Oral History with Jim Cavener, Interview 1 (2019)

Jim Cavener:

Where are you working?

Corey Childers:

I'm working at The Hop in Asheville.

Jim Cavener:

At?

Corey Childers:

The Hop.

Jim Cavener:

Which one? West Asheville or Merrimon.

Corey Childers:

I'm working the one in Merrimon because it's closest to where I live. I just started, so I'm brand new, and I haven't done a full shift yet.

Jim Cavener:

You can't even tell me all the flavors, right?

Corey Childers:

No, absolutely not.

Jim Cavener:

Okay. I'll get along without them.

Corey Childers:

Okay, so just to start, I wanted to go ahead and 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 stop, take a break. In the interview, as you know, my name is Corey Childers, and I'm a UNC Asheville student. I'm working with two other undergrads and our faculty mentor, Dr. Amanda Wray.

Jim Cavener:

There are only three of you doing this survey.

Corey Childers:

Yeah, there's about four of us, I think. There's three undergrad students, including myself, and then Dr. Wray is also doing interviews. We are wanting to 00:01:00record oral histories from elders and representative members of the LGBT community in Asheville. Our ultimate goal is to document alternative histories and foster intergenerational connections. The collected data is going to be used to develop a needs assessment and an asset map for the LGBTQ+ people in western North Carolina.

Corey Childers:

I gave you the permission slip, so with your permission, all stories will be archived with Special Collections at UNC Asheville. If you want to remain anonymous, depending on what we talk about, we can talk about that as well. But just to go and get started, can I just get your full name and your date of birth.

Jim Cavener:

April 11, 1932. In two days I will enter my 88th birthday, my 88th year. My 87th 00:02:00birthday but my 88th year.

Corey Childers:

Awesome.

Jim Cavener:

The privacy issue or the confidentiality issue is irrelevant. I've been blatantly out for decades, and everybody in town who cares knows, so it's a non-issue. I would ask you, do you know people in Special Collections at the library?

Corey Childers:

We had one meeting with someone but I don't really remember his name [Gene Hyde].

Jim Cavener:

I have upstairs and can show you six or eight boxes, some of them are big boxes, full of gay publications that go back probably a half century. Some of them, and I'm not sure I could find them short of five hours digging through those boxes, are local. Over the years, there have been three different monthly publications, gay/LGBT publications here in Asheville, that I know of. In the last half 00:03:00century, there have been three. One was a single person's effort, a mimeograph, sort of old-fashioned in the '70s and '80s monthly. Then two were fairly slick publications, again monthly's over the years. I've got loads of them in boxes as well as gay publications from DC and Philadelphia and New York and LA and San Francisco.

Jim Cavener:

I don't know what to do with them. I hate to toss them. Somebody hinted, and your professor would probably know, that the library Special Collections at Ramsey Library might be interested in them. I would be happy to unload them.

Corey Childers:

Please, yes.

Jim Cavener:

As you can tell, it's a crowded house. This house is furnished courtesy of four previous houses, and it's sort of late Salvation Army, early college dorm. I mean, there's no dcor, no planning, no design. It's stuff from two other houses in California, one in Salt Lake City and one here in Montford, my former house in Montford, all come together in this six bedroom, five and a half bathroom house. I've got to start downsizing and purging and disseminating things.

Jim Cavener:

Nobody in the house plays the piano, but we have two pianos. This was a great-grandmother piano, and Becky's spinet is back there. We need to get rid of 00:05:00two pianos for starters. Actually, the chair you're sitting in is Rick's, the former housemate, current half resident here. Spends a lot of time here. A lot of stuff belongs to other people, but I really need, in addition to the avocado grove on the entry and the lemon grove in the kitchen and lots more plants that you haven't seen, I need to start purging. If you could give me a connection, somebody to talk to at Ramsey Library, I would be thrilled to have this stuff go there.

Jim Cavener:

You probably know that I wrote for the Citizen Times, I call it the Citizens Crimes, for 33 years. I also wrote for half a dozen papers in Southern California. My papers, which are literally just rippings and clippings of pieces 00:06:00that were in the paper, are the California stuff, is all in what alleges to be the world's oldest and largest GLBT archives which are in Los Angeles called the One Institute, O-N-E, One Institute. It's a part of the library of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Jim Cavener:

I knew socially a couple members of the board of that group over the years. They kept asking me for my papers as though I were writing literature and they wanted manuscripts or as though I were an academic star and anybody would care. I kept saying, "I don't write literature. I'm not a writer. I'm a newspaper journalist." Arguably what's in the paper is the first draft of history 00:07:00arguably, but I was writing mostly entertainment and reviews.

Jim Cavener:

Anyway, boxes of my California stuff are in an archives there and almost all of my stuff that I produced here for the Citizen Crimes over 33 years is in Pack Library downtown on Haywood Street, the downtown public library.

Jim Cavener:

This GLBT stuff, I'm not sure. I've never actually offered all that to them, the library and the North Carolina collection at Pack, but they know I'm queer, and they won't be surprised to know that I have the stuff, but I'd rather that it go to UNCA. UNC, actually the drama department for whom I've written reviews for 30 years, they suggested, the professors in the drama department, suggested that 00:08:00Ramsey Library would like to have my clippings and rippings and drafts, what I submitted over against what got printed. I was regularly reminded by my editors that we are a family newspaper, and you can't say that because I was always pushing the envelope and saying things that didn't get printed. Here are the drafts of the copy that I submitted as well as what got printed. Somebody sometime may care or be writing a research paper and want access to all that.

Corey Childers:

Sure. No, that would be awesome if we could get those. I know that they would absolutely love to have that. Would you go into what were some of the things you were writing that wasn't family-friendly?

Jim Cavener:

Well, actually in a drawer on the other side of this thing that looks like a 00:09:00tomb, a [crosstalk], is where I used to shove all the stuff ... well, there are boxes full. Let me have a quick look-see if any of this ... This looks as though it's my Destination draft. I did travel writing for a good while. I wish I had now set aside all the LGBT stuff, but I never did, and wish I had it assembled for quick ...

Jim Cavener:

Oh. Good grief, this goes back to 1985 where my thumb is. You are probably too 00:10:00young to know who Christopher Isherwood was. He was a gay author.

Corey Childers:

I definitely heard that name.

Jim Cavener:

He wrote the book, the Berlin Diaries, on which a Broadway play called I Am a Camera was based. I Am a Camera, the Broadway play, was the basis on which the musical Cabaret was based. Do you know of a Broadway musical called Cabaret?

Corey Childers:

I've heard of it, yes.

Jim Cavener:

Liza Minnelli did the female lead. Anyway, I knew Christopher and his partner who still survives. Christopher died. Way back in '85, I was interviewed for some radio program about Christopher Isherwood.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

Here's a picture of our congressman and me on my steps of my home in ...

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

Why am I blanking? Montford where I lived for 22 years. Here's a piece from the paper about me playing ... I went to the Martin Luther King I Have a Dream Speech on the Mall in '65 or some time like that. I'm not seeing gay stuff here. Here. Interestingly, the Christopher Isherwood shot was gay stuff, and here's a review of Cabaret from a local theater group years later by me.

Corey Childers:

Wow. It's so cool.

Jim Cavener:

This isn't particularly gay stuff. There's the congressman that I worked for. I think that was written before I worked for him actually. I can keep digging through things. I should have thought about this. I know what you've asked, and I wish I could think of good examples. I would make bold statements about queer things, and the paper just wasn't comfortable printing it. There you are. What can I say? I'm not seeing any of the gay stuff. Again, a lot of it is in 00:13:00archives in Los Angeles, though some of it is here. Yeah, I'm sorry I'm not seeing juicy tidbits.

Corey Childers:

No worries. That's just really interesting.

Jim Cavener:

Shucks, but virtually everything in these four piles here are stuff that I've written, bylines, old, old, old stuff. I don't know if you see, it's called Scene. It's the pull-out Friday entertainment section from the local Citizen Crimes. I had something in it for years almost every issue. I saved a few of them. A lot of them are downtown in Pack Library. Here's a review that I did of 00:14:00an opera. I even reviewed opera. I wish I had saved the queer stuff. It never dawned on me that anybody would care.

Jim Cavener:

This was from the California paper. I'm not quite sure why it's here and hard to read. Edward Albee is a gay dramatist.

Corey Childers:

Yeah, and Virginia Woolf in here too. Very cool.

Jim Cavener:

This may be the same ... this- [audio cuts out and then restarts later]

Jim Cavener:

[inaudible] at the paper. There were other gay people on the paper's staff, in advertising, in business and other places. And in all those years, I only once, I only had one person, one colleague or superior, who obviously was uncomfortable with the fact that I was queer and would have liked to have gotten rid of me. But he's dead and I'm not. And do with it what you will. He was a managing a editor back in the eighties and he was very uncomfortable with my being ... And what it meant, though, was any time there was a gay event, I got 00:16:00asked to cover it, and that was fine. I mean, I was happy to do that. And some other of the staff might not have been, although I don't know that, I think most journalists are open minded and progressive. And then, of course, journalism as a career is fading rapidly.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

So newspapers are closing right and left and ours is just a skeleton of what it once was.

Corey Childers:

So what brought you to Asheville? You said you were a California native, but how did you end up here?

Jim Cavener:

That may be a longer answer than you want, but-

Corey Childers:

I love long answers. Please, tell me all about it.

Jim Cavener:

Well, I am a third generation native, southern California, and I ... Total fluke, first of, both my mother and my father had very large families. They were 00:17:00one of seven and eight children and I was the first, and almost to date still, the only of the vast numbers of cousins to do any higher education. And I ended up in New Haven, Connecticut at a famous university, the name of which we have already mentioned because Peter Salovey, the president there, is a good buddy and he knows your new chancellor [inaudible] and has rigged that I represent the university. I get to wear his plumage, I get to wear his doctoral drag. And, in fact just today, I sent off an email to the president's office at Yale giving my dimensions so the gown won't be too long. And the cape won't be too crazy.

Jim Cavener:

Anyway, I ended up, by a strange fluke, at Yale and have two degrees in the history of higher education, interestingly, from Yale. I have four degrees, but two from Yale. And in the words of my late father, I went east to school and didn't have enough sense to come home when I should have. And the day after I had gotten my first degree from Yale, I flew to London and spent two years in Scotland and then a long summer in Geneva. I was at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and at an International Development Institute at the University of Geneve in Switzerland. Then I came back and was on the staff at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. And have since, with these degrees in the history of 00:19:00American higher education, I've been on staff, not faculty, of five different colleges and universities over the decades, lots of decades as we've established.

Jim Cavener:

And I lived eight years in New York City, eight and a half. And in DC off and on. I've been on boards and commissions in DC a lot. And in the early eighties, even after I had a home here in Asheville, in Montford, I worked in DC some and was on a state department commission, advisory commission. And on a board that was chaired by Henry Ford II and by George Romney, who is Mitt Romney's father, and would have been a good President, unlike Mitt Romney, the brat, who wouldn't have been a good President. And you can quote me on that. My politics are pretty blatant.

Jim Cavener:

And I knew Mitt Romney's parents, George and Lenore, pretty well. When I had ... What gives you jaundice? Hepatitis. When I had hepatitis in the eighties, early, mid-eighties, and was in the hospital at Bethesda, they came to visit me. And I have a get well card from George and Lenore Romney. He was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development then, Mitt Romney's father.

Jim Cavener:

Anyway, I've lived in all those various places. Was on a college staff in Ohio, south-western Ohio. In Appleton, Wisconsin. I worked at Yale after I got the second degree, I guess, and then I actually taught, rather than being in the administration. In most of these cases, I had administrative posts. And I 00:21:00developed a five year B.A. Peace Corps program for a consortium of small colleges. And I ran a student center in Vienna, Austria for American students studying in central Europe and throughout Europe, but based in Vienna.

Jim Cavener:

But after my father died in California, I went back to close down everything. It took me eight years to close down everything. I mean, not like we had lots of property here or anything. A very modest house, in fact. But I had emotional issues with closing down my homeland. And during that time I taught in a community college, Chaffey College, in Alta Loma, California. However, you don't have to name all these colleges, Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and 00:22:00Iowa State University, but forget it.

Jim Cavener:

But how did I end up here? So my second year at Yale ... or after my third year, one of those years, a friend from Pasadena, California, a classmate and I decided to drive back for the summer to California. And we had a classmate who was doing an internship in Winston-Salem at Bowman Gray medical school in Winston. And so we were going to drive fairly straight through, but we wanted to stop and see Bill, and take a shower. And we wanted to stop in Memphis and see Chuck, and take your shower.

Jim Cavener:

So we had this sort of route and I had always said if I ever could get south of DC, I'd been to DC while I was at Yale but I hadn't been beyond that, I wanted 00:23:00to go to Mr. Jefferson's university and Monticello. So we did, a late afternoon on a June, long day afternoon. Monticello was closing and they kicked us out and we got on the road out on the edge of Charlottesville and saw a sign that said Skyline Drive to the right, Blue Ridge Parkway to the left. And we were dumb Californians so we didn't know what Blue Ridge Parkway meant, but we got on it and were enchanted and drove all the way to Asheville, overshooting Winston. Had to go back to Winston to see Bill Eastman, and take your shower. But we discovered Asheville.

Jim Cavener:

And I started lusting after Asheville in 1957 and it took me twenty years to be able to move here. I visited often. When I was living in New York City I was 00:24:00director of an organization called the Commission on Youth Service Projects. And one of my board members worked for the Southern Presbyterian Church based in Atlanta, I think it was based in Atlanta and Asheville and Richmond, Virginia. But she was based in Atlanta. And every year she ran an international development conference at Montreat, which is sixteen miles from here, at the Southern Presbyterian Conference Center at Montreat. And she invited me each August to come as a resource person to this week long conference. And here I was on the edge of Asheville and I could, and I had weekends on both sides. And so I replenished my intrigue of Asheville.

Jim Cavener:

And, oh, and when I lived in Paris, I forgot, I lived two and half years in France, in Paris. And I was working for a Quaker organization called the American Friends Service Committee, which had recently won a Nobel Peace Prize. 00:25:00The only religious organization, maybe ever, to win the, at least the first to win the peace prize. Had nothing to do with me, they'd already won the prize before I worked for them. But I was working in eastern Europe, but living in Paris and my predecessor, two removed or one removed, was on the staff at Berea College in Kentucky. And I was encouraged to visit there and get briefed on it. And in my mind, coming from Connecticut or New York City or Southern California, eastern Kentucky and western North Carolina were right next door. So I snuck down to visit Asheville, again, on my way to Paris. And that kept going on.

Jim Cavener:

When I lived in New York, I was appointed to a State Department advisory commission. And the weird part of that was, oh, and by a very honorable 00:26:00Secretary of State, his name was, it's on the certificate on the wall up in my office, why am I blanking on his name? William R. Rogers from Buffalo, New York, an attorney and Secretary of State under Nixon, of all people. But William Rogers was great and honorable and he appointed me, however, Henry Kissinger didn't like William Rogers and Henry Kissinger, who was National Security Chief, wanted to be President. But because he was German born, he couldn't become President so the highest he could be would be Secretary of State. So he got rid of William Rogers and during all that period I was moving from New York City to Vienna and I was living abroad and I was still on this commission, three year 00:27:00appointment by Rogers.

Jim Cavener:

And thought, I'd heard that Rogers had been kicked out. And it sounds like Trump's, all over again, you know, revolving cabinet members. One got kicked out yesterday, you probably have heard?

Corey Childers:

Right, yeah.

Jim Cavener:

But then when Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State, there was no chance I'd get reappointed to this commission, I thought. I was wrong. Because when I was still in New York City, both my home and my office phone were being tapped by the FBI, and for understandable reasons, explainable reasons, but not defensible. And I knew that, at the time. And since an attorney friend knew how to play the Freedom of Information Act and got me all these redacted, page after 00:28:00page with stuff blacked out.

Jim Cavener:

But it was, I was on a UNESCO commission and, had worked with UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in Paris. And every two years they had conferences in Ghana and then Switzerland and in Sweden and various places. And one year it was in Bulgaria, in far eastern Europe in a resort town called Varna, on the Black Sea. And to get there, you had to go through a lot of eastern Europe. What I was doing those years, living in New York City, any time I'd get back to Europe, I'd buy a Volkswagen at the factory, for thousands of dollars less than they were here, and either keep it ... Oh, and if you drove it so many, 1500 kilometers or I don't know, if you drove it a 00:29:00certain distance, then you didn't have to pay new car tax when you imported it, on top of it being much cheaper.

Jim Cavener:

So I would, I went through a lot of Volkswagens during those years, but also I would buy them and then sell them to friends. And you know, I'd put on the requisite mileage, and this occasion I took Christmas holidays, this conference was usually early December, and added extra time, flew to Luxembourg on a cheap flight. Luxembourg Airlines, what's it called? No, it was Icelandic Airlines that landed in Luxembourg. Went and picked up the VW, then I drove through Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe, Hungary, Romania, somebody else and Bulgaria, to Varna and back. But in order to do that, I had to go to all those embassies in DC and get a visa.

Jim Cavener:

So it turns out that the FBI was photographing the license plates of every car that parked outside these embassies and the people who went in. And so they had a record of my going to all these communist countries and you know, and I'm queer and I'm a Commie and I'm a Quaker. I mean, I've got everything going against me, you know?

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

I grew up with Joan Baez, who you have never heard of, but a folk singer, a famous folk singer who was anti-Vietnam and she's doing her farewell tour now, at age 80, 90, you know, 79. Anyway, so that was where they got ... Oh, and I'd worked for William Sloane Coffin, who was a radical freedom writer, civil rights disturber and all.

Jim Cavener:

So I was on the shit list of CIA and FBI and I wasn't surprised at any of that. 00:31:00But what was the surprise was that Henry Kissinger reappointed me to this State Department commission, while I was living in Vienna, after I had been on all these FBI tapped phones and all that. So when I came back, I was on this commission ... I'm getting to why I ended up in Asheville. I told you it was going to be a long answer.

Corey Childers:

No, no worries.

Jim Cavener:

And the reality was that when I came back ... When you live abroad, if you want to vote, for instance, you have to have a home address to be able to vote from abroad. You can vote as a resident abroad, but you've got to claim. So I always claimed my family home in California. My parents were living and that made sense. And so the State Department assumed that when I came back I would go to California. Well, I guess I kind of assumed that too. And maybe even to have an 00:32:00international driver's license, maybe you have to have a US address, if you're American.

Jim Cavener:

Anyway, for whatever reason. But it dawned on me coming back from Vienna, from living in Austria, that I could live wherever I wanted to because the State Department would take me to and from DC. And I remembered I wanted to live in Asheville, here's my chance. And the Department of State was thrilled because the airfare from Asheville to DC was a lot less than from southern California, any one of four airports in southern California. So that's mostly, and kind of, why I ended up here.

Jim Cavener:

And if I want to be dismissive when people ask and don't have time and don't 00:33:00care whether they really know why I'm here or not, I say I was born and raised in southern California where it's normal to sleep under a blanket at night in the summer and the only place east of Denver and south of Nova Scotia in the US that you can do that is Asheville. And that used to be relatively true before climate change. Literally, my house in Montford, for 22 years, had no air conditioning and I was perfectly comfortable in it. That was then.

Jim Cavener:

The other answer is that I came to my senses early. Why did you move to Asheville? I came to my senses early. I think it's a great place. I have not regretted ever moving to Asheville. I have been free to travel a lot and so I still maintain ties elsewhere but it's a great place. Climate, typography, culture and ...

Jim Cavener:

Oh, so I arrived here with no job. I was on this commission and I was going back 00:34:00and forth to DC and on weekends I would go to the symphony or go to art gallery openings or go to the theater and I got to know, socially, back then there were two daily newspapers, the Asheville Citizen in the morning, the Asheville Times in the afternoon. And they were owned by the same company and they merged and became the same paper even before they called themselves the same paper. And I got to know the editorial page editors of those two papers, Will [Curtis] and Rick [Gunder], and they would pick my brains.

Jim Cavener:

I'd run into them at social things that were at the weekends and they'd pick my brains about what scenarios you're hearing on Foggy Bottom or on Capitol Hill. And I would come back with all kinds of great stories, like Ronnie was losing it 00:35:00and Nancy has to feed in as lines, which is of course true. Ronald Wilson Reagan was losing it and everybody anywhere near him knew that and she did feed him his lines for a long time. And that George Herbert Walker Bush was clearly a complicitor in the Iran Contra thing and he would be indicted and prison, not. But I mean could have been, should have been. And then what was his name? Tennessee congressman from the next congressional district over, which made it a local story kind of, would have become President. Speaker of the House becomes President after Vice President and President are impeached or whatever.

Jim Cavener:

And they loved these stories. And one Saturday morning I went in to the paper with some story, I don't remember what it was, and said, Rick was there, and 00:36:00said, I've got this story for you. And he said, look, I've got a double truck, which means two facing pages, tomorrow, Sunday, of opinion and editorial page. And I've got lots of room for it, but I don't have time to enter it, why don't you sit over at Will's computer, he's not here and you enter it, I'll stylize it and we'll call it a guest editorial. And so I started doing this week after week after week.

Jim Cavener:

Then Tony [inaudible], who was a 27 year old then, who for 30 years was the entertainment page editor, came down the hall one day and I was in there writing something and he said, I see you at all these cultural events and I wonder, we need a reviewer, we need somebody, I like what you write for Will and Rick, would you be able to review performing arts for us? And I didn't have enough 00:37:00sense to know that I didn't know how to do that. And so I said, sure. And 33 years later I stopped writing entertainment reviews. And that became what allowed me to stay in Asheville all these years, arriving without any means of support locally. So that's a very long answer.

Jim Cavener:

And during some of those years, during almost all those years, I was the only openly gay person on the staff. You know, we didn't talk about it a lot, but everybody knew. And I was close socially with some of the folks, Barbara Blake who wrote for 40 years for the paper and whose daughter is now the editorial page editor. Essentially, Casey Blake, I knew her mother before there was a Casey Blake. Anyway, that's a crazy long answer. But now you know.

Corey Childers:

Yeah, I'm-

Jim Cavener:

And early on it was obvious that this was a very gay friendly community, that it was progressive and open. And everyone knew then and now even the staff, but not the family, will talk about the fact that George Washington Vanderbilt was queer. Everybody knows that, who built the Biltmore Estate, and knew it then. And I thought, well, you know, if he built his country home in Asheville and could afford to live anywhere in the world, maybe Asheville's not going to be a bad place to be. Forty two years later it was proven to be true.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

Sure.

Corey Childers:

I'm just, I'm a little nervous that we're not picking up everything.

Jim Cavener:

Oh really?

Corey Childers:

So would you be comfortable either like leaning in-

Jim Cavener:

Hold it.

Corey Childers:

... or you can hold it.

Jim Cavener:

Sure.

Corey Childers:

Just make sure I'm-

Jim Cavener:

I'm sorry.

Corey Childers:

No, that's not your fault. I'm just getting nervous. I want to make sure we're getting all of this.

Jim Cavener:

Well, a lot of it you don't need. I'm not sure which way it's facing that.

Corey Childers:

So that's where the mic is, right there.

Jim Cavener:

Great. It's an odd looking mic-

Corey Childers:

Yeah. It's weird.

Jim Cavener:

... to my experience, but I'll, I'm happy to hold it or whatever.

Corey Childers:

Okay, great. Yeah. If you can just kind of talk toward it, I guess.

Jim Cavener:

So there were two or three gay bars in Asheville in the 70s. Can you imagine that? Bars were important then, bars aren't important now. But that was, you know, there was no internet. That was how people met and identified and bingo, queer town.

Corey Childers:

Yeah. I was going to ask you how you felt that, how you've seen demographic shift in Asheville, maybe? Like I interviewed with someone who was saying that there were a lot of gay bars around whenever they first started coming here, but then over time they've become less and less and the queer scene has become more pushed out, and I was just wondering how you, your personal experience with that?

Jim Cavener:

I don't read it. The stats are correct, but the judgment about it, I don't know that we're pushed out at all. There used to be many more organizations, gay organizations, and there was at one time, depending on how you counted, as many as seven gay bars in Asheville back in the late seventies, eighties, nineties, somewhere in there. I've forgotten, I guess not in the 70s, there were two or three. But among those seven there were, there was a cluster that had three in it and so they weren't distinct and set totally separate. One was a heavily lesbian bar and one tried to be a leather bar and one was just sort of a normal 00:41:00gay guy bar, but they were all under the same roof, a very large roof, an old warehouse, in a huge area. But O. Henry's, which is on Haywood now, was on Haywood too, but it was, it's on Haywood Road now, it was on Haywood Street next to Malaprop's, originally.

Jim Cavener:

And it advertises itself as the oldest gay bar in the Carolinas. And it's, very likely, true. It opened the month, or maybe two months after I arrived in Asheville. I had, there was no causal relationship here, but two Californians, one from Sacramento, one from Long Beach, but they were a pair, they were a couple, opened O. Henry's on Haywood Street. I guess, next to where Jewels That 00:42:00Dance, do you know beside the library, beside Pack Library, there's a jewelry store called Jewels That Dance, and it's owned by two dykes, two lesbian women own it. And they lived across the street from me in Montford. And one of them is a jewel smith and the other, Carol, does the business aspect of that.

Jim Cavener:

And next further down toward where Malaprop's is now, but Malaprop's and O. Henry's were together on Haywood Street in the seventies and eighties. I guess it wasn't until well into the 90s, or maybe even this century, that O. Henry's moved down on to where it is now. A man who lived on my street in Montfort, on Pearson Drive, Arthur blank, Art ... It'll come to me. Owned the old YWCA on 00:43:00Grove Street, which is now Scandals and that whole complex, he bought what had been, was built as the YWCA, then had become a private school when I first moved here in the seventies and eighties, and in the eighties sometime, Art [Fryar], whose brother is the County Commissioner, now as a matter of fact, from Black Mountain, but Art Frier bought that building and developed it into three levels of gay-dom, a restaurant and a party room and then Scandals at the ground floor. Art died of AIDS. And it's, I understand now, the building is owned by a gay, not a gay, a straight couple from California, a man-woman couple, who I've actually met, 10 years ago when they first bought into it. But they've made it 00:44:00very compatible to the gay community.

Jim Cavener:

But there are fewer, there's less need. I would not, I would not think, I don't feel like gays and lesbians have been pushed out of Asheville at all. Although there were, there was a political organization, the name of which isn't coming to me, but I can find it for you. And there were social organizations, there was a group that met every Tuesday night, year round at All Swells Cathedral, I call it. The episcopal cathedral down here, All Souls, and it was called CLOSER and it meant Community Liaison Organization for blah, blah, blah. You couldn't say gay and queer and lesbian back then, you had to have initials and euphemisms and 00:45:00CLOSER met every Tuesday night for 30 years, probably. And it was a really useful group for people who were coming out and needed to know where to meet other people who had, doing the same struggling with Baptists and other evil sources. And they, it was a great organization.

Jim Cavener:

And then there were supper clubs. There are three still. And there were three or four lesbian groups. They used, ALPS was one, a something, Lesbian Professional da, da, da. But there were two or three kinds of lesbian organizations that I was aware of and book clubs and hiking clubs and all sorts of structured groups. The supper clubs were, one in fact is tomorrow-

Jim Cavener:

... for clubs. One, in fact, is tomorrow night called Gorge-Us. Have you heard of Gorge-Us? Okay. Do you know the Hickory Nut Gorge out east of here towards Rutherford and Forest City? There were a whole pocket of lesbians and gays who knew each other who lived out around Lake Lure and Chimney Rock and Bat Cave. They created, maybe 25 years ago, a group called Gorge-Us. Gorge hyphen U-S. A play on words because they lived in the Hickory Nut Gorge. Slowly, that group has grown toward Hendersonville and Ashehville. The monthly supper called Pot Luck Dinners were originally always over in Bat Cave or Lake Lure or almost all 00:47:00the way to Rutherford. Slowly, they started growing into Fairview, out east here, toward Bat Cave and the Gorge.

Jim Cavener:

Now, the one tomorrow night, there's a pot luck tomorrow night in Hendersonville. I could give you the contact address and all and you'd be welcome. That one is lesbian and gay. Equally men and women. Well, not equally. It swings. Some years it's heavily women. It tends, always, if it's hosted in a gay male home, there will be more men who come. If it's hosted as tomorrow night in a lesbian couple's home in Hendersonville, there will, predictably, be more lesbians and more women there.

Jim Cavener:

I hope to go tomorrow night. I hope that Bill Bryant who lives a block away and Ron Presley and my friend, Drake, will all go. I need to get on the email and nail that and be sure. Rick works until five tomorrow but it doesn't start until 6:30 and I've got a big frozen pasta thing in the freezer than I can pull out and defrost and take. They don't have to worry about preparing food since some of them are working.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

Two of those three names probably should not be quoted. That I just said. I mean, referred to. One of them works in a very prestigious post in the city and all of his close associates know but it probably wouldn't be judicious to have 00:49:00that out. Rick works for Lowe's and, again, everybody who knows him knows. Thanks for the stove and the refrigerator, Mr. Lowe.

Jim Cavener:

Meanwhile, those groups are not flourishing. They're not as strong. Even those groups aren't as strong as they used to be. I don't hear of Alps. A-L-P-S. Something professional women. But I don't hear of the lesbian groups. Hardly at all anymore. You probably know Phoenix. There are trans groups now. It's sort of like in Quaker circles, it's a tired, old issue. There's no issue anymore. We 00:50:00won the battle. There's no reason to keep banging the drum.

Jim Cavener:

I'm assuming that with the trans group, which I don't hear of, I know several trans women in town more than I know trans men, interestingly. I don't know why that should be so in Quaker queer circles. I know almost as many trans men but I don't hear of programs being presented by Phoenix or by other trans groups now. I don't think that I've lost contact with the channels where I would hear.

Jim Cavener:

I would like to think and I think it's possible that the need just isn't there. The trans community know who each other are and, to some degree, they have 00:51:00gained some acceptance. The battle isn't over but in the larger community, for sure. But it's just not as much an issue as it once was.

Jim Cavener:

My perception is not that we've been marginalized or that any evil forces... Hell, we've got an openly lesbian County Commissioner. Everybody I know on City Council knows I'm queer and it's not an issue. We are blessed. That wouldn't be true out in some other communities. But I feel that I made the right decision in claiming Asheville 42 years ago and it's gotten better and better. You know the story of downtown that, in the 70s and 80s, downtown was all boarded up. There 00:52:00was no street life in downtown Asheville at all. The malls, the various three malls, had stolen all the business. You could walk down the middle of Haywood Street or Patton Avenue and there would be no danger of traffic hitting you.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

There wasn't any. Literally more than half of the shops were boarded up and the buildings were in disrepair. Patty Glazer, a Yale graduate woman architect in town, has remodeled and restored countless of the downtown buildings. The pioneers who rescued it. The first people who bought businesses and brought life back were gay.

Jim Cavener:

John Cram who runs... You probably know the Fine Arts Theater and Bellagio and 00:53:00New Morning Gallery and Bellagio. What's the other? Blue Spiral. All those art places. He owns a quarter of Biltmore Village and much of a whole block of Biltmore Avenue downtown. Used to live next door here and used to own the house across here. Within the first two weeks that I was in Asheville, I had spent nights in the house next door, courtesy of John Cram, who was already known to be an openly gay entrepreneur and very successful.

Jim Cavener:

Then the women across the street from me who started Jewels That Dance. Caroline and Paula, a lesbian couple everyone knew. It was not an impediment to their success. They were really the pioneers, lesbians and gays, in rescuing downtown 00:54:00Asheville. Without any question.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

I'm thinking of something that I'm sure you are aware of. Cyclically, there are three different times that I know there have been efforts to create an LGBT center. It wouldn't have been called LGBT 30 years ago. It wouldn't been called a gay center and, maybe, gay and lesbian, if you were lucky. But there have been these cycles.

Jim Cavener:

Do you know a trans woman named Yvonne? Very tall women. Very long hair. Very full hair. I just saw her at the drum circle this last weekend. She was, at one time, pretty much ran the Blue Ridge Pride thing. The Blue Ridge Pride has gone through cycles. You may know there was a state wide, in the late 70s and 80s, a 00:55:00state wide pride event, usually, late June because that was when Stonewall was when the prides used to always be.

Jim Cavener:

By that time, by late June, in the calendar year down in the Piedmont and the eastern part of the state, it was too hot to have a street festival by the end of June. Eventually, it became October. They do it now at the last week of September or October. There used to be a state wide one that would be alternately in Charlotte, in Raleigh, Greensboro.

Jim Cavener:

Three or four times, the state wide one was here in Asheville and it would be an all day event with a parade. A real parade with floats and all that. It was a 00:56:00big to-do, state wide. For some reason, a guy named John Short took over that state wide one. It moved to Durham almost permanently and it even, currently... Although, John has been kicked out of it in the last couple of years. It's in Durham every last weekend of September.

Jim Cavener:

But, periodically, every five years or so, it would be up here. Then when it wasn't, we tried to have our own. When it wasn't the state wide one, we would try to have our own on a related weekend, a different weekend, so we didn't compete for audience and participation. These were fairly impressive events.

Jim Cavener:

But in the last five years, the current structure of Blue Ridge Pride has really created this monumental, I mean, taking off over all of Pack Square and overflowing. Just elbow to elbow. Booze. I can't see how anyone could feel that the gay and lesbian community has been edged out or pushed aside with an openly lesbian County Commissioner, with gay pride overflowing at the seams.

Jim Cavener:

Two or three years ago, it rained out pathetically. Tragically. You were probably already on the scene and know that. Downpours. Torrential. Lost lots of money because they had signed contracts for entertainers and things and the 00:58:00crowd couldn't come. It was torrential rain. But the last two years is an amazing success, I think. We have some interrelationship with Greenville and Spartanburg. They have their own pride events and some people here go there.

Jim Cavener:

In those boxes that I'm happy to, Ramsay Library, special collections, if somebody wants them, are these old newspapers. Monthly's. Gay newspapers from Asheville. There were three different kinds. The middle one was called Community Connections.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

I don't remember what the last one that didn't last very long and has been gone 00:59:00for 10 years or more. I can't remember what it was called. But I know people who would know. If you need other people to talk to about the community, I could give you names and contacts and people who know as much or more than I, not many have been longer than I, but they've been more involved.

Jim Cavener:

A guy named Andy Reed. Do you know Andrew Douglas Reed? I can give you his email. It's reedroid@gmail. I'm almost sure. R-E-E-D-R-O-I-D. Andy is actually a native of Asheville who's mother taught at Carolina Day School before it was called Carolina Day School. His mother was a native born Russian, born in 01:00:00Russia, of a prestigious family and immigrated here as a child. Maybe the Russian revolution. I don't know. His father was washed out, ordinary European extraction American.

Jim Cavener:

But Andy was born and raised here. Went to Columbia University in the City of New York. Worked for NBC for a number of years as a fairly openly gay man. Worked on Saturday Night Live, I'm sure you would know of, with Lorne Michaels, who is the producer of-

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

... Saturday Night Live. Andy returned here about 25 years ago. His dad had died and his mother was ailing. He needed to come back. Andy was very much involved, 20 years ago, ballpark, in an effort to create an LGBT center. One of the 01:01:00cyclical, every five years or so, there gets to be an interest. You know the office over here on Biltmore Avenue and Doctors Park, and pride and two other organizations have that office.

Jim Cavener:

That's the most recent incarnation of there being a center. It sort of is a social center. You can drop in and hang out. But it's not the dream that they've had. I used to dream that they would have a library and I could contribute at all.

Jim Cavener:

Well, actually, in the library right behind you, there's shelves and shelves of books. From here, you don't see that there are books here and here and here and there. But there are shelves of lesbian, gay books. I'm not eager to part with 01:02:00all of them yet. But sometime down the pike.

Jim Cavener:

I wish there were an LGBT library in town. I'd happily say, "Sometime, these are yours." But the boxes of gay rags and newspapers-

Corey Childers:

We would love to have those. Absolutely.

Jim Cavener:

I'd love to pass them your pay. But, anyway, Andy would be a good person. Another would be Bill Miller. I can give you both the...

Corey Childers:

I think on the intake form, maybe, there might be a place where can just-

Jim Cavener:

To refer. Okay.

Corey Childers:

... write a bunch. Because it's kind of a snowball thing that we're doing right now.

Jim Cavener:

Sure.

Corey Childers:

We've got kind of a smaller list and then it's just grown immensely because people give us references. Yeah. We can definitely-

Jim Cavener:

Well, there are two or three people who have been added nearly as long as I and much more deeply than I. These people are full-time Ashevillians. I travel a lot.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

I still have ties in lots of places and I feel not quite a full-time Ashevillian. Though, damn near.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right.

Jim Cavener:

It's not that I'm not fairly well connected. I'm on a lot of boards and committees and I am fairly well connected. But these other guys, I guess, were more professional gays. I was never a professional gay.

Corey Childers:

What do you mean by that?

Jim Cavener:

Full-time doing it. Putting all your energy into being queer and working on queer causes. I've always had to do other things to support myself and have other commitments and involvements. I hope all of them are compatible. The ACLU, 01:04:00certainly. LGBT is top of the list of causes for the ACLU. But I don't spend all my energy and time on that.

Jim Cavener:

I have to admit, at one time... The North Carolina State Board of ACLU, is about 25 people, and, at one point, seven of us were openly queer-

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

... lesbian, and gay. A disproportionately large number. At one time, the local Western North Carolina Board that I'm going to a meeting of at 5:30 tonight has on it, I'm picking her up a block away, the first African-American woman City Council person. Back in the 80s.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

She lives a block away and I'm picking her up at 5:15 to go to this board 01:05:00meeting. But, at one time, the local Western North Carolina ACLU Chapter had five gay men on the board out of 15. Three of whom were Asheville natives. Asheville natives are pretty rare on any circle. Here were five. Well, there were five queers and there were five natives. Three of whom were in both camps.

Corey Childers:

Right. Right.

Jim Cavener:

Bruce Elmer, a local attorney, is a native but he's straight. But that's okay. Some of my best friends are straight. I have to remind them to behave themselves.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

We've wandered.

Corey Childers:

Yeah. I have tons and tons of questions.

Jim Cavener:

I'm listening.

Corey Childers:

All right. Let's see what's next. Well, if you want to, you could talk about where you grew up. Do you want to do that? Or we could talk about maybe your coming out story? If that's something that's interesting. I know that coming out isn't just a one time thing. So that's...

Jim Cavener:

Well, neither of those are western North Carolina related-

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

... because I was way out before I ever moved here. I lucked out in growing up in Southern California in the shadow, kind of, of Hollyweird. Not immediate but my family were not involved in the biz but I knew kids whose parents were and my cousins lived in Culver City on Sherborn. Three houses down, you could look 01:07:00across Ballona Creek and see the faade of Tara on the MGM. Tara is the mansion in Gone with the Wind.

Corey Childers:

Oh wow.

Jim Cavener:

1939. You could see the front of it was all that was built on this hill in the back of the MGM lot. Growing up on the left coast, or the best coast, I was damn lucky. I didn't know then that the whole world wasn't as progressive as where I was growing up. As my gay consciousness was coming around, everybody knew that Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson and I'm suddenly blanking. But countless of these 01:08:00matinee idols, of these stud actors, were queer.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Out in the provinces, nobody would imagine that that was true. It sort of made it okay. It was sort of like they had to be quiet because they had to market themselves in Nowhere Nebraska where it wouldn't work. But around Hollyweird, it wasn't a big thing.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

I really was fortunate to grow up in Southern California.

Corey Childers:

Great.

Jim Cavener:

Coming out still wasn't easy and was slow. I was a late bloomer in lots of ways. Even today, I actually and discreetly mentioned names and I shouldn't. All of my 01:09:00peers are in their 50s and the miracle is not that I claim them as my peers. I could be a delusional old fart who is in denial. But they claim me as their peer. That's the miracle.

Jim Cavener:

Hell, man. I've got artificial eyes. Cataract surgery. Plastic lenses. I got plastic eyes. I've got plastic ears. I've got three plastic teeth. Not the Bugs Bunny ones but some others. I'm more and more feeling like Eva Gabor from whom no parts are original. Yet, two days from being in my 88th year, my peers are in their 50s. I call them my keepers.

Jim Cavener:

Actually, Steve is 60. Who you saw.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Bill just turned 60. I can't say that they're all still in their 50s. But they were fairly recently.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

I have always felt younger, acted younger. I've always sort of felt quite protective. I can remember even in elementary school. When I was in fifth grade, I was sort of taking care of the third grade kids. If they were new in town or new at the school, I was concerned that they meet people. I don't know what that means. But I've always hung with younger people than my chronological age.

Jim Cavener:

In some ways, I think that grew into my late blooming. I was not sexually active 01:11:00until I was in college. Then only very rarely. Even in graduate school, I was not a flaming queen and racing around. I don't know if maybe my libido was less active or something. Maybe I needed to be eating more wheatgerm or yogurt or something or whatever. I don't know. Or was I shy? I don't think so. I don't think I'd been shy for a very long time.

Jim Cavener:

But coming out. I guess I never felt damaged. I never lost a job. I was never fired for being queer. I don't think I ever didn't get a job that I wanted 01:12:00because I was queer. I was told once that I, during affirmative action era, that I didn't have the plumbing nor the pigmentation for the job. It took me a while what the fuck that meant but it meant I was a white male and, therefore... But I understood that. I thought it was a clever phrase. Plumbing and pigmentation. But it had nothing to do about my sexual organization.

Jim Cavener:

I don't know if I ever could pass or tried. I don't think I try to butch it up now. Or I don't think I did then. Of course, in the hay days of bars, you got costumed and you wore cowboy boots or something. But, hell, that was because you were short and you wanted those three inches of height.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

Coming out, there aren't really any. It was sort of non-eventful or so gradual or so uneventful.

Corey Childers:

Were your parents accepting?

Jim Cavener:

That's a very good question. Yes. However, they didn't want to talk about it.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

It's interesting. They clearly knew and they may have squirmed for a while. They may have wished otherwise as it became obvious to them. They were certainly not dumb. They were not highly educated but they were aware. But they also were Californians. It wasn't a terrifying thing that it might've been in Nowhere Nebraska.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

It was, oh, well, shit. He's going to do be an orchestra conductor instead of a cowboy. I don't know what. I don't know. But I said that strangely because my dad did once suggest, "Why don't you study music and be an orchestra?" Maybe he meant symphony orchestra. I don't think he'd ever been to a symphony in his life. It wasn't wishful thinking. I don't know where that came from.

Jim Cavener:

But they knew and evidence that they knew and didn't want to talk about it was one time I was coming back. This was years later. I was coming across the country with a friend who I was sleeping with. We were coming to my family home 01:15:00in Southern California and we had stopped in Las Vegas.

Jim Cavener:

Bob had never been west and we had stopped in Las Vegas which is five hours from my Southern California home. Because he wanted to see Las Vegas. It was winter. It was coming home for the holidays kind of thing and bringing your boyfriend. It got dark at five o'clock or so so the lights of the strip and the excitement, we didn't have to stay really late but we stayed in Las Vegas through the afternoon until it was dark and then we drove home. We weren't going to get to my family home until after midnight.

Jim Cavener:

So my parents had gone to bed. There was a foldout bed on a, I don't know what we called that room, that they could have made for Bob but they didn't. They not only had left the light on in my room with a double bed, old fashioned, not queen size-

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

... not king size. Just double bed. And turned on the electric blanket. It was 01:16:00December. It was Southern California. But it was chilly in the evening and the electric blanket was turned on on both sides and the light was on. By this point in history, they'd decided what the hell, I guess. I don't know what they decided. But they never really wanted to talk about it.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

I don't know if they talked to other people about it. I doubt it. I think it just wasn't necessary to talk about.

Corey Childers:

Do you have siblings?

Jim Cavener:

I don't. I'm it.

Corey Childers:

Only child.

Jim Cavener:

My parents were much older. My mother was the second oldest of seven. Her older sister wanted six kids. No. How did it go? No. Her older sister didn't want any children and had six. My mother wanted six and they were married 20 years before 01:17:00they had me.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

And-

Jim Cavener:

They were married 20 years before they had me.

Corey Childers:

How?

Jim Cavener:

They were working on it, it just didn't happen. Then, I was a c-section kid and back then, I mean we're talking about 400 years ago, back then if you had a c-section you were discouraged from having another pregnancy because they did it awkwardly, I don't know why. But, anyway, the other story is that I was a hellion from the start and fixed it so there wouldn't be any more and I may have translated that my mother had a hysterectomy with my birth. I don't know what it meant. But, I'm it and my parents were 40'ish when I was born.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

I'm trying to make this germane to western North Carolina and I-

Corey Childers:

It doesn't necessarily have to be because we're trying to figure out just the history of our elders in North Carolina. So, whatever story, I interviewed someone whose from up north and they had only been in Asheville since the 90's. So, it really, I just want to hear your story and what do you want to talk about. But it doesn't necessarily-

Jim Cavener:

Well, you've heard some of it.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

Triggers some more, what are some of the other directions we might go?

Corey Childers:

So, I know you've talked a little bit about, okay, here's a cool one, did you participate in, or do you have any memories of movements that came out of 50's, 60's and 70's? Like the civil rights movement, gay liberation movement, anything like that?

Jim Cavener:

Very much both. I mean I've been a political activist since, long time. I was living in New York City in June of '69 and the irony is, I was working sort of 01:19:00at the UN and I lived on the upper west side and the UN is at midtown on the east side. I was riding the 104 bus and I could take subway from two blocks from my home to a few blocks from the UN. But I had to do two changes and when you do changes anywhere near midtown New York, you end up maybe standing if it's rush hour. If it's morning and going in and afternoon coming out, as it would have been. So, I took the 104 bus which took twice as long to get there but I would get a seat because I was sort of at the north end of it's start. I could read the New York Times and it would take me that long to read the New York Times to get there.

Jim Cavener:

On one of these occasions, okay, Judy Garland died in London. Judy Garland was a native, you know Judy Garland?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Her daughter Liza was the star of the movie Cabaret, it all come together, finally. But, Judy Garland was the youngest of three sisters, the Gum Sisters from somewhere in Minnesota. They moved to a small town in southern California, their father was trying to market them into show business. For reasons that I don't fully understand, the gay icons of Hollyweird, aside from the studs, the Rock Hudson's, the women, I don't know what made Judy Garland and Bette Davis and Barbara Streisand and you could name the more recent, I'm talking middle 01:21:00ages once. Why were these gay cult figures? Why did they have such huge gay audiences? One theory is that Judy Garland was a tragic figure her whole life and she was messed up and used and much married and abused and drugged, literally to lose weight. She was a mess and had a really unhappy life and yet she portrayed all this, ha-ha stuff and it wasn't true. Maybe that the gay community identified with her struggles. But Bette Davis, do you know the name Bette Davis even as an actress?

Corey Childers:

Vaguely.

Jim Cavener:

She was a bitch. She was a very strong woman, would be the kind way to say it. 01:22:00But she was a pushy broad. She was a terror on wheels and she also had an enormous gay following. So this is not a woman who is a victim. So, I can't figure out these various... However, Judy Garland died in London, her funeral was in New York City, maybe because two of her three children were living in or near New York City, it never made sense to me. She lived most of her life in California, in southern California, where her father had brought her to market her and her sisters to showbiz. Ew. But her funeral, one afternoon I was on the 104 bus coming up the west side and we're supposed to, 5th Avenue goes south and we were on Madison Avenue, going north. Suddenly, the bus turned off of Madison 01:23:00Avenue and there was this huge crowd of people at 74th or 77th and 5th Avenue, in the streets. The street was blocked. There was this huge crowd of people, at the time I didn't perceive that it was heavily male or heavily gay, though it apparently was. I later realized, I mean I knew because I rode a bus five days a week up Madison Avenue and on this corner, on the northwest corner it was the Frank C. Campbell Funeral Home.

Jim Cavener:

Well it was Judy Garland's funeral that afternoon. Something like 20,000 gay men had come, they weren't invited to the funeral, they couldn't get in to the 01:24:00funeral but they blocked the street. It may be 2,000, it may be 200, I don't know. But I could see a whole lot of, I could see the street was blocked and I only learned later what that was all about. Ironically, I looked it up, I Googled it and gotten the dates in the past because I wrote something, it was published in the National Trust or Historic Preservation actually about his causal relationship between Stonewall and Judy Garland's funeral. The causal relationship is that the next night, here were all these gay men discovering were multitudes. The next night, the drag queens were busted in the Stonewall on Christopher Street and they realized what potential power they had. I genuinely 01:25:00believe and I've been told by people who are more involved in both, because I was very out by that time in New York City and it was a very dangerous, in retrospect, but we didn't know that time. I mean it was a dozen years before the AIDS epidemic was visible but the virus was maybe around even already, between '69 and '81. '81 was when it became public and '83 was when it was named, it was GRID, gay-related da, da, da, something until it became HIV.

Jim Cavener:

Anyway, suddenly, the gay male population of Manhattan realized they had power and they weren't going to take it anymore. Part of the instigation of that or 01:26:00the realization of that was this, however many thousand gay men trying to get to Judy Garland's funeral, or at least showing their affection and sorrow and da, da, dum, grief. I think the causal relationship is there. It's a coincidence at minimum and I think it is alleged by people who were more involved than I. I didn't know of Stonewall for two or three days. The next day, or the day after, the New York Times had about a four or six inch column about a little bit of a disturbance on Christopher Street the other night, kind of story. It didn't make headlines, at all, in retrospect. It went on for several nights. There were 01:27:00people coming back, bigger crowds coming back opposing the police action.

Jim Cavener:

I was a subway ride away, I was on the upper west side, this was on the slightly lower west side, but straight down the BLT subway. I could have been involved and I didn't even know of it. It wasn't because I didn't know the bars on Christopher Street, I knew the bars on Christopher Street. I've forgotten what nights of the week any of that were, I don't think it was weekends or I might well have been there, but not necessarily. I was all over the city on the weekends.

Jim Cavener:

So, yeah, in those years and subsequent years, I was very much bi-coastal, among my other perversions I'm bi-coastal. Don't tell my grandma. I was in all of the 01:28:00dangerous cities, not wrong, doing most of, many of the most dangerous things, in terms of HIV but not all. I somehow, I mean I knew the gay communities of Houston and Atlanta and San Francisco and L.A. and D.C. and New York, I lived in three of those. I had friends in all of them and it was a very lively scene and I was a part of it. When HIV became apparent and people knew what that was, I was terrified because there was no question that I would have been exposed, having been in all those hot beds of action and again, doing most, but not all, of the most dangerous things. Not wrong things, but dangerous things. I 01:29:00postponed getting a HIV test for a very long time. Every time I'd get the sniffles or have a night sweat or anything, I was sure, I think I mentioned that I had hepatitis. Hepatitis is transmitted sexually as well. I mean, that's not the only way, I probably got it in Provincetown. Do you know about Provincetown, Massachusetts being Cape Cod and Provincetown, like Key West or Rehoboth Beach. I don't know, what are the gay mecca's that your generation would know?

Corey Childers:

I almost like to want say Miami maybe, I don't know. I don't really know.

Jim Cavener:

Well anyway, Provincetown, Massachusetts is as decades been famous as a gay mecca. I was there and did some dangerous things and ended up with hepatitis. 01:30:00Which is moderately scary but I had good medical. Well, I was at the Department of State in D.C. when it was diagnosed and I was immediately taken to Bethesda and had, it was Dr. Kissinger, Herr Dr. Kissinger, Heinrich, Henry Kissinger's personal physician who diagnosed it. A funny coincidence, I was there for a commission meeting and felt faint and almost passed out and was taken to the infirmary and here Dr. Wulff looked at me and saw yellow in my eyes and said, "You've got liver dysfunction and you probably have hepatitis and you need to get to Bethesda." He said, not knowing that I didn't work at the Department of 01:31:00State, that I was there for a meeting, he said, "Whose you're physician here?" I said, "Well, I'm not from here." He said, "Well do you know a physician here?" I thought, I happen to know a gay doctor here in town. Knew him socially, had never had any reason to see him professionally and I said, "Bob Berschbach," this guy, I don't know his first name, it's Dr. Wulff and he was Heinrich Kissinger's personal physician who traveled with the Secretary of State all the time. He said, "Oh, I know Bob." Without looking up his number, he dialed Bob Berschbach and said, "Bob, this is," He might have said his first name, but I don't remember. "This is Wulff at State, I have a friend of yours here and he needs to be admitted to Bethesda hospital, can you pull that off for us?" Or, I 01:32:00don't know what he said. That was an interesting fluke.

Jim Cavener:

Actually Berschbach and I played sexually at a given point, not then, not for awhile. But small world, funny world. But, finally I did have an HIV test and I was terrified. Back then, this was in California actually, in the 90's, in the 80's, early as 90's. A decade into, I finally broke down and got the test. I didn't have convincing symptoms, I just decided I need to know and be treated if needed, although I was terrified. Convinced, convinced I had too many opportunities to be exposed not to be. So, I got the test and back then it took 01:33:00two weeks to get the results. Most miserable two weeks of my life. I had a friend who was an AIDS counselor. He was sort of a sex buddy but not much recreational sex, he was a really good man and friend. So, on the day that I was to get the results, I arranged to spend the evening with him because I was sure the results were going to be bad. His whole practice was AIDS counseling for Pasadena AIDS project group, I've forgotten what the organization was. But the reason I knew him was I worked with that and the L.A. gay AIDS group, AIDS Project it was called.

Jim Cavener:

Here I've worked a long, well I lease my Mumford house to, do you know WNCAP, 01:34:00the Western North Carolina-

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Yeah. How many years ago? 30 years ago, I leased my Mumford house to WNCAP to be an AIDS residence.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

Have been on the board, I'm considered an honorary board member of WNCAP, I'm not very active anymore. But yeah, I've been involved in some of these things. So anyway, I went back to the clinic, this very earth mother sort of woman, frumpy, social worker, nurse, I don't know, I didn't care what her pedigree was came out and got me. Came in and closed the door and I thought, oh yeah, that's a bad sign, closing the door. She said, "Well, your results are back and you're negative." The word negative means bad to me.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

She had one hell of a job trying to convince me that negative was good. That I was free of the virus. That I didn't have to worry. I was in such disbelief. So I made my way to La Canada which is a Pasadena suburb to the home of this friend and we spent the evening and the night, he trying to convince me that negative was good. But I went to another clinic within days and got another test, I was in such denial that I could not be exposed, I had to be. The irony is, I'll show you before you leave, I have a table, a shrine of my partner of a quarter of a century who about that time, a little after that, this is early '90's, I met 01:36:00Allen and we got involved. Seven months after we were involved, very involved, we owned this house together, he and his partner, well under probably your wine glass are two Mickey Mouse things, two Disneyland things. Do you see two cards, yeah, those are medallions. Do you know the name Mouseketeer or do you know the name Imagineer, Disney Imagineers? Okay, Allen was an Imagineer. He worked for Disney.

Corey Childers:

Oh wow.

Jim Cavener:

He was a special effectS guy for them and he worked on both Disney World and Disneyland and these are commemorative medals that the people who worked on them got. He was arguably the foremost water featured designer in the world for two 01:37:00decades. I don't know if you know the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City but the big fountain in front of it, he designed. He restored the Prometheus Fountain at Rockefeller Center. He did the L.A. Music Center fountains and lots and lots of resort hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. But what big cities do you know and I'll tell you what, do you know Atlanta?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Do you know the Olympic Circles in Centennial Park? Allen engineered and designed that.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

Et cetera and you name the city and I'll tell you the fountains that he did there. All over the world.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

In Israel, in Saudi Arabia, in Mexico City and Hong Kong. Which cities do you know and want to know what fountains Allen did? So the painting of the African-American women and kid, Allen painted in high school, a lot of years 01:38:00ago, the photo to the right of it that you can't see for the reflections is Allen in the time warp. Do you know, what's it's called at Disney World?

Corey Childers:

Epcot?

Jim Cavener:

Epcot, so you know the big round-

Corey Childers:

The ball?

Jim Cavener:

Geodesic dome, not a dome, orb. Do you remember an escalator or elevator that you go up to get into it?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

That's the time warp tunnel, this is Allen in the time warp tunnel prototype in Glendale, California where it was all invented near the Disney Studios. They had a, what do you call it, research and development plant and we called it the 01:39:00Skunk Works. The secret place where they were inventing Disneyland and Disney World and Epcot and all that. It was not to be known, it was very secretive, like Lockheed developing jet planes, blah, blah, blah. There was this little bronze plaque by the door of a building in Glendale that had been the Glendale Municipal Airport. Do you know a movie named Casablanca?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Did you ever see the movie?

Corey Childers:

I don't think I've ever seen the movie but I know of it.

Jim Cavener:

Okay, well the famous Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart movie, the airport scene, very famous scene was filmed at this very building, which was then the Glendale Metropolitan Airport or some name. The airport tower and the buildings, later LAX, the big airport became Los Angeles' airport. This building Disney 01:40:00bought and the little plaque by the door is W.E.D. and that's the only identification and it stands for Walter Elias Disney and this was this research and development plant that the whole Disney enterprise had and Allen worked in it. That's where they built this time warp tunnel prototype. That particular photo has been through two fires, one in his office in Studio City at Universal Studios in L.A. And one upstairs here, the top floor of this house burned in 2006 and that photo was in both and I've rescued it twice and rehabbed it and had it reframed.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

Yeah, anyway. I'll show you, do not leave this house without looking in the 01:41:00dining room at the display, a shrine to Allen of photos of his life. I think this is germane, he fell in love with Asheville, I had that in my Mumford home here. When my dad died I went back to California to try to wrap it up and come back to Asheville soon and eight years later, I'd gotten very involved with Allen and he then on his way to Saudi Arabia or wherever he was flying east to, would stop off here when I was back for the summer or whenever. Fell in love with Asheville and said, "We've got to move to Asheville." So for some years he was designing fountains from the top floor here for Victoria Peak in Hong Kong and for Tokyo Dome and anyway.

Corey Childers:

Wow.

Jim Cavener:

That's part of the gay Asheville thing. It's attracted a lot of very prominent people, lesbians and gays, many of whom don't want it known that they have homes here. They often have homes elsewhere as well, we had a home in California at the same time and we're being bi-coastal. No, no, horrible shame. You know that Gladys Knight of the Pips lives here. Do you know even who Gladys Knight is?

Corey Childers:

I know.

Jim Cavener:

Soul singer.

Corey Childers:

Yeah, Gladys Knight lives here?

Jim Cavener:

Well she lives in Fairview but yeah.

Corey Childers:

Wow, I did not know that.

Jim Cavener:

Over the years Andy McDowell, a name you probably don't know but anyway she lived in Biltmore Forest and there are some semi prominent, well David Geffen is probably the richest gay man in the world and owns Jack Warner's old Beverly 01:43:00Hills estate in California. The Symphony Hall in New York City, the New York philharmonics performance space is the David Geffen Theater. I mean he can write hundred million dollar checks and put his name on things like what used to be Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in New York is now David Geffen Hall. His former lover lives in Black Mountain and David Geffen has his name on a theater in Beverly Hills. His name is on anything he wants it. Oh, the hospital at UCLA, the hospital where Ronald Reagan died, the hospital, big, posh hospital is now named the David Geffen, or it may be the medical school. It's either the hospital or the... Anyway, his former lover and long time partner lives here and there are a lot of gay people like to live here because it's a good place to 01:44:00live and accepting as well as all the other reasons to live here.

Jim Cavener:

Proximity is a good reason, we're within a days drive of something like two-thirds of the population of the U.S. It's equal distance from Asheville to Miami, New York, Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans. Roughly, I mean within 100 miles. Yeah, people on the left coast, every time there's a hurricane they will fret about me and are you okay? I get emails and phone calls from friends. Yeah, the hurricane is 300 miles away, hurricanes don't like mountains, we don't have tornado's, we don't have earthquakes, this is Asheville. They say, " But you're 01:45:00on the coast aren't you?" I point out that Asheville is due south of Cleveland. Cleveland is in the Midwest. Think about it, we're not east, we're not on the coast. It's okay, we're safe. It's a great place to live.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

I've never regretted casting my lot here.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

More questions? I don't know how we get off on tirades, but.

Corey Childers:

No, I love it, it was great. Well, I know that you're obviously super involved in a lot of political activism and in the community but do you feel as though the LGBT community encourages that activism? Did you feel inclined to be involved because of your identity as a queer man?

Jim Cavener:

Hmm. Well, I was, you mentioned civil rights a long time ago and very active in 01:46:00the '60's. It's funny, three years apart, in '64 was the summer of, what was it called in the southeast where countless students and young people went Freedom Riders and all that.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Then summer of '67 was the Summer of Love in San Francisco and hippie, freaky, hate, Ashebury, all that. I was very much involved in both those summers, actually. They were the summers on either side of my living in Paris for three years. I lived in Paris from autumn of '64 to spring of '67. Then back and before I'd gone to those pretty interesting periods of time in our nations history and social history. At the end of the summer of '67 I bought the house 01:47:00in Mumford. That is, in fact, that photo that you can see on the wall, is the house in Mumford that I leased to WNCAP for eight years. Long after we had moved, bought this house and moved here.

Jim Cavener:

So, yeah, I've been politically active, I got an award, I think it's covered up by the shrine to Allen of a half century of civil rights and human rights and ACLU activism. From literally from 1962 to 2012, that would be 50 years I think. It's true. I've been...And it's true. I've been rattling cages for a long time.

Corey Childers:

So, what do you think made you want to get involved in that? I mean, what gave you that calling to be involved?

Jim Cavener:

Well, I mean, in the gay rights thing, I was queer. And there were people that thought that was not nice, and they needed to change their mind. So there.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

I mean, self-interest, in that case. Enlightened self-interest in civil rights for African-Americans and people of color, and now me, too. It needs doing.

Corey Childers:

Right. Do you feel that being a queer person, being involved in the LGBT community, helped you meet different people of different backgrounds, race, class, ethnicity?

Jim Cavener:

Well, certainly diverse sexualities.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

But I'd figured out some of that. Hmm. That's an interesting question. Yes. Yeah. I guess along the way, in doing all those things, I met the right kind of people, the people I wanted to hang out with, the movers and shakers. It's funny. I mentioned Bill Coughlin, that photograph of the guy with his head in his hand. His very own son, Coughlin Jr., I worked for him at Yale for a couple of years, and he was a freedom rider, literally. He was on the first bus that 01:50:00went to Selma and Montgomery, and got burned. I mean literally, the bus was set on fire and all that.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

And, yeah. As I think about it now, a lot of the... Not all, but... Well, all that I would have hung out with very long, people I wanted to hang with, were radicals and disturbers of the peace. And it needed to be done, and I was comfortable doing some of it.

Corey Childers:

Did you get pushback at all, being white and wanting to be a part of the civil rights movement? Were there people who were very against that?

Jim Cavener:

Yeah, there were several camps. I mean, there was the Malcolm X camp, and the 01:51:00Martin Luther King camp. And the Malcolm X camp, I was guilty, and there was no way I could be a part of that movement, by pigmentation. I was pigmentally challenged, and now I'm going to... But I think we were so unaware of all the nuances of white supremacy and white privilege. I mean, we weren't really unaware, but we hadn't had it focused. I mean, we weren't in denial. We just hadn't realized the extent to which. But I think back then, there was a lot more appreciation, gratitude, surprise and shock on the part of African-American 01:52:00communities, that any honkies from the North would give a shit, and would bother to come to try to do something useful.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

And I think anymore, it's a blurred... You know, another honky do-gooder coming in. Maybe they have their act together, and they probably don't, and they don't really understand. And back then, I think... I took groups of students from Iowa State University to not historically black, but still totally black colleges in the South, in Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana, Talladega, Tuskegee. I find it interesting that those three are all T words. But, Le Moyne College in Memphis. 01:53:00You know, to do two things. One, to make a statement that some honkies care, and two, to take white students from the Midwest, who generally realized Iowa's a very interesting state. They're isolated in the interior, but because I, being a career journalist... Third career, by the way. But, 33 years, until last February... that I attribute the media to a lot, and newspaper media used to have more clout than it does anymore, for good reason. It doesn't have any clout, because it isn't worth clout. I mean, it's not doing anything useful.

Jim Cavener:

But the Des Moines Register, statewide newspaper in Des Moines, was very progressive. And I think that students from Iowa, at Iowa State University, were open more to the fact that they were isolated, and they really did need to get out and experience the real world. The fact that I had moved there from Switzerland, and had lived in Scotland... I'd left there to go to Paris, strangely... So, Ames, Iowa was between Switzerland and Paris, and I think they were sort of in awe of the fact that I was willing to spend three and a half years at Moo U, Cow College, the University of Iowa, was the... Well, it doesn't 01:55:00have a good parallel here. Mostly Chapel Hill. And I was at the North Carolina State. I was at the land grant college.

Jim Cavener:

And when I left... So, they were open and eager to make these trips, social action trips to see what's really going on in the world. That was no problem in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Iowa, because there was point zero something percent people of color.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

And they'd heard, they'd seen on the Huntley Brinkley report on NBC News, they had seen references to all this violence going on about people having different colors, and they were puzzled by, "What? What's that all about?" And they were eager and open. When I left Iowa State University, I had former students who I 01:56:00had influenced. I didn't own them or wind them up in the morning, or whatever, but who were in Japan, India, Colombia, South America, and Germany. Four former students who'd been involved in my social action cage rattling were out in the world. One of them... Very bright, very handsome, very cool... Oh, he has a PhD and lives in Raleigh now, and was on the NC State faculty, Leon, for years, and retired now. I mean, even though I was in a professorial position, and he was an undergraduate then. I've been on Medicare for 22 years. And so, even students then are retired now.

Jim Cavener:

But anyway, Leon wanted to be... He was a candidate for officer's candidate school, and would have gone to Annapolis and been a naval officer. And I persuaded him to join the Peace Corps, and go to South America instead. I won, and he's been grateful ever since, and still in touch with me and [Sally]. When they were married, I was literally in Paris when they were married in Maine. She was a Maine-iac. They had met in Colombia, in Bogota. No, in another city, that I'm not thinking of the name of. But I was invited to the wedding, but I was living in Paris, and it wasn't practical to come to Maine to a wedding. But I sent a telegram. Can you imagine? I know you've heard of telegrams.

Corey Childers:

Right. Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

Nobody knows about telegrams anymore. I sent a telegram saying, "Congrats." You 01:58:00had to use every word. Costs $10 or something to send overseas telegrams. I don't know how much it cost, but lots. So, you condensed. You tightened up. You didn't use extra little words, connecting words at all. "Congrats your occasion. Regrets, my location." And you know, it said it all.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

"Enjoy, congratulations, and fuck, I'm trapped on the other side of the ocean. I don't think I'll be there. Sorry."

Corey Childers:

Hey.

Jim Cavener:

Whatever. Speaking of telegrams, it's funny. That reminded me, there's a guestbook from... I don't know where it is right now. Maybe in the guestroom, or maybe in the entry hall... that has several interesting signatures. One of them is Charlie Chaplin's first child bride. Do you know who Charlie Chaplin was?

Corey Childers:

Yeah, the comedian?

Jim Cavener:

Yeah.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

He was legendary for impregnating 13-year-olds, and stuff like that, and he was forced to marry. She was 15 when they met. They married when she was 16, because her uncle was a very prominent San Francisco attorney who forced him. He was already famous, a world-famous actor, and forced him to marry her because he got her pregnant. And so, his first two acknowledged children were by Lita Grey. Her real name was Lillita MacMurray, but he changed her name to Lita Grey, and put her in a movie, and impregnated her and married her. They were sort of married for two years, and then divorced.

Jim Cavener:

But, she was a friend of mine. That's why her name is in the guestbook. And she pulled out... She used to show me her memorabilia, and of course, she had a lot of it. They had lived next door to Douglas Fairbanks and... What was his, Mayfair? Pickfair? Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Do you know those names? Early, early Hollywood stars. Early, early. And famous, famous. I mean, they were at the top. They were married, and Lita and Charlie lived next door, and on Thursday nights they always had dinner together... She tells these funny stories... in Beverly Hills. They were the ones who created Beverly Hills. Their two homes started the whole Beverly Hills phenomena in the late teens of last century, 100 years ago now. Did you ever hear of an actress named Paulette Goddard?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (negative).

Jim Cavener:

One of Charlie's many wives was Paulette Goddard, and when Lita's son and namesake, Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr., died, Lita got a telegram from Paulette Goddard, who lived in Rome then. Don't ask. I don't know why she ever would want to live in Rome, but... I mean, Rome is a wonderful city, but... Anyway, and Lita had this yellowed, crisp... I mean, I was almost afraid to touch it... telegram of condolences to Charlie's previous wife's child's death. He wasn't a child. He was an adult already. And when I say telegram, I remember holding this piece of... I must have seen in my lifetime more than one telegram, but that's 02:02:00the one that comes to my mind.

Jim Cavener:

Yeah, social action. I wish I could think of this political group. I can find out. There was a group of politically active lesbians and gays in town here for six or eight years. We met often at the Unitarian Church up on Charlotte, Charlotte at Yvonne, I guess. Edwin, Edwin Place. And it was global and national and North Carolina and local, adjudicating for gay rights. Then, this was in the '80s, for sure. It had an acronym, a funny acronym. I'm sure that in this box of stuff up there... In addition to all those publications, I have drawers, filing 02:03:00drawers full of LGBT programs and publications. The publications are all in those boxes, I think. Events, LGBT stuff going on. I don't know if you saw the rainbow flag hanging in the dining room window.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

But there is, and there are two on the balcony out here as well. There are eight small flags in my bedroom windows, up there somewhere, and they're from the... Do you know about the AIDS project? No. Names Project? The quilt, the huge...

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Yeah. Actually, one of the two co-founders of it is a Quaker, Cleve Jones, who's still living. Both of the co-founders. And Cleve was raised Quaker in Phoenix, 02:04:00lives in San Francisco now, where the Names Project started. And the other co... This would be of interest to you. The other co-founder of the Names Project is, his last name is Smith, but what is his first name? He is the brother of a lesbian woman who lives here in Asheville, and I'd met him here. I never knew him on the left coast, or around the AIDS project, the Names Project, but I'd met him here.

Jim Cavener:

The richest woman in town was the heir to the founding family of the Raleigh News and Observer, a famous statewide Democrat newspaper, Adelaide Worth Daniels Key. Key was her husband's name, but her birth name, family name was Daniels. 02:05:00And her grandfather had founded the News and Observer in Raleigh, back when newspapers were important. Adelaide had married and had four children, one of whom owns the Gainesville paper, Jonathan Key, and she decided... And she had gone to Quaker schools, because her mother's family, the Worth family, were Quakers from Greensboro, and her great-grandfather on that side was the Reconstruction Era governor of the state of North Carolina. I think his name was Jonathan Key. No, Jonathan Daniel... Jonathan Worth was the governor.

Jim Cavener:

And Adelaide decided, in middle age, that she was a lesbian, and she moved to 02:06:00Asheville, because she knew it was harmonious. Actually, her sister Elizabeth lived here, had retired here as well. Elizabeth's husband was very active with the ACLU, and he's also in the guestbook, because he sat on this sofa with me on more than one occasion. But Adelaide got something like $19 million out of the sale of the News and Observer to the McClatchy news organization of Sacramento, California. Still owned by the McClatchys, as is the Charlotte Observer.

Jim Cavener:

Adelaide decided she was lesbian. And I don't know how she met Maggie Smith, but Maggie worked at UNCA. Maggie had several degrees. She wasn't a professor of an academic field, but she worked in administration. You know, like assistant to 02:07:00the chancellor, or associate dean of, I don't even... I didn't know Maggie until she and Adelaide hooked up. Adelaide had built this incredible home up on Webb Cove that has an indoor/outdoor pool. She built this house to entertain in, and she has hosted every Democratic candidate for president since Gary Hart, probably, including Obama, and has photos of Michelle and Barry in this home, as well as photos of she and Maggie in the White House with them.

Jim Cavener:

When the Obama presidency was winding down, Adelaide offered this home... She needed to downsize, and she offered this big, 200 acre home up off Webb Cove in North Asheville, to the Obamas, as their post-presidential home. They didn't 02:08:00accept, but I thought it would be ideal. It's secluded. It would be easily fenced. It isn't fenced, and there isn't even a house number. It's 200 Webb Cove Road, but there's no house number on the gate post on that side. The house number and the mailbox are across the street, at the end of the road going in. And you don't see anything. You just see these two posts, and a road that goes up in here. I mean, it's obviously a driveway. It's not a paved highway. It doesn't have a yellow line down it or anything. But she...

Jim Cavener:

Anyway, Maggie's brother, it turned out... I used to be barista. You know the word barista?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Yeah, yeah. I used to barist in their home for these benefits that she would host. John Edwards. I don't know if you know who John Edwards was. Raleigh 02:09:00attorney who ran for president. He was vice president candidate under, who? Well, anyway. I poured drinks for a lot of famous people at Adelaide's and Maggie's home. Adelaide died of cancer about five years ago. But before she died, while she and Maggie were still in that big house, Maggie's brother, something Smith, a co-founder of the quilt, AIDS quilt, would come and visit, and actually has been back a couple of... I mean, Maggie still lives here in town. She'd be an interesting interview. I don't know that I... Somebody at the university would know her. Maggie Smith. They were legally married at the Unitarian Church, and her partner's name was Adelaide Daniels Key. I don't know. 02:10:00I'm sure that Maggie is financially secure as a result of her years living with Adelaide, but I don't know where Maggie lives now. She's still in town, I'm sure.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

I digress. But, what more is useful? A lot of this isn't useful.

Corey Childers:

No. I think we've gotten totally useful stuff out of this. We are getting close to when you need to leave, though, so we'll have to wrap it up soon.

Jim Cavener:

What time does this say?

Corey Childers:

4:45.

Jim Cavener:

I've got 20 minutes.

Corey Childers:

Okay.

Jim Cavener:

And then I've got to get into some different drag, and pick up Wilhelmina.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

Wilhelmina is not lesbian, but she is the first African-American woman on the Asheville City Council Board, and she is now on... I mean Asheville City 02:11:00Council. She was on the council, and she's on our ACLU board, because we're movers and shakers and troublemakers.

Corey Childers:

Yeah. Awesome. I did want to ask you if you knew Holly Boswell? Holly Boswell?

Jim Cavener:

That's interesting. It sounds familiar. How would I know? Why might I know?

Corey Childers:

She was just a prominent [inaudible] in the Asheville communities, but we were just trying to... Because she passed away recently, so we were just trying to get some more history on her, [crosstalk].

Jim Cavener:

Oh, hmm. Cecil Bothwell, I know, but not Holly Bos... Cecil Bothwell was on city council for years, and I have a sign for him on the deck. I mean a campaign 02:12:00sign, but he's not running for anything. No. That name sounds familiar, but I can't place her. Hmm.

Corey Childers:

Well, if you find out anything, if you know anyone who knows her, we'd love to have more information about-

Jim Cavener:

Holly Boswell, B-O-S-W-E-L-L?

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Okay. It is a familiar name, and people like Betty [Sharpless] might know. Has the name Betty Sharpless come up?

Corey Childers:

I don't think so.

Jim Cavener:

She alone, with Bill Miller and Andy Reed, Andrew Reed, would be old-timers who would be good to chat up about Asheville and queer and-

Corey Childers:

Yeah. I'd love to get a list of contacts [crosstalk].

Jim Cavener:

Oh, I could easily... Whether on these forms or not, I can easily send these names and contact emails to you later tonight. I have a conference call, a 02:13:00committee of the board in Philadelphia, at 8:00, so I have to get... Wilhelmina wrote that she had to be back at, what time? 8:30, I think. And I said, "It's okay. I have to be back at 8:00 for a conference call." So, I might or might not get to any of this tonight.

Corey Childers:

That's totally fine. Don't worry about it.

Jim Cavener:

But if you're a senior, and you've got to get this all done before you graduate-

Corey Childers:

Well, the thing is I am graduating, but I'm also, I think, going to be interning and continuing to do this work over the summer. So-

Jim Cavener:

Oh, good.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

Oh, good.

Corey Childers:

So honestly, we have until like August, if we want. You know?

Jim Cavener:

Okay. Well, we don't, because I will be gone from late June until Labor Day, but we have until late June.

Corey Childers:

Okay.

Jim Cavener:

And I will be in the northeast for two weeks. But I'll be here much of it, though.

Corey Childers:

Yeah, but I'll be around. I'll be in Asheville.

Jim Cavener:

Oh, good. Oh, good. Oh, good. If there's a quick other question?

Corey Childers:

Let's see. I guess, okay. Well, this one's kind of big, so maybe we shoul;dn't do it. But I'll go ahead and just ask it, throw it out there. What are some of the most valuable or influential things you felt that your generation has done for upcoming LGBT generations, like mine, for instance?

Jim Cavener:

Oh, wow. Well, Stonewall for starters, and what a thrill it was when Obama mentioned the three S's. Why am I... What was the New York City... No, New York State city near Rochester, where the first woman's rights suffragette, Susan B. Anthony... Who was Quaker, by the way, as was Alice Paul, as was a whole list of 02:15:00early women troublemakers were Quakers, by the way. But what was... It was called Seneca Falls.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

And when Obama, in one of his inaugural speeches, quoted Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall... Wow. Wow. We've arrived. All three in one fell swoop. And it made good alliteration, too. Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall. Yeah. Yeah..

Corey Childers:

Yeah. So, what do you feel remains after?

Jim Cavener:

Oh. Well, we gotta get rid of the Baptists, for starters, because they're not going to change. We've got to get rid of them. It was interesting. Alan, my 02:16:00buddy Alan, who's shrine I have to show you before we pack up our goods here, was raised Mormon in Salt Lake City. Holy shit. Right. So, he had a hard row to hoe. I had a lucky one, in southern California. I had met him in California years later, when he was getting liberated. But, wow. And you probably heard that yesterday, the LDS church recanted on one of their stupid statements. Five years ago, or three years ago, they announced they would not baptize the children of same-sex marriages. And it's very important in LDS theology and hocus pocus and Mickey Mouse, too, to be baptized in a temple. And if you aren't, well, it's bad news.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

And they announced that they would not do that for children of same-sex relationships. They rescinded that yesterday. Of course, they still say you're bad if you're queer. But... But... your kids shouldn't be penalized. Well, nice of you to say that, but you're penalizing the kids if you're still saying we're bad.

Corey Childers:

Right.

Jim Cavener:

So I mean, bigotry's going to be around a long time. The current administration doesn't help it one bit. Not one bit. It licenses all kinds of craziness. And so, I guess we just plug on, and hope that people listen and notice that some of us are near normal.

Corey Childers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Cavener:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Near. I don't know that I want to be normal.

Corey Childers:

Exactly.

Jim Cavener:

Actually, that's one of Alan's and my sad disagreements. He wanted to be married, and I kept saying, "But Alan, 50% of straight couples who get married... Like you, five children later... get divorced." It's not a win-win. I mean, why do we want to emulate-

Corey Childers:

Yeah. Why do we want to be like them?

Jim Cavener:

That's right. That's right. I don't.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

I don't want to do that.

Corey Childers:

Yeah.

Jim Cavener:

So, there you are.

Corey Childers:

Well, yeah. I think that that was awesome for today, and we can definitely have another-

Jim Cavener:

We can. We...