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  Tony Lecondino

  Lecondino, Tony; Darien, Andrew (2024-04-13)

  Tony grew up in Revere in an Italian-American family composed of his father, a mechanic, his mother, a homemaker, and a younger sister, whom he adored. He attended Catholic school as a child but, as an independent thinker, questioned many of its teachings. He attended Revere High School but was bored with the curriculum so he joined a technical high school program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When Lecondino’s parents divorced, he skipped his senior year and joined the US Navy at the height of the Vietnam War. Although he was near combat in Cambodia, he never directly experienced it. The Navy opened up new worlds of travel and sexual experimentation. Still, he lived a “double life” as a closeted man on the ship and a gay one on land. He was honorably discharged due to an injury and would later throw himself into the nightlife of Boston and the North Shore. He got into the music scene, was a DJ, and served as an undercover detective for Jay Collins at Fran’s Place. He would eventually become Fran’s bartender and DJ. Tony helped usher the bar through a new era of openness, dance, music, and integration and even converted a group of hostile Hell’s Angels to allies. He concludes the interview with a story about saving Fran's Place during the 1981 fire that burned down much of the neighborhood.
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  Trey Young

  Young, Trey; Darien, Andrew (2024-04-04)

  Born Beverly in 1964 and a lifelong resident of Lynn, Young was raised with his older sister and younger brother by a strong but challenging single mother. Young’s grandfather moved the family to Massachusetts to avoid the fate of generations of ancestors who worked in the South Carolina cotton plantations. Life in Massachusetts proved difficult. Growing up in Memorial Street Projects came with many hardships, including “cockroaches and rats the size of cat.” Young’s mother struggled to make ends meet while working in a factory job at Wayne Manufacturing, where Young would be recruited at age 15 to help pay the family bills. Young describes an especially harrowing scene of violence when coming out his mother, who was a devout Southern Baptist. Despite being sent to work at age 15, Young earned a GED and graduated from North Shore Community College with a degree in Art History. They would go on to work in various jobs, none of which was as satisfying as working as a bouncer in Fran’s Place. Young speaks fondly of the family and community in Fran’s, which later spurred him to AIDS activism and fight for marriage equality. He discusses the empowerment and expenses of gender-affirming surgery, as well as his admiration for the younger generation of LGBTQ+ activists.
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  Sunil Gulab

  Gulab, Sunil; Darien, Andrew (2024-03-21)

  Sunil Gulab is an artist, environmental scientist, and community organizer who has been an active member of the Lynn community for more than two decades. Born in Harare and raised in Chivhu, Gulab occupied an “in-between” space as an ethnic Indian in the apartheid state of Zimbabwe. He attended Huntington College in Montgomery, Alabama, where he encountered an eerily similar racial system that separated blacks from whites. After college, he moved to Jamaica Plain, where he worked as an au pair for a lesbian couple. As he grew comfortable expressing his gay identity, he eventually made his way to Lynn, a city for which he has enormous respect and affection. He attended several gay bars but was most at home at 47 Central. He served for ten years as a mentor for NAGLY (The North Shore Alliance for GLBTQ+ Youth), during which time he received his MBA from Boston College. His interview discussed racial systems of power, identity politics, and generational differences in the LGBTQ+ community.
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  Tia Cole

  Cole, Tia; Darien, Andrew (2024-01-31)

  Tia Cole, born in 1984 and raised in the Highlands of Lynn, is the oldest of four children and the mother of three. She is a graduate of Lynn English, where she was a founding member of the GSA and North Shore Community College. Her family has deep roots on the North Shore, as far back as the 17th century. She describes her upbringing as “rough and tumble” but with a good deal of affection and community. Tia started going to Fran’s Place after school as a teenager, and she remembers it as a quiet and supportive place to work. Her January 2024 interview discusses being a “queer kid” and the dress code and cultural conflict with the administration at Lynn English, a battle she fought while remaining closeted to her parents. Tia talks about the changing language of gender and sexual identity among various generations. She also talks about serving as a surrogate and the painful ostracization from the LGBTQ+ community when she, as a polyamorous person, began a relationship with a man. Her interview addresses strategies for pushing back against religious arguments about LGBTQ+ people.
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  Steve Sklavounos

  Sklavounos, Steve; Darien, Andrew (2024-01-25)

  Steve Sklavounous was born in Beverley in 1951 and was raised by his grandparents in the Brickyard Neighborhood of West Lynn. He is a 1970 graduate of Lynn Classical who worked at nurseries owned by his grandparents and later at the North Shore Council on Alcohol. Known as Steve “The Greek,” he is proud of his Greek heritage but notes that he grew up in an ethnic enclave of Greeks, Italians, and Poles. He learned his work ethic and grit from his grandmother, who put him to work in the family nursery while still in grammar school. He was first introduced to Fran’s place at age eight by his grandmother, who would go there to gamble. He describes Fran’s as a lesbian bar in the 1960s and 1970s and discusses many of the fights among patrons. He describes a horrific Thanksgiving episode in which her mother shot her father, for which she was sent to prison. He frequented many gay bars in Boston and Lynn, including The Lighthouse Cafe, Fran’s Place, Jacques, Mr. Dominic’s, 47 Central, Northern Lights, Tammany Hall, and Napoleons. He discusses the fears of AIDS in the 1980s and his activism to bring it more attention.
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  Tiffany Magnolia

  Magnolia, Tiffany; Darien, Andrew (2024-05-15)

  Tiffany Magnolia is a Professor of English and Coordinator of the Honors Program at North Shore Community College (NSCC), where she has taught for two decades. She ran the LGBTQIA group at NSCC and won a seat on the School Committee as an LGBTQIA candidate. Raised in part by her grandparents in Florida, Magnolia describes a chaotic upbringing with an alcoholic father and schizophrenic mother. From Florida, she moved to Arlington, VA, St. Michael's College in Vermont, and San Francisco, CA, and eventually landed at Tufts University where she would earn her doctorate in English Literature. Her interview includes her relationship with a girlfriend who became her spouse and transitioned to a man. Magnolia has been a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and a committed advocate within the Lynn community. Interview carried out by Andrew Darien.
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  T Nash

  Nash, T; Darien, Andrew (2024-02-27)

  Born and raised in Lynn, T Nash grew up in East Lynn on Alley Street and then later in West Lynn. A 1992 graduate of Lynn Technical High School and 1995 graduate of North Shore Community College, Nash has spent a life in childcare, education, nursing, and elder care. He is a member of North Shore Pride and Chairperson for the Lynn Pride Flag Raising. He is the proud parent of an adult daughter and five-year-old son, who she and her partner are raising in Salem. A self-described “bully” as a teen, Nash explains how violence and alcoholism shaped her childhood. T discusses the long process of growing comfortable with his sexual and gender identity as a lesbian and trans-man. T speaks fondly about Fran’s Place and enthusiastically about the victory of marriage equality. T is the author of a book about caregiving called "Try Kindness."
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  Tisha Sterling and Jay Collins

  Darien, Andrew; Collins, Jay; Sterling, Tisha (2024-03-13)

  Jay Collins was born in 1953 and raised with his five siblings in Beverley, MA. His family owned and managed the Lighthouse Cafe and Fran’s Place for multiple generations. Jay was the most recent owner and manager of Fran’s until its closing in 2016. Tisha Sterling, born and raised in Gloucester, MA was a beloved bartender, manager, and drag performer at Fran’s Place from 1986 to 2016. The two close friends and longtime coworkers exchanged stories about their time at Fran’s. Their interview includes perspectives on the bar’s relationship with the Lynn Police Department, competing bars, AIDS advocacy, the Night of 100 Stars, Drag, and the changing nature of the LGBTQ+ community.
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  Jim Zipper

  Zipper, Jim (1983)

  James Leo “Jim” Zipper, born in 1938, was a gay man living in Lynn who wanted to make the world a more beautiful place for gays and lesbians. He graduated from Lynn Trade High School as the class president. After four years in the Air Force, he worked as a test engineer at several technology companies and taught electronics at Peabody Vocational School. He died of complications from AIDS in 1993. Jim Zipper was interviewed by Janet Kahn on December 1, 1983. He speaks about the Light House Cafe and other bars, living a divided life with fear, guilt, and shame, suicide, coming out to friends, co-workers, family, and to himself, betrayal by a priest, relations with police, excessive drinking, getting sober, and his hopes for a more beautiful world for people like himself.
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  Kathy Clay

  Clay, Kathy (1983-11-27)

  Kathy Clay, born circa 1947, was a lesbian from Beverly who lived in Lynn and who went to the Light House and Fran’s Place. She attended St. Mary’s, Memorial Junior High, and Beverly High. She worked as an auto mechanic and house cleaner. Kathy Clay was interviewed by Patricia Gozemba on November 27, 1983, about lesbian life in the 1960s at the Light House and, more recently, at Fran’s Place. She speaks about being locked in Danvers State Mental Hospital at age 15 and a nurse who recognized she was lesbian and steered her towards Fran's on her release. She talks about violence and being kidnapped at the bar, police harassment, rape, family, leather, looking like a guy, butch-femme behavior, and relationships.
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  Margot Abels

  Abels, Margot; Darien, Andrew (2024-05-16)

  Margot Abels is a Professor at Northeastern University with a joint appointment between the Human Services and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs. Raised in Livingston, NJ, she is the daughter of secular, left-leaning Jewish New Yorkers who came of age during the Great Depression. Her father was a clothing manufacturer in New York’s Garment District, and her mother was an independent artist who had earned a Fulbright. Raised with a social conscience and sense of independence, Abels earned degrees from Johns Hopkins University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Northeastern University. After college, she moved to New York City, where she worked in AIDS education, at an abortion clinic, as an educator for the Department of Public Health. She and her partner, Bridget, moved to Lynn in 1999, and they were the first same-sex residents of Lynn to obtain a marriage license in 2004. She served on NAGLY’s original Board of Directors and remains a community activist.
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  Peter Abate

  Abate, Peter; Darien, Andrew (2024-07-29)

  Born in 1957 and raised in Lynn, Peter is a Lynn Classical High School graduate, an artist, a former member of Lynnside Out, and a retired social services program director living in New Hampshire. His parents met in Blackpool, England, where his mother was raised, and his father was stationed as an Air Force member during World War II. After the war, she would return with him to Everett, Massachusetts, and eventually relocate to Lynn, where they would raise their four children. As the youngest child, Peter was his mother’s favorite and described a largely happy, working-class upbringing. Although he had crushes on other boys in grammar and high school, he did not understand it then and even had a girlfriend before going to Franconia College in New Hampshire. He chose the school, in part because of their progressive policy of not discriminating based on sexual orientation. By his early twenties, at the height of the disco era, Peter had started attending Fran’s Place and, later, Mr. Dominic’s. He met his husband David in 1983, and they built a life in Lynn’s Diamond District, which by the 1990s became a mecca for gays and lesbians. While working at Greater Lynn Mental Health, Peter became an HIV and AIDS prevention trainer. Peter was part of a group that published Lynnside Out, a publication and social network for community members. In 2000, Peter and David moved to Maine and eventually New Hampshire. He discusses life in these more conservative enclaves and his perspective on the future of the LGBTQ+ movement.
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  Marcia Hams and Susan Shephard

  Darien, Andrew; Shephard, Susan; Hams, Marcia (2024-02-19)

  Residents of Lynn from 1978 to 1990, Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd became in May 2004 the first same-sex couple in the United States to apply for and receive a marriage license. Marcia, born in 1947 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was raised in a middle-class family where she was the eldest of three children. She would graduate from Scottsdale High School, Pomona College, and receive her MA from Boston University. Born in 1952, Susan Shepherd was raised by her mother in a Polish enclave in South Boston while living with her grandmother and uncle. They are graduates of St. Joseph Academy, Northeastern, and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. They met while working at the General Electric Plant in Lynn, where they led unionization efforts for workers’ rights and removing discrimination against female employees. They each speak fondly of their time in Lynn, a place of remarkable tolerance and diversity, where they raised their son Peter and became accepted community members. Their joint interview from January 2024 discusses their individual life trajectories, feminism, labor unions, activism, marriage equality, and LGBTQ+ parenting.
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  Olivia Werth

  Werth, Olivia; Darien, Andrew (2024-08-16)

  Born in 1976, Olivia Werth was raised as a boy in Des Moines, Iowa, in what she describes as a conservative, Christian, lower-middle-class family. As a child, Olivia played with cross-dressing and “always knew I was a girl,” but came to hide that part of herself when her family rejected it. She became especially frightened after seeing the character of Buffalo Bill, a cross-dressing serial killer in the 1991 film Silence of the Lambs. For the following thirty years, Olivia buried her female identity. She would attend Grinnell College, where she met her future wife Niki, with whom she immediately “trauma bonded.” The couple would eventually go to the Northeast, first living in Western Connecticut, followed by Boston and eventually Lynn. Olivia worked various jobs in financial services, accounting, and mortgage firms. It was only during the pandemic in 2020 that Olivia claimed her female identity, something her partner Niki “knew well before I did.” Although Olivia experiences misgendering and transphobia, the couple has found a largely tolerant home in Lynn. Olivia has started a zine, Prismatic, dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community of Lynn. She is a member of United Lynn Pride and volunteers for NAGLY and Trans Support.
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  Melinda Wilson

  Wilson, Melinda; Darien, Andrew (2023-12-10)

  Melinda Wilson is a much-beloved drag performer born in Pittsburgh, raised in Detroit, a longtime transplant to Lynn in the 1980s and 1990s, and a current resident of Manchester, NH. Before coming to Lynn, Melinda moved to Boston in 1978, where she began performing at Jacques Cabaret. Her interview was conducted in December 2023 at a 47 Central Reunion organized by George Chakoutis in Olde Thyme Italian restaurant. She discusses the challenges of growing up as a poor, gay black boy in segregated Detroit, where one could be arrested for failing to wear three articles of male clothing. She found herself and her passion for drag at Fran’s Place and 47 Central.
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  Pat Gozemba

  Gozemba, Pat; Darien, Andrew (2023-09-01)

  Pat Gozemba, born in 1940, is a lesbian, activist, and academic who lives in Salem. She was a founding member of a lesbian and gay archive in Boston, The History Project, and interviewed patrons of Fran’s Place in the early 1980s. A former English and Women's Studies professor, Pat is active in environmental causes. Pat was interviewed by Professor Andrew Darien on September 1st, 2023. She speaks about growing up in Waltham, coming out with a former student at Salem State, and divorcing the man she married. Other topics include feminism, her activism for equality and equity, and the importance of seeing a professor who was out to her students.
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  Kirsten Freni

  Freni, Kirsten; Darien, Andrew (2024-04-04)

  Kirsten Freni grew up in a tight-knit Italian American family transplanted from the North and West End of Boston to Revere, MA. Her father was a decorated World War II veteran who worked in the produce industry. Her mother was a stay at home mom and later became a beloved cafeteria mom in the school system. As a fierce advocate and fighter, Kirsten gravitated to her older sister, who became an aesthetician on Newbury Street in Boston in the 1980s and introduced her to a community of gay men she describes as “amazing, beautiful, and gifted souls.” Freni is a 1986 Revere High School graduate with a Travel Management degree from Newbury College. She worked in the travel industry for many years, but her passion has been in health care and LGBTQ+ advocacy, working with Prism GLBT Health, the Northshore Alliance of LGBTQ Youth, and AIDS awareness. Kirsten’s other roles have included: President of NAGLY; original board member of NS Pride; Certified HIV Outreach Counselor/Tester; Co-Chair for the Boston HIV Vaccine Community Advisory Board; past MA Commissioner of LGBTQ Youth; and original member of Lynn’s World AIDS Day Events Committee. She started attending Fran’s in the 1990s and resided in Lynn from 2008 to 2018 . Kirsten is part of the founding group for United Lynn Pride and was one of the original flag raisers at City Hall. She discusses the special challenges for LGBTQ+, technological change, and doing outreach during the pandemic.
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  Robin Tobin

  Tobin, Robin; Darien, Andrew (2024-03-12)

  Robin Tobin is the daughter of a Sicilian immigrant and a police officer, was born in 1954 and raised in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston. She was a model child until the age of twelve when she discovered alcohol and secretly began drinking. While attending a Catholic High School in Newton, Robin explored her sexuality and experimented with opium. She would eventually come out to a sympathetic aunt while hiding her identity from her parents. After high school, she tried a few desk jobs that she found dull and eventually began working in a woman’s bar in Boston called Somewhere, which would be renamed Somewhere Else when rebuilt after a fire. She loved the community, began working as a bouncer, and eventually went to Fran’s Place in Lynn. A series of anxiety attacks in 1986 led her to question drug and alcohol use and would lead to her sobriety. She would work as a jail officer in the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department and a substance abuse counselor at CAB Health and Recovery Center. Robin has been the Director of Housing Operations for Centerboard since 2001 and works to address homelessness, sobriety, health, and nurturing families.
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  Emily Sherwood

  Sherwood, Emily; Darien, Andrew (2024-07-23)

  A self-described Military Brat, Emily was born in 1958 in Albuquerque and followed her father’s marine employment in Washington, D.C., Greenville, SC, and Oceanside, CA. The family ultimately settled in Schenectady, New York, where her father was employed at the General Electric Plant. Her father’s Marine Corps service and Emily's Episcopalian upbringing inculcated her and her older sisters with a strong sense of social responsibility and civic virtue. Emily’s political baptism came at age ten during the Vietnam War when her older sister took her to an anti-war demonstration. Her sexual awakening came after having a crush on a female math teacher and hearing Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman.” She would attend the women’s college Mount Holyoke College, where she met her first lesbian friend during Christian Fellowship. She joined the lesbian alliance and became part of “Women’s Music," which drew musicians from civil rights and feminist movements. After college, she and her future wife Ruth would move to Somerville, Jamaica Plains, Newton Highlands, and Marblehead before going to Lynn in 1999. They were delighted to discover five gay couples on their block, part of a larger burgeoning community. Emily dedicated her career to working for social change, from her early days as a community organizer to many years working on health and mental health policy for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Emily’s most recent role was deputy commissioner for child, youth and family services for the Department of Mental Health. Previous positions include the director of the Office of Behavioral Health at MassHealth and director of the Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative (CBHI), where she led the implementation of a statewide system of home-based mental health services for children, youth, and families. Interview carried out by Andrew Darien.
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  Cristian Recinos

  Recinos, Cristian; Darien, Andrew (2024-07-15)

  Cristian, the Executive Director of United Lynn Pride, is a lifelong Lynner. Their mother was born in Mexico and moved to Los Angeles, California, during elementary school. She and Cristian’s father, originally from Guatemala, each moved to Lynn during their teenage years. Cristian grew up in Lynn’s Ward Two around a large extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. As the first-born male in his family, he was showered with love and attention that came with responsibilities and pressure to succeed. They attended Ingalls Elementary School, Thurgood Marshall Middle School, Lynn English, and Northshore Community College. A natural introvert, Cristian emerged from his shell when discovering drama at Lynn Classica. He would join the school’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) and become a member of the North Shore Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth (NAGLY) as well as the Boston counterpart (BAGLY). Several of Cristian’s family members are queer, allowing him greater ease in coming out. They are a 2018 graduate of Salem State University, majoring in Sociology, and were part of the activist groups The Alliance and Black, Brown, and Proud. They serve in several non-profit organizations throughout the City of Lynn and have significant experience with multiple LGBTQ+ organizations across Massachusetts. Interview carried out by Andrew Darien.

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