Esrig, Barbara - interviewed by Rose Norman / Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project / Duke Digital Repository

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Okay, this is Rose Norman.

0:00

I'm with Barbara Esrig.

0:02

How are ya?

0:05

On November 11th, 2012.

0:07

And Barbara's gonna talk about her lesbian feminist

0:09

activism in Gainesville, which began

0:11

when she moved here in 1979.

0:15

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Well, my feminist activism started right before that.

0:20

(wind blows)

0:28

Um, I was a lay midwife and we were doing home births.

0:38

10% of the births back then were done out of the hospital

0:46

and I was with a group of six women.

0:54

I moved from San Francisco in '76

0:57

and I got my nursing license there,

1:06

but I put my nursing license in the bottom drawer

1:09

and came to Oregon.

1:13

One of the reasons why I put my license in the bottom drawer

1:17

is that there was a really strong lobby.

1:21

The California medical lobby was really strong

1:24

and you weren't allowed to do home births.

1:28

And so, when I moved up to Oregon, things were a lot looser,

1:32

but I still didn't want to be a nurse midwife

1:37

because there were too many constrictions.

1:41

And so, there were a group of women

1:44

and we all got together and it was sort of a synergy

1:48

that happened within a month of moving there,

1:51

actually within a couple of weeks,

1:54

and we all wanted to do home births.

1:58

And the politics there was really women being in charge of

2:02

their birth process and the hospitals always made it

2:10

a medical issue and we really believed that it was a natural

2:16

thing and that women should have control over their bodies.

2:21

So there was always that bottom line.

2:26

We started training and delivering at the same time.

2:29

We were pretty wild.

2:35

Um.

2:37

But we all had some medical background.

2:39

I was a nurse, like I said,

2:43

and we were learning from a nurse midwife.

2:46

Her name was Miriam, and she was teaching us about

2:51

home deliveries and complications.

2:55

We worked with a doctor back-up.

2:57

There was this wild doctor,

3:01

Ray, he worked at the naturopathic school

3:05

and he had worked with the doctor who was at the farm,

3:08

CB Eskin's farm in Tennessee, so.

3:16

And we worked with a pediatrician.

3:22

I mean, one of the things that was really important,

3:24

we always believed in safety and if, you know,

3:28

when we were doing prenatal care, it was really mandatory

3:33

that if, you know, we really believed that the women

3:37

needed to go to the hospital, that she would go.

3:40

You know, I mean, it was fine if she didn't want to go

3:43

and if she wanted to do that, but we weren't gonna be

3:47

her midwife, and that was just safety and our belief

3:50

that it wasn't flakey.

3:56

Nursing, it wasn't flakey midwifery,

3:59

it was really good prenatal care,

4:01

a really fabulous home birth and postnatal care.

4:07

And we, you know, instruct about lamaze

4:12

and we instruct about the late genes, you know,

4:16

about nursing and all kinds of things.

4:19

And that whole thing cost the pregnant woman $100,

4:23

and that included covering the two midwives

4:29

and all the pre and postnatal care, so it was wild.

4:34

And we did a lot of births.

4:39

The hospital percentage was something like,

4:44

2% of home births and a lot of that

4:49

had to do with good prenatal care.

4:52

So, a belief in women's choice

4:55

of where their birth should be started then.

5:00

And my midwifing partner was a lesbian.

5:04

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What's her name?

5:11

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Claire Englander.

5:12

She lives in the Puget Sound now.

5:13

She was really involved in the lesbian community

5:19

and I really, really wanted to come out in Eugene,

5:22

but there was, back then, and on the west coast

5:29

they were a lot more concrete and a lot more radical

5:34

and I was living in a commune at the time

5:39

and there were men and women there

5:47

and, you know, she just didn't wanna bring me out.

5:49

You know, I had been with women before,

5:58

I had been bisexual.

6:00

I really wanted to come out, and she just wouldn't back me.

6:02

I mean, we're still really good friends.

6:06

I just saw her a couple months ago when I was up in Seattle.

6:08

But she really didn't want to bring me out

6:13

and, so when I wound up going to Florida,

6:17

I was, like, sobbing.

6:22

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Why did you go to Florida?

6:23

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Well, this group of people.

6:25

One of the midwives had lived in Gainesville before

6:29

and they wanted to pick up and go to Gainesville

6:33

and I really didn't want to, but um,

6:36

but I did.

6:44

(wind blows)

6:45

Before that, though, I have to say that there was a woman

6:48

in Eugene named Moon who had alternatively fertilized,

6:52

they called it, herself with a turkey baster

6:58

and I was her midwife and Claire was her midwife.

7:03

And Milda was born and it was a whole community,

7:09

a whole lesbian community.

7:13

The idea in 1979 for lesbians to have, to want to

7:15

have children, really was pretty radical and, you know,

7:19

when I wound up moving to Florida, the lesbians here

7:26

just could not even believe it or fathom

7:29

that any lesbian would want to have a child.

7:32

But the other thing I'd have to say, you know,

7:36

in terms of what was going on there, with a lesbian

7:41

who died and in her will, she had some money that she wanted

7:47

to distribute to women's organizations and we needed

7:53

speculums and fetoscopes and things like that,

7:58

and so we came to that meeting and really

8:02

had to prove ourselves that we were feminists.

8:05

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You were in Gainesville now?

8:11

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No, this is still Eugene, in Eugene.

8:12

That we were feminists and that we really wanted

8:15

and that we were against the medical establishment

8:18

and that we were doing this to give power to women.

8:21

And so again, that, you know, it's this feminist belief

8:27

of taking care of your own health care,

8:31

which segued into what I wound up doing in Gainesville.

8:35

So we were at Moon's birth, Claire was there

8:42

and when I moved to Gainesville, within three weeks,

8:48

I left the group of people that I was with,

8:53

which included a man, and our relationship

8:59

really wasn't happening at that point.

9:04

It was happening enough that I wound up moving,

9:09

but I also really knew that I wanted to come out,

9:12

and just couldn't.

9:16

So I wound up coming to Gainesville and within three weeks,

9:19

I came out and I called up Claire and I said I came out

9:24

and she was with Moon at that point.

9:28

Within that three weeks she had hooked up with Moon

9:31

who was the lesbian who had had the kid, and eventually

9:34

she wound up getting

9:38

inseminated, or, you know.

9:46

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It wasn't, a lesbian couple, I had taken it was a lesbian

9:48

couple having that birth, but it was just Moon on her own?

9:51

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It was just Moon, she was single.

9:54

But she had the support of the lesbian community and Milda

9:57

wound up being brought up by the lesbian community.

10:03

It was a really cohesive group of, you know, 20 women

10:07

who shared childcare and brought her up

10:14

and the sperm donor was a gay man

10:18

who said that, you know, he wouldn't interfere

10:24

with a ton of, you know, he would just donate his sperm.

10:27

And Claire wound up inseminating with his sperm also

10:34

and she had a daughter and so

10:39

the two girls were half sisters.

10:41

Anyway, so that was sort of their story.

10:49

And I wound up coming Gainesville

10:53

and Gainesville was a really different kind of environment

10:56

in the lesbian community.

11:02

I had contacted a couple of women

11:04

who were midwives, lay midwives.

11:07

One of them was Randi Cameon, who's a lesbian.

11:09

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Spell that?

11:13

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Randi

11:15

Cameon.

11:18

And Joan McTigue, and actually,

11:21

I think I contacted Joan from Oregon.

11:23

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How do you spell?

11:25

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Joan McTigue,

11:26

and she was working at,

11:32

both of them, actually, were working

11:35

at the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

11:36

So I hooked up with Joan and was doing some home births.

11:39

She was a PA and she.

11:43

So I broke up with Bill, which was very easy.

11:51

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So there was already a Women's Health Center?

11:55

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Yeah, yeah there was one going on since, I think '76

11:57

and this was '79.

12:06

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Okay.

12:07

Joan is a PA and Cameon is.

12:08

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And both of them were PAs.

12:11

(wind blows)

12:15

Joan was breaking up with her husband.

12:23

I was breaking up with Bill, I was coming out.

12:25

I came out, and that night I met Connie Jylanki and Corky.

12:30

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Connie, C?

12:38

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Connie.

12:39

Jylanki.

12:43

Connie and Kay used to be together.

12:49

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Jylanki.

12:51

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And Randi and Corky had been together

12:54

for years and years, on and off

12:57

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Okay.

12:59

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And they both still live in Gainesville.

13:01

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Mhm.

13:03

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And Connie was living with Sally and I really,

13:04

Connie and Sally and I went to Morocco together,

13:09

but that's an aside.

13:12

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She was partners with Sally or just living with her?

13:16

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No, they were living together.

13:17

(wind blows)

13:19

And Joanie, so um.

13:25

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They were all living together?

13:28

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Yeah, and another woman, um.

13:29

But Sally can talk about it.

13:34

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Okay.

13:36

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This place called Grove Park.

13:36

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Mhm.

13:40

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So I came out and immediately,

13:46

Joan kind of took me under her wing and brought me over

13:52

to the Gainesville Women's Health Center,

13:57

which was a really,

14:00

you know, was an abortion clinic and a women's clinic.

14:06

It was a women's clinic and an abortion clinic.

14:10

And,

14:14

at the time, Roe vs. Wade had passed

14:18

and, you know, people were really positive about.

14:25

There wasn't, the religious right hadn't sort of

14:31

taken it as their, you know, their issue at that point.

14:34

I mean, there were a few, but there wasn't the same kind of

14:41

contention and,

14:44

and in fact, the thought in the medical school,

14:49

there was a rotation where physicians

14:54

could learn how to do abortions.

14:56

They could do a rotation, you know, I mean, a years' worth.

15:00

So the doctors who were doing the abortions

15:05

were medical doctors, I mean medical students.

15:08

And all of them, I mean, we really taught them how to do

15:13

conscious women's healthcare and they all became,

15:22

they really became the best OBGYNs in town.

15:28

Tom Tyler, Luke Howski, Brad.

15:37

What's his name?

15:45

Brad Williams, and there were some women

15:46

who moved from Gainesville who were also really great.

15:51

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Mhm.

15:56

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But being a nurse,

16:00

I had to take my license out

16:05

and so I was doing women's healthcare

16:08

and I was also assisting abortions and doing,

16:14

I was working the recovery room.

16:19

It was really radical.

16:22

Lots of CR was going on there.

16:29

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At the clinic?

16:33

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At the clinic.

16:34

Yeah, there was lots of women's health conversations

16:35

and being in control of our bodies

16:39

and doing lots of workshops and it initially started with,

16:41

mostly, strong feminist women and there was, like,

16:50

this tide that happened that was really kind of funny,

16:57

that over a very short period of time, like,

17:01

I think four women, Judy Keith Lee and

17:05

Linda Lou, Marilyn, Pam Smith,

17:12

Randi, they all came out, like,

17:18

within a couple months together.

17:23

They were working on a watermelon farm out in Archer

17:26

And somehow they all just sort of dropped the males

17:30

that they were involved with and hooked up with each other.

17:35

(laughter)

17:38

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Linda Lou, Pam Smith, Randi, Judy Keith Lee and who?

17:40

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Not Judy Keith Lee, because she wasn't working there.

17:43

Linda Lou Simmons.

17:46

Cheryl LaMade was working over there.

17:53

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These were all the people that were working

17:56

at the watermelon farm?

17:57

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Gainesville Women's Health Center.

17:59

No, at the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

18:00

Well, those.

18:01

Yeah, all those women there, not Cheryl,

18:03

were at the watermelon farm.

18:07

You know, they were doing that in the spring.

18:08

And they worked there for a long time, that's another story.

18:14

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So that's not related to this story?

18:18

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Well, the only thing that's related is that they were

18:20

all involved with men and working at

18:23

the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

18:26

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They were working at the.

18:29

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They were working at

the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

18:31

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And the watermelon farm?

18:32

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Right.

18:33

The watermelon farm was just, you know, it was somebody's

18:34

farm, a woman named Lois and a partner.

18:38

So in the spring they, you know, and they all,

18:45

but that wasn't like a job, you know?

18:49

It wasn't like getting paid, that was.

18:52

I mean, it was for Lois, but it wasn't,

18:55

you know, for anyone else.

18:57

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Mhm.

18:58

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Mm.

19:00

But it really radicalized a lot of women and.

19:04

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The clinic did?

19:08

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Mhm.

19:09

And there are photographs of

19:11

the Gainesville Women's Health Center back then.

19:15

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Who has those?

19:19

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Um, I can get them.

19:20

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Okay.

19:22

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And what I'm gonna do is interview Marilyn,

19:24

Pam and Linda Lou together.

19:28

They want me to, 'cause their memories. (laughs)

19:30

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Mhm.

19:33

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Together, they have one cohesive memory of all of that.

19:34

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Now, do they get together with each other

19:39

or with other women?

19:40

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With each other.

19:42

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But that's three women, is it, was it four?

19:43

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Well, that's not totally true.

19:45

Um.

19:49

Linda Lou got with Becky.

19:53

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Becky Dale?

19:56

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Becky Dale, uh huh.

19:57

Well, let me see.

19:58

Well, Linda Lou and Judy got together.

20:00

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Judy?

20:03

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Keith Lee.

20:05

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Judy?

20:07

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Keith Lee.

20:08

Actually, I think Judy was working at the Women's Clinic.

20:09

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And she was already gay?

20:15

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Mhm.

20:16

And so they.

20:17

Marilyn wound up,

20:22

you know, I'll have to, they'll have to just.

20:26

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That is not important.

20:30

But they got together with.

20:32

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Well, the point was that they went from men to women.

20:33

They got together in their own couples.

20:36

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Mhm.

20:39

You said the clinic radicalized women.

20:44

Do you mean towards the lesbian lifestyle, or?

20:46

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Towards feminism.

20:51

You know, I mean, everyone were feminists,

20:54

but I think it radicalized people into lesbian feminism

20:59

and there was a lot of stuff that was going on

21:05

and there was some backlash, you know,

21:12

there was some anti-abortion stuff that was going on,

21:17

but pretty much, right at the beginning it was just,

21:27

we were just really supporting each other.

21:31

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I need to stop and check it.

21:35

Okay, this is still Barbara Esrig, this is Rose Norman,

21:37

November 12th, 2012.

21:41

This is part two, the interview.

21:43

Okay, radicalizing them.

21:52

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Okay, now at the same time that I was working there

21:54

I was still doing home births

21:57

and there were a couple of, Randi was doing home births.

22:00

Joan was doing home births there.

22:06

Cheryl did some, a couple of births with me.

22:08

She was in medical school at the time.

22:13

(wind blows)

22:16

And there was some lay midwives

22:20

that were living in Gainesville.

22:23

I mean, yeah, so I was hooked up with them.

22:26

They were really.

22:30

We had started doing home births in '76

22:35

and they were just starting to do them in 1979 and '80.

22:40

We were, I mean, Oregon was a lot more progressive

22:50

than Gainesville was in terms of the home birth scene.

22:55

I mean, it was sort of like going back.

23:01

I mean, they didn't really, they were just starting

23:04

to do births, so their, some of them were doing births

23:06

by themselves, which was really dangerous, you know.

23:12

And also, just the whole climate was really different

23:17

for home births in Gainesville.

23:22

Pretty much, it was a norm for the granny midwives,

23:27

the African Americans had a lot of home births

23:32

but in terms of, and,

23:36

and they had their own midwives that had been there forever.

23:44

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I'm not following you here.

23:50

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Well, there's, you know, there was sort of a, um.

23:52

Midwifery has been around, you know, since day one

23:58

and in Oregon, um.

24:02

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Can you keep it on Gainesville?

24:05

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I can, but I'm just saying that.

24:07

So in Gainesville, it was.

24:10

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There were mostly African American midwives?

24:19

And then the white women were coming along, all of a sudden,

24:22

out of another complete tradition, or?

24:25

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Yeah, it was more of a political position

24:27

rather than an economic.

24:30

You know, I mean, there was a lot of segregation

24:32

and there was a real, um,

24:38

tradition and economic and personal.

24:46

I mean, it was just the way that most women

24:50

in the African American community

24:54

were having children at home.

24:56

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Even in an urban area like Gainesville?

24:58

Or are we talking rural?

25:03

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Gainesville wasn't so much urban, you know,

25:04

and most African Americans, I mean, they were living around.

25:07

You know the hospital Alachua General

25:12

didn't get desegregated until near, oh, the '70s.

25:16

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I never even thought about that hospital being segregated.

25:25

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Yeah, I mean, that's a whole other story,

25:28

which I can't get into.

25:33

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So what I'm hearing is that the.

25:37

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So there was sort of a hippie vocabulary.

25:39

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These lay midwives in Gainesville are coming at it

25:44

from a hippie perspective, a political perspective?

25:48

Are they learning anything from the granny midwives?

25:51

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There was a separation there.

25:54

You know, and, um, there was a separation there.

25:58

It wasn't intentional.

26:03

It wasn't an intentional separation.

26:04

(wind blows)

26:08

It was sort of a political movement in the white hippie

26:11

community of not wanting to deal with

26:15

the hospital regulations, whereas the African American.

26:19

(wind blows)

26:24

It had always been done.

26:36

And when it became illegal, the grannie midwives

26:42

were grandfathered, grandmothered into,

26:47

the African American midwives were exempt from that.

26:50

You know, I mean it was, the people didn't want.

26:54

You know, the laws in Florida didn't want to deal with

26:58

the African American community, they had.

27:01

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What was illegal?

27:09

Home birth or midwifing?

27:11

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Home births for, you know, I mean the lobbies

27:13

sort of gone up just like the lobbies in California.

27:17

You know, they made it, it was illegal for lay midwives

27:20

to have, to do home births.

27:25

In Oregon it was sort of laissez faire and there was hardly

27:33

any African American population, it was a non-issue.

27:37

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Mhm.

27:40

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Whereas here, there was a certain tradition

27:42

that always had been.

27:48

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Mhm.

27:49

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It just the way that births were done at home.

27:50

Um.

27:54

I think we better stop to make them move away.

27:59

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There was an offshoot at Alachua General.

28:02

The way that the hospital was, it was a three story hospital

28:05

and it was segregated.

28:13

I've heard this story because I do, because I was doing

28:16

oral histories later on with people that had been born there

28:19

and black women as well as white nurses who were there

28:23

during the desegregation process.

28:30

And the way that the hospital was set up, there was,

28:33

the main floor was the mid-cert floor for white women

28:37

and the second floor was the pharmacy and the medical,

28:46

you know, the x-rays and all that kind of thing.

28:57

And then on the third floor was labor and delivery

29:02

for the white women and delivery for everybody

29:08

and behind, in the back of the hospital by the boiler room

29:13

on the first floor was called the annex

29:18

and that was for coloreds.

29:21

That's what they called them.

29:24

And there were two large rooms, there were wards,

29:25

and one was male and one was female

29:31

and they were separated by sheets, you know, by curtains.

29:32

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Mhm.

29:37

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And that's were all the females were and so

29:38

you could have a woman with malaria

29:41

separated by curtain with someone in labor

29:43

who was separated with someone who broke their neck

29:46

with somebody, you know, who had malaria or something,

29:49

you know, whatever.

29:53

And there were only black nurses in the black annex,

30:00

you know, in the annex, they were African American

30:03

because the white nurses weren't working

30:05

with the African Americans.

30:08

And so when a woman.

30:12

There was a hand-helmed elevator, so when a black woman

30:14

was ready to deliver, the nurse had to

30:21

move her up to the third floor.

30:24

She labored on the first floor

30:26

and delivered on the third floor.

30:28

So in this hand-helmed elevator, she would go up

30:30

to the third floor with this woman, like in end stage labor,

30:34

about to deliver, and depending on how it went,

30:40

sometimes she would deliver in the elevator,

30:44

sometimes she'd deliver in the hallway.

30:45

So that was the first unit that got desegregated,

30:48

and nobody complained about it, because like,

30:53

we don't want to keep having to steer the woman

30:55

delivering in the hallway.

30:58

And so that's, and actually I spoke to the head nurse

31:00

of the OB unit and she spoke about

31:06

how, you know, she was always against the segregation

31:11

of how they were doing the hospital, but it was really

31:16

remarkable to me that, you know, as early as the '70s,

31:20

I think it wasn't desegregated until.

31:25

(wind blows)

31:27

But it was.

31:33

So most African Americans wanted, I mean,

31:37

they weren't going to the hospital.

31:42

It was just way too, you know, uncomfortable

31:44

and didn't make any sense.

31:48

So anyways, so back to this other thing.

31:51

So when I was interviewed at

31:53

the Gainesville Women's Health Center

31:55

and they knew that I was doing midwifery,

31:57

they were all interviewing me and wanted to know

31:59

really clearly my feelings about abortion because

32:04

not all midwives believed in abortion.

32:08

My mother had had an abortion in the '50s,

32:10

and so, and she had always put a lot of money

32:17

into Planned Parenthood.

32:21

I mean, that was sort of her thing.

32:23

You know, I came from a.

32:25

(wind blows)

32:27

You know, it was really a woman's right to do what

32:39

they wanted, you know, what they need to do for themselves.

32:44

And so, for me, it wasn't a difficult transition

32:48

to do abortions and to do midwifery at the same time.

32:52

It all had to do with choice.

32:57

And that was sort of the bottom line.

33:02

And I also, you know, we were, I was doing eviction checks.

33:05

We were doing Planned Parenthood stuff.

33:14

We were doing abortion stuff.

33:17

We were doing all kinds of women's health care.

33:21

We were teaching the doctors about

33:23

speaking to women in a respectful way.

33:27

Putting mittens on the stirrups so that they weren't cold.

33:32

Warming up speculums, showing women their cervix.

33:38

All of that was done at the women's clinic.

33:42

And there was also a really strong contingency

33:49

of lesbian political work that was being done there.

33:55

And it went on.

34:01

-

Such as?

-

Well, we were lobbying, you know, we were marching,

34:04

we were doing marches.

34:09

On Thursday night, we'd all go dancing.

34:10

-

Okay, how is lesbian political work

34:15

coming out of the Women's Health Center?

34:18

Is it women there are doing these things?

34:20

-

Yeah, women there, you know, we were marching,

34:23

we were doing take back the night marches.

34:26

We were involved in, you know, just a lot of education

34:29

about women's healthcare and how we needed

34:36

to take control of our body.

34:39

But that was the bottom line, and that we weren't gonna

34:44

let men, the medical establishment, take over our,

34:46

you know, who we were.

34:52

-

And one of the issues at festivals that Robert Bennett

34:54

used to talk about was how lesbians tend not to get

34:58

pelvic exams and that they should.

35:01

Is that something y'all tried to get lesbians to do or?

35:04

-

Yeah, we did and we do.

35:06

You know, I think that women really have a hard time

35:10

with it, and this is true, lesbian or not,

35:13

women who were sexually abused.

35:17

There was a lot of education about that too.

35:19

-

Mhm.

35:24

You mean like child sexual abuse?

35:26

-

Yeah, child sexual abuse.

35:28

So.

35:33

So.

35:39

-

I'll go ahead and pause that.

35:45

-

Yeah, so, I was living with three women.

35:47

I was living with three women, lesbians, while I was

35:54

working at the Gainesville Women's Health Center.

36:01

-

Before you left the first time?

36:04

-

Before I left, yeah, and, you know,

36:05

I was still really ambivalent about living in Gainesville

36:12

even though I had gotten into this, into the women's clinic

36:15

and I was,

36:22

I still only had one foot in the door

36:27

and was thinking about.

36:31

First, I thought about moving with, living with a woman

36:35

that I had a crush on

36:39

in New York City and then I traveled over to Oregon

36:40

and got my old house back and then came back to Gainesville

36:46

to get my stuff and things happened

36:51

and I never went back and one of them was I got into.

36:54

I had my LPN license in California

37:00

and I decided to get my RN license.

37:03

-

I thought you said that you left Gainesville

37:09

after you got your RN.

37:11

-

Hm?

37:13

-

I misunderstood.

37:14

I thought you had said you got your RN in Gainesville

37:15

and then moved to Oregon.

37:18

That's not true?

37:19

-

No, no.

I got my LPN license in California, I moved up to Oregon,

37:22

then I moved out to Gainesville, worked at the clinic

37:27

as a midwife, went back to Oregon for a month

37:32

and then came back here and wound up starting RN school.

37:38

And after, when I started RN school,

37:43

I moved back with, shared my house again with lesbians

37:49

and that's really when I.

37:55

(wind blows)

37:57

-

What year is this?

38:04

-

That was in '81.

38:05

-

So you left in '81 and came back in '81?

38:06

-

Yeah, I was only gone for four months, I think.

38:10

-

Okay.

38:19

-

Maybe three months, maybe I was gone for three months.

38:19

-

Okay.

38:22

-

And then suddenly, it just all made sense,

38:25

why I was in Gainesville.

38:28

I sort of fell in love with Gainesville.

38:31

-

Mm.

38:33

-

I think, a lot of my resistance

38:36

was that it wasn't my idea to come here.

38:38

-

Mhm.

38:41

-

And even though I came out and,

38:42

I hadn't gotten into a relationship with a woman,

38:50

but I was involved with a lot of women

38:57

that were just coming out.

39:00

And by the time that I came back,

39:04

even just in those three months.

39:09

I mean, there was just, I don't know,

39:11

it just became my idea, that's all I can say.

39:15

-

Mhm.

39:17

-

Suddenly made sense, so.

39:18

So I wound up going to RN school

39:22

and then I moved out to the red house.

39:26

-

So, did you not move back in the house

39:30

where you have been living, or you did?

39:32

-

I did.

39:34

I moved back in and one of the women who worked at the,

39:35

and they all worked at

39:45

the Gainesville Women's Health Center,

39:45

one of them eventually became President of NOW.

39:47

(wind blows)

39:55

And everybody was pretty radical then.

40:00

-

You know, one of the things Corky said was

40:04

that in the early days.

40:06

(wind blows)

40:09

-

It would happen.

40:21

-

So is this a lesbian President of NOW, or in?

40:23

-

Yeah.

40:26

-

Okay.

-

Yeah.

40:28

-

This is Gainesville NOW?

40:29

-

Mhm, Florida NOW.

40:30

-

Florida NOW.

40:33

-

Yeah.

40:34

-

Okay.

40:35

-

And she wound up, I think,

40:37

moving to Tallahassee or something.

40:38

I don't want to tell that story.

40:44

-

No, no, no, no, okay.

40:45

-

But anyway, so, I moved to Gainesville, got my RN,

40:47

moved out to the red house.

40:56

-

After you got your RN?

40:58

-

Yeah, the next week.

40:59

I graduated and I had planned ahead of time,

41:02

and at that point, like, I was really, while I was

41:06

in nursing school, I was focused on nursing school,

41:11

but there was a lot of stuff happening in Gainesville.

41:16

-

What year is this?

41:21

-

This was in '81.

41:23

-

So it only took you a year to get the RN?

41:25

-

Yeah, it was a bridge program.

41:28

-

Mhm.

41:30

-

I already had my AA degree.

41:31

-

Mhm.

41:34

-

And I had my LPN and so you could get an RN

41:36

in a year and 13 months.

41:39

-

Mhm.

41:43

-

And uh.

-

So it must be '82 by now, if you started in '81.

41:45

-

Yeah, it was just '82.

41:51

-

Okay.

42:00

-

I think that's true.

42:01

-

So right before, yeah, um, actually right at the end of

42:07

that 13 months of school, I got into a relationship

42:11

with Sandy Cosgrave.

42:15

I was a wild girl back then.

42:19

And there were lots of parties going on,

42:25

there was lots of socializing going on.

42:30

I mean, I'm sure Corky talked about the red house

42:33

and everything that was going on there

42:35

and I was really, um, a part of that.

42:38

-

Sandy was living out there too?

42:45

-

Sandy was living, no, Sandy was.

42:47

(wind blows)

42:50

Oh, she was living in the southeast,

43:00

but she was living in Gainesville.

43:02

-

Mhm.

43:06

-

And she had a big New York City apartment,

43:07

the lesbian, they'd party in.

43:09

We sort of got together then, and it was sort of

43:11

my first official.

43:15

It wasn't the first time that I had slept with a woman,

43:17

but it was the first time

43:21

that I called it a lesbian relationship.

43:22

You know, I had already come out a couple of years,

43:29

you know, a couple years before, but I somehow just.

43:31

You know, I used to go Flash and go, how do I do it?

43:40

You know, how do I get into a relationship?

43:43

(laughs)

43:47

She would give me, like, little lessons.

43:50

Okay, this how you do it, but I was just,

43:52

I don't know, it was just.

43:55

You know, it was just hard.

43:58

But there was lots of opportunities. (laughs)

44:01

I think I was just shy.

44:06

But, you know, there was lots of,

44:13

lots of things going on then.

44:18

-

To do with?

44:23

-

Well, you know, lots of marches.

44:25

Okay, so I moved into the red house and like I said

44:32

the other day, the room was peach colored.

44:35

I hadn't quite moved in yet.

44:41

So I went to see her.

44:43

I was buying paint and I ran into Sally Harrison

44:45

and she asked me what I was doing

44:49

and I said I was buying paint so I could fall in love.

44:52

You know, and I was with Sandy but it wasn't,

44:59

it wasn't romantic.

45:03

It was more, you know, it was sort of an introduction

45:05

into lesbian sexuality and she was a good teacher. (laughs)

45:10

-

Mhm.

45:16

-

We were doing circles, we doing all kinds of,

45:21

like, um, kind of witchy stuff

45:29

and feminist and, you know,

45:32

it would be camping, there'd be a whole group of us

45:38

and we'd go to the beach and we'd be doing these

45:40

middle of the night circles and we'd get together

45:44

at any opportunity and have parties.

45:49

There was lots of socializing going on then

45:53

and it was, like, every night.

45:55

It wasn't like a weekend thing.

46:00

-

Mhm.

46:03

-

So, you know, there was lesbian Halloween parties.

46:09

There was lesbian, you know, all kinds of stuff

46:15

and the lesbian moms were starting to

46:19

get together and organizing.

46:23

A lot of people were going over to the Pagoda

46:25

and doing CR stuff.

46:28

There was a really big music thing

46:32

that was going on in women's music.

46:34

Sandy Malone and Ruth Segal were partners then

46:37

and they had, like, amazing musicians coming all the time.

46:43

You know, it was just like a hub

46:49

and it was really, really active.

46:52

There was a women's bookstore.

46:55

-

Is this Wild Iris?

47:00

-

No, it was called Iris, actually.

47:02

It was called Iris Books,

47:03

and Jeri Green ran it with her partner

47:05

and it wasn't in the same location as it is now.

47:14

When it moved, it didn't move far.

47:18

It went from Iris Books to Wild Iris.

47:23

-

Mhm.

47:27

But it was still owned by her?

47:28

-

No, Jeri got out of that and there were different owners

47:30

at the time it was Iris Books, there was Friday night

47:38

was sort of happy hour and so lesbians got between, like,

47:48

five and seven or.

47:53

(wind blows)

47:55

The lesbian community was growing really fast

48:25

and, I mean, it had started before, but there was this

48:28

sort of renaissance and there was a couple of lesbians,

48:34

a woman named Meghan and, um,

48:42

oh, what was her name?

48:48

It'll come to me.

48:50

Anyway, they were both musicians and she wrote this opera,

48:51

this sort of operetta about Amelia Earhart.

48:58

Um, it'll come to me.

49:03

Anyway, they put it out at the Hippodrome, and that was.

49:07

Now it seems prim but it was wild.

49:10

It was sort of this big theater and there was just this

49:14

wild lesbian operetta that was written.

49:17

Linda Wilson, that's her name.

49:23

Linda Wilson wrote it and her partner Meghan,

49:25

they were in this opera and it was just wild.

49:28

And we just sort of took over the state theater downtown.

49:36

-

Was it Linda that wrote it, or Linda and Meghan?

49:43

-

Linda Wilson wrote it.

49:45

-

Okay.

49:47

-

Meghan, who was this gorgeous singer,

49:48

she sang it and they're still together.

49:52

That was a thing in '81.

50:01

But there was, you know, the thing is that it was very, very

50:05

easy to come out in Gainesville in '80s.

50:10

I mean, it still is, but it was a way that you could.

50:14

You know, I was living with lesbians.

50:18

(wind blows)

50:20

You know, I was really clear.

51:00

But, you know, there were lesbian teachers in the nursing

51:07

school, so it was very easy for me to be out as a lesbian.

51:13

-

So Jeri Green was a lesbian?

51:18

-

Yeah, Jeri Green's a lesbian.

51:20

You know, and very politically active,

51:23

and this was in nursing school, again.

51:24

-

Oh, you were not UF, you were at?

51:26

(wind blows)

51:28

Oh, okay.

51:30

-

It was kind of a big community college, and so.

51:32

I later got a degree in anthropology at UF.

51:35

-

Okay.

51:39

-

Um, so, yeah.

51:40

(wind blows)

51:42

So I was living with lesbians, I was working

51:49

at the Gainesville Women's Health Center with lesbians,

51:51

I was going to school with lesbians.

51:54

(wind blows)

51:59

Lots of social stuff that was going on.

52:02

And so it was almost like, you could think

52:06

that everybody in Gainesville were lesbians.

52:09

I mean, there was just so much activity.

52:12

So, and, when Sally and I got together,

52:15

when I was living at the red house

52:20

and that happened really quickly.

52:22

We started to do spirituality work together, and there was

52:27

a group of lesbians that went down to Cassadega

52:34

to learn natural law from Eloise Page.

52:39

-

Okay, spell Cassadega.

52:42

-

Cassadega.

52:44

-

Is this a town?

52:50

-

It's called a camp, yeah, it's a camp,

52:51

but yeah, it's a town.

52:54

It's near DeLand,

52:57

DeLand, DeLand.

53:00

-

Oh.

53:02

-

And it's 100 miles from Gainesville and every Friday night

53:07

we would go, every Friday night to do these

53:11

natural law classes and there was a group of lesbians

53:15

that used to go there.

53:17

-

Natural law?

53:19

-

Natural law.

53:20

-

Okay, and they did it all through the week,

53:23

but you went on Fridays?

53:26

-

We went on Friday, yeah.

53:28

And Cassadega is a spiritualist community.

53:29

There's psychics that live there

53:37

and there's these little houses.

53:40

People own the house, but the camp owns that land.

53:42

And Eloise Page came down in the '40s, I believe,

53:47

from New York state and started this community,

53:54

and so there was lots of psychics there,

53:58

which really fit in well with lesbians.

54:01

But that whole.

54:05

(wind blows)

54:06

It became, like, a really commonplace thing in Gainesville.

54:12

I mean, Flash was in Gainesville.

54:17

She didn't go to Cassadega,

54:20

but she was doing readings back then.

54:22

-

What kind of readings?

54:25

-

Psychic readings, and she still does.

54:26

You know, she was doing tarot readings.

54:29

She was using tarot cards.

54:35

She made up her own deck of tarot.

54:37

So a lot of people were into

54:40

tarot, it's like readings and doing circles

54:48

and having, doing feminist,

54:52

you know, and just different things.

55:01

-

And this was coming out of Cassadega or just?

55:07

-

No, this was coming out of Gainesville.

55:11

I mean, this was going on in Gainesville,

55:12

but what happened was that Cassadega, which was made up

55:15

of a lot older group of, I mean, Eloise

55:21

died about three years ago at the age of 98 or 95 or.

55:26

-

Whoa.

55:31

-

Or something.

So the physics there were not

55:33

part of the hippie community.

55:36

They were older women and a few men.

55:41

(wind blows)

55:45

It's a really interesting place.

55:50

I mean, you could still go down there

55:54

and get a reading in Cassadega.

55:57

Um.

56:01

So we went there every weekend.

56:04

Every week, there were a group of us that went in a van.

56:07

There was Sally and me and Anngil and.

56:10

-

Who was Gill?

56:14

-

Anngil,

56:16

Anngil.

56:18

She's a lesbian in town.

56:20

-

Okay.

56:23

-

Yeah, um, she actually did polarity.

56:23

She was doing alternative health stuff.

56:29

Cheryl LeMae.

56:35

Um.

56:37

Sandy Cosgrave.

56:40

Sandy wound up with Marcia Zyman and they lived in Cassavega

56:45

and Sandy became a psychic in Cassadega.

56:52

Lived there for several years.

56:56

But they were there and took to lesbians

57:02

and we sort of came under.

57:08

(wind blows)

57:10

Lou and Smith, they all went.

57:18

They went in different cars.

57:20

We were about three carloads of lesbians. (laughs)

57:21

We went down to, every single Friday,

57:25

which was really a commitment

57:28

'cause it was 100 miles each way.

57:30

And I was with Sally at the time.

57:36

We were doing political actions, like lots of,

57:43

you know, we were trying to pass the Equal Rights Amendment,

57:47

we were doing marches there and going to Tallahassee

57:52

and we were doing lots of take back the night stuff.

57:55

We were doing the Peace Walk.

58:01

Did Corky talk about the Peace Walk?

58:07

-

Yeah.

58:09

-

And I was involved in that.

58:10

And there was just this pretty amazing

58:18

flavor of Gainesville.

58:22

We sort of became the hub.

58:26

-

The hub of what?

58:34

-

The hub of feminism and lesbian feminism.

58:35

And there was also the variety show that was going on there.

58:38

And that was the lesbian variety show.

58:45

-

Mhm.

58:48

-

And that started in the mid '80s and that was,

58:49

you know, that is still going on, you know,

58:54

we have it every year.

58:59

And there was this great little, I think you probably

59:02

saw it, but there was this sign, Gainesville dyke, you know?

59:05

Whether you live in Melrose or Archer or Hawthorne,

59:10

you're still a Gainesville dyke.

59:15

You know, it was sort of a, um.

59:17

There were always country dykes that came into town,

59:25

but the action with that kind of politics,

59:30

Esrig, Barbara - interviewed by Rose Norman

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