Introduction

Early in my journalism career -- 1989, to be exact -- I pitched an idea to my news director at WEOL-AM in Elyria, Ohio, about producing a five-part radio-news series on a relatively new and misunderstood pandemic called AIDS, which had inexplicably surfaced in the rural parts of Lorain County. At the time, the average Joe was convinced that the virus could only be found in metropolitan areas like New York, L.A. and Cleveland. And it could only infect gay men. Or so nearly everybody thought.

My open-minded boss, Jeff Dettmer, intently listened to my many reasons for the series, not the least of which was the appearance of the first nine AIDS cases in the county in the latter half of the 1980s. I also told him that the morticians at the Cowling Funeral Home in ultraliberal Oberlin were refusing to embalm bodies of people who had died of the virus for fear that they also would contract the disease. (Preposterous, right?) But the deal-sealer that gave me the green light to proceed with production on the series was my open access to interview "Rob," a twentysomething-year-old gay man whose case was one of the nine reported to the county's health department. His partner was another.

I met "Rob" on a chilly October evening at his spacious lakefront apartment in a high-rise building in Sheffield Lake. He told me -- between bites of a cheeseburger and cottage cheese -- about the "cocktail" of drugs he was taking to minimize the ravaging effects of the virus. That he had to interrupt our interview several times to run to the bathroom and throw up his dinner only told me that scientists and researchers were worlds away from helping people with AIDS and HIV manage their failing health with any degree of dignity.

"Rob" died a few months after my interview with him. And his partner passed away not long after that. But to meet this couple planted a seed of an idea in my always inquisitive mind that finally would sprout and bloom into my free-to-the-public e-book, "Purple Armadillos: The Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Oddballs of Northeast Ohio's LGBT Community in the 19th and 20th Centuries."

For 21 years, I have toyed with the idea of writing about some of the region's most notable LGBTs and their allies. But I didn't get down to serious business until mid-March of 2009, when I identified nearly 40 people about whom I wanted to research and whose lives I wanted to chronicle. And each of them had to meet three criteria: They had to have lived in Northeast Ohio for at least parts of their lives; their life stories were not only entertaining and worthwhile but educational and inspirational; and they all had to be deceased.

A process of elimination whittled the field down to the 15 chapters that make up this e-book. There's Annie Perkins (Chapter 1), whose mission to make fashion uniform among the sexes in the 19th century is a classic story of lesbian activism long before the Stonewall riots against gays in New York's Greenwich Village in 1969. Stories about Leonard Hanna Jr. (Chapter 2), Langston Hughes (Chapter 4) and Philip Johnson (Chapter 7) clearly show the artistic and/or philanthropic contributions to mainstream society that LGBTs too often are not given enough credit. And the accounts of Gloria Lenihan (Chapter 5), Doris Palmer (Chapter 10) and Hank Berger (Chapter 13) prove that the straight community can be just as supportive of LGBTS as much as LGBTS themselves.

If you call up the "Bibliography" link on the menu, you'll see how many people I need to thank for taking time out of their busy lives to help me with my research. While there are too many to acknowledge in this introduction, I would like to point out a few resources that are immensely helpful to understanding the evolution and history of Northeast Ohio's LGBT community. First, the LGBT Archives at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland offers first-hand accounts of growing up gay in the region, thanks to personal papers, community newsletters and audiotape transcripts. A little-known gem, the Cuyahoga County Archives in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood, is an excellent source of birth, marriage, death and property records. And public libraries in Cleveland, Akron and Lakewood have been heaven-sent, with their catalogs of old newspapers and high-school yearbooks along with trained staff members to help you pore through them.

So you may be wondering: Why have I called the people in my e-book "purple armadillos?" Three reasons, to be honest.

Reason number 1: Purple -- or, more specifically, lavender -- is considered the universal color of the LGBT community. Its symbolic origin dates to the 1920s, when gay composer Cole Porter included the lyric, “I'm a famous gigolo. And of lavender, my nature's got just a dash in it,” in his song, “I’m a Gigolo.” Lavender is also a combination of pink (for girls) and light blue (for boys).

Reason number 2: Scientific research proves that armadillos -- those sharp-clawed creatures with armored shields -- are the only mammals other than humans that are capable of having sex in the missionary position. A strange, but true, fact.

Reason number 3: The “Purple Armadillo” is a tasty, tropical alcoholic beverage. I share the recipe with you in the next link.

Cheers!

Cris Glaser
Lakewood, Ohio
June 30, 2010