Oral History with Nancie Wilson, Part 1 (2022)

Caiden Costantino:

Today's date is March 4th, 2022. My name is Caiden Costantino. I am talking with Nancie Wilson, who was born in 1943 in Birmingham, Alabama. Their preferred pronouns are she/her. She has been living in Sylva for 21 years. And with that, we can get started wherever you'd like.

Nancie Wilson: Okay. When Alice was placed here, at St. Davis, by the bishop, we found out very quickly there were several families who had children who were gay. I'm talking about adult children now. Although we, being Alice and me, did not advertise that fact that we were. I mean, hell, everybody knew we lived together, how much talent does it take to go from there or figure it out? But it was not talked about. And we had, at that time, a very gay unfriendly bishop. And by that I mean he had no time and no place for gays and his life or in the overall scheme of things. And I used to tell Alice, "I hope every one of his kids turns out to 00:01:00be as queer as a $3 bill."

Nancie Wilson:

But anyway, what brought it to a head was the fact that there were several gay couples here, Jody and her partner, as an example. And from that, we had a circle of gay friends, both men and women. And so, we thought it would be a pretty sharp idea to start a group that could meet on Sunday afternoon for a covered dish and just hang out and talk.

Nancie Wilson:

So, we formed Out in the Mountains. It was me and Alice, Jody and Joanne, Chris and Herb, John and Bud. Bud is deceased. God, I can't remember who all else. When you get to my age, the first thing that goes is your mind. Anyway, there were several couples, and we called it Out in the Mountains. And we would meet here. The church was gracious enough. We didn't have this big parish hall then, we had a real small one. But we would meet here for our covered dish. That used to be the Canterbury House, the house up there. It belongs to y'all now, but it used to be ours and Western bought it. And sometimes we would meet up there just a social time, and we'd always have a Christmas party, usually at Tom and Margo's house. Tom and Margo's son is gay, Chris. And you probably know Chris.

Caiden Costantino:

I've heard of him, yeah.

Nancie Wilson:

Yeah. And Herbie, the worm. We call him Herbie the worm. Alice started doing that and it just caught on. It's from a cartoon character or something. But anyway, really, we trucked along with that for several years and we didn't get in much trouble with it. Nobody said anything much. And by that time, we had a bishop, an Episcopal bishop who was much more friendly to gays. And about, oh, maybe four or five years into Out in the Mountains, the Reverend Gene Robinson, you remember him? Do you know who he is?

Caiden Costantino:

I remember hearing his name, yeah.

Nancie Wilson:

Yeah. He was bishop up in, I want to say New Hampshire, but don't hold me to that. And he was gay, and he came out, and man, oh man, it hit the fan. I mean, whoa. Everybody thought we were the devil incarnate until they got ahold of Gene 00:04:00and that had to be the leader.

Nancie Wilson:

Anyway, our bishop, who was Bishop Bob Johnson, Gene wrote a book, and Bob got it and read it, was impressed. And so, he called Michael, who was the priest here at that time, and he said to Michael, he said, "I want you and Alice to get a group of people from out here in the diocese. And let's introduce Bishop Jean's book." And he also had made a DVD. And so, we did. And that kicked the whole thing off. People started saying, "Oh, well, maybe these gays ain't too bad."

Nancie Wilson:

And we held a meeting over at St. James in Black Mountain, which is a bit high from here, but it brought in a lot of people, and just to simply talk about Bishop Gene's book and what he had to say. And basically, what he had to say was, "God loves everybody, and quit worrying about the people's sexuality and what they do in their bedroom. How counterproductive. Our priest is gay." And she told me, she said, "You can tell anybody you want to." I said, "Well, I think that's your job, but okay." She's a good old gal, right out of the seminary, full of [inaudible]. We'll get that out of her.

Nancie Wilson: But anyway, from that came a more accepting attitude in the diocese. Now, that's not to say that we were welcomed in every parish with open arms. We were not. In fact, we lost several members here, because they didn't want to belong to a church that they thought was going to be called a queer church. And I said to one of them, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." Because frankly, I don't have time for people like that. I don't. And that person that said that, that she didn't want her children growing up around these people, has since come back. And I want to say to her, and I still will, her children are grown now and they're all somewhere else, "What brings you back to us? We're here. We're still queer. Get over it."

Nancie Wilson:

And it's been a constant struggle. And I'm not talking about us versus them, because after Bishop Johnson retired, we got another bishop who came over here and alienated every single gay person or gay family member by some things he said. And he knew he was wrong, because he said to Michael Hudson, the priest, he said, "I don't think I can come back." And Michael said, "Not for a long time." But he finally came around. And it's been an evolving process, Caiden. It's not like, oh, we woke up one day and everybody was all happy. It's not been 00:08:00that way. It's been an evolving process of acceptance, of people maturing in the Lord and in their soul and their spirit and the way that God...

Nancie Wilson:

Because God loves everybody, you know. And that's the point I keep making. Jesus didn't say one flipping thing about gays. Now, maybe he forgot. Or maybe God said, "Now don't you talk about them queers down there now when you go down there." No. He had no problem with it. He had problems with people doing funny things with money and several other things. He had problems with people who betrayed him. But he didn't have any problems with gays. And that's the point that we want to get across. God is love. And God is not love except for gays and 00:09:00perverts. And we've been called perverts, we've been called everything by really nice people, by some folks that you would have never thought that would come out of their mouth. And it don't bother me. I'm sorry, I just can't be bothered with getting into that. I try to live my life the best I can. And that's what most of us do. And she gets up there on Sunday and preaches love out of the pulpit. And if you want to accept it, fine, if you don't, well, that's cool, you know.

Nancie Wilson:

But we have had, and I don't know what Marilyn Jody told you guys, and I'd like to hear her perspective sometime, but Alice and I had very little problems. And I don't know if it was because Alice was ordained and that made her special, or what was going on. I don't know. But she and I had very few problems with the gays. And perhaps we were just lucky. I don't know. I know this, if Marilyn Jody had been born a generation after she was, she'd have been president of that place over there. Man, I just tell her, "You were born a generation too early." But see, it's been a process, Caiden, of evolution, that people have to evolve in their own way, in their own time. And I understand that and Alice understood 00:11:00that. The militant gays don't understand that. You can't force something down somebody's throat if they don't want you to do that. They don't care about your belief, what you think, and how come you're right and they're not. You can't go into all that. You just have to let them evolve in their own time.

Nancie Wilson:

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

Caiden Costantino:

Could we actually talk about maybe before Out in the Mountains, maybe how you grew up and maybe...

Nancie Wilson:

I grew up as straight as a [inaudible 00:12:01].

Caiden Costantino:

Can you expand [inaudible 00:12:08]?

Nancie Wilson:

I came from an old Southern family, and they were as Southern as you would ever want. My mama was a housewife, because women didn't work back then, if you married right. She was also a ranked amateur golfer, but that's a whole other story. I'm an only child. I did all the typical things a kid does in high school to show their butt. In fact, it got so bad at one point my mother was trying to get me into the Roman Catholic high school. I said, "I'm not going. I'll run away first. I'm not going to that tight-ass bunch out there. Are you kidding me? Where am I going to smoke my cigarettes, drink my beer, and hang with my friends?"

Nancie Wilson:

And so, I knew from the beginning that I was gay. What's your first clue? Well, hell, I've always known that. And I can't tell you what my first clue was. It's just something you always know.

Nancie Wilson:

And so, in Orlando, now this is pre Disney. You got to understand about Orlando. There's a pre Disney and then there's Disney. And pre Disney was much different. It reminded me now of Sylva. Small town, very community minded, blah blah blah. Nobody talked about being gay or any of that stuff. So, you had to pretty much be underground. There was one gay bar called the Parliament House, or the PH to 00:14:00the insiders. And it was mostly for men, but women went there too, because we didn't have anywhere else to go.

Nancie Wilson:

And then, when I moved up here, do you think Sylva has a gay bar? Uh-uh. And they won't. But you can go hang out there at one of the breweries and they're fine with all that. But y'all got three or four old in Asheville that are pretty nice. But I don't want to drive that far and drink and then have to come home. I don't think that's a very safe thing for me to do.

Nancie Wilson:

But anyway, I had a pretty normal, if being recalcitrant is normal, childhood and adolescence. We did stupid stuff like borrow the car and ride around all night. Where did you go? Well, around. Where do you go? You just ride around Orlando. When Disney came, that brought a very interesting element into the 00:15:00population down there. It brought the criminal element for a while, and it brought a bunch of outsiders who were from over there, like in New York, Chicago, Los... big city people. Brought them in here, because that's who Disney needed to make the place run. Because there was nobody in Orlando knew how to make it run. And when that element came, that introduced a lot of different stuff that we would have never run into otherwise. And so, I grew up, I guess, on the cusp of Disney coming. And I remember my parents saying, "My God, they're 00:16:00going to ruin the place." And they did. You would not believe the tax breaks they got from the state of Florida to come in here. But my deadbeat lecture is a whole different thing.

Nancie Wilson:

But anyway, that brought in a whole different element, introduced a whole different element and a different way of thinking to the local people, because they were a huge employer. And they were paying something, at that time like $10 an hour, which would have been 25 an hour now. And see, Disney became everybody's new best friend. And there were a lot of gay people working down 00:17:00there, most of them as the characters. And they were having a ball doing it. And you'd hear them talking about it at the bar. "Oh, yeah, well, today, I was Donald Duck. Should have seen the cute guy I was following." I lived across the hall in my apartment, the guy across the hall was one of the Mickey Mouses, until he got arrested, which had nothing to do with Mickey, but he got arrested and that ended his Mickey career.

Nancie Wilson:

Anyway, what else you want to know?

Caiden Costantino:

What made you guys leave Orlando? Did you come here directly or did you go-

Nancie Wilson:

Well, we had always, not always, but for several years vacationed [inaudible 00:18:05]. And I got a little tired. I was teaching at the University of Central Florida, and I got a little tired of having to drive 30 minutes to go five 00:18:00miles. I thought, this just can't be right. And so, I came up and looked at some places and that's when I moved up here. And I was with somebody at the time, and she was long gone before I met Alice, thankfully. And she's really long gone now, because she's wherever you go next.

Nancie Wilson:

Anyway, what else you want to know? This mango water sucks by the way.

Caiden Costantino:

What are some things that you've noticed that have changed over the years, just in general? Moving around or in Sylva?

Nancie Wilson:

Oh, well nobody pays the attention to you now that they used to. If you're out there, and I don't do this, but some people do, dressed up in a coat and tie and you're a woman, nobody says anything to you about it. You are who you are. Now, I guess some of the locals will get their panties in a wad, but I've not seen any evidence of it. And the university helps a great deal, because you bring in a diverse group of students and faculty, and that helps educate the locals a great deal on how life really is. And Western has done so much for this community just in terms of that, and so has SCC, just in terms of being who they are, in serving as an example. I'm allergic to something around here. Probably work.

Nancie Wilson:

What else?

Caiden Costantino:

Are you involved in or maybe active in any of the on-campus LGBTQ programs?

Nancie Wilson:

Only Sylva Pride.

Caiden Costantino:

Sylva Pride?

Nancie Wilson:

Yeah.

Caiden Costantino:

What do you do for that?

Nancie Wilson:

I'm on their board.

Caiden Costantino:

Okay. What do they do?

Nancie Wilson:

They had the Pride Parade last September. Very well attended by a lot of straight people who got some good information. And there was no problems. Nobody had anything negative to say. And you know Travis Rountree over in English?

Caiden Costantino:

Mm-hmm.

Nancie Wilson:

Well, he's the one who put it together. And Travis did a fantastic job. And we're going to do another one this year, probably in the fall.

Caiden Costantino:

How do you guys organize that? Who do you contact?

Nancie Wilson:

Travis did that. And I think he had to get a permit, and he had to make a reservation down at the park, that he wanted to park for that day. Travis knows all the right folks.

Caiden Costantino:

What's your impressions of the kinds of laws that have changed about same-sex marriage and stuff like that?

Nancie Wilson:

Well, they changed, and now they're trying to change them back.

Caiden Costantino:

Yeah.

Nancie Wilson:

Here's how I feel about same-sex marriage. I'm for it, but you need to understand, if you're going to play with the big kids, you got to play by the big kids' rules. And by that I mean, if you want to go over here and you want to marry somebody legally, just remember, and this happened to a friend of mine, when you're ready to split up, it's going to involve stuff like lawyers and courts. That's the big kids. And you can't say, "Well, okay, I'll see you." Nuh-uh, that ain't the way it works. Because in North Carolina, a marriage is a marriage, I don't give a damn who it's with.

Nancie Wilson:

And another friend of mine over in Asheville, she... And I told her, I said, "I don't want to hear it. Don't talk to me about that stuff." Because she and her partner had a baby together. And this was back years ago. Now the kid is 10. Now 00:23:00what? They decide to split up. And she really got mad, because the judge gave them joint custody. Playing with the big kids. And I told her, I said, "I don't want to hear it. I tried to tell y'all." And so, I'm for it, as long as you go into it with your eyes wide open. And I'm talking about wide open, and that you understand the legal ramifications of that and what that means.

Caiden Costantino:

Do you think that's something that a lot of people looking for same-sex marriage don't look at?

Nancie Wilson:

Yep.

Caiden Costantino:

Do you have any guesses as to why that might be?

Nancie Wilson:

Well, because they're used to, "Oh, let's move in together. Okay, we're not getting along, I'm out of here."

Caiden Costantino:

Okay.

Nancie Wilson:

Okay?

Caiden Costantino:

Mm-hmm.

Nancie Wilson:

That is not how it works if there's a legal marriage. And you split up and you're going to lose half your stuff. "Well, I don't think that's fair." Good, then don't get married.

Caiden Costantino:

Would you say that the... Maybe this is a moniker, but would you say the gay experience has changed over the years?

Nancie Wilson:

I don't know what you mean by experience.

Caiden Costantino:

Perhaps maybe perception of those around them, maybe things, if they're treated differently by others, if they have to do anything differently.

Nancie Wilson:

I think that there are certain elements in the population that will always treat gays differently. I think there are certain elements in the gay population that are always going to be militant and try to shove their sexuality down other people's throats. And they haven't figured out yet, that that doesn't work. I don't care what you're selling, whether you're selling homosexuality or Girl Scout Cookies, it doesn't work if nobody wants it.

Nancie Wilson:

And I used to tell... I teach only online now, but back when I taught on campus, I would tell my students, "Hey, guess what? Nobody cares what you think. Nobody cares what you think. So, don't try to force your opinion off on other people. It ain't going to work. All you're going to do is make them mad at you. Then what?" And I think that for some people, gay marriage is something that they 00:26:00probably ought to do, but I think for a lot of people, gay marriage is something that they have no business going anywhere near.

Caiden Costantino:

Why do you say that?

Nancie Wilson:

Because of the legal ramifications. They get their tail in a crack. Like my friend down in Asheville, who she ended up having to split custody with her ex-partner. And Millie was the one that had the kid, that delivered the kid. And she was madder than a hornet. I said, "Well, had your partner been a man, it would have still been the same."

Caiden Costantino:

Do you think that might have something to do with expectation of the queer community?

Nancie Wilson:

Yep.

Caiden Costantino:

What do you think those expectations are?

Nancie Wilson:

I think their expectations are, sometimes they're reaching too high, that they work so hard on trying to be accepted and wanting to be accepted, and that's okay, but they still need to understand that not everybody is going to like you. I don't care if you're gay or straight, not everybody is going to like you. And I think sometimes gay people spend an inordinate amount of time working towards trying to get along with everyone. Like my dog, Grace, out there. She's so friendly. "You like me, don't you? Huh? Don't you like me? Huh?" And you can't do that. You got to give people space. And I'm reminded again of my friend in Asheville who, because of that awful situation of having to share custody with 00:28:00her ex-partner, went over and married a man. I said, "Gee, that was bright. What next?" But they're still married. So, she's a bi. That's okay.

Caiden Costantino:

Do you still teach then?

Nancie Wilson:

Yep.

Caiden Costantino:

Do you teach here?

Nancie Wilson:

I teach online for SCC.

Caiden Costantino:

Oh, okay. What do you teach?

Nancie Wilson:

Psychology.

Caiden Costantino:

Ooh. Do you teach anything with gender or sexuality in that class?

Nancie Wilson:

There is a section in their textbook on it, yeah.

Caiden Costantino:

Okay. So, that's not really like...

Nancie Wilson:

No.

Caiden Costantino:

Yeah.

Nancie Wilson:

So, y'all have a whole class on that.

Caiden Costantino:

Mm-hmm.

Nancie Wilson:

And my kids get one chapter.

Caiden Costantino:

Yeah. Okay. Are there any other, I guess maybe active contributions, or not contributions, active engagement in anything in the community? Or is it kind of just a Pride board?

Nancie Wilson:

None that I know of. Out in the Mountains disbanded years ago, simply because there was no longer any reason for it. People were going all different ways, and different avenues were opening up. And people just, once we started getting some acceptance, we just thought, well, okay, we don't need to do this. [inaudible 00:29:58] lodge.

Nancie Wilson:

So, I think we're in a position now that we better be careful, because there are politicians out there who are after us. And I am not paranoid in the least, but I can read. And what is their problem? Well, they're probably closeted. And that's what I used to tell Al. There was one guy, one senator, and I can't remember his name now, this was several years back, that was just railing against gays and on and on and on. And I said, "One of these days he's going to get caught getting a blow job in the men's room, I guarantee it." And he did, by an undercover cop that he tried to solicit. It was an airport in Cincinnati.

Caiden Costantino:

Do you think that's a pretty common occurrence? A lot of people who are against, outwardly against?

Nancie Wilson:

Oh, I think... Yeah, I do. If you're that vehement about something, you got a problem somewhere with somebody. And most of us, I don't know about you, Caiden, but most of the people I know are just live and let live. Just don't come do it at my house. That's the way I am.

Caiden Costantino:

Is there anything that you would like to talk about that we haven't talked about?

Nancie Wilson:

No.

Caiden Costantino:

Okay.

Nancie Wilson:

You go over your notes and see if there's anything else you want to...

Caiden Costantino:

Well, I think I've got everything.

Nancie Wilson:

You think you're caught up?

Caiden Costantino:

I think we're caught up, unless you can think of anything that we haven't covered.

Nancie Wilson:

I cannot. I'm thinking I hope I gave you the information that you were seeking.

Caiden Costantino:

Yeah, we're just getting a sense of you as a person, what you've been through, what you've seen, how you've developed or anything like that. So, I think we're good.

Nancie Wilson:

Well, did you get a sense of that?

Caiden Costantino:

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Nancie Wilson:

Okay.

Caiden Costantino:

All right, we'll end it here.