UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1052
FERINGTON, FELICITUS (Fey Fay?)

FERINGTON, FELICITUS (1937-)
Occupation: Not applicable
At UW: Not applicable, in Madison 

Interviewed: 	August 23 and August 30, 2009 (3 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Linda Lenzke
Index by: 	Virginia Corvid
Length: 	3 hours, 3 minutes

Abstract: In her three August 2009 interviews with Linda Lenzke, Felicitus Ferington details her experiences growing up on a farm in Buffalo, NY in the 1940s, her participation in the Buffalo, NY gay-bar scene and her civilian and military career in psychological nursing.  FF discusses her involvement with the community health movement, her service in the Vietnam and the Persian Gulf Wars and her teaching.  She also relates her experiences in lesbian relationships, being influenced by the women’s liberation movement, discovering and becoming a part of the lesbian community in Madison,WI as well as the changes in her family’s relationships over time.  At the end of the oral history, FF provides an overview of her pursuits as an active senior.  This interview was conducted for inclusion into the project, Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960s-Present, part of the UW-Madison Oral History Program’s general collection. 

Key Words: nursing; psychological nursing; nursing instruction; Army; Vietnam War; Persian Gulf War; lesbians and gays in the military; lesbianism; gay bars; lesbian community; lesbian relationships; queer culture; University of Wisconsin School of Nursing; Madison, WI; Buffalo, NY; women’s liberation movement; second wave feminism; gender roles; sexual harassment; community service; seniors 

First Interview Session (August, 23 2009): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:02	Question: What was your date of birth and birthplace and what was your family of origin like?  
	Answer: FF was born in Buffalo, NY in 1937, the 5th child but first daughter in the family.  FF would characterize her life and herself on the whole as restless, searching, testing and full of initiative.

00:02:20	An example that demonstrates these characteristics was the dog story.  When FF was a year old, her family moved to the country and rented from someone who had a farm.  Observing the farmers, FF thought she would try milking the cows so she got the dog (male), got a kettle and ‘milked’ the dog.  Another example relates to the aphorism “you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die.”  Near the same time as the milking incident, FF thought to herself “I better get on with it” so she started eating some dirt but quit after a couple of mouthfuls.  These examples reflected FF’s early curiosity and initiative.

00:04:12	FF thinks she disappointed her mother’s expectations for what finally having a daughter meant.  FF was never one for patent leather shoes or dolls.  Her mother repeatedly said “‘Fay’s going to be a nurse when she grows up.’”  The tension between her mother’s desire for her to be a “mellow malleable girl” and her own strong initiative were there from the start.  

00:05:25	FF competed with her brothers a lot and wanted to do everything they did.  They did not want her around though because she was a girl so FF often played alone and liked sports.  Her brothers made homemade versions of equipment for every sport out of materials on the farm.
	
00:07:23	In 3rd grade FF remembers having disdain for a boy who was caught by a girl in a chase game.  At the time, FF did not think about whether she was a boy or a girl but she liked boys clothes and competed with her brothers for her father’s attention.  She would try to show him how strong she was and how much farm work she could do.  She hated house work but her mother made her clean her brothers’ room on Saturdays.  Her brothers were messy and she resented the chore.

00:10:23	Another characteristic event related to the town’s shared threshing machine.  Farmers would get together to help each other harvest with the thresher and the wife of the household would make a huge meal to feed everyone.  FF was finally allowed to go help with one of the communal treshings and she was elated.  Her mother resented it.

00:13:29	From the 4th-10th grade FF went to school in a wooden schoolhouse.  When she was in 4th grade, the teacher wanted her to skip the 5th grade but she precociously decided not to because she did not want to miss fractions   In 5th grade, FF read and loved  Little Women.  Louisa May Alcott wrote that when all of the boys went off to the Civil War she felt that she should go too.  FF felt the same way in a later time.

00:20:24	When FF was in 7th grade she “worshiped” her teacher Miss Manella (sp?).  Her friend suspected FF was gay and told the teacher.  The teacher dismissed it as a phase.  Around this time, FF became fascinated with a female country singer Donna Lee and watched her perform every Tuesday night on the neighbor’s TV.  The group went off the air but her uncle got her Donna’s pictures and autographs and FF went to see the band perform and record.  One day when Donna took her hand, FF had her first awareness of having a physical feeling towards a woman but she did not know what it was.

00:25:34	FF got a guitar intended to be a country western singer.  She played with Donna’s band later but declined to join the group because she was studying to be a nurse.  In a psychology class in 1955 she studied “homosexuals.”  Her psychology professor privately advised her that she should be more circumspect in her statements about homosexuals than her strong open defense of them in class discussion.

00:28:14	Soon thereafter, FF read The Well of Loneliness and loved it but others reacted to it differently. She had a friend Don and whey would have late night philosophical conversations.  Don told her that he was a homosexual.  FF put it together for the first time and responded “I think I am too.”  They went to downtown Buffalo looking for the gay bars they had heard of.

00:30:26	FF met Arlene in school her second year and had her first minor love affair.  Arlene came from a Calvinist family and initially was physically affectionate but later no longer wanted to because it was “‘against god’s will.’”  FF respected the strength of her religious convictions but later thought that it was really because she had found another woman.

00:33:09	FF was seduced by a graduate student but she rebuffed her after their night together.  FF then met another woman who knew where the gay bars were.  For her first visit to the bar, she got dressed up in a skirt and stockings.  When she arrived, to her surprise, she found the bar was filled with butch types.  FF started going to the bars every night but mostly hung out with the gay men.  Fights, police raids and harassment were typical. 

00:40:22	Question: Would you define yourself as butch at the time?
	Answer: FF never liked the butch/femme distinction but if she had to choose she would say she was butch and always had been.

00:41:59	Question: Do you think that the bar environment gave you a chance to have a kind of masculine power in ways that you had wanted in the past but you had been discouraged from because you were female?
	Answer: FF guesses so but she never thought of it that way.  Her best friend in the bar scene was Jim from New York City.  FF thought he was sophisticated.  He was 8-9 years older than FF and a business man.  He took her to buy a nice dress once and then took her out to her first formal dinner.  Her bar friend group would have dinner at different people’s houses and play bridge before going to the gay bars.  FF considered herself wild.   Jim would bring the whole bar back to his apartment when it closed and to stay until five in the morning.  FF and Jim visited New York City for a weekend on a whim and they also visited Toronto.  They rushed back to Buffalo to have a drink before the bars closed at three a.m. On another trip to New York City, they could not get tickets to see My Fair Lady and had to see West Side Story conducted by Leonard Bernstein (ha).

00:50:12	The Korean war started when FF was 14.  Her brother volunteered and went to Korea.  FF wanted very much to go as well.

00:51:00	After three or four years “barring” all the time, FF graduated from nursing school and moved to Ann Arbor Michigan in 1961.  She enrolled in a nursing masters program and met a woman at work, Marion.  FF would babysat her two sons when she was working.  They moved in together and had a 5.5 year relationship.  FF thought she had settled down but it did not work out.  Marion worried that her ex-husband would try to get custody of the boys so they split.  Twenty years later Marion wrote her to say that she wanted no future contact with FF but FF is still in touch with the boys.

00:55:12	FF finished her masters in 1963 and she became “energized” about health care issues and “determined” that nursing would find a more integral place in the health care system.  She helped build a hospital for emotionally disturbed children in Ann Arbor.  It was supposed to be at the forefront of community health movement but it went nowhere.  FF went to Vietnam.

00:58:59	LL commented that they will discuss Vietnam in a later session.

00:59:22	Before she moved to Michigan, FF wrote poetry.  When she was young she wrote a poem about WWII.  The beginning of the poem embarrassed her but she was proud of the last two lines, “In the field where human’s lay.  They fought in the war that terrible day”  FF reads two poems she wrote in 1960 and 1961 during the time she was in the gay bar scene.

01:02:40	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (August 30, 2009): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:19	In1966, FF did not know what she wanted to do after the breakup of her relationship with Marion and after opening the hospital for emotionally disturbed children.  The teach-ins had started about Vietnam.  FF had mixed feelings about the war but thought that the war must be justified.  She decided to join the army if she could go to Vietnam.  She spent six weeks in Texas for basic training before being deployed and enjoyed it.  The harsh military punishments for lying about homosexuality scared FF.  You could be subject to five or ten years in prison and $10,000 fine.  FF decided to just be careful.

00:03:45	After basic training, FF spent time in San Francisco before shipping out.  She went out to dinner with army friends and had a surprisingly good time drinking with a man she met one evening.  She bought a cheap guitar to take with her to Vietnam.  The chapter on Vietnam in Margarethe Cammermeyer’s book Serving in Silence resembles FF’s impression of the time.  

00:08:33	FF reads poetry she wrote about Vietnam.  She was stationed there Oct. 1966-Oct. 1967
	“Vietnam”
	“Pre-Op”
	“42 Casualties to the 93rd”
	Untitled

00:13:00	When FF arrived in Vietnam, she was directed to keep a very close eye on the Vietnamese women who worked for the unit “mamasans” because there were rumors they would plant explosives.  A week later, there was a large unrelated explosion and the next night they were told to sleep in their uniforms.  These events impressed upon FF that she was at war.  They were 98% safe at the hospital, however.

00:15:36	In Vietnam, FF had some experiences related to lesbianism.  Another nurse invited her to join medical civil action program that was designed to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese.  They set up clinics but this nurse in particular would go to an orphanage and exchange supplies for being “taken care of.”  She was a bad nurse and left soon after.  FF had a relationship with the woman who had an adjacent assigned sleeping spot.
	They had a restrained relationship because of the lack of privacy in the bunker but they were able to take a rest and relaxation trip to Japan.  Her name was Pat she was an career army anesthetist. 

00:20:38	It was the longest year of FF’s life and she was scared she might not live.  She felt isolated.  Letters took five days.  There was no TV and no phone.  FF was a psychological nurse and she felt guilty for not being in the emergency room or operating room.

00:24:13	During Vietnam, FF kept a log even though it was forbidden.  People’s cruelty on both sides of the war shocked her.  FF thought she was tough and familiar with hardship but seeing people living in cardboard boxes shocked her.   Refugees in the nearby village swelled the population from a few thousand to thirty or forty thousand.   There was no sewage system.

00:27:31	FF introduced and read two poems she wrote when she got back to the US after serving in Vietnam.

00:31:15	Question: As a female nurse veteran did you feel you were forgotten?
	Answer: Thousands of women served in Vietnam.  Many had a much less secure and more difficult experience than FF did.  After FF returned to the states, she had a conversation with a black coworker who said “women are black too.”  It was 1968 and the beginning of FF’s feminist consciousness.  She read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and the women’s liberation movement became prominent.  FF was very angry.  One day a man in her building offered to let her go first into the elevator but FF declined.  When they were riding up, the man commented “I could rape you.”

00:36:18	FF was not angry about being a lesbian in Vietnam.  Everyone in war clings to whatever tenderness they can find and no one bothered her.  She did not get angry at the Army because she knew when she joined.  In the Army, no one identified as a lesbian but no one denied being a lesbian.  FF read into many people’s housemate relationships possible lesbianism.  The military parties were different than civilian parties because they were not gay parties they were just friends.  Sexual orientation did not determine friendships.

00:40:10	FF did not get angry until the women’s movement but in Vietnam sexual harassment was constant.  Men would comment how long it had been since they had seen a “round eye.”  Once, a group of men asked permission to watch her build a bookshelf.  Another time a soldier advised her to go into a car wash for her safety.  Vietnamese children washed the cars while Vietnamese women sexually serviced the male customers.  The officers built a club but once word got around about it you could not go to it to relax because “the guys just assumed of course that if you were there you were there for them.”

00:43:58	Question: What were your experiences after you left Vietnam in 1968 but remained in the army until 1977?
	Answer: FF met the love of her life in Texas six months after she returned to the States.  They were luckily assigned to the same place and they drove to their new assignment together.  They had two separate apartments because they were concerned about their relationship being found out but they stayed in both of them together.  FF taught a psychiatric nursing class and a psychiatric technician class for medics.  The medics were mostly draftees. She also led a therapy group at a psychiatric unit.  FF held this position for two and a half years and fondly remembered her students.

00:52:36	After this posting, FF and her partner requested placements in the same area so they could be together.  They both secured positions in the Washington DC area and they lived there for the next 7 years.  FF found her teaching position to be the best thing she ever did professionally.  The school was extremely competitive and the students were very bright.  FF taught how to “establish, maintain and terminate a therapeutic relationship.”  Students spent six months working in psychology and the practical clinical experience was invaluable.

00:56:49	End of Second Interview Session
	
Second Interview Session, Part Two (August 30, 2009): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:56:49	Start of Interview [no introduction]
	FF had one student in 1971 who was not working very hard.  FF put more pressure on her to complete class assignments.  The student began to “come around” and changed her behavior.  She wrote a term paper on her change of behavior that FF still has and FF sees her occasionally at conferences.  She stayed in the army for her career and FF went to her retirement party.  FF found the teaching position extremely rewarding.  During her tenure, the faculty reworked the nursing curriculum.

01:02:23	FF served as a staff officer to the chief of the army nurse corps next.  The predominantly administrative work did not suit FF but she did enjoy meeting all of the officers she was responsible for.  The position lasted for three years.  FF decided she wanted to get her doctorate.  The army wanted her to go to Europe and then maybe go back to school.  FF thought this could mean she would never go back to school because she was already 40 at the time.  FF now regrets not taking the assignment in Europe.  FF moved away from her partner to go to school in Chicago.  They stayed together for a while but eventually grew apart and broke up.

01:05:38	FF finished her doctorate in five and a half years in May 1983 and moved to Madison.  FF planned to do a post doc at the Veterans Administration Chicago after graduating but she was called to replace a chief nurse in Milwaukee who had died.  FF panicked because she felt unprepared and decided she did not have to go because she was not on active duty.  Instead she moved to Madison because it was a nearby college town.  She got a job at the University’s school of nursing.

01:09:32	At the school of nursing, FF realized there was a distinction between Madison and the University.  FF taught at the University for several years before she knew the town and she did not know about the gay community.  She taught and researched but struggled to write.  She found the workload very heavy.  She gradually became discouraged and did not write enough.  She became depressed and felt very alone.  One of her few social outlets was playing doubles tennis for which she had little experience.  She went to counseling in town.

01:13:15	FF spent five years in town before she knew State street existed.  She went to a workshop on gay relationships she heard about at her therapist’s office.  When FF left the Army it surprised her that civilians were not more liberal.  No one FF knew was out.  At the workshop, she heard of the United and decided to do volunteer work for them.  FF quit the University and worked at Badger Prairie as a clinician. She did volunteer peer counseling for Outreach (formerly the United) for 3 years.  Her hearing was not good enough to do group counseling.

01:17:05	FF’s therapist suggested she go to Alanon.  FF’s brother and grandfather were alcoholics.  FF went, met a lot of lesbians there and found it a wonderful experience.  It was the first lesbian group FF had been a part of and she participated for five or six years.  Other things grew out of the group like Madison’s lesbian softball, volleyball and basketball teams.  They had “orphan” holiday dinners together          	

01:21:13	LL commented about the beginning and spirit of the “orphan” holiday dinners.

01:22:06	FF’s quality of life improved once she found a group of close friends that she could be out to.  It relieved her and her social life broadened.  Prior to connecting to this community, FF marched in the 1989 Pride parade.  Her father had just died and she went home for the funeral the day after the parade.   FF did not have a close relationship with her father as an adult and he was homophobic.  She marched in his honor.  FF has a lot of pictures of the parade and a section of the Aids quilt that was at the parade too.

01:27:21	FF periodically pursued photography throughout her life.  Photography helped her cope with Vietnam and she has approximately 20,000 photos stored on her computer.  She does exhibits occasionally.

01:28:45	Question: What were your experiences when you served in the Persian Gulf War?
	Answer: FF was in the reserves until she was sixty.  She tried to be careful to avoid getting expelled for being a lesbian.  FF did not serve in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war, she served in Germany.  She was sad because of the affect the war would have on a younger generation.  Everyone expected chemical warfare.  The army anticipated three thousand casualties to arrive in Europe daily and the hospitals equipped for this.  FF would have preferred to serve in Saudi Arabia but could not because of asthma.  She felt guilty.

01:33:37	LL commented that FF has repeatedly talked about not being able to go where the war is.

01:34:05	FF was glad to be called from the reserves.  Being aware of the situation and knowing people involved makes one want to be there.  For instance, her and other career course army people she knew left Vietnam before the Tet offensive.  They closely monitored the news and school seemed unimportant in comparison.  The Persian Gulf war had approximately 360 casualties.  FF thinks it was a correct war but has also never supported the Iraq war.

01:36:36     Question: What are your relationships with your family like now?
	Answer: FF had five bothers.  By 1989, the oldest brother died.  He was an alcoholic and had been estranged from the family since he joined the Army at the age of seventeen.  He was kicked out of the Army and he did not have a successful life.  He had a number of children, some of which had fetal alcohol syndrome.  FF’s next youngest brother served in the Korean War.  FF thinks her parents did the best they could.  Her mother cared for six children alone and she did not handle it well.  Moving to the farm was a big improvement but the children’s teenage years were difficult.  Two brothers joined the Army and a third left but not to the Army.  Her father wanted everything to be perfect on the farm and the boys left as soon as they could.  His dream was to buy the valley and he and the boys would farm the thousand acres together.  FF eventually went to nursing school.  

01:41:10	Two younger brothers were still at home.  One brother, Dale, met a wonderful girl, Lois, who he married and he built a home for them.  He did not let his father help build it in any way.  They had a wonderful family.  Dale and FF were close.  They played and performed music together.  Dale learned how Lois’ family acted and tried to introduce these behaviors like hugging each other to his family.  Dale married and left as soon as he could.  Lois and Dale had four kids and a milk trucking business.  They decided to buy a men’s store in New York.  Lois got sick with Lou Gehrig’s disease.  She lived for seventeen years unable to physically do anything but eat but still fully cognizant. It destroyed Dale.

01:46:10	FF’s family had a “hiatus” of illness.  Another brother had a brain tumor and then Parkinson’s disease.  Lois had Lou Gehrig’s disease.  FF’s father became very depressed and was hospitalized.  It was some time before things settled.  Dale was grieving, angry and depressed and he never recovered.  Dale and Lois’s oldest son Kevin died at 40 of a heart attack.  FF and Dale’s relationship waxed and waned.  FF’s mother died and Norman died of Parkinson’s disease.  Dale and FF became closer and he was glad FF did not support the Iraq War.  He died in 2007 and FF misses him.  His second son died of alcoholism.  The two remaining children have good families and are doing well.  
	
01:48:24	FF was out to Dale.  She came out to another brother but he did not react well so she has not brought it up again    FF is out to all of her nieces and nephews except for the ones from the brother who did not react well.  

01:52:52	FF bought a shirt at the Women’s Music Festival.  The front said:  “Who are we?”  The back said: “We are your soldiers, your teachers, your police, your mother, your sister ...  and we love you and care for you if you will let us.”  FF bravely wore it but no one asked her about it.  FF takes classes at the senior center, does photography, plays guitar and has a dog, Mariah.  Her and Mariah will visit a nursing home that week.  FF is going to begin visiting an elderly lesbian.  FF researches genealogy and will begin a study class on Plato soon.

01:57:29	Question:  Is there anything else you would like to add?
	Answer:  FF did not get along well with her mother but they reconciled five years before she died in 1999.  She visited FF, they had a wonderful time and remained in close contact after that.

02:01:07	End of Second Interview Session, Part Two  

End of Oral History #1052