Seattle-Portland-Spokane - Part III – to now

Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.
Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.
Part III – to now.

1997

Bob Birch died in December and Barbara Dayton disappeared within hours. She settled in a mobile home near Carson City, Nevada living sparsely on social security and gambling whatever she could in nearby casinos.

Reid Vanderburgh started hormones at age 41.

Kay Brown moved to California, started teaching classes at the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco and publishing the online TransHistory site, and in the Transsexual News Telegraph.

Anne Lawrence, while working as an anesthesiologist, allegedly performed an unauthorized vaginal inspection on an unconscious Ethiopian patient and was forced to resign.

Oregon Legislature responded to Buckwalter and Kotula decisions in 1996 by amending the state law to state that "an employer may not be found to have engaged in an unlawful employment practice solely because the employer fails to provide reasonable accommodation to a person with a disability arising out of transsexualism”. This was better than the original proposals.

• Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas & Sabine Lang (eds). Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality and Spirituality. University of Illinois Press, 1997. Jacobs was at the University of Washington, Thomas is a Navajo activist and health worker. The first major anthology on Two-Spirit with Native input.
• Margaret Deirdre O’Hartigan. Our Bodies, Your Lies: The Lesbian Colonization of Transsexualism. 1997.
• Dean Kotula. “Building a Male Body”. Transgender Tapestry, 79, Summer 1997. An early version of the photographic section of The Phallus Palace, 2002. Online.

1998

A prostitute, who had serviced Douglas Perry at home, reported to the police that she saw a lot of guns, knives and a cross-bow. She identified his car and police officers stopped and searched it. They found attorney papers that said that Perry had “a gender psychosis disorder where he does not like females”, and other papers explaining gender transition.

Babette Ellsworth made an arrangement with one of her students, Ross Eliot, food and board in exchange for chauffeuring and other assistances.  Bills and other mail arrived addressed to Albert Ellsworth. "My professor smiled mischievously when I asked about this. Albert? Oh, he was my husband. Some people suspected I had him murdered. This suggestion made her laugh.”

After success in the Lori Buckwalter case, Joanna McNamara became active in the Oregon Gay/Lesbian Law Association, the US National Lesbian and Gay Law Association and the US Transgender Law Conference: the latter two where she worked with Phyllis Frye and they were allowed to put the case to the US Federal Government that trans persons should be covered under Title VII, Sex  Discrimination Protection. She was also active in the Metropolitan Community Church. However as a known transsexual she was unable to find employment, and committed suicide at age 48.

Anne Lawrence put up a web site containing a lot of resources for transsexuals, including comparative material on the vaginoplasty of different surgeons. Through the web site she collected several hundred narratives via her website from 'autogynephilic transsexuals'. This collection continued until 2011.

Andrea James came to Portland for surgery with Dr Meltzer.

Reid Vanderburgh gained a BA in Psychology at Portland State University.

Benton County passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  This appears to be the first law in Oregon which makes it illegal to discriminate against transgender people.

A subcommittee of the Oregon Health Services Commission took evidence from five Portland transsexuals before deciding to organize a task force to determine if sex-change operations are effective in treating gender-identity disorders. Rachel Koteles said health commission staff members have exaggerated the possibility that Oregon would be flooded by transsexuals seeking surgery if the procedures were approved. Margaret O'Hartigan said: "Before surgery, I was surviving through prostitution and welfare and made repeated suicide attempts. Since obtaining surgery, I've supported myself as a typist and secretary and have never attempted suicide again."; Vincent Irelan, who was born blind, said he would take advantage of state-financed sex-change operations "in an instant" if they were available – he needs removal of his breasts in that binding is aggravating a medical condition; Olivia Jaquay had paid for surgery herself but needed one more minor operation.

1999

Right to Pride dissolved in 1999, but the Portland Right to Pride Dinner was taken over by Basic Rights Oregon, which called it the “Hart Dinner”, but they still could not let go of the female pronouns.

Margaret O’Hartigan opposed the Portland Lesbian Community Project extending its services to trans women whom Margaret referred to as ‘men’, and cited Janice Raymond as part of her argument. This article was later reprinted by the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter during the dispute that arouse when they rejected Kimberly Nixon as a counsellor.

Anne Lawrence worked with Andrea James on a possible book for transsexuals, but they went their separate ways.

• Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan. "Post-Modernism Harms Women". Off Our Backs. 29, 1, 1999: 6-13.
• Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan. "Postmodernism Marches on: Women's Space Under Continued Attack". Off Our Backs. 29, 8, 1999: 9.
• Brian Booth. The Life and Career of Alberta Lucille/Dr. Alan L. Hart with Collected Early Writings. Lewis & Clark College, 1999.
• Jason Cromwell. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. University of Illinois Press, 1999. Review by Dallas Denny.

2000

Douglas Perry became Donna and flew to Thailand for correction surgery.

Pre-transition Rebekah Brewis in Oregon sentenced to 5 years for burglary and threatening the homeholder.

63-year old Seattle resident Robyn Walters had surgery with Dr Meltzer.

The Portland City Council voted unanimously to add “gender identity” to the city's 1991 civil rights ordinance which already banned employment, housing, and public accommodation discrimination based on sexual orientation.

2001

Anne Lawrence studied for a Ph.D from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality at San Francisco, which she received in 2001. Michael Bailey was one of her thesis advisors.  She followed that with an MA in Clinical Psychology at the Washington School of Professional Psychology.

Rhiannon G O'Dannabhain had surgery with Dr Meltzer .

Reid Vanderburgh gained an M.A. in Counseling Psychology (specialization Transpersonal Psychology) from John F. Kennedy University's Graduate School for Holistic Studies . The thesis topic was Gender Dissonance: A New Paradigm,

2002

Barbara Dayton died, aged 76.

Babette Ellsworth was contacted by the long lost Rosalyn, who came to visit her sister-father. While she was there, Babette died of a massive heart attack while entering a bus for a student tour that she was to lead. She was 74.

Christine Beatty came to Portland for surgery with Dr Meltzer. She was accepted despite her HIV status.

In 2002, Eastmoreland Hospital was purchased by Symphony Healthcare, a for-profit hospital company founded in Nashville Tennessee in late 2001. Dr Toby Meltzer received a certified letter advising that he would not be allowed to perform any type of gender transition surgery after July 2002 (this was extended to December 2002), and that his patients must leave the hospital after three days. Meltzer asked around Oregon, at hospital after hospital, but was unable to get the hospital privileges that he required. A former patient, a doctor, suggested Scottsdale, Arizona, and in 2003 Meltzer, his wife and three children, and four members of his office staff, relocated there.

• Dean Kotula (ed). The Phallus Palace: Female to Male Transsexuals. Alyson Books, 2002. Contains an interview with Toby Meltzer and Margaret O’Hartigan’s account of the struggle for Alan Hart’s legacy.

2003

Laura Calvo testified in an Oregon legislative hearing for a bill that would ban discrimination based on both sexual orientation and gender identity.  It is the first time an openly transgender person testified for an Oregon civil rights bill that covers gender identity.

Anne Lawrence published the results of a survey of 232 MtF transsexuals who had undergone SRS with surgeon Toby Meltzer during the period 1994–2000 (Lawrence, 2003). “I observed that about 86% of respondents had experienced one or more episodes of autogynephilic arousal before undergoing SRS and 49% had experienced hundreds of episodes or more. Two years later, in a second article based on data from the same survey, I reported that 89% of the respondents classified as nonhomosexual on the basis of their sexual partnership history reported one or more experiences of autogynephilic arousal before undergoing SRS, vs. 40% in the small number of respondents classified as homosexual (Lawrence, 2005); there was evidence that some of these supposedly homosexual participants had misreported their partnership histories and were actually nonhomosexual.”

Skippy LaRue, Garden of Allah alumna, died age 82. In later years Skippy lived in a mobile home in south Everett, north of Seattle, and worked at a gay bathhouse in Seattle, where he was known as Seattle’s oldest female impersonator. He kept in touch with others, and when Don Paulson was researching his book on the Garden of Allah, Skippy acted as a major resource.

Internet Society of North America (ISNA) moved its office to Seattle from Petaluma, California.

• A A Lawrence. “Factors associated with satisfaction or regret following male-to-female sex reassignment surgery”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32, 2003: 299–315.
• Peter Boag. Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest. University of California Press, 2003.
• Gary L. Atkins. Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging. University of Washington Press, 2003.

2004

Portland resident, Susan Faludi, was contacted by her father after a quarter century of non-communication. Her father had become Stephanie. She went to Budapest where Stephanie was then living, and finally wrote a book about rediscovering her father.

Melanie Myers, ex-commercial-printing salesman in Portland, had surgery from Dr Kunaporn in Phuket, Thailand. She then opened a guest-house there for trans women especially those who had surgery at Kunaporn’s clinic, where Stephanie Faludi was a guest.

Asa Wright, Klamath-Modoc, started Partland Two-Spirit Group with 20 people.

2005

Marc LeJeune, worked at Outside In as a social worker during his transition

• A A Lawrence. “Sexuality before and after male-to-female sex reassignment surgery”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 2005: 147–166.

2006

TransActive Gender Center founded by transgender pioneer activist Jenn Burleton. Jenn remains the organization’s Executive Director.

2007

Donna Perry said too much in 2007-8 when talking to an agent of the Department of Social and Health Services. She talked of shooting people, and said: “I knew I was going to end up dead or in prison again if I didn’t do something. I got gelded just like a horse and got my life back under control.”

Rebekah Brewis castrated self, and transferred to psychiatric ward at Oregon State Hospital.

Reena Andrews returned to Spokane to be closer to family.

Michael/Megan Wallent, manager at Microsoft who had worked on Outlook and Windows, took paternity leave and returned to announce that was trans. She took six weeks leave and returned to a different division.

Alexander James Adams, Oregon based musician, after a 25 year career and 10 albums, transitioned to male. He continued playing in the same venues.

Imperial Court System Coronation Ball in Seattle, on Feb. 17, José Sarria formally handed leadership to Nicole Murray Ramirez, and she assumed the title “Queen Mother of the Americas”.

The State of Oregon enacted the Oregon Equality Act which bans discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, and some other areas.

• Reid Vanderburgh. Transition and Beyond: Observations on Gender Identity. Q Press, 2007.

2008

Stu Rasmussen elected Mayor of Silverton. 

The Formans contacted the FBI and showed the evidence that Barbara Dayton was DB Cooper, but never heard back from the FBI.

• Pat & Ron Forman. The Legend of D. B. Cooper - Death by Natural Causes. Lulu, 2008.

2009

The National Geographic cable channel broadcast a special on the DB Cooper case in July 2009. They filmed material re Barbara Dayton, interviewed the Formans and hired a female pilot to wear a wig and fly a Cessna 140. However all Dayton material was pulled when sent to senior management: "executives at National Geographic cited three reasons for pulling the Dayton footage: one, Barb Dayton’s sex-change was too controversial; two, the story line was too complex for a one-hour broadcast; and three, the FBI did not consider Dayton to be a credible suspect".

Rev David Weekly, inspired by Japanese-Americans in Oregon congregations who told their stories of internment during World War II and the healing they had experienced, and following months of preparation, David told his story as a trans man in a sermon on August 30, 2009. The congregation responded with resounding support. He became one of the only openly transgender clergy serving in The United Methodist Church. Following this event Rev. Weekley appeared on ABC News, CBS Early News and several radio programs.

2010

Rhiannon G O'Dannabhain, who had had surgery with Dr Meltzer in 2001, won in court against the US tax authorities to the effect that the cost of transgender surgery was tax deductible.

October: Lynn Edward Benton, a cop in Gladstone, south of Portland, had been transitioning to male and married Debbie Higbee. He was not called as a witness at the Neil Beagley trial, despite being the first cop to the death scene. He was also passed over when the police chief retired.

2011

Darcelle was grand marshal of the Portland Rose Festival's Starlight Parade and received the city's Spirit of Portland Award.

Colin Wolf becomes the third openly-trans therapist in Portland, opening his practice Queerapy.

May: Lynn Benton offered $2000 to a friend and her son to kill his wife. They shot, beat and then strangled her. Debbie had opposed his further progress to male, and he had beaten her. If she reported this it would damage his career. The mother said too much and was arrested. The son was arrested and imprisoned for sex with underage girls and said too much in prison.

Benton was first placed on administrative leave, but then fired in December when pornography was found on his laptop, and because of the 1993 marriage which was considered a sham. He became a Greyhound Bus driver.

Rebekah Brewis released. Sued the Oregon prison system for failing to treat her for gender identity disorder.

• Walter Cole & Sharon Knorr. Just Call Me Darcelle: A Memoir. CreateSpace, 2011.
• Peter Boag. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, 2011.
• David Weekly. In From the Wilderness: Sherman, (She-r-man) (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2011).

2012

Donna Perry was again arrested by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition. A search of her home recovered more firearms. She was sentenced to 18 months and placed in a Federal Prison in Fort Worth, Texas. She boasted to her female cell-mate that she was a contract killer who had killed nine prostitutes. “He told me … becoming a woman was a disguise to take the heat off of him, that an elderly lady with mental illness would never get caught.” She also claimed to have killed two others after returning from Thailand. A check on Parry’s DNA revealed a match to that taken from Ms Brisbois’ fingernail. A further match was found with DNA found on the blanket wrapped around Yolanda Sapp’s body, and a fingerprint match to Nickie Lowe’s purse etc. which had been recovered from a dumpster. A further search of Perry’s home found a box containing panties – but in a size too small to be her own. In an interview in November that year Donna said: 'Douglas didn't stop, Donna stopped it,' 'I'm not going to admit I killed anybody, I didn't. Donna has killed nobody.' And 'I don't know if Doug did or not, it was 20 years ago and I have no idea whether he did or did not.' She also said that a sex change is a “permanent way to control any violence” – that it results in “a very great downturn in violence”.

Stu Rasmussen was re-elected Mayor of Silverton. 

Rev David Weekly was invited to preach Morningside United Methodist Church in Salem, Oregon, and talked about his life as a trans man. Later he left for Boston University School of Theology to do a doctorate.

In 2012, in Flagstaff, Arizona, while out shopping, musician Camilla Rose collapsed and woke up in hospital. Her lack of sight was now almost complete. She decided to move to Portland, Oregon for access to the Casey Eye Clinic, the city’s mass transit system and its strong music scene.

Candi Brings Plenty, Oglala Lakota Sioux, from South Dakota, moved to Portland.

The Portland City Council voted unanimously to cover fully inclusive and medically necessary transition related health care for transgender city employees. Trans activist and Basic Rights Oregon Communications Manager Sasha Buchert is the major advocate for the new policy.

Oregon prohibits heath care providers from discriminating based on actual or perceived gender identity.  This means that health insurance plans sold in Oregon can no longer deny care to transgender policy holder’s procedures which are provided to non-transgender (cisgender) policy holders.  Transgender activist and (at that time) BRO Communications Manager Sasha Buchert provides the major advocacy for this important advance.

Latina transgender pioneer Laura Calvo was elected Democratic National Committee Member, Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO). Previous to that, Laura had held a number of other positions in the DPO.

Sasha Buchert was appointed to the Oregon State Hospital Advisory Board by Governor John Kitzhaber. She is the first transgender Oregonian to hold a public appointed position.

Simone Neall appointed by Governor Kitzhaber as a member of the State Construction Contractors Board.  

• Paula Nielsen. The Trans-Evangelist: The Life and Times of A Transgender Pentecostal Preacher. CreateSpace, 2012.

2013

Sasha Buchart left Oregon to take a position with the Transgender Law Center in California.

Megan/Michael Wallent, Microsoft manager returned to being Michael citing health concerns.

Camilla Rose, was welcomed by the Portland Folk Music Society and invited to be one of the representatives of the blind community. She is the first trans person in the history of the Western Music Association. She was chosen by the Portland Folk Music Society as their featured artist for November and December 2013, however the Oregonian Newspaper refused to do a story on her, or to review her music.

Gregory G Bolich, who did his first degree at Gonzaga University in Spokane published books on Proyestant Theology 1980-2001. From 2007-2013 he published 9 books on trans topics through Lulu.

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber signed House Bill 2093 to remove the surgery requirement before changing a birth certificate.  Basic Rights Oregon’s contract lobbyist played a lead role in lobbying the bill, while BRO Transgender Justice Program Manager (at that time) Tash Shatz and TransActive Executive Director Jenn Burleton advocated for it. 

The Oregon Health Plan announced that beginning October 1, 2014 it will cover the cost of pubertal suppression treatment for transgender adolescents and teens.

The Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) ordered Portland bar owner Chris Penner to pay $400,000 to the T-Girls, a group of transgender and crossdressing people whom Penner asked not to return to his bar the previous year. The penalty is the first imposed under the 2007 Oregon Equality Act which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public places.

The State of Oregon settled with Alec Esquivel in his case Esquivel v. Oregon, by agreeing to remove the exclusions that denied coverage to transgender people for transition-related health care. This applies to the State of Oregon’s employee health plan.

• Stu for Silverton, book by Peter Duchan, music and lyrics by Breedlove. Directed by Andrew Russell, with Mark Anders as Stu Rasmussen, Intiman Theatre, Seattle, 125 minutes.
• Anne A Lawrence. Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism. Springer, 2013. This is largely based on the autobiographical narratives submitted through her web site. Lawrence also discusses several published biographies of those she considers to be autogynephilic but chose not to include Barbara Dayton, Seattle’s first surgical transsexual, despite writing five years after the Formans' biography.
• Cameron Stauth. In the Name of God: The True Story of the Fight to Save Children from Faith-Healing Homicide. Thomas Dunne Books, 2013: 158, 201, 202, 205-6, 220-1, 338, 398-9, 405, 411-2, 417, 427, 440-1, 448-9. Lynne Benton, pre-transition, is in this book as a cop working the case.

Cheney, Spokane, March. Reena Andrews shot and killed Roman Bailey, and then herself. (both were trans)

Spokane, July. Amanda Blanchard’s body discovered after a mobile-home fire.

2014

Portland Trans Pride marches had been held in Portland in previous years, but 2014 is the first year a Trans Pride March is an official event during Pride Weekend.

• Ross Eliot. Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth. Heliocentric Press, 2014. About Babette Ellsworth.
• Reid Vanderburgh. Journeys of Transformation: Stories from Across the Acronym. Odin Ink, 2014.
• Miriam J Abelson. Men in Context: Transmasculinities and Transgender – experiences in Three Regions. PhD Thesis, University of Oregon, September 2014.

2015

Dylan Orr, 36, previously chief of staff at the US federal Office of Disability Employment Policy, was appointed to direct Seattle's Office of Labor Standards to oversee implementation of Seattle’s $15-an-hour minimum wage law.

Mel Myers, who as Melanie, had run a guest house for transsexuals in Phuket, Thailand, was back in Portland and reverted to male. He and his Thai wife had opened a Thai restaurant, and Mel was also driving a city bus.

• Maija Anderson. Interview with Ira B. Pauly, MD. Oregon Health & Science University, Oral History program, Februray 18, 2015. Online

2016

Darcelle XV was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Oldest Drag Queen.

Irene Berg, the mother of Debbie Higbee filed a $900,000 wrongful death lawsuit against Lynn Benton.

Portland Two Spirit Society, regrouped in February, with Candi Brings Plenty as leader. The group was Grand Marshall of Portland Pride.

• Susan Faludi. In the Darkroom. Henry Holt and Company, 2016. Susan’s account of her trans father. She had been living in Portland when she started the book.

2017

Donna Perry was found guilty and sentenced to three life sentences without parole.

Lynn Edward Benton was found guilty of arranging the murder of his wife in 2011. He was sentenced to life without parole, which he is serving in Oregon’s only women’s prison at Coffee Creek. (The facility also processes all new inmates, male and female. There are usually about 400 men at the facility. There are also six trans inmates there.)

Rebekah Brewis was a director of PDX Trans Pride which agreed to be a fiscal sponsor of the Portland Women’s March. It raised over $20,000 which disappeared when Brewis disappeared.

2018

Danni Askini, trans activist from Seattle, had her US passport renewal refused, and became a refugee in Sweden.

__________________

The following were consulted in compiling this section of the timeline.

• Kay Brown. Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History …. 1997-2000. No Longer available as such. Archive.
• Walter Cole & Sharon Knorr. Just Call Me Darcelle: A Memoir. CreateSpace, 2011.
• Jason Cromwell. Making the Visible Invisible: Contrictions of Bodies, Genders and Sexualities by and about Female-to-Male Transgendered People. PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1996.
• Jason Cromwell. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
• Kirstin Cronn-Mills. Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex voices. Twenty-First Century Books, 2015.
• Mara Dauphin. “ ‘A Bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012.
• Ross Eliot. Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth. Heliocentric Press, 2014.
• Susan Faludi. In the Darkroom. Henry Holt and Company, 2016..
• Pat & Ron Forman. The Legend of D. B. Cooper - Death by Natural Causes. Lulu, 2008.
• Chrystie Hill. “Queer History in Seattle, Part 2: After Stonewall”. History Link, November 2003. http://www.historylink.org/File/4266.

-------

It is rather unfortunate that 2017 trans history on this region was dominated by the convictions of Perry and Benton, and the disappearance of Brewis.   This is merely happenstance and of course should not be taken to imply anything about trans persons or the US North West.  

Seattle-Portland-Spokane - Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.

Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.
Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.
Part III – to now.

1957

Jazz musician Billy Tipton moved to Spokane. He worked as a talent broker and his trio was the house band at Allen's Tin Pan Alley, performing weekly. This was his best year for sales as his group’s albums sold 17,678 copies despite being signed to a small, independent record label.

• Billy Tipton. Billy Tipton Plays Hi-Fi On Piano. LP Tops Records, 1957.
• The Billy Tipton Trio. Sweet Georgia Brown. LP Tops Records, 1957.

1960

Billy Tipton started a relationship with nightclub dancer and stripper Kitty Kelly (later known as Kitty Oakes), who was known professionally as "The Irish Venus". They were involved with their local PTA and with the Boy Scouts. They adopted three sons.

Hotcha Hinton, Jackie Starr and Skippy LaRue were on the road with  working carnivals, performing in girlie shows. The other carnies knew what they were, but not the customers. In addition to the show they had a blowoff (sideshow) act where they did a striptease and even, being very confident of their gaffing, they had men pay to touch their genital area.

1961

Bobby Dayton was sometimes working in the Seattle shipyards.

1962

Ira Pauly, who had been working with Harry Benjamin in New York and was aggregating 100 transsexual cases, obtained a position at University of Oregon Medical School.

Alan Hart died of heart disease at the age of 72. His will specified that he be cremated and that ‘no memorial be erected or created’. His widow Edna lived another 20 years. They left a trust to the Oregon Health Sciences Foundation for research grants in the field of leukemia.

A group of cross-dressers in Portland, including Olivia Perala, began regular meetings.

Marilyn from Seattle was featured in the February 1962 issue of Transvestia.

1963

Ira Pauly completed "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases" in 1963, but it was not published until 1965. He concluded that that gender surgery had positive results and that trans patients should be supported by medical professionals in their quest to live as the gender of their identity.

Paula Nielsen, a patient of Harry Benjamin, transitioned. In stealth Paula was active in her local Portland Foursquare Church and its choir. She worked as secretary to the comptroller for a theatrical agency.

• Ira B Pauly. "Female Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. Read before the American Psychiatric Association, St. Louis, May 1963.

1964

Albert Ellsworth had done a BA and masters at the Catholic University of Portland, and a PhD at the University of Bordeau. He had been employed to teach history, French and Spanish at Portland State University, and taken a wife, Helen, and they had three daughters. In 1964 Ellsworth was hired at the newly formed Portland Community College, and stayed the rest of his life. Albert was cross-dressing in private.

1965

Bobby Dayton married again, to Cindy who already had three children.

Francis Blair and her husband of 20 years took a vacation in San Francisco, and they were attacked in Golden Gate Park. The husband and their dog were killed. Francis was left to drive home to Seattle alone, and was killed in a car crash in Oregon.

• Ira B Pauly. "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases". Archives of General Psychology, 13, 1965:172-181.

Ira Pauly received a thousand requests from doctors around the world for offprints of his article. It also resulted in a job interview at Johns Hopkins, but Oregon doubled his salary to keep him.

1966

Harry Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon, p81/37 tells us of “Peter A. (who, however, much prefers to be called Irene). He is a rather well-known musician from Oregon, married for twenty-five years, with a grown-up daughter who knows nothing of her father's hobby. The wife knows and makes the best of it, but does not want to see him ‘dressed,’ except perhaps on occasion of a masquerade ball.”

1967

Bobby Dayton moved to Baltimore with wife and children, and started living as Barbara.  The Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic declined her application based on age, appearance and numerous tattoos. Also Barbara could not afford the fee.

Gender Identity Research and Treatment Clinic opened at the University of Washington, Seattle, headed by John Hampton, previously of Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in Baltimore.

The Dorian Society, Seattle's first gay rights organization, was founded by UW Professor Nicholas Heer and others.

37-year-old Walter Cole, ex-military club owner, Portland, did drag for the first time at age 37.

1968

Barbara Dayton applied to the University of Washington Gender Clinic, and lived as female for six months, staying with Cindy and her new boyfriend. The University clinic then accepted her.

Lee Leonard had transgender surgery at Minnesota Gender Clinic, and became Liz Lyons.

Jackie Starr’s husband, Bill Scott, had to have both legs amputated. Jackie took care of him till he died.

Katherine Cummings from Australia, having obtained position of Reference Librarian at Oregon State Library in Salem, Oregon, wrote to Virginia Prince for local FPE contacts: none in Salem, only one in Portland, but several in Seattle. The met at the Halloween party. “The Seattle chapter of FPE was one of the liveliest transvestite groups I ever encountered. With one exception all were married and their wives participated with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. … The only bachelor was the acknowledged leader of the group, a lawyer called Marilyn.”

Virginia Prince met with people at University of Oregon Medical School.

Annette, whose photograph had been the first cover girl on Transvestia #5, invited FPE, as he did most years, to visit his remote ranch in Idaho. Most of the Seattle Chapter went, and Virginia drove up from Los Angeles. Katherine Cummings was present and observed that Virginia managed to alienate most of the wives by telling them that she was just as female as they were. (Cummings: 185).

• Ira B Pauly. “The current status of the change of sex operation”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Nov;147, 5, 1968:460-71.

1969

Barbara Dayton had transgender surgery in December 1969, the first done at the University of Washington Gender Clinic. Ten days later Barbara returned to surgery for a colostomy. Her parents arrived, and stayed with Cindy. Follow-up operations continued through 1970 and 1971. Barbara trained in data processing, but was unable to find any work, and was frequently depressed. She had still not told her children.

The University of Washington Gender Clinic announced itself to the press.

Walter Coleman left his wife of 18 years and came out as gay. He took the name Darcelle for his drag alter ego, and for his club.

Seattle's Dorian House, which provided counseling and employment help for homosexuals, opened its doors. It was the first institution of its kind in the United States.

• Ira B Pauly. “Adult Manifestations of Male Transsexualism” and “Adult Manifestations of Female Transsexualism”. In Richard Green & John Money (ed). Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969: 37-87.
• Ursula K Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace books, 1969. A science fiction novel by a Portland resident about a planet where the inhabitants are without gender, that inspired both trans and cis readers.

1970

Verissa, completed legal and surgical transition and was advertised as such at the Magic Inn, Seattle.

New Trenns magazine. A new magazine for trans persons out of Seattle. Published by Empathy Press.

1971

November 24, 1971, Thanksgiving Eve, a man using the name Dan Cooper purchased a walk-on ticket for a 727 flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle. He handed a note to a stewardess to the effect that he had a bomb. He demanded $200,000 in unmarked twenty-dollar bills and two sets of sports parachutes. These being provided, he allowed the passengers to disembark at Seattle. Cooper demanded that the plane, now refueled, take off for Mexico City via Reno, no faster than 170 knots at 10,000 feet, and that the cabin be left unpressurized. He sent all the crew into the cockpit. He then opened the back door and after a while jumped. Due to a miscommunication with the media, the perpetrator came to be referred to as DB Cooper. The FBI was unable to find the parachute, a body or the money. Bill Dayton, watching the news reports about the hijacking thought that he recognized his brother.

December 1971, at a follow-up interview, the doctors noted that Barbara Dayton had a much more positive attitude to things, and shortly afterwards she was able to get a job at the Suzzallo Library at the University. She came out to her son, Dennis.

Bill Plant/ Peewee Nattajon had been a dancer at the Garden of Allah, and later had been a private nurse for the comedian George Burns after his wife Gracie had died in 1964. He then helped the elder Nattajon through the last years of his life. In 1971 He was a founder of the Awareness of Life Church in Renton, Washington. He and his straight son continued to do drag performance for Seattle charities into the 1990s.

1972

Marilyn from FPE’s Lambda chapter started an annual Dream retreat.

Jamison Green completed a MFA in creative writing at the University of Oregon.

Dr William McRoberts of the University of Washington Gender Clinic announced that it had processed 13 MTF transsexuals, with excellent results in 7 cases, satisfactory in 5, and one failure.

1973

Barbara Dayton bought a surplus airplane. Her son Dennis and his new wife accepted Barbara.

Catholic psychiatrist Paul McHugh became the chairman of psychiatry at the University of Oregon.

1974

Douglas Perry of Spokane was arrested for second degree assault.

June24-30. Seattle’s first Gay Pride Week, included a discussion on transsexuality at the University of Washington Hub Ballroom.

• Ira B Pauly. “Female Transsexualism”. Archives of Sexual Behavior,3, 1974:487-526.

1975

Dennis Dayton, son of Barbara, died of a drug overdose in May 1975. The funeral led to a reconciliation with daughter Rena whom Barb had not seen for ten years.

Walter Coleman’s Darcelle’s became a popular place for drag performance.

Paula Nielsen joined the Portland Metropolitan Community Church. She became church secretary, came out publically as transsexual, assisted the pastor, edited the church newsletter and participated in the student clergy program. She was the religion editor for the NW Fountain, a gay community paper.

Catholic psychiatrist Paul McHugh left the University of Oregon to become head of the Psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins. He later wrote that he intended from the start to put an end to sex change surgeries which he described as “the most radical therapy ever encouraged by 20th-century psychiatrists— with perhaps the exception of lobotomies”.

• Liz Lyons. Up Your Ass. LP Angelo Production, 1975.

1976

Jonathan Katz realized that “H” in Gilbert’s 1920 write-up and Alan Hart were the same. In his Gay American History, Katz wrote of Hart’s hysterectomy as an example of unneeded medical mutilation forced on a lesbian. Gay/lesbian historians were unable to interview his widow in that they persistently alienated her by thinking of her husband and thus herself as lesbians.

Jackie Graham was found guilty of second-degree murder after a trick became belligerent on finding that she ‘was not a woman’.

• Jamison Green. Eyes: stories. Olive Press, 1976.

1977

Pat and Ron Forman met Barbara Dayton at the Thun Field airstrip. Some months later Barb accepted invitations and became a regular dinner guest at the Furmans on Sunday nights.

Seattle’s Ingersoll Gender Center founded for and by transgender and gender diverse persons.

Christina Kempf, a “self-professed transsexual”, offered immunity in exchange for testimony in the Thomas Ragan rape-murder trial.

1978

February Barbara Dayton told the Formans that she had been a transsexual.

Ira Pauly became chair of the University of Nevada Medical School

1979

Douglas Perry was found guilty of a dangerous weapons violation.

Billy Tipton separated from his wife, and he and his sons moved into a mobile home in Spokane.

A group of pilots at the Thun Field airstrip were discussing the DB Cooper affair when Barbara Dayton surprisingly denied that Cooper was a fool and revealed detailed knowledge of the case. Ron joked that Barb must be DB Cooper. Later Barb admitted that she – in reverse drag - really had been DB Cooper, although she subsequently denied it.

Kay Brown and various other cis and trans women were living at CedarStar.

Ira Pauly was a founding member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, (now WPATH).

• Liz Lyons. Live: From Around the World to You. LP 1979.

1980

Barbara Dayton lost her pilot's license due to medical problems, but kept flying anyway.

Paula Nielsen débuted on the stage of the Darcelle XV showplace where, billed as "Portland's Own Red Hot Mama", she did Sophie Tucker impersonations. Through the 1980s, Paula wrote a column that was printed in four different alternate publications.

Northwest Gender Alliance (NWGA) founded in Portland.

1983

Jonathan Katz in his Gay/Lesbian Almanac re-asserted that Alan Hart was a lesbian.

Jennifer Cleasby discharged from a training course for dance instructors, solely because she was trans.

• Kim Elizabeth Stuart. The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender. Metamorphous Press, 1983. Metamorphous Press was located in Lake Oswego, a suburb of Portland. A conservative guide for heterosexual transsexuals by a cis writer and mother of four, based on interviews with 70 who had gone through the process. The book became quite popular. Overview. Review by Rupert Raj.

1984

The Right to Privacy Political Action Committee in Oregon established an annual “Lucille Hart Dinner” thinking that they were honoring Alan Hart. This event was attended by Portland’s liberal elite, gay and straight both, and regularly raised more than $100,000 for charities.

1985

Ira Pauly became president of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association for two years.

NWGA was listed in the gay newspaper, Just Out.

1986

Douglas Perry was arrested for second degree assault.

Jackie Starr lived the last ten years of her life in a mobile home near the Seattle-Tacoma airport. She was as meticulous as ever in her appearance, and when she and her friends went to the Golden Crown drag bar in Seattle, the younger generation of drag performers would crowd around.

1987

Douglas Perry was found guilty of reckless endangerment with a firearm.

Margaret Deirdre O’Hartigan, from Minnesota, had applied for a typing job with the Washington State Police in Seattle, and discovered that only police forces and a few others may require a polygraph test asking questions to prospective employees about private matters. With the ACLU she sued the Police on this matter.

Anne Lawrence, also from Minnesota where had self-prescribed hormones, became an anesthesiologist at Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center. Still living as male, Lawrence married a woman and they had two children.

Paula Nielsen had her own television gospel show, and was featured as a guest on television shows in the US, the UK and Canada.

1988

Douglas Perry was arrested by Federal Agents for possession of a pipe bomb. A search of his home discovered 22 handguns (including .22 handguns), 27 rifles and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Thus he became a convicted felon.

Barbara Dayton retired from her library job, and opened an aircraft restoration shop at Thun Field airstrip with Bob Birch who had been flirting with her for some time. She lived in a room at the shop. The business lasted for 4 years.

1989

Douglas Perry was arrested in Spokane for soliciting sex from prostitutes.

Billy Tipton, aged 74, died in Spokane, and examination of his body outed him as a trans man.

Margaret O’Hartigan and the ACLU won their case against the State Police requiring polygraph tests.

• The Brussels Experience. Seattle: Ingersoll Gender Center 16 pp 1989. What to expect if you have surgery with Dr Seghers.

1990

Three sex workers, Nickie Lowe, Kathy Brisbois and Yolanda Sapp, were murdered in February and March 1990. All three were shot with a .22 caliber gun, and their nude or partially nude bodies were found in or near the Spokane River. At the time investigators considered the three deaths to be part of the longer string of prostitute murders.

• Henry Bair. "Lucille Hart Story" and Brian Booth "Alan Hart: A Literary Footnote", in Right to Privacy Ninth Annual Lucille Hart Dinner Booklet (October 6, 1990).

1992

Barbara Dayton and Bob Birch sold their aircraft restoration business. Barbara moved in with Bob in Tacoma, Washington, and as he deteriorated with age, she became his full-time care-giver despite family antagonism to her presence.

Anne Lawrence restarted hormones, and underwent electrolysis.

Washington State Supreme Court reversed the ruling won by Margaret O’Hartigan and the ACLU two years previously.

• The Trinidad Experience. Seattle: Ingersoll Gender Center 16 pp 1992. What to expect if you have surgery with Dr Biber,

1993

Toby Meltzer began performing vaginoplasty surgeries. He almost gave up after his first transgender surgery discovering how much he did not know. The patient required additional surgery, but sent a thank-you note. He persevered, and began performing vaginoplasty at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU).

Margaret O’Hartigan obtained a ruling against a Seattle bisexual women’s group that excluded her because she is transsexual.

Margaret O’Hartigan wrote: “Every application of the term transgender to me is an attempt to mask what I've done and as such co-opts my life, denies my experience, violates my very soul. I changed my sex. … I am not transgender.”

Filisa Vistima, (more) Seattle, dead by suicide at age 22. Prior to her death she had been working at the Lesbian Resource Center, cataloguing the library, helping out on the paper.

• Tom Cook & Thomas Lauderdale. “The Lucille Hart Story: An Unconventional Fairy Tale.” The Lucille Hart dinner. Reprinted as "The Incredible Life and Loves of the Legendary Lucille Hart," Alternative Connection, Vol. 2, Nos. 12 and 13 (September and October 1993).

1994

Douglas Perry was again arrested for unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition, including a .22 handgun and a couple of .22 rifles. As a convicted felon Perry was prohibited from possessing firearms.

Albert Ellsworth married Sandra, a close friend whom he had known for decades, who worked in administration at Portland Community College. Shortly afterwards, Ellsworth started talking about changing sex, and transitioned on the job at the age of 66. She was one of the first patients of surgeon Toby Meltzer. Her legal name became AJ Bobbie Ellsworth, but she was from then generally known as Babette. Sandra could not relate to this and they were divorced shortly afterwards.

Rev David Weekly started pastoring congregations in Idaho and Oregon, including Salem, Corvallis, Forest Grove, Montavilla and then Epworth UMC in Portland.

Kay Brown wrote to the free Portland gay magazine, Just Out: “The Right to privacy Political Action Committee in Oregon has a big fundraiser every year that is called the Lucille Hart Dinner. When I am asked if I am going, I indignantly answer, ‘Not until they stop using the wrong name and gender for one of our heroes! His name is Alan’. ”

• Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan. “The Joy of Fat”. Dimension Magazine, February 1994. Reprinted in Harper’s Magazine, May 1994

1995

Douglas Perry was in prison in Oregon from January 1995 to October 1997. Other inmates later reported that he talked about taking prostitutes home, and talked in such a way that they thought that he was involved in the prostitute murders.

Ira Pauly retired.

Margaret O’Hartigan moved to Portland, Oregon, where she persuaded the Phoenix Rising Counseling Center to include trans persons. She publicized the role the Unitarian Universalist Church had had in publishing Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire. She established the Filisa Vistima Foundation in order to collect funds to aid indigent transsexuals gain access to health care.

O’Hartigan and other transsexuals were alienated by NWGA which was run by a heterosexual part-time cross-dresser who spoke against public and insurance funding of surgery.

Kay Brown, Rachel Koteles and Ken Morris co-founded the Ad Hoc Committee of Transsexuals to Recognize Alan Hart. Koteles addressed the Portland Lesbian Avengers who agreed to hear a presentation from the Ad Hoc Committee, and agreed to work with the Ad Hoc Committee. Brown and Morris travelled to Seattle and recruited fellow trans persons Kaz Suzat and Jason Cromwell.

October 11: Tom Cook started to give his lecture “The Legendary Life of Lucille Hart, alias Dr Alan Hart’. The Ad Hoc Committee and Lesbian Avengers unfurled a 20-foot banner: HIS NAME WAS ALAN. This shook Cook enough that he actually started using male pronouns for Hart.

October 14: at the Lucille Hart Dinner, a transsexual wearing a HIS NAME WAS ALAN button met the diners, and gave them a flyer urging that Hart be recognized as the transsexual hero that he was. The flyer also contained a message from the Lesbian Avengers: “We view the Right to Privacy’s use of ‘Lucille’ instead of Alan as disrespectful and divisive. The Lesbian Avengers call upon the Right to Privacy to respect Alan Hart and stop referring to him with a name that he rejected.”

Dr Joy Shaffer, a college trans friend of Kay Brown who had started a medical practice in San Jose, California, brought Anne Lawrence to meet Kay. As a professional courtesy, Lawrence had been able to observe Dr Meltzer do a sex-change operation. Lawrence obtained a court order for a name change. Lawrence had by now abandoned her marriage and transitioned socially, including as work. Anne Lawrence was one of Meltzer’s first patients, six months after social transition. This was a special concession as Meltzer normally required a full 12-month real-life test, and 12 months of therapy.

Reid Vanderburgh began transition.

1996

February 2: Kay Brown and six other transsexuals met with Right To Privacy board for a three-hour meeting.

Portland Right to Privacy renamed itself to Right to Pride, and its fundraising event was renamed the “Right to Pride Dinner”.

Ken Morris and Rachel Koteles became board members of the Vistima Foundation.

There were sometimes problems finding beds for patients at OHSU, so Dr Toby Meltzer opened his private practice at the Eastmoreland Hospital, a 100-bed medical center also in Portland, and over the next few years expanded to take more than 50% of the surgical workload. In the early days of the internet, word about his work spread in transgender chat rooms.

After a second divorce with the same wife, Joanna McNamara moved to Salem, Oregon and did a law degree. On graduation, she acted pro bono for Lori Buckwalter who had been fired from Consolidated Freightways for starting transition, and intended to marry a woman before surgery. McNamara won her argument that transgender persons were covered by Oregon disability law. This led to a conflict with transactivist Margaret O’Hartigan who felt that she deserved the credit as she had been campaigning on the same case.  In either case, Oregon became the second US State (after Minnesota) to protect trans persons in its employment law. O’Hartigan put down McNamara and her client as ‘men’ who had enjoyed ‘adult white male privilege’ because they had not become women until their 40s.

Dean Kotula, 38, from Minnesota, obtained work as a shipyard machinist in Portland, and started transition. Being called to work less and less, he obtained his work record where it stated “was F, now M” with a notation that he should not be called back. He obtained a ruling from the Bureau of Labor and Industry that he was protected under the Oregon Disability Law.

Kay Brown and Joanna McNamara worked as legislative lobbyists with It’s Time Oregon, successfully removing language from a bill which otherwise would had removed the employment protection gained by the Buckwalter case. Using a one-two punch strategy, they set up appointments with a members of the legislature, then during the first part of the meeting, Kay acted as if she were JoAnna’s assistant.  JoAnna did not pass well, so during this time, the legislative member and staff would assume that only she were trans, and Kay was her non-transsexual female assistant. When the moment came Kay would out myself to explain that it was not just the inability to get hired as a known transsexual that was at stake, but that if one was already employed and one was discovered to be transsexual, one would then be fired, passed over for promotion, demoted, or harassed to force one to quit, giving personal anecdotes of just such occurrences.

Margaret O’Hartigan had sought an alternative to NWGA and lobbied the Phoenix Rising Counseling Center for gays and lesbians to also counsel trans persons. Phoenix Rising received a $9,000 grant to serve transsexual and transgender young people. 

Margaret O’Hartigan received Pride NorthWest’s “Spirit of Pride Award” for her “tireless advocacy for the trans community and for trans consciousness raising with both the Les/bi/gay and general straight cultures”. She has opposed the removal of Gender Identity Disorder from the DSM in that the associated HBIGDA Standard of Care is non-abusive unlike what she was exposed to as a child, and attacked Phyllis Burke's Gender Shock which documents abusive attempts to 'cure' gender variant children as a 'transphobic' book.

Dean Kotula, offering support to a friend Kenny after his mastectomy, came to know cis photographer Cheris Hiser, who encouraged him to take over her project of photographing trans men.

Dean Kotula obtained a ruling from the Bureau of Labor and Industry (BoLI) that he was protected under the Oregon Disability Law. He was able to continue working in the shipyards despite harassment from both workers and management. Enough money was saved to pay for surgery.

Marie Caitlin Brennan, musician, lived and performed in Seattle, and pioneered using the MP3 format.

• Don Paulson with Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. Columbia University Press, 1996.
• Jason Cromwell. Making the Visible Invisible: Contrictions of Bodies, Genders and Sexualities by and about Female-to-Male Transgendered People. PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1996.

__________________________

The following were consulted in compiling this section of the timeline.

• Henry Bair. "Lucille Hart Story" and Brian Booth "Alan Hart: A Literary Footnote", in Right to Privacy Ninth Annual Lucille Hart Dinner Booklet (October 6, 1990).
• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977
• Brian Booth. The Life and Career of Alberta Lucille/Dr. Alan L. Hart with Collected Early Writings. Lewis & Clark College, 1999.
• Kay Brown. Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History …. 1997-2000. . Archive.
• Walter Cole & Sharon Knorr. Just Call Me Darcelle: A Memoir. CreateSpace, 2011.
• Jason Cromwell. Making the Visible Invisible: Contrictions of Bodies, Genders and Sexualities by and about Female-to-Male Transgendered People. PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1996.
• Jason Cromwell. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
• Kirstin Cronn-Mills. Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex voices. Twenty-First Century Books, 2015.
• Katherine Cummings. Katherine’s Diary: The Story of a Transsexual. Beaujon Press, 2008. Katherine worked at the Oregon State Library in Salem in 1968-9.
• Mara Dauphin. “ ‘A Bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012.
• Ross Eliot. Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth. Heliocentric Press, 2014.
• Pat & Ron Forman. The Legend of D. B. Cooper - Death by Natural Causes. Lulu, 2008.
• Joshua Allen Gilbert. “Homosexuality and its Treatment”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 52, 4. Oct 1920: 297-322. Identified the patient, Alan Hart, only as ‘H’. The article is a mix of the patient’s and the doctor’s writing. In line with the practice of the time, the patient’s condition is labeled ‘homosexuality’.
• Chrystie Hill. “Queer History in Seattle, Part 1: to 1967”. History Link, April 2003. http://www.historylink.org/File/4154.
• Chrystie Hill. “Queer History in Seattle, Part 2: After Stonewall”. History Link, November 2003. http://www.historylink.org/File/4266.
• Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A., Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1976, revised edition 1992.
• Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. 1983, Carrol & Graf Publishers, Inc. 1994.
• Dean Kotula (ed). The Phallus Palace: Female to Male Transsexuals. Alyson Books, 2002.
• Ursula K Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace books, 1969. A science fiction novel by a Portland resident about a planet where the inhabitants are without gender, that inspired both trans and cis readers.
• Diana Wood Middlebrook. Suits Me: The Double life of Billy Tipton. Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
• Paula Nielsen. The Trans-Evangelist: The Life and Times of A Transgender Pentecostal Preacher. CreateSpace, 2012.
• Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan. "Post-Modernism Harms Women". Off Our Backs. 29, 1, 1999: 6-13.
• Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan. "Postmodernism Marches on: Women's Space Under Continued Attack". Off Our Backs. 29, 8, 1999: 9.
• Ira B Pauly. "Female Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. Read before the American Psychiatric Association, St. Louis, May 1963.
• Ira B Pauly. "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases". Archives of General Psychology, 13, 1965:172-181.
• Ira B Pauly. “The current status of the change of sex operation”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Nov;147, 5, 1968:460-71.
• Ira B Pauly. “Adult Manifestations of Male Transsexualism” and “Adult Manifestations of Female Transsexualism”. In Richard Green & John Money (ed). Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969: 37-87.
• Ira B Pauly. “Female Transsexualism”. Archives of Sexual Behavior,3, 1974:487-526.
• Maija Anderson. Interview with Ira B. Pauly, MD. Oregon Health & Science University, Oral History program, Februray 18, 2015. Online
• Danni/y Rosen and Ampersand Crates. “Oregon Trans Timeline”. The Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN), 2017. www.glapn.org/6031TransTimeline.html. Lists Alan Hart in 1917, but then no other transsexual until the 21^st century.
• Kim Elizabeth Stuart. The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender. Metamorphous Press, 1983.

------------------


Empathy Press/ Empathy Forum were active in the 1970s, with a Seattle address. They published under various names: Empathy, The Transvestite, New Trenns. However there is little recorded about them. You may find some of their publications at Digital Transgender Archive.

Here is Kay Brown on the NorthWest Gender Alliance (NWGA):  “O’Hartigan relocated to Portland, Oregon where her outspoken and abrasive manner alienated her from a transgender/crossdressers organization, NorthWest Gender Alliance (NWGA). To be fair... she was not the only transsexual to feel uncomfortable with the organization as it did not empower transsexuals to even run their own support groups... instead a heterosexual part time cross dresser ran the group! The facilitator had made remarks that several transsexuals felt were indicative of opposition to public and insurance funding of surgery. Remarks were published in the NWGA newletter that Ms. O’Hartigan took exception to... and were later retracted, with apologies, at her request.”

Seattle-Portland-Spokane Timeline - Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.

As I have commented before, there is now so much trans history, that a universal timeline is futile, and most that I encounter are badly done. I have already discussed which are the better universal timelines.

Which brings us to regional timelines. The rough story is the same everywhere: initial oppression, some resistance, some success, more success. But the details and the persons involved are quite different, and the local issues can also be very different. Some months back I did an Atlanta-Savannah timeline.

Now here is what happened in Oregon and Washington. Apologies for the lack of native two-spirit content. It should be included, but I was unable to find a summary of such.

The early years are dominated by pioneer trans men and female impersonators.   Of the trans women discussed in Part I only Alice Baker and Hotcha Hinton passed well off stage.   Trans women as we today think of them, will appear in Part II.   In the circumstances before the mid-1950s, those with the yearning to be trans women settled for stage performance or the occasional private party - that was all.  Of course many others yearned but suffered in silence.

The significance of Albert Ellsworth will become apparant in Part II.

Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.
Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.

Part III – to now.

Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956

1579

Francis Drake made his way to Nehalem Bay in 1579 and spent five weeks in the middle of summer repairing his ship. He claimed the land between 38–48 degrees north latitude as a Symbolic Sovereign Act for England.

1811

New Yorker John Jacob Astor financed the establishment of Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River as a western outpost to his Pacific Fur Company.

British explorer David Thompson conducted overland exploration. In 1811, while working for the North West Company, Thompson became the first European to navigate the entire Columbia River. Stopping on the way, at the junction of the Snake River, he posted a claim to the region for Great Britain and the North West Company.

Thompson who had met Kaúxuma Núpika/Manlike Woman in the upper reaches of the Columbia River, now met him and his wife at Fort Astoria. Kauxuma had been passing, but Thompson outed him. Kauxuma’s prophesies on the downward journey had so scared the Lower Columbia River inhabitants that the locals were intent upon killing Kauxuma, who now approached David Thompson to seek his protection during the journey upriver.

1812

In the War of 1812, the British gained control of all Pacific Fur Company posts.

1818

The Treaty of 1818 established joint British and American occupancy of the region west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. By the 1820s and 1830s, the Hudson's Bay Company dominated the Pacific Northwest from its Columbia District headquarters at Fort Vancouver (built in 1825, across the Columbia River from present-day Portland).

1843

The first law code for Oregon was a copy of Iowa’s simply because someone present had a copy. Sodomy was not a crime in Iowa, so it was not specified for Oregon either.

1846

The border between the United States and British North America was set at the 49th parallel. The Oregon Territory was officially organized on August 13, 1848.

1850

A new code of law adopted by the Oregon Territorial legislature did not include sodomy as a crime.
Settlement increased with the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 and the forced relocation of the native population to reservations in Oregon.

1853

A new criminal code in Oregon makes sodomy a crime for the first time, with a penalty set at 1 to 5 years in prison.
Washington became a US state.

1859

Oregon became a US State.

1866

Election code of Washington State said that “all white citizens” could vote. It was said on the floor of the house that this included women. However women were turned away at subsequent elections. Litigation followed. See 1909.

1886

First person sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary for Sodomy.

1889

Ray Leonard and his father Joseph arrived in Lebanon, Oregon, and set up a cobbling business.

1894

Joseph Leonard died. Ray continued the business. He lived in the back of the shop, and went fishing and hunting with other men from the town. The men would gather in his shop in the evenings to tell stories.

1898

Harry Allen, then 16 and still living as female, gave birth to a boy. The father had already deserted. This confirmed to Allen that he should be a man. The boy child was raised by his grandparents..

1900

Harry Allen, then using the name Livingston, came to the attention of Seattle and national newspapers, which constantly gave his female name. He had been arrested several times by the Seattle police. The reason given was creating a disturbance, but really for wearing the wrong clothes. He left town and got a job as a bartender in Washington’s Tunnel City, a railway camp at Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains, where a tunnel was approaching completion. Edward ‘Black Jack’ Morse, a felon from Alaska, was shot dead during an attempted robbery in Seattle in 1900. In his pocket was said to be found a photograph of himself and Livingstone taken in Tunnel City

1901

In Tunnel City, it was reported, a waitress named Dolly Quappe, killed herself on Christmas Day, 1901, by drinking carbolic acid. This was said to be because she discovered that her Harry, Harry Allen, was not really a man, and anyway he loved another.

1902

August: Harry Allen, drunk, punched a cop, which led him to the jailhouse.

1903

November: Pearl Waldren in Seattle attempted suicide by gunshot, declaring her love for Harry Allen.

1906

Harry Allen was arrested again on a trumped-up charge – it was said that the police wanted to tie him in to train robberies by the infamous Bill Miner.

1909

The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition put Seattle and Washington State in the national spotlight. Both the Washington Equal Suffrage Association and the National American Woman Suffrage Association held their annual conventions in Seattle in July 1909, and July 7 was declared Suffrage Day at the A-Y-P Exposition itself.

1911

Harry Allen was arrested and charged with selling alcohol to Native Americans.

Ray Leonard, now 62, was found wandering at night and was disoriented. He was taken to the state hospital, where, on being stripped for a bath, was declared to be a woman. Ray recovered and returned to Lebanon, but the authorities made him wear dresses (although he wore trousers underneath). The men no longer gathered in his shop.

1912

June: Harry Allen and a prostitute friend, Isabelle Maxwell, travelled to Portland, Oregon, and took a room. As Maxwell was a prostitute, Allen was charged under the 1910 Mann Act for transportation across state lines for immoral purposes. The arrival of a cop who knew Allen and his gender history resulted in the dropping of the Mann Act charges, although – Oregon having no law against cross-dressing, he was convicted of vagrancy and sentenced to 90 days in the city jail.

It just so happened that while Harry Allen was in jail, Miriam Van Waters, a Portland native, an anthropology student at Clark University, Massachusetts and a future prison reformer was in town doing research on female inmates at the city jail. Waters perceived Allen to be an energetic and independent woman for whom modern society (unlike many aboriginal tribes) had no place.

November 8: 19-year-old Benjamin Trout was arrested in Portland for only petty theft. But was so frightened that he confessed to participation in local homosexual culture. The story dominated local newspaper headlines for several weeks, over 50 men were implicated, those who fled to California, Washington and British Columbia were arrested there. Most charges were dismissed due to lack of evidence, however seven pled guilty or were convicted, and one committed suicide in his room at the YMCA. The newspapers contained numerous lists of suspects along with spicy details about drag parties, men with female names, secret codes of communication, male brothels, nationwide networks of perverts, and local sites where men met for sex.

December 12: physician Harry Start was charged with sodomy, and convicted. The prosecution entered into evidence accounts of drag parties.

Julian Eltinge’s Vaudeville Review played the Metropolitan Theatre in Seattle.

Oregon suffrage extended to women on the 6^th attempt.

1913

Alice Baker arrived in Portland in the spring. She arrived in men’s clothes but found refuge at the women’s Peniel Mission, where she explained that she had had to leave home in Idaho after a disagreement with her parents, and had traveled as a man with a fake moustache. Donations were made to her of feminine attire and a ‘transformation’ wig. There were even rumors that a local evangelical minister had proposed. However the wife of the Peniel Mission’s superintendent became suspicious and a short stay in hospital resulted in the physician reporting to the superintendent and to the local authorities that she was a man. Baker quickly left town, on a ship sailing to California, with a man friend.

The Oregon legislature, responding to claims during the 1912 trials that fellatio was not forbidden by the 1853 Sodomy law, broadened the 1853 law to forbid both oral sex and “any act or practice of sexual perversity”.

Harry Start appealed on the grounds that it had been improper to introduce evidence regarding activities for which he had not been charged. The prosecutor argued that this was to establish that Start was a congenital invert. In May 1913 the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that “To admit testimony...making it appear that the accused has the bent of mind adapted to such actions, would cloud the issue and confuse the jury” and overturned the conviction. However Start had lost his Oregon medical license. Start moved to Hong Kong, his wife Mary to follow later, but she died of a drug overdose. Start moved on to the Philippines, where he was still working as a urologist during the Japanese occupation after 1941. After WWII he returned to the US and died in a mental hospital in California in 1946.

1916

Robert Gaffney, 44, head janitor, was arrested in Seattle under the 1913 ‘Lazy Husband’ Act for deserting his wife, and sentenced to hard labor (for which his wife would gain $1.50 per day). However he revealed that he had been born female, and had lived as male for 18 years. He had married a woman, deserted by her husband with one child and another on the way, to help her. When she became pregnant again, he considered their agreement broken and left. The judge dismissed charges, and declared the marriage void.

1917

Harry Allen was working as a police informer after Washington State introduced alcohol prohibition.
Alberta Hart, the only ‘woman’ in her class, graduated from the University of Oregon Medical Department in Oregon (now the Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine) with the highest honors in her class, and consulted a physician-psychiatrist, Dr J. Allen Gilbert of Portland, Oregon. Dr Gilbert established that the real problem was connected with her sex. He had initially tried hypnosis to get her to accept a conventional female role, but she had refused to continue in that.

1918

In February, using the name Robert Allen Bamford, Jr., Hart married Inez Stark in California. Otherwise he was now Allen Hart. He requested a hysterectomy from Dr Gilbert, and the operation was done late in 1918. This is a remarkably early cooperation of a doctor to supply as much of a sex change operation as then technically feasible.

1919

Harry Allen got into a quarrel with his 79-year-old father and was stabbed in the lungs from the back. The city hospital managed to save him.

1920

Harry Allen was busted for opium

• Joshua Allen Gilbert. “Homosexuality and its Treatment”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 52, 4. Oct 1920: 297-322. Identified the patient, Alan Hart, only as ‘H’. The article is a mix of the patient’s and the doctor’s writing. In line with the practice of the time, the patient’s condition is labeled ‘homosexuality’.

1921

Ray Leonard died, age 72.

1922

Harry Allen died at age 40 of syphilitic meningitis.

1923

Alan Hart, MD had obtained a hospital position, but was outed after a chance encounter. Inez Stark left him.

1925

Alan Hart and Inez were divorced. Later he married a school teacher. He obtained positions out of state.

1926

A speakeasy was opened in the basement of the 19^th-century Arlington Hotel in Seattle's Pioneer Square. It was called The Garden of Allah after the popular 1904 novel by Robert Hichens, which had been adapted as a play in 1911, and filmed in 1916 and 1927.
The teenage Francis Blair already has a trunk full of female clothing, and passed easily on Seattle streetcars.

1928

Albert Ellsworth was born in Yakima, Washington State, to a teenage mother, Mildred Sweet (1911-1955) and her husband Albert Ellsworth (1906-1990). They were told that the child was not expected to live, and relocated to Redmond, Washington. Subsequent enquiries to the hospital re the child went unanswered.  Neglected, the baby was cared for by a French aristocrat, Germaine Bonnefont (1894-1983) a teacher of French and Spanish, and her US husband, Robert Brown, 

1929

“Sam Jarvis” found guilty of second degree burglary after being arrested in stolen female clothes,

1930

In the 1930 census the Brown-Bonnefont family listed Ellsworth as their son Bobby Brown. They took the young boy to France, although without the formality of adoption.

18-year-old Vilma arrived in Seattle. While he had previously done quite a bit of female impersonation, he desisted as he grew older.

1930s

The Casino was the main gay bar in Seattle. "the only place on the West Coast that was open and free for gay people”. Same-sex dancing was allowed. It was nicknamed: Madame Peabody's Dancing Academy for Young Ladies.

Hanna Banna had come to Seattle with the Alaska Gold Rush in the late 1890s. Sometimes dressed as female, but not always, Banana was often found at The Casino, where she was the local gay historian.
Chicago Marge was one of the few who always wore female clothing. She also hustled. One night she was chased by a policeman, but got away. The next day the local newspaper ran a cartoon of the incident and complained of police wasting time and money,

The Spinning Wheel cabaret featured female impersonators.

Female impersonators were also featured at the State, Rialto and the Palm. The public were not told which dancers were trans.

Francis Blair was in the chorus line of the Rivoli Burlesque. Her gender was known and her dressing space was separated from that of the cis women by a screen. She sometimes played the organ for the show.

1942

Skippy Larue from Texas moved to Seattle and worked at Boeing for 72¢ a hour, and then on a ferry lunch counter. He met Jackie Starr, first at a party, and then because they lived in the same building.

1946

In the chaos following WWII, Albert Ellsworth came to the attention of the new government in Paris, and after scrutiny of his documents, it was determined that he was a US citizen and he was sent back to Yakima, Washington on the SS Argentina in 1946. He met the birth mother of whom he had no memory. She was still only in her mid-30s. They had sex and a sister-daughter Rosalyn was born, although by then Albert had left and did not know about the child.

The Garden of Allah, previously a speakeasy and then a tavern, re-opened, this time as a gay cabaret. It was Seattle's most popular gay cabaret in the late 1940s and 1950s and one of the first gay-owned gay bars in the United States. Acts were primarily female impersonation, though some male impersonators also performed. The opening night act was the Jewel Box Review. Local performers included Wanda Brown, Michael Phelan, Francis Blair, Jackie Starr, Robin Raye, Hotcha Hinton, and Paris Delair. Unlike the female impersonator nightclub, Finocchio’s, in San Francisco, local gay men and lesbians were encouraged to attend.

Hotcha Hinton, raised as a circus performer, worked each winter at the Garden of Allah and did many of the costumes for the show until it closed. Her act involved live snakes to the consternation of the other performers. In summer she would leave to work in carnivals. She lived as a woman full-time, was quite pleased to be taken as a woman, and she would get upset if she failed to pass on the phone, or if show-biz rival like Ray Bourbon or Liz Lyons referred to her as a man. She had electrolysis but apparently did not take the new hormones.

Jackie Starr, previously with the Jewel Box Review, was signed as the headliner at the Garden of Allah.

Francis Blair was known for her singing, but also danced, stripped, produced shows and designed costumes. Syndicated columnist Walter Winchell wrote about Francis as ‘the boy with the million-dollar legs”.

Bernie Carey (born 1922) was an impersonator at the Garden of Allah, on and off, 1946-1952. Later he became a hairdresser.

1947

Ricky Reynolds (born 1933) singer, dancer, female impersonator, had been with the Jewel Box Revue, since the age of 11. He performed at the Garden of Allah 1947-9, bluffing his way through the age barrier.

Bill Plant/ Peewee Nattajon (born 1929) won the amateur night at the Garden of Allah several times. The older performers encouraged him, and he took the name of Nattajon in homage to an older performer who helped him and others. Bill was mainly a dancer, but later also a stripper.

Skippy Larue started going to the Garden of Allah, Jackie and others encouraged her to perform, and helped with costumes, makeup and how to a do a gaff. She sometimes performed as Madame Fifi.

1948

Kim Drake (born 1932) already knew Ricky Reynolds and other impersonators at the Garden of Allah. In November, when he turned 16, the others dressed him, gave him false ID and his performance at amateur night led to a contract. He stayed, on and off, for four years. He left when he found a husband.

Robin Raye came to the Garden of Allah. With the help of a female friend, entered the amateur night as a stripper, and won. Later he worked with Lee Leonard before she became Liz Lyons. Start of a 20-year career. He later performed at Finocchio’s and with the Jewel Box Revue. He married female stripper in 1958. And the marriage lasted 30 years,

Lee Leonard from Seattle also performed at the Garden of Allah as an impersonator. The act was more raunchy than most. Later Leonard likewise performed at Finocchio’s in San Francisco, and toured with Robin Raye.

1950

Paris Delair had begun performing as a female impersonator during her teenage in Vancouver, BC. She toured with the Jewel Box Review and did gigs at the Garden of Allah.

Jackie Starr married preacher-trucker Bill Scott.

1952

Francis Blair did shows for the United Service Organizations (USO) which provided entertainment for the US Military during the Korean War. A rather prim hostess of the show had a fit when Francis stripped down to only a G-string.

1954

16-year-old Betty, after winning first prize at a local Halloween ball, sent photographs to the friend at Jewel Box Review, and got back a wire from the manager offering a job. Later she became a successful female impersonator in New York, and found a mentor to finance her transition. Her autobiography was included in Harry Bemjamin’s 1966 book.

1956

Seattle’s The Garden of Allah closed for financial reasons, after a rate raise from the musicians' union and a raise in city taxes on locales that provided both entertainment and alcohol. The military had made the Garden off limits to servicemen. New rules obliged female impersonators to wear male underwear, and the system of payoffs to the police was an extra burden.

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The following were consulted in compiling this section of the timeline.

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977
• Peter Boag. Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest. University of California Press, 2003.
• Peter Boag. “Go West Young Man, Go East Young Woman: Searching for the Trans in Western Gender History”. Western Historical Quarterly, 36, 4 (Winter, 2005): 477-497.
• Peter Boag. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, 2011.
• Mara Dauphin. “ ‘A Bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012.
• Ross Eliot. Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth. Heliocentric Press, 2014.
• Joshua Allen Gilbert. “Homosexuality and its Treatment”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 52, 4. Oct 1920: 297-322. Identified the patient, Alan Hart, only as ‘H’. The article is a mix of the patient’s and the doctor’s writing. In line with the practice of the time, the patient’s condition is labeled ‘homosexuality’.
• Chrystie Hill. “Queer History in Seattle, Part 1: to 1967”. History Link, April 2003. http://www.historylink.org/File/4154.
• Don Paulson with Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. Columbia University Press, 1996.
• Don Paulson and Skippy LaRue photograph collection, 1903-2000. http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv08840#ID2IKKWE2WIFAHGDYOPTQOQJOI2D1SP3S3E5IWOL1ZA01PAY42LBE.
• Danni/y Rosen and Ampersand Crates. “Oregon Trans Timeline”. The Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN), 2017. www.glapn.org/6031TransTimeline.html. Lists Alan Hart in 1917, but then no other transsexual until the 21^st century.

Wikipedia (History of the LGBT community in Seattle) contains no trans content whatsoever, except to mention that The Spinning Wheel in the 1930s and the Garden of Allah in the 1950s had female impersonation shows.

I couldn’t find which years Liz Lyons was in Oregon/Washington.


Who was the elder Nattajon? Bill Plant says that he was in 13 Hollywood movies, including Beauty and the Beast and The Picture of Dorian Gray. However there is no Nattajon listed in IMDB. He is probably listed under another name – but which?