Don Kohn, May 11, 2020

Don Kohn, May 11, 2020

Don Kohn talks about his involvement with the Eastern PA chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

Special Collections and Archives, Trexler Library, Muhlenberg College

2020-05-11

This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject.

This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source.

Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley

video

English

Movingimage

LGBT-09

Mary Foltz

Don Kohn

video/mp4

1:37:24

5.4 May 11, 2020 Don Kohn, May 11, 2020 LGBT-09 01:37:24 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. PFLAG GLAAD MCCLV Don Kohn Mary Foltz video/mp4 KohnDon_20200511_Final_video.mp4 1:|11(6)|36(8)|60(10)|72(3)|83(9)|93(7)|102(2)|109(16)|118(10)|129(9)|137(3)|148(1)|159(2)|167(7)|178(1)|187(10)|204(14)|217(1)|231(2)|240(4)|252(4)|263(5)|273(7)|283(2)|291(8)|302(2)|312(15)|324(10)|332(14)|342(11)|352(4)|363(6)|372(11)|381(1)|393(10)|403(6)|413(17)|423(10)|433(2)|442(13)|452(8)|462(17)|471(9)|482(11)|492(7)|502(3)|513(3)|524(9)|534(7)|544(3)|553(7)|562(10)|573(10)|582(15)|592(12)|604(1)|612(7)|622(7)|632(1)|642(1)|650(13)|662(3)|673(9)|687(3)|696(8)|703(5)|713(9)|721(6)|735(13)|744(6)|755(13)|764(9)|773(9)|785(3)|794(12)|802(11)|810(5)|820(8)|831(1)|840(8)|852(3)|860(12)|873(8)|882(10)|893(8)|901(17)|912(15)|919(15)|929(3)|937(7)|950(15)|959(2)|971(3)|994(2)|1016(4)|1033(5)|1061(2) 0 YouTube video &lt ; iframe src=&quot ; https://www.youtube.com/embed/XrrqqvV0Eco?rel=0&quot ; width=&quot ; 560&quot ; height=&quot ; 315&quot ; frameborder=&quot ; 0&quot ; &gt ; &lt ; /iframe&gt ; 8 Interview Introduction MARY FOLTZ: So my name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with Don Kohn to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. This is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on May 11th, 2020, and we’re conducting this interview via Zoom. So Don, thank you so much for your willingness to speak to me today. I’m just so thrilled that you’re willing to share your story. And to start, before we jump into the interview, would you be willing to state your full name and spell it for me? 169 Early Years / Family MF: Oh sure, I’d be happy to. Would you tell me a little bit about the early years of your life? DK: I was raised in Omaha, Nebraska. I had two brothers, a mother and father. I left high school and came out to Lehigh University, where I graduated, and later on raised a daughter -- not a whole family, just that. Melinda was raised in New Jersey, went to Trenton State, until the end of our junior year, where we got married, and she transferred to Moravian. Okay. 403 Developed Understanding of Diversity MF: When did you develop your understanding of embracing diversity? DK: I don’t know. I went -- my high school was very diverse. When I entered into the realm of GLBT people, and that I know I went back and questioned, what did I think, and how did I treat people? Gee, was that person that I knew -- I had a friend at work, and was he gay? And did I greet him right? It evolved. It evolved from a belief probably that people were all the same. As far as GLBT people, I probably didn’t know much about it. Again, it evolved. So -- that’s right, there was someone in my adult life before we had our daughter, we had a friend who had a child. And the child’s nanny was a gay man. 682 Moving to the Lehigh Valley / Schooling / Job MF: Well, I will be curious about, if we move on a little bit, what it was like for you to move to the Lehigh Valley and to attend Lehigh University. What was that move like for you? DK: Again, it’s so long ago. I can remember I was -- on the football team, I was one of the helpers, I don’t think (inaudible) it called. Standing in the middle of the field, at that time Lehigh’s Goodman Field was nothing except one building and a practice field. There was nothing else out there (inaudible) and saying, how did I get this far away from home? I don’t know. I guess I never looked back that much. I was back two summers, and that was it. Again, the world here is different, and the people were more -- I don’t know. I can’t remember back that far to give you a good answer. 1307 Daughter Coming Out / Joining PFLAG MF: So I know that one of the impetus for joining PFLAG was your daughter. So could you describe a little bit about how she came out to you, and how you felt about the coming out process? DK: This is interesting, because if Melinda was here, you’d get two different answers. Sally had a best friend, who they did everything together, whatever. And they were in a play together, where her friend and her brother had the leads, and Sally had a supporting role. And I was backstage afterwards. GLAAD ; Liz Bradbury ; PFLAG ; Trish Sullivan 2075 How PFLAG Helps Families MF: Maybe we could talk a little bit about, what kinds of activities did PFLAG organize for families? And what kinds of events were you organizing in the early years of your presidency? DK: Let me say this, I think it’s important to note, right now in the Lehigh Valley, there’s a lot of acceptance. We really are out of business, PFLAG is, because -- you could tell in the early days, we get a phone call -- Melinda and I had the help line. That was another thing we did when this woman transitioned out and went to California. While I wasn’t president, we took on the help line. And we just stopped that last year. Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center ; MCCLV ; PFLAG 2745 PFLAG's Strategies for Parents / Advocacy MF: Well, I’m curious, you described -- you said, “We got them through it.” And I’m wondering if you could describe how. What strategies did PFLAG use to help parents that were really struggling to accept their children? How did you help people work through their fears? DK: Melinda was better at that than I am. Although when she was still working and I was here consulting, I’d get the phone calls, or at the meetings. And I think the meetings -- the phone calls, it was just talking through it, and inviting them to the meeting. Reassuring them that they didn’t do anything wrong. Reassuring that their child was still the same person they knew before. PFLAG 3340 PFLAG's Involvement w/ Freedom to Marry MF: Well, so I’m wondering if maybe -- you’ve mentioned the Freedom to Marry events a few times. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about PFLAG’s work on that particular political issue. How was PFLAG involved with the Freedom to Marry movement? DK: Well, PFLAG nationally was certainly involved. Locally, again, we, as all other organizations in the area, supported that. Again, we went to the Freedom to Marry evening event. It wasn’t necessarily PFLAG support, but on the Friday before the event, there was a march on the Lehigh County Courthouse, where people went in to try to get marriage licenses, unsuccessfully. They took their money, though. Anti-Discrimination Law ; Freedom to Marry ; The Morning Call 3742 How LGBT Organizations Work Together in the Lehigh Valley MF: Well, so I have two different sort of ideas for moving forward. But I want to ask the sort of larger question. Looking back on all of your work in PFLAG, how do you think PFLAG as an organization has impacted the Lehigh Valley? DK: Let me just say, not everything was PFLAG, okay? You know, my support of Renaissance wasn’t necessarily PFLAG, some of it was personal. I’m looking at something else we have in front of us. When MCC had their Christmas party and they needed a Santa Claus, guess who volunteered? You know, was that PFLAG? No. MCCLV ; PFLAG 4410 How LGBT Organizations Changed the Lehigh Valley MF: Well, we’re getting towards the end of our ninety minutes, and I have two questions that I’m thinking of. One is one I asked earlier, but I didn’t ask it well. This is sort of a historical question. What do you think PFLAG -- but then the other organizations, MCCLV, Lehigh Valley, Renaissance -- what kind of impact do you feel those organizations have made on the Lehigh Valley in their early years, when we’re thinking historically about your early work in PFLAG? How did those organizations together change the Lehigh Valley? DK: Well, like I said, the Lehigh Valley over the twenty years has changed from not as accepting to a pretty accepting community. 4706 PFLAG's Attendance Decreasing MF: Okay. I want to return to something that you talked about sort of briefly before. But you talk about a sort of change in the need for PFLAG, that the shift in Lehigh Valley has decreased the membership and attendance at meetings for PFLAG. I’m wondering if you could reflect a little bit on that transition. From a really active organization to our current sort of moment, why do you think PFLAG’s attendance sort of declined and the interest in the organization kind of declined a bit? DK: Well, there obviously -- again, there’s much more acceptance today than there was then. Why? I don’t know. You know, I’m an engineer, I don’t know why. 4967 Personal Reflection on PFLAG MF: How has being involved in PFLAG mattered to you personally, or mattered to you as a father and as a spouse? How have you personally been impacted by your years of work in multiple organizations, you know, centrally with PFLAG? DK: I mean, my daughter thinks we’re more gay than she is, because we’re more involved. Yeah. Let me put it this way. No offense to the Jewish religion or Jewish people, but we were involved with the synagogue for many years -- not a lot, we started late, when my daughter was Sunday school age. MovingImage Don Kohn talks about his involvement with the Eastern PA chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). MARY FOLTZ:So my name is Mary Foltz, and I&#039 ; m here with Don Kohn to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley. This is a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on May 11th, 2020, and we&#039 ; re conducting this interview via Zoom. So Don, thank you so much for your willingness to speak to me today. I&#039 ; m just so thrilled that you&#039 ; re willing to share your story. And to start, before we jump into the interview, would you be willing to state your full name and spell it for me? DON KOHN:Full name, Donald Jerry Kohn, K-O-H-N. I think Donald and Jerry don&#039 ; t need to be spelled, but Kohn, K-O-H-N. MF:Thank you. Could you please share your birth date? DK:June 4th, 1947. MF:And we had a phone conversation about consent for this interview, but I&#039 ; ll just ask you a few questions here now for verbal consent. Do you consent to this interview today? DK:Yes. MF:Do you consent to this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? DK:Yes. MF:Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats that might appear in the future? DK:Yes. MF:And do you understand that you&#039 ; ll have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview and identify parts that you&#039 ; d want to delete or withdraw from the project? DK:Yes. MF:Wonderful. Okay. Now let&#039 ; s move into the interview part. Today I want to start with a question about your childhood. Would you tell me about your early years -- DK:I just want to add something that we discussed earlier. MF:Go ahead. DK:My wife and I did most of -- my wife, Melinda, did most of this together. Most of the stories I tell of that are for both of us, but I did want to give a little background and answer some of your questions and some of the discussion from her point of view also. Okay? MF:Wonderful. I&#039 ; ll be happy to hear about the work that you&#039 ; ve done together. DK:You wanted to know her -- starting with my -- ask your question again. MF:Oh sure, I&#039 ; d be happy to. Would you tell me a little bit about the early years of your life? DK:I was raised in Omaha, Nebraska. I had two brothers, a mother and father. I left high school and came out to Lehigh University, where I graduated, and later on raised a daughter -- not a whole family, just that. Melinda was raised in New Jersey, went to Trenton State, until the end of our junior year, where we got married, and she transferred to Moravian. Okay. MF:What was it like to grow up in Omaha, Nebraska? DK:You know, I don&#039 ; t know that it was any different. I mean, as a youth, you just know what&#039 ; s around you. You don&#039 ; t know there&#039 ; s a difference between Nebraska, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. You don&#039 ; t know that. In high school, you probably still don&#039 ; t know it. When I moved from, at the advice of my older brothers, and came out East, I realized, yes, there&#039 ; s a big difference. Midwestern towns, particularly Omaha at the time, was a one-horse town. There were only Italian or steak houses for restaurants. There wasn&#039 ; t a lot of cultures. There wasn&#039 ; t a lot of interests like there is here. There&#039 ; s no shore, there&#039 ; s no Poconos. You know, it&#039 ; s a different world. It&#039 ; s changed somewhat, I&#039 ; m sure, in the fifty-some years. But at that time, it was different. MF:Could you talk a little bit about your family and the family dynamic? What was it like growing up in your family? DK:My older brothers were much older. They always treated me as the little brother. My parents were -- my dad was very forceful. Not abusive, but forceful. And I have to look back and probably think that my father was not accepting of diversity, we&#039 ; ll say it that nice way. Okay? MF:I have a question about that, but when you say not accepting of diversity, what, in particular, are you thinking about? Was he sort of like a small-town guy, sort of concerned about outsiders in your community? DK:I&#039 ; m not sure I can even categorize it. It&#039 ; s just the way he spoke, the way he commented about different people, the way people&#039 ; s color, people of different nationalities, et cetera, over the years. And some of that may have been tainted, or an impression I got later on when I was older and recognized and my own feelings about diversity versus theirs, were different from theirs. He wasn&#039 ; t an overt racist person, it&#039 ; s just the kind of person that you run into who is quiet, but you can tell sometimes they&#039 ; re not appreciating other people. MF:When did you develop your understanding of embracing diversity? DK:I don&#039 ; t know. I went -- my high school was very diverse. When I entered into the realm of GLBT people, and that I know I went back and questioned, what did I think, and how did I treat people? Gee, was that person that I knew -- I had a friend at work, and was he gay? And did I greet him right? It evolved. It evolved from a belief probably that people were all the same. As far as GLBT people, I probably didn&#039 ; t know much about it. Again, it evolved. So -- that&#039 ; s right, there was someone in my adult life before we had our daughter, we had a friend who had a child. And the child&#039 ; s nanny was a gay man. And I guess at that point, I made a decision to treat that person as a person. I won&#039 ; t say norm, but not be concerned with his sexual orientation. Like I said, that all evolved. So the best way to describe my journey, if you call it a journey, is my acceptance of diversity has gotten far beyond just people of color, skin colors or religion, but just in the general accepting of people who are different, and who have different concepts of what I think of, or what I was taught, or what I grew up as. By the way, I think my father was very, this is how he thinks, and therefore, the world around him should think the same way, okay? So maybe that&#039 ; s coming back. So it&#039 ; s a journey. And I&#039 ; ll also say this ; if -- my wife was one of the early people who work in industry, and they did not like to be called, &quot ; Girl.&quot ; My dad&#039 ; s attitude was, &quot ; I&#039 ; m going to call them &#039 ; girl,&#039 ; it doesn&#039 ; t bother me.&quot ; My attitude&#039 ; s always been, if I put my foot in my mouth and say the wrong thing and someone corrects me, and there was someone who was very good at correcting me on those issues with GLBT people, then the difference is not that I said it in the first place, but that I ever say it again. That I learn from it. So yeah, it&#039 ; s a journey, and I won&#039 ; t say that. I&#039 ; m not still on it. I still wonder whether, sometimes thoughts creep up from the old days, that I&#039 ; m, gee, that&#039 ; s wrong, I shouldn&#039 ; t think that. It&#039 ; s repressed. So, yeah, okay. MF:You describe this kind of evolution of your thinking about diversity. I&#039 ; m wondering, did that occur in part with your move East and out to Lehigh University? DK:I don&#039 ; t know. You know, it&#039 ; s a long time ago. Like I said, my high school was very diverse, from both skin color, religion, ethnic background, financial. We had some very poor people, and we had some very wealthy people at the school. I guess I don&#039 ; t know if it ever started, like I said, so I can&#039 ; t put a thing and say, this is the day that somebody hit me over the head and said, &quot ; Diversity&#039 ; s good.&quot ; All right? Maybe it was in something inherent in me that I just definitely don&#039 ; t see, striking differences in people, okay? Maybe it&#039 ; s a want to -- like the Freedom to Marry, to say, gee, that&#039 ; s wrong thinking. I know I should change it. I don&#039 ; t know. I don&#039 ; t know. MF:Well, I will be curious about, if we move on a little bit, what it was like for you to move to the Lehigh Valley and to attend Lehigh University. What was that move like for you? DK:Again, it&#039 ; s so long ago. I can remember I was -- on the football team, I was one of the helpers, I don&#039 ; t think (inaudible) it called. Standing in the middle of the field, at that time Lehigh&#039 ; s Goodman Field was nothing except one building and a practice field. There was nothing else out there (inaudible) and saying, how did I get this far away from home? I don&#039 ; t know. I guess I never looked back that much. I was back two summers, and that was it. Again, the world here is different, and the people were more -- I don&#039 ; t know. I can&#039 ; t remember back that far to give you a good answer. MF:Describe for me a little bit about your course of study at Lehigh, and the early years of your career here in The Valley. DK:I graduated in chemical engineering. My grades started bad, worked progressively up to the senior year. I didn&#039 ; t do all that bad at the end. I went to work for an insurance company as a fire protection engineer, did that for about three years, and then I went to work for Pennsylvania Power and Light, in the design area of fire protection, office buildings, power plants. And then about &#039 ; 95, I went on private consulting. I go with my wife, she graduated from Muhlenberg with a degree in mathematics. Went to work for -- Burroughs, we were down in Philadelphia, she went to work for the Burroughs Company, in computers. When I moved up here, she went to work for Bell Labs and became one of their computer experts, had supervised people. And the last ten years -- she retired many years ago -- last few years ago, she was an omnibus person, taking care of people&#039 ; s problems. So that helped with our diversity concept also. MF:Well, since you talked a little bit about Melinda, how did the two of you meet? DK:Oh, yes. Remember, because you said you went to Lehigh -- Lehigh was all men back in the sixties. So we had a mixer one day at the Jewish Community Center/Synagogue, which was off the corner of the campus, which is now a campus-owned building, all right. Packer Avenue and the street that goes up towards the alumni, the main street that comes from town -- it&#039 ; s right there. Okay. So interestingly enough, I saw this gal I wanted to ask to dance. I walked up to her, and two seconds before I got to her, somebody else took her away. (laughs) And who was behind her, but Melinda. And it progressed from there. MF:What did you like about Melinda in the first years that you were dating? DK:Same thing I still do, how about that? It&#039 ; s been fifty-two years, at the end of the month. I&#039 ; d have several steady girlfriends, and, you know, every time each one of them had a quality I liked, but obviously didn&#039 ; t have all the qualities I liked, Melinda seemed to have all the qualities I liked. As far as her point of view, I was a tall Jewish boy. (laughs) Melinda&#039 ; s tall. Okay. MF:Do you want to describe what some of those qualities were? DK:No, just let&#039 ; s go on. MF:Okay. DK:You know, it&#039 ; s so ingrained in me, I&#039 ; m not sure I could pick them out anymore. You know, I guess many couples split apart and then divorce, we&#039 ; ve gotten sort of together. And there are some things she&#039 ; s better at than I am, things I&#039 ; m better at than she is. Basically, yeah, I just -- there&#039 ; s too -- you know, we only have a certain amount of time. You don&#039 ; t want me to start listing all of her good qualities. We won&#039 ; t get on to the other things. Okay? MF:That makes sense. She sounds wonderful. Why don&#039 ; t we talk a little bit about -- DK:That was the one or two prejudices that I do have, and that&#039 ; s (inaudible). MF:Why don&#039 ; t we talk a little bit about the early years of your marriage, because I know we&#039 ; ll be working up to your work with PFLAG. But what were the early years of your marriage like working and living in the Lehigh Valley? DK:Well, first of all, we spent three and a half years in Philadelphia. Then we came to Lehigh Valley, and I guess it was work. We had a house, and did things around the house, and remodeled a house or two. It&#039 ; s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing different, yeah. Centered around work. MF:Talk to me a little bit about building your family. DK:I guess we made a decision, as many people do right now, saying, do we really want to bring a kid into this world, with all the things going on? We both had our careers, we were both working, we were both happy. And whatever, it&#039 ; s hard to go back -- you&#039 ; re asking me to go back so far in time. But we finally decided that when one of us wanted a child, we would have one, and we did. So about nine years after we were married, we had a baby. And that was Sally. I&#039 ; m sorry if you hear the geese in the background. I live in the country. MF:That&#039 ; s fine. The geese aren&#039 ; t bothering the sound at all. DK:Good. MF:Describe for me what it was like your first years as a father for Sally. DK:It&#039 ; s interesting. Melinda had a friend who had six kids. And we went through a lot of -- because Melinda worked -- we went through a lot of childcare concepts. And I think when we -- we had a full-time person taking care of her. And when the person couldn&#039 ; t make it, we defaulted to taking her over to this other woman, okay? And she only liked babies, although she had six kids. She loved taking care of babies. And she ultimately had to -- and so I worried that I would only like Sally as a baby. I also worried that having a full-time housekeeper, I&#039 ; d miss the important things. Well, let me say other than the teenage years, I enjoyed all the years. For things like, you know, learning to crawl ; she was crawling -- or standing up, that&#039 ; s right. I was laying on the floor, and she came to me, crawled over to me, and started to crawl over the top of me, and then stood up. So I got to see her stand up first. We had a family Thanksgiving, I think it was, and she was crawling around from family member to family member, when she stood up and walked across the room. And we all said, &quot ; Did you just do that?&quot ; So it was an exciting time. While both Melinda and I worked, we came to not work a lot of overtime, so that we were home with Sally. And we did a lot of things on the weekends that you do with kids, and stuff like that. So it was an enjoyable time. MF:What was Sally like as a child? DK:A lot of fun. Like I said, teenagers -- I don&#039 ; t even know if I want to talk about those. And go on the record. But as a child, she was a lot of fun. She was cute, you know, I can remember her -- try to take a picture of her, you know, she had to walk up and see the camera, things like that. And probably around -- now, understand Melinda was into computers, and that was her business. So we got the personal computer very early. So Sally really grew up on computers. When she was in high school, she was teaching the teachers about computers, that same thing, so-- MF:So I know that one of the impetus for joining PFLAG was your daughter. So could you describe a little bit about how she came out to you, and how you felt about the coming out process? DK:This is interesting, because if Melinda was here, you&#039 ; d get two different answers. Sally had a best friend, who they did everything together, whatever. And they were in a play together, where her friend and her brother had the leads, and Sally had a supporting role. And I was backstage afterwards. And it was something about the way that she looked at this partner -- and I want to leave the partner&#039 ; s name out, because I&#039 ; m not sure where her parents -- they&#039 ; re -- that was Sally&#039 ; s first partner. And up to the time they split, her parents weren&#039 ; t supportive, very supportive. So I won&#039 ; t mention names. I said, there must be something more to this. Well, they were graduating high school, and as a graduation present, we were going to send them to New York to see a play. The other gal&#039 ; s parents asked a question, and they thought it wouldn&#039 ; t be a problem, and they told them. And the other parents slammed down and said, &quot ; You&#039 ; re not going anywhere without a chaperone,&quot ; da da da da da da, okay. Now here&#039 ; s where the difference comes. I believe she waited until she got home. Melinda thinks she called on her cell phone and told us, thinking we wouldn&#039 ; t have a problem, and we didn&#039 ; t. Melinda thought she had a target on her back, okay, and was very concerned from that standpoint. And now here comes Liz and Trish, and PFLAG, somewhere in there, it might have been a year afterwards. But I accepted my daughter fully, and my wife accepted her fully. But here comes the education part of it is -- what did I accept? Technically I knew what a lesbian was, but I didn&#039 ; t know a lot of the details. I didn&#039 ; t know -- it was easy for me to -- and speaking to an English teacher here -- you -- understand I&#039 ; m an engineer, my ability to talk and communicate isn&#039 ; t as good, and certainly not as good as my daughter&#039 ; s is today. I needed to know what to say and what not to say, and have some education. And that&#039 ; s -- PFLAG&#039 ; s one of the places I got that. So yeah, we were fine with her and that. And frankly, through her college years, dating and interfacing with her first partner, we got to see that budding romance. You know, as a parent, what do you want from your child? You want to see -- when you give up on the fact that you&#039 ; re not going to have a husband and wife, and two point three kids and a picket fence and two dogs, you really want to see that your daughter has someone who wants to take care of her and loves her. We got to watch that. We got to see that happen, because we spent several times with both of them. They would spend a lot of times on breaks at our house, okay, so we got to see all that. So it was, like I said, yeah. So we accepted her. It wasn&#039 ; t a big, traumatic event for our family. MF:Your daughter comes out, your family&#039 ; s very accepting. But you just described, you wanted education. You wanted to know what to say, when to say it. Could you describe how you found PFLAG, or how you found Liz and Trish? DK:Well, let&#039 ; s see, I don&#039 ; t know. Why I did it, I can tell you. Besides the education, Sally was a teenager, she was about eighteen at the time. And as I either knew then instinctively, or wanted to know -- I clearly know now, because that&#039 ; s how I counsel parents at PFLAG -- if your teenager comes out to you and you say, &quot ; Okay, that&#039 ; s fine,&quot ; and walk away, they think you don&#039 ; t accept them. So you&#039 ; ve got to do a little more than just say, &quot ; It&#039 ; s okay,&quot ; and walk away. If you start asking too many questions to a teenager, then you&#039 ; re prying, and they don&#039 ; t like that, either. So what do you do? In our case, joining PFLAG sent my daughter a very clear message that we were accepting and willing to learn more and do something. I might add in here, a couple of things happened when she was in college. First year, which I think was a year before we actually got really involved with PFLAG, mainly because of Sally&#039 ; s partner, who was local, and didn&#039 ; t want it to be known and that. So we were sort of asked to be in the closet for a year, okay? Sally, during college, interned first for the GLAAD, the Gay, Lesbian -- no, GLAAD isn&#039 ; t -- I&#039 ; m starting to use a different acronym. And so we went down for -- instead of parents&#039 ; weekend, we went down the weekend before. You said you, when we previously talked, that you were down there then. We had the AIDS quilt in the mall. Sally ran a booth at GLAAD, at the AIDS quilt. Then afterwards, at night we went to a party, with Sally, again, being the intern, had to be at the door to greet everybody. But talking about diversity, and I always tell people, sometimes us white males who are in the majority, ought to find ourselves in the minority sometimes, see how it feels. Here we were at a party, there may have been one other heterosexual couple. You know, I had to be careful. I couldn&#039 ; t tell any of my jokes, which I was just beginning to realize I couldn&#039 ; t, you know? We had dinner afterwards, and I found it very interesting, some of the directors Sally was -- I found this gal was talking about going out to bars and finding girls. I wasn&#039 ; t that far out of (inaudible), I&#039 ; m thinking, boy, we have some things in common, okay? But that was another event that I like to say comes -- Sally also interned for the National Gay-Lesbian Task Force, both in Washington, D.C., and New York, and became, and to this day, is still friends with some of the leaders (inaudible). In fact, I guess she was still in college when we went to the National Gay-Lesbian Task Force Greeting Change Conference, and we paid for her partner to also go, so all four of us were there. I might point out that somewhere in here, Sally&#039 ; s attitude was, she&#039 ; s got a couple of terrible parents, teenagers going up to where we are today, &quot ; I got a couple of terrible parents, what the heck are they all about?&quot ; It&#039 ; s, like, okay. At the conference, I kept telling her -- because Sally knew, she was an intern, she knew people, people knew her. And I referred people to her as, &quot ; I&#039 ; m Sally&#039 ; s dad.&quot ; &quot ; Hey dad, you&#039 ; re embarrassing me.&quot ; &quot ; Well, that&#039 ; s my job. I&#039 ; m a father. I&#039 ; m supposed to embarrass you.&quot ; Where, somewhere in the middle of this, people kept coming up to Sally and saying, &quot ; Your parents are fantastic! I wish my parents would have come to this. I wish my parents cared enough.&quot ; Sally started to realize that maybe we weren&#039 ; t so bad, okay? So that PFLAG, all this stuff was our way of letting our daughter know, it&#039 ; s okay. (inaudible), it&#039 ; s okay if you&#039 ; re gay, you know. And being supportive, being supportive of her and her partner. And PFLAG just sort of fell into that. That again, the educa-- I&#039 ; m not sure if we did it for the education, or we did it because the typical parents that want to go to PFLAG to learn more about it, I don&#039 ; t remember that transition. I do know that once we got, we got hooked. And of course, Liz and Trish were regulars at the meetings. MF:Tell me a little bit about why you got hooked. What was so moving about being a part of PFLAG for you? DK:Well, I&#039 ; m not quite even sure. But that I remember doing it, I just don&#039 ; t remember the whys. We joined PFLAG, and at the times -- and I can&#039 ; t remember the names, I probably can look them up, but there were three families -- yeah, three families, we&#039 ; d say, that started the local PFLAG chapter ; one of them had already gotten older and tired and stepped away, maybe they went to Florida. One remained -- Helen Early remained for a long time, even after we were there. Helen, she just passed away last year, I think. Then there was a woman in there, I can&#039 ; t remember, but she was the president at the time, and her husband was dying of cancer. She knew that when he did pass, she would be moving to California to be with her kids, okay? So it was sort of, like, &quot ; gee, Don, you seem like a right person. Would you like to be president?&quot ; Okay, and that was, like, a year or two. And that was, like, you know, I&#039 ; m one who likes to get involved with an organization, but learn a little bit about it before I start getting heavily involved. So there was a woman called Elsa [Stohl?], who worked at Bell Labs, who was, again, an ally. Very diversity-oriented. They had a diversity group at Bell Labs, and she was head of it, as I remember. As it was explained to me, Elsa likes to get into a group, give it energy, and then move on. Okay, get it setting right, get it going well. So she stepped in to be president. But she wasn&#039 ; t always available. She was traveling enough that it defaulted to me. And so Melinda was, of course, we were there always together and doing things. And it just defaulted to, gee, I might as well step in to be president, because Elsa&#039 ; s going to move on, and Elsa&#039 ; s doing it all anyhow. Again, those were the early -- I don&#039 ; t remember that part of it as much as I remember the different events and things that we did, and the people and things like that. MF:Maybe we could talk a little bit about, what kinds of activities did PFLAG organize for families? And what kinds of events were you organizing in the early years of your presidency? DK:Let me say this, I think it&#039 ; s important to note, right now in the Lehigh Valley, there&#039 ; s a lot of acceptance. We really are out of business, PFLAG is, because -- you could tell in the early days, we get a phone call -- Melinda and I had the help line. That was another thing we did when this woman transitioned out and went to California. While I wasn&#039 ; t president, we took on the help line. And we just stopped that last year. In the early days, we&#039 ; d pick up the phone and hear (gasps) -- and then we knew that was a parent that was in trouble, you know? As one of my friends said, because I used her as an example in meetings, you know, with everybody -- I can&#039 ; t -- I don&#039 ; t know what to do. I said, &quot ; Go turn to so-and-so, look what she did. What was your first reaction?&quot ; &quot ; I was going to jump off a cliff.&quot ; Okay? Now she&#039 ; s a person who&#039 ; s one of our active members, or was. Today, in the last few years, we&#039 ; ve got nobody coming to our meetings. If we did get someone coming to the meetings or calling us, it was, &quot ; How do I help my child? My child&#039 ; s being abused at school. I want to go stick up for his rights,&quot ; things like that. So the whole complexion change, that&#039 ; s number one. Number two, right now we have the Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center. There are a zillion different programs. We have GSAs, we have all sorts of activities. Back twenty years ago, we had PFLAG, we had MCC Church, and that was just about it. Liz and Trish had a newsletter, had some friends, had some things, but there was no real organization of activities. So if you, for instance, needed to come out and you needed to get to your parents, you might come to PFLAG. If you were a forty-year-old who had been married and then realized your sexual orientation, where do you come for information? PFLAG. So it was a whole different situation back then. So what did we do? First of all, we had monthly meetings. You know, they were held at the same place. They did switch around different places, but generally you knew where they were, so you could come. They were confidential. You could call us -- you could come and talk and meet with people who had been there before and learn, that&#039 ; s why Liz and Trish came. Somewhere in there, really in the early days, because we went to one of the first PRIDE meetings, back in those days, it was GLBT, right? Well, the gays knew who they were. The lesbians knew who they were. There was some question about what a bi was, okay. Transgender -- that just didn&#039 ; t fit their image. That just didn&#039 ; t -- again, people shall remain nameless, but someone in GLBT in the Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual group was, like, &quot ; I don&#039 ; t understand why these men are getting dressed -- I just don&#039 ; t understand it.&quot ; So I&#039 ; m going to try to guess here for a minute that I said -- first of all, I made an early on decision to go and find out about transgender, because that&#039 ; s part of our mission. I attended some Renaissance meetings. I became friends with some people from Renaissance. Then because of this person, they said, &quot ; We need to set up.&quot ; So we had an event one Saturday afternoon where we invited some of the leaders of the community to learn about transgender. I believe I can explain transgender and what it&#039 ; s all about as well as anyone now. Okay? By the way, fast forward to a couple of years ago, that same person was talking to someone, and this someone said to that person, &quot ; I don&#039 ; t understand this.&quot ; &quot ; You don&#039 ; t have to. Just accept them.&quot ; Okay. So we had the meetings. We had a few special things like that. We attended PRIDE, we had a booth at PRIDE. We supported different activities, like the Freedom to Marry. I can&#039 ; t remember if we did any other special -- you know, there were certain events where -- convening events where we had to set up a table. I do remember one time setting them up a table on Sunday, some event, and this woman comes up. I said, &quot ; Take all the literature.&quot ; She said, &quot ; I already got it. I was at the meeting Tuesday.&quot ; And it&#039 ; s, like, &quot ; Well, it&#039 ; s supposed to be confidential.&quot ; Okay. Mostly we tried to have our meetings and be a presence, so that I suspect if you went to the -- the younger people don&#039 ; t know who we are, because we weren&#039 ; t as important. But if you go back to the people who were in the community twenty years ago, that age group, I think you&#039 ; ll find there&#039 ; s a whole bunch of people that know more than I, and we don&#039 ; t know them. Because they knew that there was this group out there, led by Don and Melinda, who supported them, even if their parents didn&#039 ; t. Okay? So that&#039 ; s what we did. And we did what PFLAG typically does, and that&#039 ; s the national thing of PFLAG. MF:I want to talk a little bit about the monthly meetings. You really describe people sort of calling the help line, or being panicked. For people in our community today, I think they&#039 ; d be interested why people were so panicked, or the kinds of concerns that people that called the help line, or people that showed up at the meeting, what kinds of concerns were they bringing to those early PFLAG meetings when it was so essential for people in our community? DK:For the GLBT people, it was -- again, it seems to me we had a lot of people who would have been married and in relationships, whether they were forced or whether they thought that would change their -- I don&#039 ; t know. But they did realize that we were a source of support. We also had just GLBT who came to the meetings because there was no other form of support. Where are you going to go, okay  take you as an example, you&#039 ; re gay, where are you going to go back then? To a bar? Where are you going to go for support? We were that support. Then there was the parents who were -- I looked at, and Melinda, GLBT parents, families and friends. Friends. So that doesn&#039 ; t mean you have to -- we&#039 ; re everything, okay, everybody&#039 ; s included. But from the parents&#039 ; standpoint, this was a time when parents in Lehigh Valley were, God help me if my kid&#039 ; s gay. I must have done something wrong, what do I do? You know, it was the whole gamut. I mean, we had parents who were just absolutely shocked, we don&#039 ; t know where we&#039 ; re going. I think we had a few who just came because -- remember one, got to tell a funny story. My daughter&#039 ; s in junior high, and she wants to have this boy over to do a project. And it&#039 ; s, like, &quot ; No, mom and I aren&#039 ; t here, you can&#039 ; t have a boy over to the house.&quot ; Fast forward a bunch of years, the parents, the boy and his brother come to the meeting, and that boy is gay. I guess I didn&#039 ; t need to worry, okay? But so we had -- it was a big difference -- different people came for different reasons. But by and large, parents were, at the time, it was, &quot ; What am I going to do? I&#039 ; m going to jump off the cliff. How do I handle this? What do I do? Have I done something wrong? Get me through this.&quot ; And we got them through it, you know? We could turn around and say -- and use members who were in the meeting, or whatever, to say they were in the same position you were, look at me now. Okay? And by the way, when I said I reached out transgender and I had that meeting, that person who ran that meeting is today one of my best friends. She is. She transitioned somewhere in there, did part of that transition at my house. And she would come to the meetings for anyone who was a transgender person, to help. So we were there, again, in the early days it was the parents who were just -- they were ready to do whatever. And they needed some semblance of how to cope with it, all right. You know, Melinda and I did fine. But that&#039 ; s not what everybody else did. Today we see more on TV, we&#039 ; ve got more interaction. There&#039 ; s more acceptable -- we&#039 ; ve come to grips with it, I guess. Not to say everyone, but some. It&#039 ; s a changed world. MF:Well, I&#039 ; m curious, you described -- you said, &quot ; We got them through it.&quot ; And I&#039 ; m wondering if you could describe how. What strategies did PFLAG use to help parents that were really struggling to accept their children? How did you help people work through their fears? DK:Melinda was better at that than I am. Although when she was still working and I was here consulting, I&#039 ; d get the phone calls, or at the meetings. And I think the meetings -- the phone calls, it was just talking through it, and inviting them to the meeting. Reassuring them that they didn&#039 ; t do anything wrong. Reassuring that their child was still the same person they knew before. I think that we had a few rare -- where people came to a meeting and they were just irate. They weren&#039 ; t going to accept -- I mean, as you know, there&#039 ; s just a group of people who are never going to accept the diversity, or GLBT people. But those people in the middle, and they&#039 ; re just lost souls, if you will, we need to take care of them. When we stopped having meetings, we did have one on one, and there&#039 ; s only one couple that we had that&#039 ; s, like, they were just obnoxious. And we wanted to throw them out. I couldn&#039 ; t believe how they were treating us and their son in our house. But in general, I think we just tried to show people that their children were the same child they were before. They knew more about that child than they did, and that things would be all right. Things would get better. Things that they would find out, and some of the things we talked about, it&#039 ; s, like, gee, you don&#039 ; t want to miss that when your son finds a partner. You don&#039 ; t want to miss that relationship, watching that. You don&#039 ; t want to be in a situation where you don&#039 ; t see your son. You know? And there&#039 ; s a few horror stories, and we used to not deploy those. But there are cases where parents didn&#039 ; t talk to the kid, didn&#039 ; t talk to the kid, and then there was no kid to talk to because of suicide. But generally, no. It&#039 ; s just a basic of talking them through, and the meetings, meeting other parents. We would tend to have sometimes Liz and Trish -- well, they were always there, but sometimes we&#039 ; d have GLBT people who were (inaudible), oh my God, she&#039 ; s gay, what am I going to do? She won&#039 ; t amount to anything. Well, no. Then we&#039 ; d bring in someone who was -- you know, go to the community, or whatever accomplished, and say, you know, &quot ; Come on. Your child has no future? It&#039 ; s not going to be any different,&quot ; you know? So I guess that&#039 ; s basically what -- we also -- and that brought us back, we also advocated for, and I think we can talk about that, is going to government things and talking, and standing up in front. I had a great one with politicians of saying, you know, &quot ; Yeah, only ten percent is gay.&quot ; Yeah, but every one of them, every one of those gay and lesbian people have a mother, father, an aunt and uncle, et cetera, et cetera.&quot ; I said, &quot ; Maybe they&#039 ; re going to say it in public. Well, when they go in that voting booth, are they going to vote for someone who&#039 ; s against their child? I don&#039 ; t think so.&quot ; We can come back to that later, too, another example. But go ahead. MF:Well, you just mentioned advocacy. What you describe is this real commitment to helping people work through fears about their children and their friends, to helping LGBT people feel connected, be leaders or pillars in the community. Now you&#039 ; re introducing this advocacy piece. Can you describe some of the major works of advocacy that PFLAG, during your time in PFLAG, really undertook? The major advocacy issues that you put at the forefront of your PFLAG group? DK:Let&#039 ; s see. I can remember meeting with a state senator, who said, &quot ; We really don&#039 ; t think gays should be married. They&#039 ; re not ready for it&quot ; . And they&#039 ; ve been divorced a couple of times.&quot ; I can remember somewhat involved, Melinda more so than I was, when we had the -- well, in Allentown, we started with the Equal Rights Amendment, add gay, sexual orientation, gender identity to the anti-discrimination law. And as I remember, there were two times ; the first time didn&#039 ; t go anywhere, and the second time did. And I will share with you, part of the project was the Kreiders are also in this project. Kreiders didn&#039 ; t know Allentown very well, and they were older. And they used to come to our meetings regularly, okay? So that&#039 ; s a real thing, when you&#039 ; re a parent and you&#039 ; re emotional, and you think, and here&#039 ; s this former Mennonite minister and his wife who are little tiny old people saying, &quot ; It&#039 ; s okay.&quot ; All right? Anyway, we had dinner with them and then took them to the meeting. And we walked in, and some people standing next to Liz and Trish said, &quot ; The other side&#039 ; s stacking on the deck.&quot ; Liz said, &quot ; No, they&#039 ; re on our side.&quot ; (laughs) So we went to those meetings, we spoke. I spoke, usually. Bethlehem had some more things, we spoke there. Melinda and I were honored by the Allentown Human Relations Commission for some of our work. And that&#039 ; s where I can tell the story. There&#039 ; s a couple of times where I tried to speak to groups and colleges, high schools and that. I wasn&#039 ; t real successful. Liz was more successful getting in than I was. But the first time I did it, I went with a lesbian, and she taught me something. And I use it every time I speak to a group. And at the Human Relations Commission is a good example. Someone I know tried to get the politicians to give her money for -- she was going on a walk for some charity, GLBT, probably, oriented. And it never happened. Okay. So in my talk, because I had to give an acceptance speech, and Liz said, &quot ; Make it count.&quot ; So I start off as I do mostly, I say, &quot ; How many people in this audience are GLBT? I don&#039 ; t want anybody to come out,&quot ; but, you know, a few people raise their hand. And I go on, I talked for a while. And then I say, &quot ; How many in this audience have a relative, a brother, sister, family member, uncle, or a friend who&#039 ; s GLBT?&quot ; At Lehigh, with the Gryphon Society, I did that talk, and I had seven percent, from one or two in the first place. Well, in this case, I had a large percentage, maybe twenty, thirty percent. And the reason I do that is to show that, you know, you walk into a thing and you say, oh, I can discriminate, there can only be one or two in here. Then you realize you&#039 ; re treading on unsafe water with a lot of people. At the end of the event, those politicians fell over each other to try to give this person a donation, okay? I&#039 ; m sure there&#039 ; s a lot of other things we did as far as advocacy and speaking, and things like that. A lot of what we did, what I did, again, was indirect. Like I said, there&#039 ; s a lot of people who I&#039 ; m sure -- and there&#039 ; s a lot of things we did just to show support, you know? Why did we go to the Freedom to Marry events, you know, the marriage type events? To show our support. You know, we were a presence. We were someone who was there, someone who was to show the community that there are two adults, or more, who do care, even if their parents don&#039 ; t. And again, back 20 years ago, a lot of GLB people did not have supporting parents. So here came two people who they care about, okay? So I don&#039 ; t know if you call that advocacy, okay. MF:Well, so I&#039 ; m wondering if maybe -- you&#039 ; ve mentioned the Freedom to Marry events a few times. And I&#039 ; m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about PFLAG&#039 ; s work on that particular political issue. How was PFLAG involved with the Freedom to Marry movement? DK:Well, PFLAG nationally was certainly involved. Locally, again, we, as all other organizations in the area, supported that. Again, we went to the Freedom to Marry evening event. It wasn&#039 ; t necessarily PFLAG support, but on the Friday before the event, there was a march on the Lehigh County Courthouse, where people went in to try to get marriage licenses, unsuccessfully. They took their money, though. I always thought that was interesting. You know, they&#039 ; d take the money, but they wouldn&#039 ; t give them a license, you know? Anyway, that was February, and it was cold. So we had to do something for the -- so Melinda made -- I don&#039 ; t know how many years when it started, and I don&#039 ; t know how many years, but obviously it stopped, but she made scarves every year. Something like sixty, seventy scarves. And she was a machine knitter, she had a machine that did it. But nevertheless. And of course, each year was a different color of the rainbow flag, okay? And there are people who -- probably Liz and Trish still have every one of them. But again, that was -- I guess we probably held banners sometimes. I can remember  I don&#039 ; t remember what it was, I can remember being out in the cold, some banner and some things, whether that was Freedom to Marry or some other rights event. There was a -- with the adding orientation and gender identity to the Allentown Relations Commission Anti-Discrimination law, there was a challenge to that. I was not that involved, Melinda might have been more involved, where we were calling and checking and telling people not to, and stuff like that. You know, asking to rescind their -- a lot of people signed up to oppose it. We were calling and making -- because a lot of that was almost fraudulent the way they did it, at least in my opinion. But I can remember being a little bit involved. I can remember there being a court case, and we went there again in support. Understand, it wasn&#039 ; t as much that we actively did stuff, as much as just being there and saying, look at how many people there are. Or, look, there&#039 ; s some -- there was a case where, I think it was during that time, the Allentown Morning Call had an insert that was Spanish language. And this Spanish language one wrote a scathing article. And I don&#039 ; t remember the details right now, but a scathing article, anti-gay. And we had some real good supporters in the Spanish community, the GLBT activities. And of course, I&#039 ; m sure Liz and Trish were there. So we had GLBT representation. And I went, maybe Melinda too, I don&#039 ; t remember. Well, you know, the Morning Call is, like, oh well, you know, this and that, and everything else, and you know, at one point, they said, &quot ; We use that newspaper because that&#039 ; s where we get our press people.&quot ; Now somebody taught me this in industry. There&#039 ; s a time when someone could say something that someone can&#039 ; t, okay? As a straight male, I can say things in that kind of a situation that maybe a gay or a lesbian couldn&#039 ; t say, or a Hispanic couldn&#039 ; t say. And I turned to think and said, &quot ; You know, there&#039 ; s some very intelligent Hispanic people. Maybe you could get a few columnists and editorial people, rather than just&quot ; -- okay? So, you know, I guess Melinda and I interjected ourselves, where we could, in support, in just numbers, in just saying, there&#039 ; s straight people who are supportive in this. The Civil Rights Movement, and you know, that was in my childhood, as I knew it, got its real strength when white people started supporting it. They could no longer just ignore them, the group. And so that was a little bit of where my thought process came is, you know, this is going to take off more, the more of us that can support it. When we get the parents enraged -- which we did. I think through PFLAG that said, &quot ; You can&#039 ; t do that to my child!&quot ; You know? &quot ; I&#039 ; m sorry, that&#039 ; s my child. What do you mean, my child can&#039 ; t have this, or can&#039 ; t have that?&quot ; We actually, I can remember this thing with fighting the people who signed off, and, you know, my wife called up a friend of ours and said, &quot ; What do you mean, your daughter&quot ; -- maybe she didn&#039 ; t quite say it to the daughter, but her attitude was, &quot ; What do you mean, you think your daughters are better than mine?&quot ; Okay? So it&#039 ; s, I guess, to say, as an engineer, I&#039 ; m a problem-solver, and anywhere I could see that I could help solve the problem, I jumped in. And some of it was quiet, some of it was -- I&#039 ; m not an in-your-face person, but, you know. Where else should we go here? MF:Well, so I have two different sort of ideas for moving forward. But I want to ask the sort of larger question. Looking back on all of your work in PFLAG, how do you think PFLAG as an organization has impacted the Lehigh Valley? DK:Let me just say, not everything was PFLAG, okay? You know, my support of Renaissance wasn&#039 ; t necessarily PFLAG, some of it was personal. I&#039 ; m looking at something else we have in front of us. When MCC had their Christmas party and they needed a Santa Claus, guess who volunteered? You know, was that PFLAG? No. That&#039 ; s just me, all right? And that&#039 ; s me supporting the community, all right? So go ahead, what were you going to ask about PFLAG? MF:Well, this actually makes me think about a different question, because I think what you&#039 ; re describing is -- and you&#039 ; ll just have to tell me if I&#039 ; m right -- but it sounds like the Lehigh Valley LGBT organizations were kind of inter-webbed, in a way, or connected importantly, so that you were drawing on each other for support for different kinds of events or for where you&#039 ; re dressing up as Santa Claus, you know, that you were really sort of working in tandem with each other. Maybe could you describe a little bit of how organizations worked together in the Lehigh Valley? DK:Well, I think you may have used the word &quot ; was,&quot ; and I&#039 ; d like to change that to &quot ; are,&quot ; because I think we still are. Renaissance had a presence in our meetings at PFLAG. MCC, we had a presence at theirs. And in fact, they would end up having -- some of them, I can&#039 ; t remember if it was Freedom to Marry, or something, it was on a night with Renaissance, and so -- and Renaissance used their facility at the time. I think they still do. You know, there is that inter-mixing. I don&#039 ; t know that we ever made the distinction when we went to do something as a group, like fighting for rights, or Freedom to Marry, that it was PFLAG or MCC, or this or that or the other. You know, occasionally we&#039 ; d have to go and explain to somebody, I can remember -- oh, we need to talk about Reading and Monroe County a little bit. But someone, one of those, it&#039 ; s, like, didn&#039 ; t quite understand why gender identity was important. And yet this particular lesbian always is mistaken for a man. Her voice is low. And I tried to tell her, when you go out in public -- this sounds prejudice, it&#039 ; s not, it&#039 ; s not meant to be -- but there are certain stereotypical things that people look at and say, she&#039 ; s a lesbian, okay? She&#039 ; s gay. If you don&#039 ; t fit that stereotype, they don&#039 ; t know. And believe me, I&#039 ; ve convinced myself over and over and over again that they&#039 ; re not typical, not stereotyped people. But they don&#039 ; t know who she&#039 ; s sleeping with. And in fact, I&#039 ; m pretty sure she&#039 ; s not sleeping with anyone. It&#039 ; s the gender identity that they see that they are tagging her. And so if you get gender identity on the books, then it&#039 ; s protection, okay? So and today, it&#039 ; s still interweaved. Here I am, PFLAG&#039 ; s essentially not -- you know, the only thing I claim is that I used to be involved with PFLAG ; we used to have a PFLAG. But I moved on. I&#039 ; m now involved with the Community Center. I am their head of design. You don&#039 ; t know about the first one, but that was a hefty design project. But this one, there hasn&#039 ; t been that much design, but there&#039 ; s a little bit. So I&#039 ; m still helping the community. I&#039 ; m still involved, or I can be. I&#039 ; m a little older, so I&#039 ; m slowed down a little bit. So I like to think that we all have our little bit of the pie, and we all have a segment that is different than the other. There are times when I felt they overlapped too much, maybe, and it&#039 ; s, like, why are you doing that? That&#039 ; s what we&#039 ; re supposed to be doing. But it&#039 ; s all good. And the pie is us. And so I have never felt like if Renaissance needed something that I wouldn&#039 ; t be there to help them. If MCC needed a Santa Claus, I&#039 ; d be there. If the community needed scarves for Freedom to Marry, Melinda was there. And it&#039 ; s still that way. It&#039 ; s just you&#039 ; ve got so much more going on today, that it&#039 ; s -- yeah. MF:My previous question I&#039 ; ll return to, but I&#039 ; ll make it broader now. DK:Can I just bring up one thing? MF:Oh yes, please do. DK:You know, because we&#039 ; re talking historical here, too. At some point in time we were doing things, and Reading was starting up. And we said, gee, we have a newsletter, why should we have two? Why don&#039 ; t we bring them in? So we started doing things. Then later on, around 9-11, somebody came to our meeting and wanted to start a group up in Monroe County. So we ultimately put those three groups together and called it Eastern PFLAG. It used to be Lehigh Valley, I think. But now it&#039 ; s Eastern PA. I&#039 ; m not sure we ever fully operated as one group ; each had their leaders, and each did the leaders slightly different and there wasn&#039 ; t a lot of back and forth. Although I can remember taking a group of transgender people to Reading and also to Monroe County to help a situation, and that. So I just wanted to bring that in, that we did formulate and bring -- and right now, Reading has also ceased to have meetings, for the same reason. Monroe County&#039 ; s slowed down and stopped, and we&#039 ; re not sure what&#039 ; s going on up there. We want to separate functionally because -- but I&#039 ; m not sure what&#039 ; s going on. Yep, and then we&#039 ; ve got all the people. But anyway, I wanted to bring that in, that we -- okay. MF:I have a question about that. How did you support Monroe County and Reading in developing their PFLAG groups? What was that process like? DK:Well, first of all, we had, at the time, was running a newsletter. So we extended that newsletter to them so that they&#039 ; re members. Then we kept membership lists. We had a rather large membership list, which was confidential. Everything went out as blind copies, but we&#039 ; d keep people informed and keep them connected, if you will. I would often go to the Reading meetings. We had a picnic often, and we would have the people together. And sometimes when Reading PRIDE and that, we would set up a table. Again, the personalities were such -- Reading and Allentown -- we never really intermixed much, if you&#039 ; re new to The Valley. But somehow the Lehigh Valley is here, and when you cross that border into Berks County, you&#039 ; re not in Lehigh Valley, according to Berks County people. You&#039 ; re in Berks County, and it&#039 ; s heavens to Betsy that you, you know, it&#039 ; s an (inaudible) -- and by the way, I&#039 ; m a quarter of a mile from Berks County, okay? But Monroe County was just -- and I had gone up to their meetings a couple of times, just to interface with. It was when we had one Treasurer. We made donations to different -- and that&#039 ; s something else we did -- we made donations to different groups and activities. And I can&#039 ; t remember where we made donations. But we collected some money, and we tried to spread it around a little bit, and somewhat evenly between the different groups. Reading did have a -- I can&#039 ; t remember, it&#039 ; s down here -- they had a funding organization, community funding, and they set up on to do stuff for GLBT. They got additional money from somewhere, matching funds. And I was on that board for a while, to try to figure out where to spend the money. I don&#039 ; t remember where we ended up spending money. But that was an interesting activity, too. The problem is, you tend to do -- if you were writing a resume that you wanted to get another job, or as my consultant, you would write down all these things you did so that you could say, &quot ; Hey folks, here&#039 ; s what I did.&quot ; When you do it just because you want to do it and you think it&#039 ; s the right thing to do, you don&#039 ; t always write it down. You don&#039 ; t always remember what you did, and how you did it. MF:Well, we&#039 ; re getting towards the end of our ninety minutes, and I have two questions that I&#039 ; m thinking of. One is one I asked earlier, but I didn&#039 ; t ask it well. This is sort of a historical question. What do you think PFLAG -- but then the other organizations, MCCLV, Lehigh Valley, Renaissance -- what kind of impact do you feel those organizations have made on the Lehigh Valley in their early years, when we&#039 ; re thinking historically about your early work in PFLAG? How did those organizations together change the Lehigh Valley? DK:Well, like I said, the Lehigh Valley over the twenty years has changed from not as accepting to a pretty accepting community. And yes, some of that is watching TV and more GLBT people on TV, et cetera. And some of it is just, you know, what&#039 ; s going on the world. I think that the other part of that equation has to be the different groups in the Lehigh Valley. When you get up and you put signs up and say, &quot ; We want equal rights&quot ; -- I just realized, yeah, I didn&#039 ; t go to those things. It&#039 ; s cold. But I made the signs for them, okay? That&#039 ; s another thing I forgot I did. You know, it&#039 ; s calling attention to what&#039 ; s going on. When you go to city council and you fight for equal rights, and all that gets press, and everything else. So it&#039 ; s those groups. We didn&#039 ; t get where we are today without struggles and without people&#039 ; s efforts. Those different groups, each in their own way, helped do that. The early days of PRIDE. In the PRIDE Festival, we need a bigger -- having a par-- we used to have a parade down Main Street. People see that, you know? There&#039 ; s another one, we participated as a group, PRIDE, with my old truck in the Puerto Rican parade, okay? And -- trying to think now, it was something else -- so those different things and those different activities are what, I think, painted a picture to the community of who we were. And there were allies. The few times I spoke at organizations or to schools, Liz is speaking, all that has caused a different thing. Probably it helps that we&#039 ; ve got people in responsible positions at different companies. You know, I&#039 ; m not -- no offense to Mr. PP &amp ; L where I used to work, PPL now, there&#039 ; s no &amp ; in there, they took it out when I left -- but I used to kid and laugh. Says, you know, it&#039 ; s too bad there&#039 ; s some bigot in there. It&#039 ; s terrible to be a bigot. You have to remember who you hate. As a Jewish person, I&#039 ; m not sure I feel totally comfortable at times. I probably knew of some gay people who I didn&#039 ; t, you know, (inaudible), but I wasn&#039 ; t necessarily friendly -- I am friendly with those people now. Try and take care of my sins, if you will. But when I got caught up and found out that they have a gay association, I was flabbergasted, okay? So, you know, that all helps with -- it&#039 ; s hard to say why we got where we are, okay? A friend of mine transitioned while at Mack Truck. Mack Truck supported her. You know, what was that all about? Some of the colleges we have were not supportive. Again, I don&#039 ; t want to go into one of them, but they weren&#039 ; t supportive, and others were, okay? So it&#039 ; s not -- I don&#039 ; t know. All right? Don&#039 ; t know how it all came about, and glad it did. MF:Okay. I want to return to something that you talked about sort of briefly before. But you talk about a sort of change in the need for PFLAG, that the shift in Lehigh Valley has decreased the membership and attendance at meetings for PFLAG. I&#039 ; m wondering if you could reflect a little bit on that transition. From a really active organization to our current sort of moment, why do you think PFLAG&#039 ; s attendance sort of declined and the interest in the organization kind of declined a bit? DK:Well, there obviously -- again, there&#039 ; s much more acceptance today than there was then. Why? I don&#039 ; t know. You know, I&#039 ; m an engineer, I don&#039 ; t know why. It&#039 ; s a social economical, whatever, change. And how much we had impact on that -- I can guess, like I just said, you asked what the groups did. I can guess. But the effect is that people are more tolerant, and learned tolerance in Lehigh Valley. Is that because of the effects we did? Is that effect of watching more things on TV -- I mean, I watch these home shows where the couples are looking for a home, and it seems like a larger and larger percentage are same sex couples. That&#039 ; s got to be a positive thing, when people see it and say -- you know, their children, and say, &quot ; Gee, I just watched that show the other day, and these two guys could afford this really expensive house. You know, I guess my son&#039 ; s going to do all right.&quot ; Or, &quot ; My daughter&#039 ; s going to do all right.&quot ; You know, all that has an effect. As to which one, or what, I don&#039 ; t know. Maybe PFLAG didn&#039 ; t have a big effect on that. Maybe we&#039 ; re just seeing the effect, you know? Affect, effect, whatever. But we kept seeing a big decrease in the people coming to our meetings. We held on for quite a while, and finally it was like we didn&#039 ; t even stay the whole hour. We were just, like, nobody&#039 ; s here. You know, we talked about changing our format to being just -- because we like getting together once a month, okay, in the early days. And maybe even towards the end. We would get together for dinner before or after the meetings, because we got to be real good friends. So I don&#039 ; t know why it changed. I just know it absolutely did change, again. Now I&#039 ; ve had a few people say, &quot ; You should keep doing it.&quot ; I say, &quot ; Why?&quot ; You don&#039 ; t keep selling tacos when nobody wants tacos, you know? All right? I&#039 ; m not sure how much the meetings and all that helped, as much as Melinda and I and all the other PFLAG parents being there. And understand, I mean, PFLAG wasn&#039 ; t just Melinda and I. There were people in Reading, two or three people that were involved with the Reading group. They kept Reading going, and kept influence and a presence in Reading. We have still people, friends here who were in our board and our involvement who also, you know, came to those meetings and came to those events and things like that. So, yeah. MF:I&#039 ; ll ask one final question, and then we&#039 ; ll move towards the conclusion. We talked a lot about sort of community impact and the shift in PFLAG, and I kind of want to move towards ending with a more of a personal reflection. DK:Okay. MF:How has being involved in PFLAG mattered to you personally, or mattered to you as a father and as a spouse? How have you personally been impacted by your years of work in multiple organizations, you know, centrally with PFLAG? DK:I mean, my daughter thinks we&#039 ; re more gay than she is, because we&#039 ; re more involved. Yeah. Let me put it this way. No offense to the Jewish religion or Jewish people, but we were involved with the synagogue for many years -- not a lot, we started late, when my daughter was Sunday school age. And when she was about ten, eleven or so, we moved to the country. It became very hard to get her there midweek for Hebrew school. On weekends I would drive her there, it took me a half an hour to get there, class was an hour, then I had to wait around, do something for an hour and then take her home. That was a pain in the neck. During the week was hard, because we both work. And subsequently, we made the decision based on her and her feelings, and everything else, to drop out. The best I can say is, the synagogue was a clique. We never quite got into the clique. We have friends who were involved with the synagogue who were our friends before, and they&#039 ; re still our friends. And yeah, we made a couple. Right around that time was the Matthew Shepard event, and we had  well, there&#039 ; s another example. We went to the Matthew Shepard events, and there was candles and stuff. We did the same thing with the event in Florida. So, you know, that&#039 ; s where we show our presence, if you will. Anyway, I&#039 ; m standing there, and I&#039 ; m looking around at the GLBT board. And understand, that was relatively early in our involvement with the community. And I said, I have more friends right now in the GLBT community than I did in the synagogue. I&#039 ; m going to put, I guess, a pat on my back a little bit -- about five years ago, I guess it was 2015 at the Bradbury-Sullivan gala, we were honored, Melinda and I. The Kreiders were honored before us, and we really love the Kreiders. Roberta refers to me as &quot ; son,&quot ; I refer to her as &quot ; mother,&quot ; and that&#039 ; s pretty odd when you have a Mennonite and a Jewish couple that were that close. And we still see them every few weeks. So we thought that was a big deal. We thought, man, we didn&#039 ; t do much -- by the way, Sally was keynote speaker. And we got a standing ovation. This is my community now, right? And I don&#039 ; t feel I do a lot for it. Other people think I might. But to me, it&#039 ; s my community, and I do things for my family, my community, all right? So does that answer your question? MF:Yeah, thank you so much. Well, before we close, I just want to give you the opportunity, is there anything else that you really want to share today that we haven&#039 ; t yet talked about? DK:You know, there&#039 ; s so many things over those twenty years that I&#039 ; m sure I did that might be interesting to the community, I don&#039 ; t know. But like I said, it&#039 ; s been a great time, it still is a great time. You know, it&#039 ; s always -- a stereotypical comment is, &quot ; Some of my best friends are GLBT.&quot ; Well, it&#039 ; s not -- that&#039 ; s true. It&#039 ; s not a fake comment, okay? The Kreiders are our best friends. Liz and Trish are our best friends. Some of their friends are now our best friends. Again, I&#039 ; ve got a couple of friends who are transgender. I&#039 ; m going to leave you with this: In the early days, I was concerned of who was gay, and who wasn&#039 ; t, all right? I don&#039 ; t have gaydar, and so I don&#039 ; t know. My biggest concern at some point in time, in certain times, is to know what gender or -- no gender, sexual orientation or gender identity people are, because I want to be able to say to someone, &quot ; I&#039 ; m on your side. I&#039 ; m a supporter. I&#039 ; m an ally.&quot ; You say that to a gay man, and he&#039 ; s not, you might get beat up, okay, and insulted. You know? It could be an insult. Transgender are even harder because someone who&#039 ; s either crossdressing or transgender wants to be accepted, and doesn&#039 ; t want to be identified, okay? So if I can pick them out and identify them, they just lost. So how do you tell someone GLBT, you&#039 ; re on their side? Okay, so two stories with that ; one, we were at the Creating Change conference in Pittsburgh that year. And the events were either at the basement or the top floor. And everybody was riding up and down in elevators. Now I won&#039 ; t begin stereotyping, but most lesbians don&#039 ; t dress very fancy, okay? Melinda gets on the elevator, and from the back of the elevator is, &quot ; Hi, mom,&quot ; which I believe is a euphemism for someone -- a member of the community. &quot ; No, that really is my mom.&quot ; It was Sally, okay? That&#039 ; s one story. The other is, I have ceased to care what somebody&#039 ; s orientation is. I am at events at Bradbury-Sullivan, or whatever, where I can pretty much guess that probably somebody is or isn&#039 ; t. In my early days at PFLAG, and I wanted to be able to prove to myself and be able to say this -- we&#039 ; d go around and tell who we were. And I have to admit, I tried to pick out who was gay and who wasn&#039 ; t. One time, there was a man with a younger guy, who I knew was gay, and was sitting there like this. And I said, &quot ; Oh, that&#039 ; s dad. He&#039 ; s not happy.&quot ; No, it was the partner. MF:Mmm. DK:Another time it was a woman, who I said, oh, she&#039 ; s gay. No, she was there because of her son. Okay? I don&#039 ; t care anymore. It doesn&#039 ; t matter to me. You know, if somebody tells me, fine. I know a little more about them, you know? I&#039 ; m not interviewing you, so I don&#039 ; t know a lot about your background ; we should have talked. But it doesn&#039 ; t matter to me anymore. Maybe that goes a little step beyond acceptance, a step beyond where we&#039 ; re at, whatever. But, you know, if somebody wants to share with me what they are or who they are, or whatever, that&#039 ; s fine. It doesn&#039 ; t matter to me anymore. I don&#039 ; t -- it&#039 ; s not that I don&#039 ; t care. It&#039 ; s just that you&#039 ; re a person, I like this person, and I&#039 ; m not going to make a judgment based on their sexual orientation or their gender ID, and they&#039 ; re fine with me regardless. So that&#039 ; s probably what -- I said it started with getting more and more acceptance and diversity. Now I have to give one more piece of Don Kohn philosophy here. There are those people of a religion belief who believe that we&#039 ; re being tested on earth, and we won&#039 ; t go to heaven if we fail that test. Those people who believe that way have a different idea of what that test is than I do. My belief -- (inaudible), this is a great forum for this -- my belief for this is, what is universal throughout the planet? Diversity. And maybe it&#039 ; s our approach to diversity that&#039 ; s our real test. And a lot of people are failing it. Okay? MF:Don, thank you so much for talking with me today. It truly is -- it&#039 ; s just been a real pleasure and an honor to hear some of your stories. DK:I enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking with you also. And I&#039 ; m glad -- you know, you talk about what I&#039 ; ve done, I think what you&#039 ; re doing, and the rest of the people with this oral history, is also doing something for the community. So we&#039 ; ll have to come when you get honored. I&#039 ; ll have to put the bug in Adrian&#039 ; s ear, that should be one of the honorees, that&#039 ; s the group who&#039 ; s doing this. Okay? MF:Thank you so much. DK:He does listen to me sometimes. MF:Well, again, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. I will just conclude the interview there by letting you know that we&#039 ; ll reach out with a transcript, probably within the next three months, if that&#039 ; s all right. DK:Okay. MF:Great. DK:All right. MF:All right, that will be where we&#039 ; ll stop the interview, but I wanted to stay on the line with you and just check in. How did that go for you? DK:Well, well, I think that there&#039 ; s areas that I was surprised we didn&#039 ; t get to, and there&#039 ; s probably more. But I threw in a few things that I thought were important. Yeah. I thought it went well. MF:I thought it was fabulous. Look, I was tearing up there a little bit. I had to -- fortunately I had Kleenex here, but I didn&#039 ; t want to have that on camera, so -- DK:Oh, okay. MF:I had to dab my eyes there a bit. Yeah, I thought that was wonderful. Well, if there were things that we missed today that you were surprised about, we could always reschedule a second interview if you feel like you&#039 ; re-- DK:I don&#039 ; t know that they were that important. I think I got the important stuff in. MF:Okay. All right. Well, then I will be in touch when we have a transcript for you, and I&#039 ; ll send that via email. And in the meantime, if you have any questions for me, or any concerns for me, anything you want to talk about, just reach out. DK:I&#039 ; m fine. I just -- we&#039 ; ll see each other, I&#039 ; m sure, at the Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center sometime and say hello. I&#039 ; m terrible at remembering people, so it&#039 ; s not a strongpoint. Whereas as a professor, I&#039 ; m sure you know who all your students are, and so-- MF:Yes, but then sometimes, like a year later, I&#039 ; ll know the face, but I&#039 ; ll forget the name, so-- DK:Politicians are very good at remembering me. I&#039 ; m terrible. As I&#039 ; m getting older, I&#039 ; ll remember someone and it&#039 ; s, like, but I can&#039 ; t remember the name. Then it&#039 ; ll hit me. MF:Well, just poke me and say, &quot ; I know you. Remind me where from.&quot ; DK:Well, I&#039 ; m saying if you see me, poke me, and -- let me put it this way. There&#039 ; s not as many gray-haired old men who show up -- (laughter) with their wives, you know? It reminds me of one time, somehow we got tickets to a GLBT event. I don&#039 ; t even remember how we got it. I mean, they sent it to PFLAG. So Melinda and I said, &quot ; We&#039 ; ll go.&quot ; And there we are. It&#039 ; s, like, &quot ; What are you doing here? You&#039 ; re not gay!&quot ; You know? &quot ; Well, okay.&quot ; So again, sometimes it&#039 ; s interesting to be in a -- to find out what it&#039 ; s like to be in a minority, when you get to be there. It&#039 ; s not the same. I can&#039 ; t say that I know what it&#039 ; s like to be a lesbian or a gay man. But I understand. And so it&#039 ; s -- yeah. MF:Well, I will say &quot ; hi&quot ; to you when I see you at the Bradbury-Sullivan, then. DK:I&#039 ; m looking forward to meeting your partner, I assume, so-- MF:We would be delighted to meet you. DK:Yes. MF:Well, I will be in touch really soon, Don. I hope you have a wonderful day, and thanks again. DK:Good. Thank you. It was enjoyable. MF:Bye, now. DK:Bye-bye. How do I get out of this? MF:I&#039 ; ll just end it for both of us. DK:Okay. MF:When I click this button, I&#039 ; ll disappear. DK:You know, always when I&#039 ; ve done Zoom for other things, like a friend of Liz and Trish&#039 ; s had a Zoom birthday party, Melinda always set it up. And my granddaughters had cello concerts with a bunch of kids, and she set it up. So this is the only time I&#039 ; ve ever been on Zoom. Now Facebook, I do my yoga class on Facebook. Not on Facebook, on Skype. So that I&#039 ; m familiar with. But -- okay. MF:You did wonderful for Zoom. Okay, I&#039 ; ll turn it off right now. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0

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