Two own-voice impersonators

Sometimes we get only a snapshot of a person, and never find out what happened to them later.   Here are two trans woman surviving as performers, who are incidentally mentioned in books on other topics.  This is all that we have of them.

Loretta Zotto (193? - ?)

During the filming of Trouble Along the Way, 1953, about a failing Catholic college that employs a has-been sports coach (John Wayne) trying to regain his lost wife and daughter, director MichaelCurtiz (who made Casablanca and Mildred Pierce) was noticed spending time with Loretta Zotto, an extra on the cast.   Zotto was tall, beautiful, well-endowed and was compared to film-star Jane Russell.   

One night Judy Garland, Peter Lawford and Merv Griffin (who had an uncredited voice part in the film) went to the West Hollywood club, Tabu.   Judy said: “I hear there's a drag queen there who does Judy Garland better than I do”.   

They sat through three ho-hum acts, and then the star, billed as Stormy Weather, came on and performed “The Trolley Song” from Meet Me in St Louis, 1944 and “Over the Rainbow”.   Judy graciously conceded that Stormy sang “Over the Rainbow” better than she did.   Merv recognized Stormy, instantly, as Loretta Zotto from the film set, and Peter scored a date with her, and reported back to the other two on Stormy’s actual genital sex.   

Merv blew his chances of a better, bigger part in Michael Curtiz’s next film by telling him that they knew.

• Darwin Porter.  Merv Griffin: A life in the Closet.  Blood Moon, 2009: 213-4.

Ruth Brown (194? - )

Ruth had a troubled career, divided between church gospel, drag bars and jail.  She  took the name of the well-known rhythm and blues singer, Ruth Brown, and was even presented in a night-club as if she were the Ruth Brown (several cis women also were so presented in other nightclubs).  

She was at the Stonewall riots, and performed at Harlem drag balls.

In 1976 Marion Williams, the gospel and blues singer, appearing at New York’s Town Hall encouraged the audience to sing along, but they were unable to match her range.   It was Ruth who stepped down from the balcony and sang a duet with Marion. 

A few years later, when Anthony Heilbut had produced Marion’s album I’ve Come So Far, a group of critics and fans were invited to hear her sing.   Among them were a group of what were taken to be church ladies, but were not.  Among them was Ruth who led the ladies in holy dance.   

Heilbut then got to know Ruth. In the late 1980s, he accepted her invitation to hear her sing at Sally’s Hideaway.  He describes her act: 

“She was indeed a powerhouse, a combination of Wilson Picket and Little Richard, but better than either.  She sang a typical soul repertory, including songs that predated her audience.”

·         William G Hawkeswood.  One of the Children: Gay Black Men in Harlem.  University of California Press,1996 :86.

·         Chip Deffaa.  Blue Rhythms: Six Lives in Rhythm and Blues.  University of Illinois Press,1996: 263n9.

·         Anthony Heilbut.  The Fan Who Knew Too Much: Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations.  Alfred A Knopf, 2012: 22-5, 30, 34-5, 48, 70, 109.

John Campbell/Murray Hall (1850 - 1901) business man, Tammany Hall politician

John Campbell and his younger sister Marie, possibly from Govan, on the Clyde, were orphaned  in 1861.  Marie had worn male clothing due to ‘bad usage’ as a child.   John died two years later when Marie was 13.  He advised her to take his name and his clothes as such would ‘probably enable her the better to make her way in the world’.

In 1869 in Kirknewton, east of Edinburgh, the person now called "John Campbell" married Mary Ann, pregnant and already the mother of two.   

Some months later, in May 1870, John deserted his family.   He found work in Renfrew, adjacent to Govan, east of Glasgow, at the forge of a local shipbuilding company, Henderson, Coulborn & Co.   He lodged with a family and became well-liked for his willingness to help in the home.   He began a relationship with a local woman, Kate, and took her on romantic trips to Edinburgh. 

There was a smallpox epidemic 1870-2 in the Glasgow area.   John attended his landlady when she fell ill.   When the doctor called, he insisted that John needed to be admitted to the infirmary.  John agreed only if he were to remain fully clothed.   The doctor pressed, his suspicions aroused, and John admitted that he was Marie Campbell.   In Kirknewton, parish authorities had sought Mary Ann’s husband.  She had admitted that her husband was a woman, but as her children were not John’s her character was questioned and her claim dismissed.   On hearing the news from Renfrew, it was decided that Mary Ann and a Will Waddel, a witness to the marriage, should accompany the Inspector of the Poor to Renfrew.   John, on seeing Will exclaimed: “Is that you Will Waddel; how’s the wife and bairns?”.   

John was charged with contravening the Registration Act.  Shortly afterwards, John disappeared.

He emigrated to New York, where he gave his name as Murray Hamilton Hall.  The name of his first wife in New York is not documented.   She complained about his flirtations and womanizing, and disappeared mysteriously after a few years.  

Hall soon married again, on Christmas Eve to Celia Lowe, in the Presbyterian Church in Lower 6^th  Ave, and they became US citizens together, 20 October 1875. They adopted a daughter, Imelda, but also known as Millie. Celia, also, complained of his womanizing. Murray ran an employment agency for domestic servants, and also became involved with the Tammany politicians, where he was a member of the General Committee, and was a personal friend of New York State Senator Barney Martin.

Murray was known as a man about town. Although slight and with a rather squeaky voice, he came across as very masculine, and drank and fought within the city political in-crowd. He always wore baggy, rather too large, clothes, and an overcoat even in summer.

Celia died in 1898.

In the US Census of June 1900, Hall listed himself as male, age 60 and that he had immigrated in 1846 from Scotland.  His daughter was listed as Millie, age 20 from Maine. 

Murray Hall suffered cancer of the left breast for many years but avoided medical attention – he said that his declining health resulted from having been knocked down by a bicycle on Fifth Avenue. He purchased a considerable library of medical and surgery books, which he used towards self-treatment and to avoid disclosure. Finally, on his deathbed, he allowed his doctor to examine him closely.

On 19 January the body was buried  at night in an unmarked $12 grave at MountOlivet Cemetery, by his adopted daughter, Imelda.  For the first time since he was 13, the body was dressed in woman’s clothes. 

The inquest was held on the 28^th. Two days of testimony were taken from his doctor and from Imelda.  Imelda continued to refer to her father as ‘he’, and when nudged by the coroner to say ‘she’, She replied: “No … he was always a man to me, and I shall never think of him as a woman”. The all-male jury took just seven minutes to find that Hall had died of natural causes, and was a lady.

Alternate stories of Hall’s life were soon in circulation: that he was John Anderson, born Mary, from Ireland; that he had been born Elizabeth Hall in the lower west side of Manhattan; that he had worked the California gold fields in the 1840s. 

John Campbell:

·         “ ’A Woman Married To A Woman’: Shock Revelations and Intrigue In Victorian Scotland”.  A History of Working-Class Marriage, September 30, 2014.  Online.  The accounts of John Campbell.”

Murray Hall:

·         “Woman Long Posed as Man”. New York Times. Jan 18, 1901. Online at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5031.
·         “Known as a Man for Sixty Years, She died a Woman: Astounding Life History of Murray Hall, the Sixth Avenue Employment Agent”.  New York Evening World, Jan 18, 1901.  Online. 
·         “Murray Hall Fooled Many Shrewd Men”. New York Times. Jan 19 1901. http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/news/hall.html.
·         “Story of ‘Murray Hall’ told by her adopted daughter: Woman who Masqueraded as a Man for More than Forty Years was Buried Yesterday – Other Similar Cases in History”.  The St Louis Republic, Jan 20 1901.  Online. 
·         “The Murray Hall Case: Possible Solution of New York’s Strange Mystery: The Story of an Old Nurse”.  Goldboro Weekly Argus, Feb 14, 1901.  Online.
·         Havelock Ellis. Sexual Inversion. In Studies In The Psychology Of Sex. Random House. 1936: 246-7.
·         Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. Avon, 1978: 353-361.
·         Karen Abbott, “The Mystery of Murray Hall,” July 21, 2011, Smithsonian.com, Online.
·         Lydia Nelson. “Reanimating Archiving/Archival Corporealities: Deploying ‘Big Ears’ on De Reigeur Mortis Intervention”.  QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1, 2, Summer 2014: 132-159.

__________

The first wife in New York is not named.   There is no reason to assume that she was Kate from Renfrew, but no reason to rule that out either.

Imelda replied  “No … he was always a man to me, and I shall never think of him as a woman”, but only 9 days before had buried him in female clothes.  His sex-gender disparity had come as a shock to her, and she had not had time to think it through.

Imelda ("Story of ‘Murray Hall’ told by her adopted daughter") remembered that her adoptive parents were married on Christmas Eve in the Presbyterian Church in Lower 6^th  Ave, but was not sure which year.   As a variant, Lydia Nelson has a footnote, #55, that they “ were married on Dec. 24, 1872 at the Church of the Strangers on Mercer Street. As of 1901, 'the record [was] on file at the bureau of vital statistics,' according to the Salt Lake Herald, January 27, 1901: 12”.  If this is so, the marriage to the first wife in New York was a matter of months, not years. 

Thank you to Lydia Nelson for discovering the naturalization certificate and the census return of the Halls and including them in her article.   She also worked out where Murray’s unmarked grave is. 

Most writers about Murray Hall take their facts from Havelock Ellis,  Hall was not mentioned in the original 1897 edition of Havelock Ellis’ Sexual Inversion (obviously), but  he was added in the 1915 edition.  Ellis states of Hall: 

“Her real name was Mary Anderson, and she was born in Govan, in Scotland.   Early left an orphan, on the death of her only brother she put on his clothes and went to Edinburgh, working as a man.  Her secret was discovered during an illness, and she finally went to America.”  

He cites the Weekly Scotsman, February 9, 1901 (which unfortunately is not available online).   

This is supported by “The Murray Hall Case: Possible Solution of New York’s Strange Mystery: The Story of an Old Nurse”, cited above in which Mrs Canning, a nurse previously with the Edinburgh Hospital, tells of Mary Anderson whose brother John died and she took his identity.  He went to Govan and there married.   After infidelities and a separation, the wife disclosed that John was a woman, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.  John went to Duddison close to Edinburgh (no such place – did she mean Duddingston?).  Suspected of having smallpox, John was taken into the Edinburgh hospital, and his body discrepancy discovered.  He was arrested on the outstanding warrant.   Edinburgh Hospital had two sections: Hamilton Hall and Murray Hall.   Hence John’s name in New York: Murray Hamilton Hall.  I assume that Canning means the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, established 1729.   However I cannot find confirmation that it had two halls of that name – Google fails to find them, nor are they mentioned in Helen Dingwall’s A History of Scottish Medicine.

John Campbell and John Anderson seem to be two variants of the same tale:

ü  Born Mary or Maria  
ü  Elder brother John who dies
ü  Takes John’s name and clothes
ü  Ellis has John go to Edinburgh; Campbell went to Kirknewton, east of Edinburgh
ü  Wife abandoned, she tells that he is a woman and a warrant is issued
ü  Works in Renfrew or Govan which are only 2 miles apart
ü  John is taken ill in the smallpox epidemic, and his body discovered to be discrepant.

These parallels are almost convincing.   Do we have a claim from 1901 that John Campbell and Murray Hall are the same?  Again Lydia Nelson delivers (p139):  “According to Sir Henry Littlejohn, Edinburgh, Scotland’s Medical Officer of Health, Hall (alias John Campbell) was born an orphan in Govan, Scotland; she wore her dead brother’s clothes to gain employment. (‘Masqueraded in Glasgow,’ Washington Post, January 29, 1901: 1)”.  Littlejohn was Edinburgh’s Medical Officer of Health.   He was also one of the two men who inspired Conan Doyle when he created Sherlock Holmes.  

On the other hand when Murray Hall was registered in the 1900 census he claimed to be 60 (born 1840) and had arrived in the US in 1846 (aged 6).  

Caveat lector!

Sarah Muirhead-Allwood (1947 - ) hip-replacement surgeon

William Muirhead-Allwood was educated at the  Wellington independent school in Somerset, and was trained at the prestigious St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School.  Muirhead-Allwood became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, has private consulting rooms at Wimpole Street, and specialised in hip-replacement surgery.  

Muirhead-Allwood married a nurse in 1983, they had two sons, and lived in Haringey, north London.  She knew of the Sarah persona, which she considered to be simply cross-dressing, but when Sarah announced an intention to transition, she insisted on a separation. 

   

In 1996, the Sunday Mirror was preparing a story about Sarah’s transition, so she went public about her transition rather than be outed by the tabloid press: 

"For years l have called myself Sarah, and that is how many of my friends know me.”  

In general medical colleagues were supportive, however the medical committee of the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers temporarily withdrew her admitting privileges.   However they were reinstated in December 1996. 

Dr Muirhead-Allwood retired from the NHS, aged 65 in 2012.  She continues in private practice. 

She has had many celebrity patients.

•                    Tracy Schaverien & David Rowe.  “You can call me ma'am; Queen Mum's Hip Op Surgeon And His Sex Change Secret: She never knew top doctor was growing breasts.”.  Sunday Mirror, 31 March 1996.  Free Library.

•                    “Queen Mother’s Surgeon Outed”.  Aegis News, 4/96:9.  Online.

•                    “TS SurgeonGender Talk, Regains Admitting Privileges “. Trans-Actions #5.  December 1996. Online. 

•                    Adam Helliker.  “Hip Hip for Sarah Muirhead-Allwood”.  The Express, May 20, 2012.  Online.

Top Doctors      

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 Protestant 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

++Jessica Salmonson, Seattle science-fiction writer and co editor of The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror transitioned on the job.

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.

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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.”