:18:00But I never thought he was mean to you or ... No.

Lorena: No, I always felt an accepted part of the family. Yeah. And I think you felt the same from my mother.

Kitty: Oh yeah.

Lorena: She remarried and her [crosstalk] Yeah that's another story . . .

Kitty: Okay, so that's our coming out.

Libby Ward: When were you first aware of your sexual identity?

Kitty: As a lesbian you mean?

Libby Ward: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Kitty: I guess Hollins College. My first year, my roommate was a lesbian. And I remember watching her, and she reminded me later that I said to her, "I can't imagine kissing you." And we just laughed over that. And I guess it was my second year in college that I just fell in love. I just fell in love. I was just 00:19:00... That feeling of falling and excitement and that kind of thing. So, my second year.

Lorena: And for me, it would have been probably when I was at Goucher. So I was probably 20, 24, 25, which seems incredibly old today.

Kitty: I know. Feels like today, the kids know like when they're in high school.

Lorena: Puts some work in us as youth population. But it took me that long. And it was the same process of being heartbroken up at Goucher College in Maryland, and just realizing I needed to be with Kitty. That that was there. I was a Kittian.

Kitty: She was a Kittian.

Lorena: I went to go through that, but at least God knew I was in love with a woman and had to be with her.

Libby Ward: I love that. How would you define coming out?

Kitty: I guess just being comfortable with who you are, and being willing and ... Oh, I don't know. I've never ... I think about it more in terms of work than our family. And at my work, I've always been out, but I've been a psychiatric nurse, so that lends itself to being who you are, and in understanding yourself and knowing yourself. And so at my first job, I pretty much was out. I was at the VA for 15 years, and you orient people, and you start talking right away 00:21:00about your families, and I always just said Lorena's she. And corrected people if they said your husband ... Well actually, it used to be partner. It's odd because we got married about three or four years ago and I had partner in my head. It's still hard for me to say wife or spouse, I can't quite go there. I am an elder in that way. I can't, it just feels awkward. But anyway. That's pleasant. [crosstalk] That dog coughs.

Lorena: And so the question was, how would I define coming out?

Libby Ward: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Lorena: Yeah. So I see it on different levels. I think there's the way we've been talking about my coming out narrative as far as just on that period in my 00:22:00early adulthood. This is what he does. He has a chronic sinus issues and ear issues. So there's that idea of opening the door of the closet and stepping out and saying, "Here world I am," and we've talked about that. But there's also this constant way, it's not all in our control, that social situations sometimes closet us against our will. And I find, I have to assert myself sometimes against that. So I think less so now than 20 years ago, but people would assume-

Kitty: Yeah, that you have a husband.

Lorena: That you have a husband.

Kitty: You have to correct them.

Lorena: So that a social situation. And I hate the trope of a journey, but it was like that for me until I could be comfortable identifying as a lesbian, and then that moved to social awareness and political action and being more 00:23:00involved. That's a whole other level too, I think.

Kitty: I had one story, which was, I was getting my Master's in Nursing, and it was Abnormal Psychology. I don't even know if they still have that class.

Libby Ward: I think they do.

Kitty: Do they? And they were discussing homosexuality, and somebody in class said that they would never want a homosexual to teach their child, that homosexuals should not be in school. And then I remember just being struck and sitting there, and I was just like, "Well, you'd be lucky if I was your child's teacher and a lesbian." And just come of the er, er. And then I had, I remember, a woman coming to me afterwards and thanking me, and how she was struggling, and 00:24:00was getting ready to leave her husband, because she was so in love with this woman. And just saying it out loud and having him be out, was so important to him So for me, I don't seek those situations out, but if they're there with me, I'll go ahead, say what I have to say.

Libby Ward: What was your first visit to a gay related place or event like?

Kitty: Oh, I was terrible ... Like a gay bar?

Libby Ward: Yeah. Something like that, yeah.

Kitty: Yeah. I remember I got real scared. But I get scared now, that bar. I remember getting really scared.

Lorena: I was dragging Kitty to bars and bars [crosstalk 00:24:50]. I thought, Come on, Kitty.

Kitty: And then when I get in the bar I never want to leave, I'm happy. I remember being thrilled because this was like '73, '74 and the big thing was 00:25:00Cris Williamson. I don't know if you've ever heard of her.

Lorena: Yeah, this is useful for your history actually.

Kitty: Cris Williamson. And it was sort of a-

Lorena: It's the Michigan and the Womyn's Festival.

Kitty: The Michigan Womyn's Festival, and Cris Williamson and ... Who were some of those-

Lorena: Holly Near.

Kitty: Holly Near.

Lorena: There were there ...

Kitty: There was a whole group of womyns.

Lorena: I mean, the society so much more closeted then, that people would come over and you would test the waters by saying, "Oh, do you Cris Williamson? Do you Bob Dylan?" But it had meaning. And if you were in the know, people would say, "Oh yes. And I like Holly Near too." So it's almost like a code about these singers in the lesbian community, that you could safely come out if people knew 00:26:00about that Womyn's Festival in Michigan, which has historically a lot of political problems now too. I'm not saying it was all great and wonderful, but that was that. I remember that distinctly. Yeah. It was like a code.

Kitty: And then we used to have Remembering Greensboro.

Lorena: Yeah, that's what my mind went to, because Kitty's lover, Karen-

Kitty: My first lover, her name was Karen, and she very political.

Lorena: Was pretty out in the community.

Kitty: And going to meetings, festivals and ...

Lorena: She used to go to festivals and things.

Kitty: It was just exciting and fun. You didn't feel alone. And-

Lorena: You had pictures of the pool party.

Kitty: Yeah, going to pool parties and ... But it was a very close group. And when I think about it now, it's so much more open where you have 15, 20 people and everybody's at one point sleeping with somebody. So it was all very 00:27:00incestuous or ... And the other thing is you couldn't afford ... My heterosexual friends would say, "Oh, you still know ... " Like the woman who was my first lover, I'm going next week to Greensboro because she had the knees replaced. Like an idiot she did both knees. So she said on the phone she's like, "What was I thinking?" I was like, "I'll come over and help you." What started that? I can't remember.

Lorena: It was the question about her coming out.

Kitty: Oh, you still are friends with them. In your heterosexual world, oh, you have a lover, you have a breakup, oh, you never see them again, screw them. But we couldn't afford that. So you're still going to maintain those relationships because you have a smaller group of people, you have to depend on each other and 00:28:00that kind of thing.

Lorena: And my entre too at that point, I guess, we're talking in the '70s, it was more segregated, the lesbian community and the gay community, I feel like. At least in-

Kitty: Oh yeah, the men and the women. Yeah.

Lorena: But the pool parties and things, you have pictures, there were gay men there too. But it was like the parties that Karen would have tended to be only women. And that's what I'm remembering too in terms of ... And then here in Asheville, O. Henry's is still a bar that used to be on Haywood street. And then Malaprop's was huge for us when we moved to Asheville. So that-

Kitty: They had a cafe in the bottom of Malaprop's. Yeah.

Lorena: No, so there it was like a distinctly queer friend. Wouldn't want to say queer in those days, but a distinctly lesbian friendly space. And then O. Henry's right next door, a couple of doors down.

Kitty: But we weren't really bar people.

Lorena: No we weren't. We didn't really do the bar scene. I think we had lunch at O. Henry's twice. They used to have birds in the windows. They had the tall glass windows. If you go on Haywood street. And they kept birds.

Kitty: And they kept birds. Canaries and finches and stuff were in the window. And you could stand on the street and they just created aviary out of the whole window thing.

Libby Ward: Wow, it's so cool. Kind of watch the birds.

Lorena: Birds at O. Henry's, yeah.

Kitty: God, this is so on memory lane.

Lorena: And yeah, women's studies also. And for me, as in going back to school was huge for me. I found an intellectual space at the university too. I remember I started a feminist group. And so that was where I also found my way into queer 00:30:00friendly spaces, was through the women's studies I guess. So I start to think about it.

Libby Ward: Do you have any favorite stories from your dating life, earlier life or now?

Lorena: Oh my gosh.

Kitty: You know when we knew you were coming over I thought about was when we bought this house. That was what year?

Lorena: '86, I think. Early '86, March '86.

Kitty: '86. And it was 50,000, I remember that. And we had to get a mortgage. And so we went to apply for our mortgage together. And I remember when we went, we had on jeans, we had been out in the yard, dirty. And later I remember thinking, "Oh we should have dressed up. I had no idea." To me in my mind, we're 00:31:00good workers, we made it, we had our little jobs, and we would pay off our mortgage. And not understanding that I was asking for them to give me something big.

Lorena: And as two women, we were an anomaly.

Kitty: I think the first in Asheville.

Lorena: And I do think too, that process, when you encounter homophobia ...

Kitty: You don't know it.

Lorena: We made an offer on a house we really wanted off in Charlotte Street. And I remember it falling through and getting that real feeling, I was like, this woman didn't want to sell to us because we were two women. She could feel it. And the same thing, I think, we ran into issues with the loan.

Kitty: It was for ... What were they called, the first union?

Lorena: It was Cameron brown, I can remember that.

Kitty: So we went through all the hoops. And I remember when we sat to fill out 00:32:00the paperwork, I have my job as a nurse, and Lorena arena was more in school, I think. And they were like, "Well, one of you has to be the lead, and one of you is the follower." And we're like, "Well, what does that ... Let's just not even include Lorena." "No, we're doing this together." Remember?

Lorena: Yeah.

Kitty: They just need to do it.

Lorena: They couldn't figure out how to do it for two women. Was impossible.

Kitty: So finally they wrote it down and then, "Okay, we're going to get your good risks. We're going to give you the mortgage." At the last minute, "Stop."

Lorena: "Where did all this money come from?" It was my money that we hadn't put on the [crosstalk 00:32:42].

Kitty: They told us not to include Lorena.

Lorena: I was just really frustrated.

Kitty: And Lorena had a trust fund.

Lorena: And then finally, and that speaks to our privilege too.

Kitty: That's our privilege.

Lorena: It was the whole piece of this story, is educational and financial privilege to get going.

Kitty: But we're sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting, and a woman 00:33:00comes through and says, "Lorena!" Do you remember this?

Lorena: Yeah, yeah. I'd gone to school with her at Brevard.

Kitty: It was her friend from Brevard College, and she was back in there with all the vision. "Lorena!" And then right after that, I don't know if the two are tied, but they came out and said, "Here's all the paperwork," and we signed. And so we got our mortgage.

Lorena: But in terms of a story that demonstrates that, just there wasn't a space for two women to be a couple and buy a house together.

Kitty: And then to figure out how to ...

Lorena: The legalities.

Kitty: The legalities of the ...

Lorena: How to protect our ... What would you say? Our earthly possessions.

Kitty: If one of us died, what would happen to the house? And we were strangers in blood. That's the legal term, strangers in blood. No wait, is that right?

Lorena: Yeah, that's right. Strangers in blood.

Kitty: Wouldn't that make a good novel? Strangers in blood.

Lorena: Yeah. Because if you're married, the way the lawyers explained it to us. I remember we went to Greensboro for some reason, so this is probably about 1990 that we were trying to do this kind of work. But they said if you were kin, then you are blood relationship, and then marriage legally confers blood, so that when a man and woman get legally married, they are considered to be blood. But there's no space for two women. So the legal is strangers in blood, which is extremely weird.

Kitty: And then it had the-

Lorena: But all this legal stuff we got to go through.

Kitty: Wrangling, and it was-

Lorena: Because I had another sister who's conservative Christian, and never would have honored our relationship, and posited somewhat of a threat, I think, to us. She would ... Yeah.

Kitty: And I remember going to an attorney and we had a trust setup or ... Oh, 00:35:00before we were able to get married. And we got it all set up tight as we could, and I said to the attorney, "Now, this means that if Lorena died or I died, that none of our family can rise up." And she says, "Oh yeah, they can rise up." She's like, "Of course they can rise up." But we've done the best we could do in terms of tying it down legally.

Lorena: We have lots of stories.

Kitty: We have lots of stories. Is that what you-

Libby Ward: I like to hear stories like that [crosstalk 00:35:36].

Kitty: Strangers in blood. So then it was weird to get married, because all my friends and family, they were all like, it was such a big deal and it wasn't a big deal for us.

Lorena: Well, for us coming up in that second wave feminism and identifying as 00:36:00feminists. I came to feminism at the same time I did my lesbian identity. Marriage was understood as an oppressive institution, and as something that confers legitimacy on some people and leaves other people out. So we, for years, had really questioned this whole institution and process of legitimization, or at least for me it was this mental thing. It was the way I understood marriage, and for me to participate in that when I realized there's so much inequity for others who don't have easy access. It doesn't even have anything to do with sexuality. It could have to do with money or whatever life circumstances. If I think of all the single mothers who have no option for getting that legitimacy, it felt wrong to benefit by this system, that now we have the option and we're going to benefit, but we're leaving people behind. So I'm still [crosstalk 00:37:00].

Kitty: I don't think as much as Lorena does.

Lorena: Yeah, I do all this social justice-

Kitty: I don't think.

Lorena: Like, "It's not right. It's not fair."

Kitty: It was just like we just spoke to the attorney, and to our financial person who said, "You have to weigh it. You have to weigh the risks and the benefits in terms of inheritance and the taxes." And one of our friends said he wanted a ring and instead he got a spreadsheet. Because it's a spreadsheet that made the decision.

Lorena: I think for people who've been together for 30 years going through them ... For us it was not a huge romantic, symbolic thing. We went to New York, we found a couple of women on the street who were our witnesses, and got married in two days. They make you wait 24 hours. So it was really just a legal thing. And I was really uncomfortable with all the adoration that seemed to follow.

Kitty: Oh God, friends and-

Lorena: In good will. But I understood it. So it was awkward. It's like having to be gracious, but I was, well, really not. She's not my wife.

Kitty: It's like, "Oh God."

Lorena: So we're still not on the marriage journey.

Kitty: But I will say spouse, because I'm federal. I was federal, so I did all the spouse stuff.

Lorena: There was a funny while there too. We got married before marriage was legal in North Carolina.

Kitty: Oh, poor baby. Work it out, sir.

Lorena: So when Kitty went to work as a federal employer, she was a married person. But for me as a state employee at UNC Asheville, I was not a married person. I was only married if I were in New York. So I remember someone say ... Kate Clinton had the joke about, it was like a cell phone where the reception goes in and out depending on where you are. Am I married here or not? If you cross a state line. Very weird.

Libby Ward: So you went to UNC Asheville?

Lorena: Yes, I did. I did.

Libby Ward: How has it changed since you were there? Just the overall ...

Lorena: Yeah. Well, the population certainly changed. When I was there in the 80s, I think I started there like '85 maybe, I don't know. It was largely a commuter school, or that's my sense of it. So it did not begin to have ... Governors village was still there that the smaller dorms, but there was not a strong traditional student population, there were a lot more commuting students and nontraditional aged students. So as an older student, I fit right in. Most of my classes, I'd say 50% nontraditional aged folks just from Asheville, from the community. And so it's really developed that liberal arts identity a lot more. It's of course gotten a lot larger, so that as a faculty, I became more 00:40:00aware of the administrative kinds of structures.

Lorena: So it's really making that transition from a small college to a larger university. So saw big changes there. There's still though fair amount of continuity. The curriculum was shockingly similar when I came to teach there in 2000. I was teaching a lot of the courses that I'd taken in the '80s, and so in some ways change is slow to come. I was taking humanities. That was funny for me. I'd taken humanities as a student there and went to Chapel Hill and studied 20th century British literature, women writers, Queer Theory, and I had a job interview in there like, "Hey, you want to teach humanities?"

Lorena: And I'm like, "Yeah. I teach medieval, oh yeah." So I've been pulling out my notes from humanities 214, and trying to remember the medieval world. But 00:41:00yeah, so a lot of continuity but a lot of difference. And, it has gotten more diverse. I mean, it was almost entirely a white campus, but of course, I think it still has a ways to go to be representative in those ways.

Libby Ward: Sure. And Kitty, for you working with the VA, were there many programs for LGBTQ people?

Kitty: No. What do you mean? A long time ago or ...

Libby Ward: I probably-

Kitty: Yeah, the federal government's pretty good. They have the expectation there was transgendered-

Lorena: Need to send me stuff.

Kitty: Yeah. Transgendered efforts in education and pushes. And they have a whole week. They have a gay and lesbian week.

Lorena: Whole week?

Kitty: Yeah, a whole week.

Lorena: What do you get? Cake in the afternoons?

Kitty: Yes. There're always like five or six of us that represent the gay employees. And we'd sit and do a-

Lorena: Five or six out of how many?

Kitty: Oh God, 1500. Well, I don't know, I guess there were more, I mean, they would always have a panel member till I become one of those panels they'd invite people from the ... It's always felt like there were programs. I can look back though on my work, when I was in my twenties and thirties, I worked with adolescents unlocked mental health, and I thought that it was pretty ... We had one, I remember, transgendered kid and-

Lorena: The thinking was so much more primitive though then, I feel like, in some ways.

Kitty: Yes.

Lorena: It's interesting to remember in the 80s.

Kitty: Yeah, there were programs. Of course, I've just been at the VA for the last 15 years. And then I was in Chapel Hill. In Chapel Hill I worked at a retirement community, very accepting. I don't know about program though.

Lorena: And I didn't answer your question about UNCA in terms of the queer environment there. I realized I answered generically as a standard faculty. So if you want me to elaborate on that, since we're here talking about queer things. Yeah. That as a student, that was when I was coming out and it was largely because of UNCA. And I remember having a German teacher, Charlotte [Getcha 00:43:48], and sharing with her an article from the chronicle of higher education, about the importance of having out faculty, having known her to be a 00:44:00lesbian and considering her out. And then her later coming to me and saying, "Oh, that article changed my life." That, "Now I'm devoted to being out in a more active way on campus." Then the other, Bramlett of course, Keith Bramlett. I'm sure you've heard his name, really important, significant figure in the campus community. And so there weren't any gay organizations. As I said, I played a role in starting up, I think we called it the Feminist Collective, and that was a space. But again, that was sort of women's studies.

Lorena: And now of course, I think it's really changed. I was the advisor for the GLBT group alliance when I was there for the first few years as a faculty member. But then, last few years I was there, I wasn't involved as much with Hyannis House, but I felt like Hyannis House was a huge step. Because I remember 00:45:00working in the arts over trying to find some time to center on campus for GLBT folks. And I think having that space was really big. And when they built the new student union, and even had a suite for the gay organization, that was really critical and important.

Libby Ward: Sure. Let's see. How have you built a family or support network here in Western North Carolina?

Lorena: We were so lucky because we had our camp community. So in some ways when we made the move as a group, we had a nice community of friends. The university, of course, has been one path for me. Large path for community.

Kitty: I go play bridge at one o'clock, and it's merit mostly. Do you know merit 00:46:00or ...

Libby Ward: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Lorena: Number of retirees, retired faculty.

Kitty: Retired with [Michael Gillon 00:46:08]. Retired faculty. So that's how we got to ... Through work and friends. And that kind of thing.

Lorena: You're talking about queer community?

Kitty: Queer community?

Libby Ward: Yeah.

Lorena: Yeah. That would be ... For me, I remember, going back to Charlotte Getcha and her partner Cynthia, helped to bring us in to activism in the community. There was a group called [Closer 00:46:29]. And there was a group called SAGLA, Southern Appalachian Gay and Lesbian Association. And they had a newspaper called Community Connections. And we used to meet and talk about racial equity and how to make the groups better. I think Closer was more like a support group, I don't think we were that involved, that was over in All Souls Church. But they'd have plays and events there. David Hope still teaches at the 00:47:00university, and I remember him being active with Closer. And then I remember being part of a panel. Did you do the panel discussion thing I did? I don't know that you did.

Lorena: We would go around to schools and churches. And I think Keith Bramlett's partner, Phil, and maybe Bramlett ... They're the flip side, remember, but we'd sit in a panel and they'd say, "When did you first know you were a lesbian?" It was like we were the first gay and lesbian people they'd seen. That was how limited the community was in those days.

Kitty: I'd forgotten all that.

Lorena: Yeah. I mean, I was like, "I'm so glad we're doing this work." To try to put a face on this scurious specter of the lesbian or the gay man in those days was the limit of it. And now I feel like I'm more in the community than I ever 00:48:00have been here. And that's more because I've started volunteering actively and with Youth OutRight.

Libby Ward: Do you feel as though the LGBTQ community encourages or discourages activism in community involvement?

Lorena: The community encourages or discourages activism?

Libby Ward: Yeah.

Lorena: That's a real hard one for me to answer, because I feel like there's so many subcommunities. And I didn't feel pressure from the community. I felt pressure, I guess, when Donald Trump got elected president. I really felt I've got to do something more than the work I felt I was able to do through the university. So that pushed me, but that isn't my first engagement with activism.

Kitty: Say the question again?

Libby Ward: Do you feel as though the LGBTQ community encourages or discourages activism in community involvement?

Kitty: I can't think-

Lorena: Yeah, I cant really ... Maybe I'm not that in touch or wasn't that in touch. I always felt supported for the work that I did. I think it's hard work and I think-

Kitty: Well, Lorena's doing this youth stuff, which I define very hard and difficult to relate to.

Lorena: And just anytime you're doing community activism, I think, the challenge of overcoming our differences and understanding each other and finding ways of supporting each other through those differences, becomes such a ... It's good work, it's really important work. So the kind of activism too that I feel is important now, it has to be intersectional, that we can't progress without 00:50:00thinking about racial justice, for example. That didn't answer the question. Yeah, I know how to answer questions.

Libby Ward: Oh yeah, that's fine.

Kitty: I like our people.

Lorena: Yeah, i guess I'm not-

Kitty: Like I think about my friends, like Jane. Jane doesn't. She just wants to go and eat.

Lorena: Yeah, it's like our group of gay friends are not ... And Richard and Eric ...

Kitty: What do they do?

Lorena: They're into the humane society, so-

Kitty: They do in the Montford recreation ...

Lorena: Our groups of gay friends is not a particularly activist group I suppose. Is that true?

Kitty: I guess.

Lorena: Running through along now. Yeah. I think we're all ... Maybe it's our stage of life too.

Kitty: Yeah.

Libby Ward: Let's see. Okay, I like this one. Did being part of the LGBTQ 00:51:00community bring you in contact with people of different class and race backgrounds? And how did that impact your circumstances or outlook?

Lorena: It's funny, a minute ago I remembered conversations in Charlotte and Cynthia's living room, trying to talk about what can we do to try to diversify? And that's back in like '87 or so. It certainly raised my awareness of thinking through social injustice. I don't know. Did it bring me in contact with people of a different class or race? Probably not in terms of my intimate, social circles are still quite segregated I think, both in terms of race and class, I guess. I mean, I don't know. That's not entirely true. When I think of our friends, maybe less with class, but generally we're pretty segregated in those ways.

Libby Ward: I'd like to go back to when you guys first met and everything. Can you tell me, do you remember meeting each other and what was your ... Yeah.

Lorena: Yeah, I was in a meeting at the summer camp and it was before camp started. And I had come from my job as a riding instructor in Washington with, come with the horses and with a friend, who was running the riding program and who was anxious about Kitty. I found Kitty made her anxious. So I'd heard about this Kitty person that she was worried about managing. And so I remember when you walked into the meeting and just the energy and the brightness at 22-

Kitty: Because I had already worked there a year. So I knew everybody and I don't remember Lorena though.

Lorena: Yeah, no, I was just one of the new people in the circle. But I do remember Kitty from that.

Kitty: So I don't have any actual real memory.

Lorena: It wasn't like love at first sight.

Kitty: I don't even remember meeting you first off. Yeah, you were just one of the counselors.

Lorena: Yeah, no, I mean, we were friends for like five years or six years before we even had sex and identified as a couple. So we had a very long courtship.

Libby Ward: Let's see. Do you guys have a favorite memory together?

Lorena: A lot.

Kitty: Oh my God, a lot. A favorite?

Lorena: A favorite? For us, favorites, it's traveling.

Kitty: Traveling. Having this house, our pets, our garden, our friends, our dinner parties. We were just looking at pictures. Lorena's a lovely photographer. And so we have a lot of nice pictures of dinner parties and gardens.

Lorena: Yeah, I can't ... Gosh, we have a whole load of wonderful memories. I mean, I'm really at the point in my life where I'm just seeping with gratitude. Can't get a head around how lucky I've been, and privileged.

Kitty: Because we're retired now. So it's like the promised land. It's just wonderful to-

Lorena: I mean, that we got together as a couple when we did. That we've been able to live together all our lives and yeah.

Kitty: Yeah, because so many-

Lorena: And the friends, and careers.

Kitty: Yeah, so many people you don't need ... There's an element of luck, I think, that you're at the right place in your life, and you're free, and you meet the right person, and you do commit early. But a lot of people don't know 00:55:00themselves very well and it doesn't work out. So we were just lucky too, but privileged and so that part's good.

Lorena: And if I think about where I was before we became a couple, and when I was so deeply closeted and full of self-loathing and ambivalence, I just feel incredibly lucky to have gotten through all that. And part of that is coming out. I mean, I think that's a huge piece of finding my peace.

Kitty: So yeah, we have tons.

Libby Ward: Let's see.

Lorena: There you look like me, it's great.

Kitty: Well, she told me not to smile.

Lorena: Don't smile.

Kitty: They say to you, "Don't smile. Don't smile. Take off your glasses and don't smile." I look like my mother.

Lorena: Oh God, it happens.

Libby Ward: Let's see.

Kitty: I know. God. It doesn't go out till March, 2029.

Libby Ward: Wow.

Lorena: We got time. We got time.

Kitty: Great.

Lorena: I can't even think about it.

Libby Ward: Oh my God. I do have a few questions about LGBTQ media representation, and how that's evolved over the years. That be all right?

Lorena: Yeah, sure.

Libby Ward: Okay, cool. So what have you noticed about LGBT people being portrayed in the media, and how has it changed since you were younger?

Lorena: Well, as I was saying before, there was just as if though-

Kitty: Oh, I'm sorry.

Lorena: I mean, there was Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares, was like the first 00:57:00gay sensibility that I encountered as a kid. I liked Hayley Mills and Doris Day. They're gay.

Kitty: Let's get together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lorena: Yeah. There was nada there.

Kitty: There wasn't much. I remember when there would be a gay character, or one of those movies of the week, it would be so exciting. And I remember when the Golden Girls, remember they had the gay episode.

Lorena: Yeah. So you knew if something like Personal Best was coming out, or Desert Hearts. And I'm talking about film here. But media coverage, growing up, I don't remember.

Kitty: It was very sporadic. It wasn't very-

Lorena: There were tomboys. And I tend to go to fiction in my mind, which is typical, but I think of the character in To Kill a Mockingbird, where there was 00:58:00space for me to identify with characters, I would. So tomboy kinds of independent girls and things.

Kitty: I remember my father ... This isn't media, but my father saying to me ... And I wasn't brave enough to come out at that point, but about the tennis player, what's her name?

Lorena: Martina Navratilova.

Kitty: That had heard about Martina, and what did I think about Martina? And, "Oh dad," and just running off. And I think back, that was a good opportunity to say, "Well, she's a lesbian like me, your daughter." But I didn't do it. So Martina was out.

Lorena: Yeah. I mean, it's changed enormously. And I remember the Ellen moment when Ellen came out as a significant, and that's fairly recent. I mean, I feel like-

Kitty: I don't feel like it's that far ago.

Lorena: That long ago. The big stunning moment for me was Obama's second 00:59:00inaugural, when he actually mentioned Stonewall and said something about gay and lesbian rights, and I was just blown away. But there had already been changes in terms of media coverage, I think, about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. And that was the point my emerging political consciousness, of course, at that time too. And just the brutality and the stereotypical and the negative kinds of press. And then growing up in South Florida, there's a woman named Anita Bryant who was a former Miss America or Miss Universe, Anita Bryant.

Lorena: And she had a Save our Children campaign, trying to ... The idea was that, and this is what I was raised with, that gays and lesbians were sexual predators and pedophiles. So that was the narrative, what I saw in the press and 01:00:00in the public media was save our children from the terrible threat of gays and lesbians who just want to seduce them and bring them into the gay agenda.

Kitty: And Jesse. Jesse ... What was his name? Jesse, the senator?

Lorena: Oh, Jesse Helms. Oh my God.

Kitty: Jesse Helms.

Lorena: Yes. He was horrific. He was-

Kitty: He would say awful things.

Lorena: Yeah, all through the 80s.

Kitty: That gay people should be killed and ...

Lorena: Yeah. This was all part of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Yeah, he said that there should be a concentration camp, so we could jail all gays and lesbians. So it was frightening. It was frightening. And then slowly the acceptance came. A lot through popular culture, less than journalism, hardcore journalism per se. In terms of my perception, I'd mark things the Ellen DeGeneres, or just having visible people that are out. Elton John.

Kitty: Right. And then there was a turn, where being gay seemed cool. And it was so strange. It felt strange have it be cool. And now it just is nothing.

Lorena: Well, I wouldn't say that.

Kitty: Well, not nothing, but ...

Lorena: But it's more regularized. It's more normalized now. It was absolutely atypical and abnormal, and usually couched in those kinds of ways up through, I'd say at least the mid '80s, '90s. Yeah, and-

Kitty: We used to have a cartoon of the baby being born, and the doctor holds it up, and says, "It's a lesbian." And it was so funny.

Lorena: I think it's in a Judith Butler book.

Kitty: Yeah.

Lorena: Yeah, it's a great one.

Libby Ward: Do you think that LGBTQ media has a future?

Lorena: Sure. And I guess I'm thinking what is LGBTQ media? Things like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy kind of thing?

Libby Ward: Yeah.

Lorena: Shows like that?

Libby Ward: And like Accurate Representation.

Lorena: Accurate Representation. Definitely. Especially when it comes to trans issues. I think people are so still just super ignorant and misinformed, and there's a lot of prejudice and hate out there. So I feel as though for us as white, upper middle class, middle class lesbians, we're in a different space I think, than a lot of other folks in the community, particularly trans people. So there's a way to go. Sure, sure. But again, there was an article years ago, 01:03:00early women's studies, Catherine Stimson, called Zero Degree Deviancy. And it was just like, "If something doesn't have any sense of deviance about it or difference about it, then it's going to become invisible socially. And it's only when different stands out to us that we think we have a need for that representation so that it's seen." So it's a funny play on invisibility, it inverts it. So I suppose if there were ever a world where everyone was just accepted as a human being on an equal level, if there were true equity and parity in the world, there wouldn't be a category for lesbian fiction, which is be fiction. So, I don't know. There's that.

Kitty: I'm just thinking about you having to write all this down.

Lorena: Oh yeah. Yeah, that's right. Sorry. Get the professor going, yeah. Sorry.

Kitty: Oh my God.

Libby Ward: It's fine though. I get to listen to it again and again. I really do like it, I do. Gives me great followup questions.

Kitty: Yeah, let's do it again and again.

Libby Ward: Oh my gosh. Do you think it's important that there's more representation in the LGBT in media? Do you think that's important?

Lorena: Oh, absolutely. I think visibility silence equals death. I still hold to that mantra. For us as a community realizing that it's easy to hate people if you have just a lack of reality, an aerial image of them. So the more representations of individuals and variation and differences in categories, I think the better.

Kitty: Yeah, just women. When you think about the movies, it's not about 01:05:00families or relationships or... It's about Spider -Man and 12-year-old boys.

Lorena: Although it's interesting how some of that ... What is that thing called, Steven Universe?

Libby Ward: Yeah.

Lorena: Yeah. I mean, there's stuff out there that's so cool and does such good work, that's a kids show.

Libby Ward: I think it's the cartoons.

Lorena: Yeah, it's a cartoon ... [crosstalk] Yeah, that's great.

Libby Ward: Let's see. I think I have one or two final questions. What do you see or what do you hope for for the future of, not per se, maybe Asheville or just overall community? What-

Lorena: Sort of a vision ... I'm going to go use the toilet and be right back.

Kitty: Okay, just go to the bathroom. I think it's hard because of the current political situation. So Lorena's much more ... She wants to read everything she can, and study it, and rails at the TV, and that just get stunned by it all, and just want to go and have a dinner party. Just to like, oh my God, we are so stunned by the current political situation. That isn't what you asked. What did you ask? Is the future ...

Libby Ward: Yeah, the future. Any politicals involved. Politics are involved in that, I'd say.

Kitty: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I hope we can get Trump out and get some more sanity involved. But it's interesting. My brother and sister-in-law, they live up in West Virginia. They're in a little tiny town. They're both attorneys and 01:07:00they're retired. And Lorena and I are flaming liberals, and going up to see them, and just trying to understand. Because they're more conservative and they're not feeling listened to, or they're politically correct, or that they're not a piece of it. And so Trump is almost like a thumb your nose at the whole thing. And that's hard for us to understand. So I guess I would hope that there would be more education, there'd be more critical thinking, that I would feel to get ... It's hard to feel like they're these people that I just can't even talk to. Talking about what do we hope for the future? So I hope that people could have civil discourse and be able to talk about differences. And so for me, with 01:08:00my brother and sister-in-law, I can see, I just avoid the topics.

Lorena: And see how it goes. We're going to go visit them.

Kitty: We're going to go visit them. Maybe the molar report [crosstalk 01:08:18]. We can see our hubris in that, they were coming to visit right at the election time and we had fantasies that we would have to be kind to them and not talk about it and help them, and then ...

Lorena: Deal with Hillary as president.

Kitty: Deal with Hillary as president, because they were struggling. And then it was us that worst-

Lorena: I was literally weeping the whole three days they were here. But that was national politics.

Kitty: It was right at the time. So that's what I would hope for the future, is that we could ... Because I know for Asheville, we're a real bubble and you just drive out 30 minutes, and in the big old sign that said, "Let Trump be Trump." 01:09:00So you're driving, where were we driving? Just the Kashi or something. So that's hard. But then I worked at the VA, and people are people. I would see these men and they would have their Trump hat on, but then they'd be terrified because they're going to have surgery and we'd help them. And so how do you reconcile all that? I don't know. Just going to have a dinner party. What would you say for-

Lorena: Yeah, for envisioning a better world-

Kitty: A better Asheville.

Lorena: My utopian vision, a better Asheville. If I think about Asheville, I have to go ... Again, the intersectionality to me is so critical, so that I see 01:10:00it almost more in terms of race and economic parity nowadays than I do in terms of gender and sexuality. Although I know we still have enormous strides, but I feel as though it's not as though I want to erase difference or have this [Lala] vision of the Zero Degree Concept that I referenced earlier. So I would want to see difference embraced, and I heard you say something about being able to talk to each other across difference.

Lorena: It isn't I want a world composed of liberal thinking people. I think we need the balance of opinions, but just to be able to understand each other and accept each other despite our differences would just be a lovely thing. And it seems like we're so far away from it. But I would want to see an Asheville that's more diverse and representative, and has a more visible African-American 01:11:00presence. I'd want to see schools truly integrated, again. I'm really feeling, the need for just the basic level of racial justice that we worked for so hard in the '60s. It's just not here. So I hate it to be taken us from the queer stuff to race, but I think it's all the same and the economics of it as well.

Libby Ward: Is there anything else you guys would want to talk about or add, just overall in general?

Lorena: I do have some photos that I'd be happy to share. I'll have to track them down and I can just send them to you via email or something.

Libby Ward: Yeah, that'd be perfect. It'd be awesome. Yeah, thank you. I just realized that I didn't get basic educational information about you guys, so Lorena, where did you go to college?

Lorena: I went to college at Brevard college, in '73, '74, '75, dropped out 01:12:00after three semesters. And then went to horseback riding school, and got certified as a horseback riding instructor in '76. Worked in that capacity until the '80s. And then moving to Asheville, started at UNC Asheville in '85 or so. Had a double major, German and English. And then did the MLA and then did the PHD at Chapel Hill. And then I taught at UNC Asheville from 2000 until 2018.

Libby Ward: Okay. Same for you.

Kitty: I went to Hollins for two years and transferred to UNCG Greensboro, got 01:13:00my nursing degree there. I had a BSN in nursing and then in '91, '92, I went to UNC Charlotte and got my masters in teaching and psychiatric nursing.

Libby Ward: I see. All right. Well, thank you so much.

Lorena: Yeah, appreciate your doing this work.

Kitty: How do we compare to the other couple?

Libby Ward: You did great. Kind of had to keep asking questions. It was nice for you guys just to keep talking.

Lorena: Oh yeah.

Libby Ward: This was so nice, yeah.

Lorena: We may have gotten off track.

Libby Ward: No, it's nice. I really like it. Would you be okay if we scheduled a followup interview?

Lorena: Oh, sure.

Libby Ward: Okay. I'm not sure when, maybe the next ... We go to Alabama and next week, so maybe the week after or ... If that works for you.

Lorena: Well, we are going to be going to West Virginia. Let's see. Kitty, next week you're going to Karen's, and then I think the ... Let's see ...