Kay Kwarta (1928 – 1999) engineer, salesman, monkey keeper

Casimir Kwarta, a first-generation Polish-American, trained as an engineer. In 1960 he met Ursula, a recent immigrant from Poland, although by origin a Berliner whose first husband had been the Polish artist, Ryszard Kryszczuk, whom she had hidden to protect from enlistment in the German army in the Nazi period. Casimir and Ursula married in 1963.

They felt pity for monkeys, then frequently found in pet stores, and bought several. Word got out and individuals, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and zoos asked them to take more. They became a chapter of the National Simian Society. Ursula’s favorites were woolly monkeys from Brazil and capuchins. They renovated the garage with large cages, but a few lived in their house in St James, Long Island.

The monkeys could cause chaos by opening jars, and hanging jewelry and even car keys in the trees. Each monkey had a name that s/he responded to. In the wild woolly monkeys live 40 years or so, but in the northern climate only 20. The Kwartas and their monkeys were featured in an article in the New York Times in November 1978.

Casimir, who had become a sales representative with an electronics company subsidized the sanctuary which barely broke even. Ursula worked around the clock looking after the monkeys.

Casimir was trans, and Ursula gave full support. They ran a trans social group from 1980-1988 that was listed in TVTS Tapestry and elsewhere. Casimir, as Kay, was on hormones prescribed by Dr David Wesser.

In 1982, budding journalist James Boylan (the future Jennifer Boylan) had become friends with a trans woman photographer she refers to as ‘Casey’ - although she did not then realize that Casey was trans. They visited the Kwartas for an article for American Bystander, and Casey realized that Kwarta was trans, especially when she discovered the hormones in the bathroom.

In 1989, Casimir retired and they desired somewhere warmer. They eventually found a place in South Carolina with privacy and room for lots of animals. In addition to the monkeys, they had dogs, horses, chickens and a parrot.

Casimir died in 1999 at age 71 from a brain tumor. Ursula died in 2008.

• Francis X Clines. “Couple Do Everything Humanly Possible to Provide for Monkeys”. New York Times, Nov 13, 1978. www.nytimes.com/1978/11/13/archives/couple-do-everything-humanly-possible-to-provide-for-monkeys-humans.html.
  
• Jennifer Finney Boylan. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders. Broadway Books, 2004: 64-6.
  
• Sandi Chaney. “A Winding Road: Manning’s Kwarta has life story full of twists, turns”. Sumter Item, Dec 30, 2003. Online Reprinted as “Ursula Kwarta”. Find a Grave, Jul 30, 2011. www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=74196539.
  
• ‘Casey’. Email to Zagria, July 2016.

______________

The Kwartas are not listed among the notable residents of St James in Wikipedia.

A note re the anecdote in Jennifer Boylan’s autobiography. She renames the Kwarta’s as D’Angelo, and relocates them to Philadelphia. She also claims to have read Kay and claims it was she who spotted the hormones in the bathroom cabinet.

David R Wesser (1933 – 2008) sex-change surgeon

Revised September 2017 re Wesser's first marriage.

David Wesser gained an MD degree from New York University-Bellevue College of Medicine and was trained in Reconstructive Surgery. He married in 1963. During the Vietnam War he served as a Major in the US Army Medical Corps and lived in Saigon with his wife and two children.  Afterwards he was a consultant for the US State Department in Vietnam caring for war-wounded children.

He taught and practiced surgery in the New York area, usually at the Yonkers Professional Hospital. He also had an office at east 86^th St and Park Avenue. His first transsexual patients were those who had had surgery elsewhere, and corrections were needed.

In 1972 Rupert Raj had his mastectomy from Dr Wesser and later said “a finer set of (man-made) male pecs I have yet to see”. In 1977 Rosalyne Blumenstein had an orchiectomy and a nose reduction.

Earlier, in 1976, there had been Romain, 30, previously a social worker with a city child-welfare department, and also an organizer of S&M parties. His friends knowing that he thought himself to really be a woman, had suggested Dr Benito Rish, who sent him to a panel of experts including a psychiatrist, all of whom approved her for surgery. Rish sent her for surgery with Dr Wesser. However as she later remembered it, she developed doubts while under sedation and on the gurney. As she was medicated, she was not considered rational. Seven months later, after failing to find a surgeon who would reverse the operation, Romain killed herself. Dr Wesser then started requiring a full-year of living as the target gender before surgery.

++Sandra Mesics wrote after Romain's suicide:

"But can you blame the physician? I was operated on by the same doctor who performed Romaine' s surgery and I can attest to his technical competence. I have known about six other transsexuals who had their surgery performed by this man, and there was not one botched job in the lot. I found him to be a very warm , compassionate man , who feels that he is genuinely performing a much needed service for people with gender problems. Sure, he's making money by the fistful, but he could do just as well performing nose jobs on wealthy society women."

By 1980 Wesser had done 200 sex-change operations.  One of his patients that year was Sharon Davis, 24, who was well pleased with the results.

Later that year, the Yonkers Professional Hospital was closed down after a surprise inspection by the state.

Also in 1980, David Wesser remarried. They had several children.

In 1981 he was charged before a panel of the New York Department of Health with

“negligence or gross incompetence, or both, in connection with the care of five gender-change patients. The basis for the charges was that he had diagnosed transsexualism and performed the gender-change operations without obtaining an adequate medical history, adequate physical or psychiatric consultations and without having obtained an adequate informed consent. Petitioner denied the charges and alleged that he had relied upon the psychiatric evaluations of a board-certified psychiatrist”.

His lawyer describes the panel:

“The Chairperson of the panel was a psychiatrist who believed homosexuality to be a deviant criminal activity. Another doctor on the panel was a close friend and professional colleague of the expert witness testifying for the prosecution. The lay person, non-medical professional member of the panel was a Roman Catholic Monsignor.”

Wesser’s license was suspended for one year in 1983, but the case had been pursued for seven years and Wesser was left psychologically broken, and in diminished health.

Dr Wesser started doing silicone injections, although by the end of the decade the procedure was being done by non-doctors such as Jimmy Treetop.

Wesser suffered a heart illness in 1993.

In December 1994 Dr Wesser admitted to the truth of allegations of malpractice endangering the life of a patient receiving liposuction and breast reconstruction. His license to practice medicine in New York State was revoked and he was fined $10,000.

He then lived in Palm Coast, Florida, and was a Counselor at the Stewart Marchman Center in Bunnell where he was an advocate for substance abuse treatments, especially for youths. He died at the age of 75.

• Edward Falces, David Wesser & Mark Gorney. “Cosmetic Surgery of the Non-Caucasian Nose”. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 45,4,April 1970: 317-3324.
  
• Isaac Kaplan & David Wesser. "A Rapid Method for Constructing a Functional Sensitive Penis".  British Journal of Plastic Surgery, 24, 1971: 342-4.  
• A Robert Beck & David R.Wesser. "Constrictive Digital Injuries in Infants, Caused by Human Hair". Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. 49, 4, 1972: 420-422.
  
• "Post-Op Transsexual Commits Suicide - Operation was a Mistake!"  Drag, 7,25, 1977: 6-7.  Online. 
• ++ Sandra Mesics. "Thoughts on the Suicide of Romaine Atura".  F.l. News, No. 22.  Reprinted in The Journal of Male Feminism, vol. 77, No. 4 & 5:  47-9.   Online.  
• David R.Wesser. "A Single Stage Operative Technique for Castration, Vaginal Construction and Perineoplasty in Transsexuals". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 7, 4, 1978: 309-323.
  
• Sharon Churcher. "The Anguish of the Transsexuals". New York Magazine, 13, 25, June 16, 1980.
  
• “Matter David R. Wesser V. State New York”. Supreme Court of New York, May 24, 1983. http://ny.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19830524_0042984.NY.htm/qx.
  
• Sharon Davis. A Finer Specimen of Womanhood: A Transsexual Speaks Out. Vantage Press, 1986:
  
• Rupert Raj. “Metamorphosis: Man in the Making (A Personal and Political Perspective)”. In Bonnie Bullough, Vern L. Bullough, James Elias (eds) Gender Blending. Prometheus Books 1997: 480-4.
  
• Rosalyne Blumenstein. Branded T. 1stBooks, 2003: 83 -5.
  
• David R.Wesser. "Repair of a Cryptotic Ear with a Trefoil Flap". Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. 50, 2, 2006: 192-193.
  
• Laura Rena Murray. “The High Price of Looking Like a Woman”. New York Times, Aug 19, 2011. www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/nyregion/some-transgender-women-pay-a-high-price-to-look-more-feminine.html.
  
• Deyan Ranko Brashich. “Transgender’s Dark Ugly Past and Present”. Litchfield County Times, June 10, 2015. www.countytimes.com/articles/2015/06/10/opinion/doc5578bf0d835ef867043039.txt.

Obituary    License termination