UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1002
BIDDLE, DONNA 

BIDDLE, DONNA (1940-)
Graduate Student, Fire Fighter
At UW: early 1960s 

Interviewed: 	2009 (2 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Linda Lenzke
Index by: 	Carmen Baumann
Length: 	2 hour, 42 minutes (total)
Series:		Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960s to present
00:00:00	Start of First Interview Session
LL: 	Hello. Today is June 17, and it is just shy of 6 o'clock in the evening. And my name is Linda Lenzke, and I'm going to be interviewing Donna Biddle. Donna, would you like to start out telling us a little bit about your age, where you grew up, and we'll take a little bit of time to talk about your family background. 
00:00:24
DB: 	OK, sure. I just turned 70 last month, so I'm now one of the senior citizens, I guess, although I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. And I was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. And basically, I grew up in a family of women. My father, I never knew. My mother and father were married, they were divorced when I was 18 months old and he left and I never saw him, so I have no recollection whatsoever of my father. So I grew up, basically, with my aunts and my mother and my grandmother all in one house. And then when I was five, my aunt Mary died of asthma at a very young age. And then my aunt Martha got married and left. So it was my mother and my grandmother and myself living there. And, of course, I had some cousins and aunts and uncles around. When I was nine years old, my mother got pregnant and had my sister. So for nine years, basically, I was an only child, which meant that I had a lot adult attention, which meant that I learned to read by age three and things like that. I basically was more an adult at that age than a child because there were mostly adults around me. And later, as I got older, of course, there were kids in the neighborhood to play with. But mainly, I was pretty much raised in a very adult atmosphere. 
00:02:01
DB:	Unfortunately, Indiana was an extremely conservative place. And even though I began to have feelings that I was different at a very young age, say four or five years old, I don't know why it was never spoken, but I knew never to say anything about it. I knew to keep this hidden. This was something you had to hide and I don't even know why I knew that, but I knew it. I knew very well that I could not say how I felt about some little girls that I saw. I just knew not to say a word. And I didn't. I didn't. And it was very interesting, though, that as a child, you can pick up on something like that. I've never known why. I can't go back in my memory and understand why I knew not to say anything. 
LL: 	So it sounds like, just for clear understanding, that you were at a pretty young age when you started having some feelings about other girls. 
DB:	 Yes, very young. It started when I got in first grade. I did not go to kindergarten, but I did go to first grade. And I remember in first grade, we sat at these little tables. We were four to a table. And I remember immediately getting a crush on the little girl sitting across from me. Her name was Marilyn, my first crush, and she was born on the same day I was. We were the same age. And I just remember having these feelings about her. I also remember being intelligent enough when people were saying, "Oh, do you have a boyfriend" and all, to say, "Yes, Bernard." Honestly, I felt about Marilyn-- some of the things I said about Bernard, I was really saying about Marilyn, but I was keeping it very, very hush-hush, knowing not to say anything. Why? I don't know, as I say. But the interesting thing was, later, Bernard always said I was his girlfriend too. And later-- much, much later, like after we were out of college-- I found out Bernard was gay. So we had sort of picked each other, and felt very safe with picking each other. And all through grade school, we sort of played crush on each other, as kids had crushes, but we both felt very safe in this crush. And I don't know how we knew, but we actually picked up on these vibes. I think we were very young with gaydar. But we actually knew those kinds of things. 
00:04:28 
DB:	And of course, in the Bible Belt, everything was a sin. There wasn't anything that wasn't a sin. And I realized when I went to Sunday school with some of the kids in my neighborhood-- my family, actually, didn't go to church. Part of my family were Catholics and they did go to church, and once in a while I went to mass with them. My mother and I were baptized Methodist, but we never went to any church. We were just baptized Methodist because that was supposedly the family religion. But she sent me to Sunday school and to vacation bible school with my little friends that went to a Free Methodist church, which was extremely, extremely conservative and fundamentalist. And they preached about how often the blacks were, the sons of Ham. And they preached against Jews and they preached against Catholics as the Antichrists and all. And I remember when I was about nine, the minister said, "Well, you're of the age when you need to be saved." And I turned to him and I said, "Reverend Sewell," I said, "I can't hate enough to be a Christian." Well, he didn't really want me back to that church very much. And I realized I was not welcome and I quit going. And basically went for a long time without any thoughts of going to any kind of religion because you had a lot of people praying for you. Since my mother was divorced, she was a fallen woman, and some of the kids in the neighborhood weren't allowed to play with me because she was divorced. The atmosphere was horrible. 
00:06:02 
LL: 	I know a little bit about your story since we're friends. And I know that there was a certain amount of poverty growing up. And sometimes you've told stories about having to overcome the shame that you felt growing up in the kind of home you did. At the same time, you grew up in a home that was predominantly women. Did you feel like there were certain messages that were given to you by your family of "women can take care of themselves"? Or on the contrary, did you get messages of "women need a man" or "women are only half of a person without a relationship"? What kinds of values were you communicated in your family? 
DB: 	It was an interesting situation. Basically, I saw women doing everything they needed to do. We fixed the plumbing. My grandfather had been a master plumber. My mother and my grandmother knew how to fix plumbing and all. They knew how to do a great many things around the house. We always did our own repairs. We always did things. When I was little and we wanted to make a soapbox scooter, my mother made a soapbox scooter. I never got the impression that I couldn't do anything. My toys were not censored. While every Christmas I got a doll that I basically don't want, I also got an erector set. I also got a chemistry set. I got a lot of things. My toys weren't differentiated. I got all toys. And when I got toys, if I wanted a boys' toy, I was able to get it. I had trucks, I had little cars, I had a lot of that sort of thing. So I basically got a strong feeling of women. I didn't realize until later that women weren't supposed to do certain things. It was only after I got out into the community in Terre Haute and in school did I begin to learn the woman's role, so to speak, because I didn't see it in the house. I honestly didn't. We did everything we needed to do. 
00:08:06
DB:	But yes, we had a great deal of poverty, which, of course was a problem because, basically we kept that very secret-- as secret as we could-- because being the Bible Belt, they felt that if you were poor or if you were sick or disabled, it was because you were a sinner. God wouldn't visit that upon you unless you were a sinner. So we tried to keep that so we wouldn't get harassed by the religious community down there. However, the social worker that was a social worker for welfare-- because I was on welfare-- went over to the school and told my teacher in fourth grade. So the teacher called me out in the hall and said, "Well, you're on welfare and you didn't tell us. You should've told us that. It makes a big difference." She said, "Now, I want you to pack your books and go sit in the back of the room. You cannot participate in class anymore." So I was put in a back seat, even though I'd been making straight As and one of the top students in the class, I was put the back of the room and not allowed to participate anymore. And I still got my good grades because I could pass a test and all. I remember we had a play writing contest. My mother always came to everything. She came to PTA. She did everything she could. She was very good about helping me in school. She put on the best clothes she had and went to the PTA meetings. Anything I was in in school, she went. So I wrote this play, and the teacher called me in and said, "This is really the best play that was written. However, your mother's poor, so she probably doesn't care, so we're not going to let you read yours." So I sat there with my mother, but the other kids got to read theirs. I was not allowed to read mine because I was poor. 
00:09:46.00
DB:	 Same thing happened to me in school when I was a senior. I was called in by the dean of women and told that I'd won the scholarship, which I needed, and then told me I couldn't have it because, being poor, I'd only drop out of school. And my kind would never make it. I happen to have a master's degree. But my kind was never going to make it, so she gave it to somebody else. She gave it to one of my best friends.  I never told my best friend because it was not my best friend's problem. It was not her fault, and I never wanted her to feel bad about it. But those things happened all the time down there. It was really very, very bad. As you know, I try as much as possible never to go back. 
00:10:26
LL: 	Well, talking about that, why don't you talk a little bit about how you left that environment and how you got your education at the university here and how that changed your life and any changes in whether you were thriving or whether you felt held back, how difficult it was to fit into a new community. Do you want to talk a little bit about that experience? 
DB: 	Sure. Basically, strangely enough, for all the problems that city had, they had extremely good schools at that point. Better than when my sister came nine years later. The schools had deteriorated. We had, basically, something that would not be allowed today. And I have mixed feelings about how I feel about it, but at that time, they graded you according to your ability. So when I was in first grade, I was in the B1s. There was two, so the ones, we moved a little faster. And we went with a different teacher. The others stayed in another class. That kind of continued all the way through grade school. When we got to junior high school, we took a bunch of tests, and then we were in Section One, Two, and Three. Interesting thing about that was-- and I was in Section One-- the interesting thing about that is that if you did better, you would move. And if you didn't do as well, they did move you around. You were not stuck. They literally would move you around. I knew kids that were having a little trouble with reading. They got put in Section Two until they caught up on their reading. Then they came up to Section One and that kind of thing. I know one of my best friends was in Section Three. And she said, had that system not been in place, she would not have gone to high school. But having been able to catch up and get the help she needed, she went on and finished high school. And she went into business school then and went on to have a fairly decent career, which she might not have had. So in that sense, I think it was a good system. In high school-- we had, basically, five high schools in town. We had a Catholic high school. We had a laboratory high school that was hooked to the teacher's college-- Indiana State Teachers College that was in town. Then we had three public schools. We had the north side academic school, the south side academic school, and the technical school in the middle of the city anybody could go to. And I went to the south side academic, which prepared you for college. And it was a very good school. It was interesting. About one third of my class was black. And this was just shortly after Brown versus Board of Education three years after. 95% of my class went to college, even though a third were black, which was almost unheard of in that day and age. And about 85% of my class graduated from college, and most of us went on for further degrees. So it was a very, very high-level school. 
00:13:28
DB:	When I got out of college-- I did not get the scholarship I needed, but I planned to go to the school in my hometown. I could stay at home and I had worked enough that summer to get enough to pay for-- it was a quarter system. So I had enough money-- it was $44 a quarter. Can you imagine? I had saved up about $100. So I had enough for two quarters. I did not have enough for the third quarter. So I went to school. I started college. And I also went into speech. I had started working in public speaking in high school. My best friend was in it, and I decided to try my hand at doing it. And it turned out that I had kind of a skill for it. So when I got to college, I decided that I would go into debate and get on the debate team if I could, which I was quite able to do. And because I needed money, the debate coach set up a job for me helping in his office. I helped set up the debate tournaments and fill out the registration form. So I worked a little there. The other thing I was able to do was, another friend of mine that had gone to the technical school rather than the academic school because she was an albino. She had trouble reading. She thought she could get her academics as well as get trained in some other stuff if she needed it. She went on to college with me. And she needed a reader. She couldn't read all of her things. It was too hard on her eyes. She asked if I could be her reader, and I got paid for reading her books to her, which was wonderful because she was taking a lot of classics at that time. And I've read The Iliad and The Odyssey aloud-- not in Greek, but I read it aloud to her-- and a lot of these comparative lit kinds of things, which was very good because I wasn't taking that class. I was taking the English classes, so I got that along with mine. 
00:15:26 
DB:	So it helped me go through, but come the third quarter, I did not have enough money to go on. And I was scared. I really wanted to go to school. I wanted to go to school because when I was 16 and a junior, my social worker came in and told me I had too much pride that I wanted to go to college, and that I should drop out and go into the factory to keep the family. There was no reason to go on for further education, and my mother told her to get out. My mother said, "You go on." And I did. So I had this real urge to go, and I wouldn't let that social worker get me to drop out of school. She was getting all kids that were poor dropping out. And so I went on. And finally-- I was a fairly shy kid. I was very shy. I don't come off that way now, but I was painfully shy at that point. But I sat there and I thought, it's now or never. It's do or die. Because I knew if I dropped out, it would be very difficult. I probably would not come back. And so I knew I just wanted to stay in. And so I got up all my courage, put on my best clothes, marched myself into the scholarship office. I remember the woman. I think her name was Doris Leary. I'm not sure of the last name, but I know her first thing was Doris because so was my mother's. And I marched in and I said, "I want a scholarship." And she looked at me and she said, "What makes you think you can get a scholarship?" And I said, "Well, I don't have any books." I didn't have any books for any of my classes. I would go to the library and do as much as I could, but most of it, I got through without books. And I said, "Because I've got a 3.85. I'm working two jobs. I walk to school because I don't have any transportation. And I don't have books, but I'm still pulling my weight and doing well." And I said, "I would really like to continue my education." I said, "If I don't get this, I have to drop out next week." I said, "This is it." And I said, "I'm afraid if I drop out, I'll never get back in." She looked at me and she said, "Quit worrying." She said, "I'm giving you a scholarship for the rest of the time." She said, "It won't really cover all your books. It'll cover a few books." But she said, "From now on, if you keep a B average, you have a scholarship." She said, "You will have a scholarship for the rest the time," which really took a huge, huge weight off of me. Huge weight. In reality, I did have something in my back pocket, but I didn't want to use it. One of my really close friends that I'd gone through high school with, whose name was also Donna, she was an only child and her parents had put aside money for her college in an insurance plan. And then her parents had done a lot better and they were able to pay for her college education. And her mother took me aside and told me that if any time in college I get in trouble, that they would finish paying off my tuition if I wanted it. And she said it would not be a loan. I would've thought of it as a loan. But I felt a lot better being able to do it on my own than having to ask her. To this day, I don't know whether I would've asked her. I might have. I don't know. But I was just very pleased not to have to do that. I'd had so much problem with having to ask for so much or being denied so much, it just didn't sit right with me. I wanted to be more independent. 

00:19:01
DB:	So I went to college, did well in college, kept my scholarship, kept my grades up very high, and got on the debate team. And in college, I just never came out. I was very, very closeted. There was no way that you could come out. I would've been kicked out of school. There was no way. If it had been known, I would have been out the door. They would not have tolerated it. So you had to be extremely, extremely closeted. So I never came out. Never had a girlfriend or anything because it was impossible. I would never have told anybody. I wouldn't go up to another girl because if I had made a real big mistake, I'd have been in real big trouble. So I just never did anything in college. I dated a couple of guys because everybody dated. And I went out on all these double dates and everything. In fact, I even got a proposal from Ron, who was very interested in getting engaged and I wasn't. And a very nice fellow. Liked him a lot, but I wouldn't do that to him because I knew that I really would never feel for him that way. It would have been a lie, and I wasn't going to do that. So I decided that after I got out of college, I'd probably go to graduate school, become a professor, because I felt that since I couldn't have any other kind of life, I could have an academic, intellectual life. I could never have a love life, as far as I knew. From everything I'd seen, it was something you could never do. Being a lesbian, you would never have a love life. 
00:20:36 
DB:	So I decided that I wanted to go on to school. So when I was in my senior year, I was a championship debater. I was one of the number one debaters in the United States. And at that time, debate was very big in colleges. It was almost like the football team. You could get people to come to debates. We held public debates and filled the auditorium. So three schools bid on me for graduate school-- Ohio State, Northwestern, and the University of Wisconsin. And they all offered me a teaching assistantship to teach debate and public speaking as a TA. And I was debating on all of them. The one I probably would have liked to have gone to but wouldn't have would've been Northwestern. The cost to go there outside that TA was just extremely expensive. My mother was very adamant she didn't want me living in Chicago. She was very nervous about that kind of a city. She didn't know what that would be like. And Ohio State looked pretty good. And then, at the last minute, I was telling the University of Wisconsin that I didn't think I was going to go here. And they said, "What's the problem?" I said, "Well, Ohio State's offering me about $100 more and I think I just have to take that." And they said, "We'll throw in a fellowship." So basically, they upped the ante. So I got both a fellowship and a TA. And they also waived out of state tuition for me. So Wisconsin became really good. I mean, as far as money went, it was really good. I also had an aunt that lived in Milwaukee, which meant that I did have somebody close. 
00:22:24 
DB:	So I left home and came to the university. And that was a big move. I'd never lived away from home. I'd never lived in a dorm. I had never done any of that. Other than about twice, I had never stayed at anybody's house overnight. Because I couldn't invite people back, I tended not to be doing the slumber party kind of stuff. 
LL: 	Before we talk about your experience in Madison and how that changed your life, do you want to talk a little bit about what that transition was like for your family? You left your mother and your younger sister and-- 
DB: 	And my grandmother. 
LL: 	--and your grandmother. Was that hard for you? Or did it feel like you were fulfilling your dreams and their dreams for you? Or did your family feel that you were abandoning them? 
DB:	 It was a real conflict. On one hand, my family was very happy that this happened. They were very happy that I got this. It was something I wanted. And I was always encouraged, academically. I had always been encouraged. But my mother's idea was, I'd get my degree, I'd teach, and I'd keep the family and they would have a better life. She was a little upset about it, although she wasn't as upset with me coming to Wisconsin because also, I had an aunt up here. It was very mixed. It was very mixed. On one hand, my mother did not try to keep me from going, which surprised me. But she did have a lot of mixed feelings about me coming up here. I had told them that I thought I could finish in about a year, year and a half, and then I would be back. To me, it was just a short time away. And so, yes, I felt bad about leaving my sister because my mother had a lot of untreated mental problems, a lot of depression. She also had thyroid problems that make you paranoid and all. And they didn't know anything about it. I had never been to a doctor. She hadn't either. Just to put it bluntly, there was a lot abuse. There was a lot of physical and emotional abuse in my home. On one hand, my mother having these problems doesn't take away from the terrible, terrible things it caused emotional for me and my sister. And mainly for my sister, because after I left and did not come back, my mother really clamped down on my sister and my sister had a much more terrible life. She took her to high school and brought her home every night. She wouldn't let her go to anything. She wouldn't let her have any friends. She almost locked her up like a prisoner. And in time, she actually tied her into the house and wouldn't let her out. So she had a much harder time, mainly because I left. And I don't know whether she would have had an easier time if I had stayed or not. I just had to make the decision. I knew that my staying there would not save the family or even help the family that much. So I decided that I wasn't going to sacrifice myself. You might say I was selfish, but it wouldn't have done any good to stay at home. And it would have just been one more lost life, as far as I could see. And I chose not to lose it. And felt that I probably, at some time, could help my sister more by not being there. 
00:25:56 
LL: 	Do you want to talk a little bit about the transition in Madison and how your life changed when you've got here? 
DB: 	Oh, yeah. It was like another world. Talk about future shock. I just couldn't believe it. I came up here and it was just entirely different. The first thing was, it was clean up here. Terre Haute was filthy, dirty all the time. Nothing was ever clean down there. The streets had junk. It was just really different. First thing I noticed was it was clean. I was so happy it was clean. And of course, I had all these dreams. You know how when you have no idea what's out there, you have all these dreams. And I remember I had to have a place to stay. And so I came up here with a friend. We drove up here and took a room at the old Loraine Hotel while I looked for a place to stay. We only had about three days to find me a place to stay. And boy was I hustling. And my idea, when I came, I'd get myself a nice little one-bedroom apartment. Wouldn't that be neat? In reality, that wasn't anything I could afford at all. So what I was I came up here and I finally found a room on Langdon Street. It was in a rooming house owned by the people whose son built the House on the Rock. junior Jordan actually lived there. He was kind of nutty. But he lived in the basement with his parents. So I got myself one room with the bath down the hall. But it had a little closet that opened up and there was a hot plate in there, and there was a little refrigerator in there so I could cook. And it was actually the nicest place I'd ever lived to that date. It was much nicer than my home, actually. It was a long room. It had hardwood floors. It had a nice closet and at the end. It had two dressers. In my house, mother just stacked stuff. We never used drawers. So I had to learn to use drawers. That was interesting, to learn how to organize and use drawers. It had a little desk at the end that I actually had a place to study. I'd never had a place to study before, so I actually had a little desk to study. And that was nice. It had two couches that were actually-- they didn't open up into beds, but they were couch beds that at night, they were beds. And it had a little maple table for eating on. So to me, it was very lovely. And I had a dresser, and I just loved the whole place. And I was very, very happy there. 
00:28:41 
DB:	I was very lonely, though. I remember I got in and got in late. I'd taken the night train and I got in, and I remember the next morning, there was a pay phone out in the hall and I took some of my money and called home, told them I got here and all. Then I went back to my room and just felt like I didn't know what to do. I just had never been away. And I sat and cried and cried and cried and cried because I was so lonely and I didn't know what was going to happen. That didn't last long because the next day I had to be at the university because I had to go down and work on the assignment committee for that and all. And of course, at my college, women were not allowed to wear slacks at all on campus. And the boys were not allowed to wear jeans or anything other than dress pants and dress shirts and ties and all. Even though it was a public school, it also had a very religious bend. Even though it was a public school, you were required to go to fundamentalist conventions all the time. And even the Jews and the Muslims-- anybody had to go, and attendance were taken, so you had to go. And so I came up here, and I want to the assignment committee. And the kids were coming in in shorts and stuff to sign up for classes and I was sending them home to change their clothes. They came over and stopped me. They said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, they're not dressed correctly for campus." And they told me I couldn't do that. And so I learned very quickly. So it was a big transition. A huge transition. I went back to my room and met the woman that lived next door to me. She worked for the state as a secretary at that time. And I remember Julie took me down to the union and showed me around. And so it was kind of nice. I all of a sudden met somebody that I knew. And then I got it graduate school. But the transition was too much for me. It was just too much for me. I began to get emotionally in just extreme trouble. Just extreme trouble. A lot of depression. Just feeling out of my element. The kids were different. The school was harder. I could keep my grades up, but everything was just going blank on me. Finally, it got to the point I couldn't handle it anymore, so I tried to kill myself. And I ended up in the psych ward at University Hospital for about 11 weeks. Strangely enough, I was able to stay in graduate school. They let me out on a pass to go teach my classes and take my classes. And then I'd come back at night and stay there. But I was in a lot of trouble, emotionally and all. I kind of got over it, and I got back in school and out of the psych ward and back to my little place. Part of the problem was when I got up here, tuition had changed. And I only had enough money to pay my tuition and I was left with no money for food. I only had $30 left for about six or eight weeks. I thought I'd get a check when I came. And I had to work the whole month and then it was two weeks after. So I had about six or eight weeks when I only had about $20, $25-- $30, maybe, at the most-- to live on. And so I started to try to eat on that. And I got to the point I could only have one meal a day. That wasn't too different because we often had only one meal at home a day. But I lost 40 pounds in that six weeks. I was so undernourished. So the not having food, just a completely different climate up here. Everything was so different. The students were different. The intellectual level. Everything just kind of collapsed in on me. And then when I got ready to do my dissertation for my master's-- I finished my coursework pretty well-- getting ready to finish to do my dissertation, I found out the dissertation that I'd chosen, I had to go to Washington, DC. You could not get the stuff. It was in the Library of Congress. And at that time, they didn't have a lot of these library exchanges. Certainly not the internet or anything that would've made it possible. And it became obvious that I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the money to go. And so I dropped out and not finished that Master's degree in speech. At the same time, not only was I having psychological problems, was in the psych ward, having no money, and practically starving at points, I was also coaching debate, and I had to go on the road and take the debate team. I also had to do Quiz the Professor at the university. I was just really overwhelmed. I was working very, very hard. And I could not do it. I just ended up just not able to handle, keep all those balls in the air. I was lucky to finish my coursework. I was lucky. And then I told them I was not going to continue the next semester. I just couldn't. My TA was only for one semester. And at that time, they were only letting you have it for one semester. I mean, not one semester but one year. Two semesters. And it was not going to be renewed. And it was just not mine. Most people's weren't being renewed because that was the contract you were under. I didn't have money. I didn't have anything, so I decided I would drop out. I felt bad because I felt like I had failed. 
00:34:16 
DB:	And of course, all this time I'm having all these crushes on these women. I can't come out. And at that time, the university was not a place you ever came out. The university probably-- all the time I've been here, of all the places I think that were the most restrictive would've been the University of Wisconsin. I still don't know how it is now, but I know up until a few years ago, most people did not come out at the University of Wisconsin. So I would, of course, not come out there because I would not have kept my job. I would not have kept anything. And the year before-- now, I don't know this for sure. I know one person that's told me this. I do not know for sure. But as I understand, in 1960, they had a big purge, and they got a lot of undergrads to rat on the grad students that were older. And they kicked out tons of people. I know one person that did get kicked out of school during that. And I met her later, after that. She eventually got back in, but at the time, she was asked to leave. So knowing that they had had this big purge, you certainly did not come out at the University of Wisconsin. And unfortunately, the dean of women that was doing the purge, I know, felt bad about it, because she and her partner-- she was a lesbian. I know she was, because later, I got to know her. They used to come to my house for cocktails and I used to go to their house for cocktails. And I don't know what it must have meant to her to have to throw these kids out. But she did and protected herself. So you had a lot of that. The hypocrisy at the university was unbelievable. 
00:35:50
DB:	So I dropped out. And then I needed a job, so I got a job at the Y doing summer camp with these kids. Now, I'd never been to camp. So I had no idea what summer camp was, so I had to make it up as I went. But I did make a little money then, and then I was looking for a job. And I started working at Manchester's. So I was working in their gift department, just selling, just to keep body and soul together. And I became training director there. They found out that I had some training ability and I had taken a teaching certificate as my undergrad was teaching, as women were wont to do at that time. I had not wanted to teach, but I did. But first of all, after I got out of school, I went there and then started training. And actually, it turned out to be a really good place for me. I enjoyed it a lot. I met a couple of gay guys. And in Madison, at that time, it was very difficult to meet women. You never met women. The guys had places to go-- the old Pirate Ship was a gay bar. But women had no place. Women had no place to go. 
LL: 	And just for frames of reference, Manchester's was located on the Capitol Square. 
DB:	 On the Capitol Square. It was a big department store. 
LL: 	And and for years and years and years, one of the major locally owned ones. 
DB:	 Major locally owned. Morgan Manchester had got his training down at-- not Macy's. What was it before Macy's? The big one that everybody knows about and has the Chicago windows. 
LL:	 Oh, Marshall Field's? 
DB:	 Marshall Field's. He was trained at Marshall Field's, and the store was based on the model of Marshall Field's. And then they began to open more stores, and I began to train there. They opened stores in Eastgate and Westgate at that time. And then they bought Baron's, which was another store on the square, and made it their home store. 
LL: 	And then the Pirate Ship was located off of State Street where Overture is now, right? 
DB: 	Right, and in fact, I think it was a place where Dotty's-- 
LL: 	Right, Dotty Dumpling's Dowry was for a number of years. 
DB: 	Yeah, so that was the Pirate Ship, the old Pirate Ship. So I got to know more guys, and I started hanging around with the guys. And one of the guys had a cabin down on Lake Kegonsa, and we'd go down there on weekends and hang out. And it was just quite a lot of fun. The guys were fun and all, and most of them worked at The Edgewater, because at that time, you had to pay to work at The Edgewater because they made such good tips. I remember one time, my friend Tom had been parking cars over a football weekend, and he came to my apartment, my place on Langdon. And he said, "Help me." And he threw all this money down. We counted over $300 he had made in tips that night just parking cars. So I knew a lot of the guys-- most of the guys at The Edgewater at that time were gay, and they would be the bartenders and the bellhops and all. So I knew them, and we'd often go down in the afternoon to The Edgewater and sit on the pier. And we would go and we would order one drink, but we'd bring our own Coke and our rum, and we'd keep filling that drink and we could nurse it all afternoon. And since the bartenders and all were our friends, they never kicked us off. And if anybody came, we always had a drink in front of us, so that worked out nice, We swam off the pier. We had a good time. The pier was very little then, not like it is now. But it was a lot of fun. So I had a pretty good time once I got over this. And then I worked at Manchester's for quite a while. And then they began to get into a little financial difficulty. About in 1966, they had some problems. 
00:39:44 
DB:	At 104 Langdon, when I was living there and started working at Manchester's, I had a big change in my life. A young woman moved into the rooming house. She had been living at Lowell Hall. She was a junior. And the minute I met her in the hall, my little heart went pitty-pat. Oh, my. I thought, ooh, it was love at first sight. Wow. I was smitten. And she was very friendly, and I made friends with her. And was sort of dating this guy. And I thought, "Boy, this doesn't seem right." And she came over more and more, and I went over to her place more and more. And I remember one homecoming that I had some friends that I had known here. They came back for homecoming, and they stayed at my place. And I thought only one was coming, but they brought more. And there was no place my little one-room for me. So Phyllis took me in over at her place. She had this pull-out double couch. And that was the first time we slept in the same bed. I was very good. I didn't do anything. I just slept there quietly. Anyway, I remember that it was in 1963. And I had gone home for Thanksgiving. Kennedy had just been shot and we were really shook up. But we still left for Thanksgiving. She went home to her home in Illinois and I went to my home. I sat there and decided that I was either going to make a move, or I was going to get out of this. I just knew we couldn't be friends. I had too many feelings to be friends. I knew that that was not going to work. It was just too painful for me. So I made my decision that when I came back from Thanksgiving that something was going to change. And so I remember, she was over. She was getting ready to leave. And I said, "I want to kiss you." And I thought she would run screaming out. She said, "OK." And so I sort of gave her a little kiss, and she wasn't going to settle for that. She gave me a big, big kiss. And then after that, we talked. And that was the beginning of quite a relationship that lasted for 23 years after that. So then we begin to decide that-- she had just finished her junior year and was getting ready to go into her senior year, and we decided we really wanted to live together. We were trying to be very discreet, but we keep getting caught running back and forth to our places with our pillows and stuff. And we were afraid that people might get a little nervous about us. We decided we needed our own home at that point. So we found a place that we could afford together out on Johnson Street. Didn't have any furniture, so we started gathering furniture. The place was only $75 plus utilities. Three bedroom. Really nice place. So Phyllis' family gave us a couple of things. In the rooming house we were living in, they had some old stuff down in the basement that we talked them into letting us buy for about $5, $6 for these things. And then the landlady let us buy some stuff from her. So for about $35, we managed to pretty much furnish an apartment at that time. 
00:42:58 
DB:	So we moved out and moved over there. And I was working at Manchester's, and she was finishing up her degree. So she finished that year. And then, Manchester began to get in financial trouble. And they hired this, actually, what was the store detective. And finally told me that since he was a man, he needed to keep a family, so they laid me off and gave him my job, which he ruined immediately. He couldn't do it. And it went downhill from there. But all of a sudden, I was out of work and got a little unemployment, but knew I couldn't handle that. So I decided to go back to school if I could, and I went down to the university and I managed to get a fellowship again. And this time, I went into my true love, which was English lit. And I went in and a year and a half later, I had my master's degree. I finished it. And at the time, because we didn't have any money, I needed to do something besides have a fellowship, which basically was paying my tuition at that point. So Phyllis and I knew this woman who had been a house mother on campus. So we decided we would be house mothers because it came with an apartment. And Phyllis, at that time, had now graduated and was trying to start into art, and she wanted an art studio. So she rented a little place down on State Street above the Triangle Superette there, that little thing. She had an art studio up there. And we needed money, so they hired us as one house mother. And so we had an apartment, which was a one bedroom with a living room and a kitchen and a dinette. And this was a kitchen privilege dorm, so we had two kitchens downstairs in a house where they had two places on each side. And it was kind of fun. We had a lot of kids there. And we took care of it for about two years, and it allowed me to get my master's degree, and it allowed Phyllis to get started. And when I got my masters, then I got a job teaching at Orfordville for a semester. I realized how much I hated teaching, so I quit teaching. I just quit teaching. I just did a semester and I could not do it. I did not like teaching high school. So I quit. And we realized we were going to have to give up the dorm because neither one of us were in school anymore and we really needed to do something else. So we found a place on Monona Drive that was really nice. It had a swimming pool and a basement. It was really a nice place. And so we decided we were going to move out to Monona. And I needed a job after I quit my job, so to keep body and soul together and not go into any savings that I had managed to put away and all, Phyllis and I started working at Graber's because at Graber's curtain rod place in Middleton, you could work a night shift. And so Phyllis could do her art in the daytime and I could be looking for a job in the daytime. And I could go to interviews without any problem. So we worked from about 5:00 to midnight out there. 
00:46:06 
DB:	I did that for a while, and then I got a job at the state. I got into the state, and from then on, that was my career. I stayed in the state up here. But at that point, we were now beginning to meet people. Madison was becoming more open. We're now into about '68, '69. And you're actually beginning to see more people coming out and being more open. Still very closeted, but you're able to kind of make contact.  And I remember, in all our various things, one time, Phyllis tried to sell Avon. So she went to this house in our neighborhood over on Gorham. And she said, "Donna," she said, "I think I just met two people we need to know." And I said, "Oh?" And she said, "Yeah," she said, "I didn't want to say anything. So when I was showing them the samples, I showed them the thing and made sure they knew the name, Rose Gay. And it turned out to be Alice, whom you know, and Betsy, who she was with at that time. So that turned out to be kind of interesting. We got to know them, and then we began to get to know more people. Very closeted, very quiet. We met, we did things, but we did it very under the table, so to speak. We knew, but nobody else did. 
LL:	 Do you want to talk a little bit? That was a time in Madison where there was a lot of political activism by college students. But by this point, you and Phyllis were really older. You had been working. You had been trying to establish your careers. So you were a little bit above and beyond that kind of-- 
DB: 	Actually, not really, because a lot of the protests were taking place when I was on campus. I remember every day getting teargas going up Bascom Hill. 
LL: 	Do you want to talk about that time? 
DB: 	Yeah, sure. It was very exciting. I don't think anybody that didn't live through that can realize that we honestly believed we could change the world. We believed that, just give us a chance, it will change. A lot of idealism. I mean, just incredible idealism. I remember Phyllis at her studio, there was this sort of activist priest. And it was not [? Father Grappe. ?] It was an activist priest, and he was doing light shows. And they would go up there, and at that time, you took slides that had nothing on them-- the clear slides-- and pulled them up through acetate stuff out of water and you made psychedelic stuff. And we would go to concerts. The Jefferson Airplane would come here and we'd go to their concerts, Pink Floyd. We'd do all that. So I was now working at the state. Now, people might not believe this, but at the time I was at the university, I never ran into pot. Got to the state and immediately was introduced to pot smoking. And you could smell it on 2B down in the state office building every noon hour. You could just cut it with a knife down there. And one of the guys that introduced it to me was a Barry Goldwater conservative, of course. But anyway, we actually still stayed in the war movement even after I was out of the university and Phyllis was too. We would go down and go to the marches and go to the protests. And I remember one night, we were at that great big one that went from the-- everybody was in it. I mean, it was hardly college kids. It was townspeople too-- Women for Peace and Freedom. Just tons of people were in it. And the cops blocked us off, and they kept saying, "You have to get out of State Street. You have to." But they wouldn't let us out. They had blocked every entrance. You couldn't get out. And because we couldn't move, of course, they tear gassed us. And I remember the churches down there on the end, they were sanctuaries, so everybody's running into Saint Francis and all the churches down there to get out of the tear gas. But everybody would have dispersed if they had let us get to our cars. But they wouldn't let us out of State Street. We couldn't disperse. They said they would tear gas if we didn't, but they wouldn't let us disperse, so they tear gassed us. But yes, we were quite active in that. And that's a time when we met Juanita and Barbara that are active in it. And a lot of people at that time-- Carol and Sue-- 

LL: 	And Barbara is Barbara Lightner, who was a very well-known early lesbian feminist activist here in Madison. 
00:50:33 
DB: 	Yeah, and Carol Bentley and Susan Johnson. And they had a place down in Sun Prairie and we used to go there for big parties. It was interesting. The parties we used to have were very interesting, particularly in English graduate school. Often, they were thrown by the lesbians. And one thing we'd is we'd throw this great big party.  I remember big Halloween parties. We'd throw these great big parties. And they'd be mixed. Everybody would be there. Of course, we weren't going to come out. And so when everybody got ready to leave, we'd say, "Oh, this place is a mess. We'd better all stay and clean. We women will clean up." And so all the lesbians would stay and then we'd have our party. We'd have the lesbian party after the regular party ended. So you had all these little tricks that you were doing. Sometimes, you just had your own parties. But if it were a mixed party, often, we had the party after the party. 
LL:	 It's interesting because it was a very politically-active time where civil rights was so important, the antiwar movement was so strongly-- people from the community were involved in that, students were involved in that. And yet, it sounds like from your direct experience, even within the university-- or especially within the university-- 
DB: 	Especially within the university. 
LL:	 --it was still very much an issue that people couldn't be open about and talk about and be accepted. 
DB: 	No. I felt like I could be more open at the state any time. I felt that I could do things that could jeopardize my job, but I never felt anywhere near as vulnerable as a state worker as I did as a university person. The university, to me, was just incredibly closeted. I knew tons of people there that were gay. But boy, they were so deep in the closet that you couldn't even find them. And so that was a big thing. The University Hospitals had tons of women doctors, but they never, ever came out. 
00:52:36 
DB:	And about that time, I got into an organization called Altrusa, which is a women's service club. And it had been started in 1917 in Tennessee for professional women to network. It was a classified club, so they only had so many doctors, so many lawyers, so many-- they didn't have, like, all doctors, all lawyers. You could only have so many. So Alice and Midge got me into that. They were in that. And [? Jane Courier. ?] So I joined that. Phyllis joined that. And there were a lot of older women in the club that we knew were lesbians. They were living together I knew they were lesbians. I'm not sure they knew they were lesbians, but we knew they were lesbians. And they never said anything. They took trips together. They did everything, but that word would never have crossed their lips. They never, ever, ever said anything. But they were always very nice to us. And were a little more open. But we still never came out. I mean, we wouldn't sit in meetings and we never were in anybody's face. We just never felt that we should do that. And so it was interesting to see these older women and how, when some of us among ourselves felt comfortable, they basically didn't even feel comfortable among themselves. They felt very, very uptight. And of course, these were very powerful women. These were some of the leaders in this city. Even a couple of married women, we walked in once, kissing each other, and I won't say their names because they're very prominent people. One of them is dead now, but they were very prominent people here in town. And I think they were having a little affair on the side. But they were both married, and they weren't going to let anybody know that. And we excused ourselves and walked out. And it was fine. It was that time when you were very careful. And I remember one of the women in Altrusa-- Judy-- when she broke up with her partner, Nita. And we knew them, and they were out to us. And we had gone to their house many times. But when they broke up, Judy had nobody to talk to-- nobody of her peers. Even though many of them were, she could not go to them. They would not say anything because their relationships were not supposed to be in the open. So she came to us. She was about 20 years older than we were. And so we started this little support group. And that's about 1970. Everybody's got encounter groups, support groups at the time. And we were doing pretty well, just supporting each other and talking about stuff. And then Barbara Lightner decided we had to, for some reason, come out as a group and register, for some reason, with the Secretary of State. We could never figure out what she was coming at and all, but she started ranting every time. You know Barbara's ranting. And it got to the point where we just broke up the group because there was no way any of us were going to go down and register and do all this kind of stuff she wanted us to do. So we just broke up the group. 
00:55:36 
DB:	And about that time, I decided, well-- let's see, outreach was called United. And it might have even been called something before that, but it was at least United at that time. And I remember, I thought I'd get active in that. So they were having a silent auction and something down at the place. I think they were down around the Cardinal Hotel at that time. So I decided to go down there. A bunch of us women went down there. And it was supposed to be for men and women, but we dropped out very quickly. At that time, the men did all the planning, everything. Women were allowed to lick stamps, envelopes, and we were not allowed, really, to participate. The gay guys were treating us just like straight men were treating us. We were not allowed enough voice in anything. And it was mainly the gay guys running everything. It was mainly for them. So that never worked very well for us. It never really worked very well for us. So we started doing some of our own things. And I remember somebody said-- this was even earlier. This was in the '60s. They said, "Well, maybe softball." But at that time, city league wasn't big. It was not big. There was a women's softball league, but it only had about eight or nine teams. So one time, a friend of mine that worked at Mendota said that Mendota had a softball team. And she was straight, but she thought I might enjoy watching the women's softball. So we went out there, and it scared me to death. These big women came rolling in on their Harley hogs. They had tattoos. They were the toughest women I had ever seen. And they called themselves things like "Goat" and all sorts of strange nicknames. And I was scared of them. I was really scared of them. So I didn't play softball. Well, in the first place, I couldn't play at their level. These people were real players. And so I didn't get into softball at that point. 
00:57:34
DB:	A lot of things were happening. We were beginning to get active, and one thing of the things that was happening was Lysistrata. And we wanted a place of our own, and so they started this co-op, Lysistrata, a feminist restaurant. And I remember getting involved from the beginning. A bunch of us went together, we called ourselves Sweet Friends. You had to buy $500 worth of stock to get into it, and none of us had $500 to lay out. So I think about five of us or 10 of us-- I can't remember whether 10 of us each gave $50 or five of us gave 100, but we went in as a group. You could go in as a group and buy stock. And so we went in as a group and called ourselves Sweet Friends after that song, "Sweet Friends of Mine." And I think that was Cris-- 
LL: 	Cris Williamson? 
DB: 	No, Meg Christian. 
LL: 	Meg Christian. 
DB: 	Meg Christian, yeah. So anyhow, we did that. And this was the time when women's music was starting. And I remember, you couldn't buy it around here. It was just not in Madison. And I remember people would find it, like, in Chicago. And they'd come back with Alix Dobkin or I remember the first one was Max Feldman. 
LL: 	Maxine Feldman, yep. 
DB:	 Maxine Feldman. And they'd bring her Amazon Women back. And I remember, you'd get these albums, and then you'd have a dinner party. And you wouldn't play it. You would have it there, and you'd have it so everybody could see it and you could read the names. I mean, things that we had never seen in print before like, "Lavender Jane loves women." All these things, we'd never seen any of this. This was really big, really big stuff. And we would have a dinner party and we'd eat, and we'd sit there and finish our dinner, and then we'd get coffee and dessert, and then we'd play the album. And we listened to it and we'd play it over and over. It was a big, big deal. You don't think of that now, but this was really big. We'd go to Alice and [? Von's ?] and a really big deal. And so there would be dinner parties all based around getting the newest album at that time. And then I began to play softball. The city league started, and A Room of One's Own started a team, so I got on that team. And that was a lot of fun. A lot of us played on that for years. You certainly were a fan. I remember you in the stands all the time. 

LL: 	Yep, absolutely. 
DB: 	And then you just began to meet people. And we began to have community here that we had never had before. You might know a few people, but now there was a community. There was a community. And at that time, you had fallen women bringing in sorts of concerts. I remember the first concert, and I don't think it was done by Fallen Women at that time. I don't think they've been formed yet. But it was Margie Adam. And it was out at the old Freedom House out on Winnebago. And you had to take your own pillow to sit on. And there was no chairs or anything. And I remember Phyllis and I decided to go. And we weren't sure-- because we didn't know that many lesbians. We weren't sure what they were going to be like. So we went out there, and everybody sort of looking at each other. And we were making contact for the first time. 
01:00:43 
DB:	Earlier though, when I told you we met these women that Phyllis met selling this, and they lived over on Gorham. I remember we got invited to our first lesbian party. We were terrified. We didn't know what to do. And we hesitated and all. And we went over there, and we won't get away from each other. We'll go right home. We didn't know what we were going to find. And what we found was very funny, that most of the people were as hesitant as we are. They were all as scared as we are, because many of them hadn't really been to one either, didn't know what to expect because we'd grown up on these horror stories of what lesbians were. And you never got real information. Nobody ever got real information. And I know when I was growing up, and I wanted to read anything about gay and lesbian, I went to the public library. But at that time, you had to sign it out. In Terre Haute, it was in closed stacks, and you had to sign for it. So I know my name was getting on stuff, but I needed so much information that I signed. And then what you got was just horror stories about how to change and how to be changed and that it was a phase. And the only books, you'd have to go to the bus station to buy. And so it was kind of bad. Getting information was bad. But now we were getting to know each other. And my gosh, we weren't that different. We were just like everybody else. We were having parties. We were getting together. We were in relationships, and many of them, long term, seemed to be doing pretty well. You always had the people who were still dating and moving around, but you also had longer-term relationships occurring. 
01:02:25
LL: 	Well, I'm going to ask you a question at this point because that's a period of time when I first met you. And I always considered you and your partner, Phyllis, to be out lesbians. And not in any kind of overt way, but very approachable, very comfortable with your relationship, and very welcoming to the other members of the community. Had you come out to your family or Phyllis' family at that time? Or were you talking about your relationship as, "This is Phyllis, my roommate," or "This is the person I live with"? 

DB:	 It was funny. When I first got into trouble up here and got in the psych ward, my mother did come up. And I tried to tell her that this was one of the problems I was dealing with. She said, "No you're not, and I don't ever want to hear it again." And she just shut me down, and she wouldn't listen to me. So I never approached it again with her. We never did approach it with Phyllis' family. But they always treated us fine. I could take Phyllis home and they put us in the same bed. Phyllis was always treated by my family as welcome and as one of the family. I don't know what would have happened if we'd have said something to them, if they would have been as welcoming. But we didn't, and they just accepted us as we portrayed ourselves as roommates. Same thing with Phyllis' family. And after my mother died-- she died when I was 33-- and so after she died, I was not going home for holidays as much. Even though my sister was there, I was going at other times because the weather and everything was usually awfully bad. And at that point, I started going to Phyllis' house for the holidays. And I would go down there, and I was always very welcome. And we would go down there for Christmas, and my Christmas gifts would be under the tree from mom and pop. They would put their name on it, and treated me very, very much almost as a daughter. So while we weren't out to them, I think they knew. I don't think they wanted to know. I don't think they wanted to say anything. They just wanted us to be quiet. And I mean, they knew when we got our house on Johnson. We only had one bedroom. We only had one bed. And they knew we were sleeping together. In a lot of ways, we didn't hide it from the family, but we never talked about it with the families. And it just seemed to work. It just seemed to be the thing to do. They didn't want to hear it, so we didn't bother them with it. As long as they didn't cause any problems, we didn't really care. It worked out just fine for us. 
01:05:09 
DB:	And at that point, that's the way we felt about doing it, whether we should have or not. And I know some people said, "Oh, you should tell them. You should be out" and all. At that point, we didn't feel comfortable doing it. We had it set up in a way that worked with us. And yes, we were open. We were open with a lot of people. I think what we did was pick and choose what we wanted to do. I was working at the state, and then Phyllis started working at the state then. I was working with a lot of people in health and social services at the time. They wanted to start what I thought was going to be a book group. I honestly thought I was getting into a book group. And the first meeting, it was a couples group, and it was an encounter group. And I'm the only one that doesn't have a partner there. I'm sitting with all these-- we had two married couples, and we had a couple that were living together, but not married. And she was an ex-nun, and he had been to seminary, but they'd both gotten out and went on to college. They'd never taken vows or anything. They were then debating their relationship and how that would work. And I'm sitting there, and so finally, I just said, "I'm going to invite Phyllis," because I just felt like I wanted somebody there. So I did. I invited Phyllis. They said it was OK, but we never said what we were. We just thought we'd ease this in. But these are people, now, I work with. I mean, this is getting scary territory now. Well, let's see, it was our 10th anniversary, so that would have been 1973. So getting kind of scary territory there. This is not a big time yet. Women's movement was bigger, and this is a lot of what we were talking about at that time was the women's movement. So we met with them quite a bit. And sometimes, we'd meet and talk for a while. Sometimes, it just deteriorated into a card game. We'd play cards and eat snacks. And one night, it was at our place. They had made enough references that we were sure they knew. And we thought, it's time we just get this out in the open, because they had talked a little bit about some gay stuff and all. So we thought, we ought to get this out into the open. So we had played a little cards and talked a little bit, and it was kind of winding down. It was our 10th anniversary the next day, so we thought we'd come out and tell them. So we told them, and they said, "You're what?" They actually hadn't figured it out. Some of them sort of had inklings, but they really hadn't. Well, they were about ready to go home. It was about 10:00. And at 3:00 in the morning, while we're still all talking. And they were very nice about it, though. I was nervous. I was nervous, but they stayed, and then they took us out the next day for brunch for our anniversary. They were being OK about it, but then I had to face them at work on Monday, and I didn't know. I never had a bit of trouble. And it's interesting, most the time-- in fact, I can't think of any time, other than when my mother said she didn't want to know about this and it wasn't true, I've never come out that I've had a problem. I've never, honestly, ever had a problem when I've come out. And it's been difficult. I worried about it. But I never really had a problem. 
01:08:24
DB:	 Now, in Wisconsin's political caucus-- I was involved in that. They had asked Altrusa if they wanted to get involved. Well, Altrusa's always taken the stand that they do not get politically involved. But one of the women said, "I know somebody that is politically active and would not represent Altrusa, but would be a good member." So they gave my name. And I think it was Joyce Erdman called me and asked me if I wanted to be on. Either that or Midge Miller. I can't remember. But they asked me if I wanted to work and set up the first Wisconsin Women's Political Caucus. And I said, yes, I'd very much like to. So I worked with them. And again, I didn't come out right away. And I was worried about it because we were getting close to this. And I knew that lesbians were going to appear. I just knew they were. And I didn't know where they stood and what was going to happen. I didn't want it to be a problem, but I knew people were going to come. So the night before that meeting, I could hardly sleep. I knew I had to say something. And I was real nervous. I felt these people were OK, but I just didn't know. I just really didn't know. Because we had mainly talked about politics. So I decided that I needed to say something. So I went and screwed up all my courage and said, "There is going to be a group there, and we need to decide how we're going to handle them. Because they will be there, and we need to talk about this openly." They said, "We know, and we don't want them there under any circumstances, and we don't want to do." And I thought, "Oh, my god." They said, "If that Eagle Forum that's been formed by Phyllis Schalfly, and they have a big group over outside of Milwaukee. If they come, I don't know how we're going to handle them." I said, "Oh." I said, "Well, that's not the group I was talking about." And they said, "Oh." They said, "Who were you talking about?" And I said, "Well, there will be lesbians." They said, "Oh, that's fine." And they didn't care. They were worried about the Eagle Forum, though, and the Phyllis Schlafly type of people-- the Total Woman coming. And it was really funny. Again, no problem. And I began to learn that probably, it was a bigger problem for me. Most people, you just don't know. So that worked out very well. And that became OK. 
01:10:45 
DB:	But those are the kinds of things that I was active in. And then got very active in Lysistrata. I never went on the board, but I bought stock. I met through the first meetings that helped form the thing-- what should it be? how should it be? where should it be?-- and was really active in all of that, and certainly was there the first day it opened, and went down there and found it a great place, often. If I had been working and all, and sometimes Phyllis didn't want to meet me down there, I felt quite comfortable before I came home stopping there for a drink. And usually met people-- maybe knew, maybe didn't know-- but good place to talk. Good place to go hear music. Spent quite a bit of time-- 
LL: 	Lysistrata was very interesting for a number of reasons, and you've just described a few. One I remember was it was very different than a gay bar. 
DB: 	It certainly was. 
LL: 	That it was bright, lots of light-colored woods, lots of windows, lots of what would have been, in later years, called a fern bar. 
DB:	 A fern bar. Before fern bars. 
LL: 	Right. It was just a very warm, friendly place. And one didn't walk in there feeling like they were walking into a gay ghetto. They were walking into an environment that was welcoming and warm. And that was when you when I met, too And I remember that there were always meetings going on. Many times, different groups would be having their meetings in the what they called-- 
DB: 	And women's straight groups would meet there. 
LL: 	Absolutely. In that little banquet room there, that was a private room you could rent. And then there was the back area that they used for dancing or programs. 
DB:	 And pool. 
LL: 	And pool. 
DB: 	Now, this was funny. As welcoming as it all, there was still a conflict between the people that did not want the pool and the dancing in the back room and wanted it to be more an upscale cocktail, dinner place and meeting place. So you always had that conflict between those two groups, too. And so they sort of solved it by making Thursday night the big pool night and the big dance night and all. And so they kind of solved it, but there was always a tension between those that-- because the pool place was close enough that it could get noisy. 
LL: 	And I think that ended up being part of the financial problem with the cooperative, because people started questioning, "Is this a cooperative restaurant, or is this a gay bar? Who's the audience?" And fewer men were coming. Fewer moderate political people were coming. 
DB: 	And fewer wealthier people that could pay were coming. You were getting the groups that came in just to play the pool and have a beer. You began to lose some of the people coming in for the big dinners and the cocktails and the more money coming out of that group. And it began to get into a conflict. It really did get into a conflict. And then, of course, it got into terrible financial problems. Not paying the taxes as a big problem. 
LL: 	Do you want to talk about some of your efforts? I remember you talked about being there at the beginning. But you were one of the people who was very instrumental and trying very hard to keep it open. Do you want to talk about some of your programs and some of your efforts to do that? 
DB: 	Sure. We went down there for a Saturday morning meeting. And management wanted to close it. They just wanted to close it. And I remember Harriet, Claire, Phyllis and I, Yvonne, Alice. We are sitting all at a table together, and we said, "We're not going to close it." We said, "It shouldn't close." We said, "We need time. We need time. And the time we need is to either make it come back and be viable, or we need to hold it open until we can sell it." Just to close the doors meant that everybody that had anything it it lost everything. And we had about $80,000 out that we would've liked to have paid back. The one thing that we felt sitting there that we were talking about is that we felt that if it went under and people that had helped it lost all their money without any trying, that to start anything again would become just almost impossible in this town. People would remember that. They would say, "Well, you can't go into something that's women oriented because they can't handle it." We felt that it would have been one of the worst things in the world to happen if we just let it go. And we stood there, and we made our stand. We decided we would make a stand, and we did. We decided at our table that it had to stay open. And so they were saying, "Well, how are you going to keep it open?" And I had done my research. And I found out that because it was a cooperative, as long as we didn't pay anybody, you could volunteer there. And Yvonne and I had talked, and we decided that we were going to try to keep it open on Fridays. We figured if we could keep it open one night a week, we could meet some of the bills-- because we weren't going to have that many bills. The foodstuffs weren't going to be that much. The only thing we had to have was an actual bartender. You have to have a licensed bartender if you're going to serve liquor. So we did have a licensed bartender. We had to pay that, but it was only for two or three hours, so we could pay that out of our expenses. And so we talked them into letting us run the place. Management actually disappeared, quite frankly. They all left. And we took over the restaurant. So we decided we were going to have "Thank Goddess It's Friday." And we would have one meal. And that would be it. And you would pay a flat fee. And at that time-- you've got to remember, this is when things were still cheaper. And I think we set the fee at $5. And you got a drink-- not a liquor drink, but you could have coffee or Coke or milk or tea-- and you got the meal. And that was it. And if you wanted drinks at the bar, the bar was open. If you wanted extras, you could. But that was what we had. And I remember we had these big Nesco roasters. And we would go down there on Thursday and start preparing. And then I'd go right after work on Friday. And we'd cook the dinner. And I remember our first dinner, we decided to keep it simple. And of course, we had to be correct, because we had to have both vegetarian and meat. So we decided our first dinner would be fairly simple. We were going to fix spaghetti. Just make it easy. We had two Nesco roasters. One spaghetti and meatballs-- or meat sauce. I think it was meat sauce. We weren't going to get that fancy. And vegetarian spaghetti. We had garlic bread. We had a salad. And then you got your drink. And you had come up and stand in line and get yours. And I remember Ruth Bleier standing there. And she volunteered. "I'm going to help." And I remember her with those spaghetti tongs, slinging that spaghetti on those plates. We didn't know. We got it all ready. We opened the place. We had the food ready. I think we started at 5:30. No, 6:00. I think it was 6:00. And boy, 6:00 came and the place was empty. We thought, "Oh, my gosh." We didn't even know how much to cook. None of us had ever been professional cooks. We were guessing. We decided that we would cook for x number of people and hope. Well, about a quarter after 6:00, people began to come in. And it was open until 9:00, I think. And we were running our food. We were having runners going and grabbing more spaghetti. We were cooking up spaghetti in the back as fast as we could. I think Kroger's was still open, or something was close there, and we were getting big bags of salad and pouring it. And we literally filled the place two or three times that night, more than it had ever been filled recently. It was not doing business. And all of a sudden, we had huge business that night. So from then on, we started doing the dinners. Yvonne and I did all the cooking. And every Friday, we were open, And I remember the women's studies group decided they would come and do their Christmas party. We put them in the back room, and we did an all-Indian meal. We did curries and dals and all sorts of stuff. And we were serving the front room then, and we had a banquet. I mean, that was a big thing for two non-chefs, non-restaurant people. But we were getting better by that point. We were beginning to figure out the food. We were beginning to do pretty well with it. We were actually beginning to turn the place around. We were also still trying to get buyers. And we had people coming through at that point. And they were seeing it as a place that could be viable. And we were doing pretty good. And I remember I went down, and we were back to our spaghetti dinner. I think it was in January. 
LL: 	Right, it was right after New Year's Eve. 
DB: 	Mm hmm. And we went down there. We'd had a big New Year's Eve party, and I remember all those ribs. In fact, they were still there, and all that fire. But we had done a big New Year's Eve party too. We did not do the New Year's Eve party. Some other people did. Unfortunately, they weren't as careful as we were, and they lost a little money. They didn't charge enough for New Year's Eve. But we broke even. Anyway, we went down there Thursday night. I was fixing stuff. I was getting stuff ready. I got the spaghetti sauce-- we were going to do spaghetti again-- I got the spaghetti sauces ready and all. And I was down there until about 9:30 or 10:00. Sat down, had a drink and went home. And at about 5 o'clock in the morning, Yvonne called me and said, "Well, we don't have to do 'Thank Goddess it's Friday' tonight." And I said, "Really? Why?" I said, "Did we get a buyer?"-- because we had somebody that was thinking about buying it-- I said, "Did they buy it?" And she said, "It's burning down." And I drove down there right away. I got in the car, And couldn't get close, but you could see everything was gone. And my first thought was, "I know I shut those stoves off." And I had, of course. It did not start on the stove. 
LL: 	Yeah, the fire had actually started upstairs. 
DB: Up at Sam the Bag Man's place. 
LL:	 It was an after hours place called The Living Room, and it was rumored at that time that cocaine was being dealt there. 
DB: 	Yeah, we always called him Sam the Bag Man. He was a very nice guy, but he-- and they were serving liquor up there illegally after hours, it was an after hours place, is what it was. And the Flour Box Bakery was next door too, down there. And they were all burning. And of course, it was gone. And unfortunately we had had an offer. We would've sold it. It was going to sell that next week. It was sold. It would've been sold. And we would not have made anything, but we would've paid off all our debt. And of course, then we got into that lawsuit with the insurance company because they said we weren't in business. And we could show them we were. And we had to go down and testify. We had a big deal. We did get our insurance money, finally. 
LL: 	Well, we got one portion of it, because at the 11th hour, I was on the board as the vice president, just at the tail end of the organization when all of the other people had bailed out. 
DB: 	They wouldn't give us the loss of business. 
LL:	 They wouldn't give us the business interruption insurance, so we were unable to continue business. 
DB: 	And they should have, because we actually had a business. I mean, yes, it was only one night a week, but we were expanding. Because we had now gotten movies, and we were going to have a Movie Sunday. The next Sunday, we would have had Movie Sunday, where we were going to come in and we were just going to be serving sandwiches. Not a big meal, but sandwiches and movies and popcorn. And so, we were now going to expand to two nights a week. So we were beginning to expand. And they simply refused to listen to that. I remember that. I was at that trial all the time. 
LL: 	The irony, I think, of it was that they didn't understand that a feminist women's model of business looked very different than a conventional man's business. 
DB: 	Right, but we were in business, and we were making money. We were making profit at that point. We had begun to make profit. We were paying all of our bills. We were putting some aside to take care of that tax. We didn't have much, but we were beginning. And I think with Movie Night and a couple of other things, we would have gotten out of that debt. It wasn't a huge debt. But it was a debt. And we were getting back on our feet. And we also had sold the place. 
LL: 	Well, I think that this might be a good place to stop for this first interview. Because it was kind of a turning point in the community, too. 
DB: 	It sure was. 
LL: 	It touched many of our lives, because Lysistrata had become a hub and a place where we had many meetings and political activities. Boards would meet there. Activities would be planned there. Fundraisers would be planned there. So following that fire, we had to kind of reinvent our community to some degree. So in our next interview, we'll talk about some of those other activities and involvements you had in the community and finish up the interview. So I just want to thank you, Donna. It's been an honor to be able to sit here and reminisce with you and hear your story in a way that I haven't before. So we'll pick this up again. 
DB: 	OK, great. 
LL:	 Thank you.