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
Series:		Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960s-Present

00:00:00: Start of Second Interview/ Interviewer’s Introduction
LL: 	Today is August 30 and I'm Linda Lenzke. And this afternoon, we're going to be doing the second interview with Felicitus Ferington. The year is 1966 and here's Felicitus. 
00:00:19 
FF: 	Better known as Fay. In '66, as we had left off last week, after my five and a half year relationship with my partner and her boys and the job that we as relative youngsters all in our late 20s had undertaken in opening this hospital and building this hospital for the emotionally disturbed children, I was at loose ends. And really didn't know quite where I wanted to go from there. And while I had been in Ann Arbor working on my master's, the teachings had started already with respect to Vietnam. And one of my professors, in fact, was very active in that. And so I had really mixed feelings about everything that was being said, pro and con. I tended to feel pro in that I thought, well, you know, if we're doing it, it must be right to a certain extent. So anyway, I decided to join the army if they would let me go to Vietnam, and they did. And I went. But prior to that we had about six weeks in Texas of basic training that I thought was kind of fun. Some people found it irritating and confining, but we marched around and we did a field exercise or two. And I sort of liked getting into my fatigues and running around the field anyway. But mostly we did classroom work. I don't think I just mentioned this, I had been afraid to join the army because of the threat that if you lied about whether or not you were homosexual, you would be subject to 5 years in prison or $10,000 fine, or both. And so that they give me pause, but I decided, well, I'll just be very quiet about it all and go about my business. I decided no one would even know. Well, I wasn't there more than a few days and this nice, young woman-- I was 28, so I was the old woman of 400 nurses. I was one of the old women, there were about 10 of us. And these kids were all 21, 22 years old, just out of school. Anyway, there was this just exceptional individual and I kept my distance. We became friends, good friends. And that was all that came of that. She really was a very impressive individual in more ways than one. 
00:03:45 
FF:	After six weeks, we went to San Francisco and joined up with three or four other nurses who had just finished basic in the same class as I had. And I had told them, by the way, anticipating that everybody would be going to Vietnam. I said, well, when you get there, just look for a sign that says Fay's place. As I say, we went to San Francisco a couple days before going to Vietnam, leaving for Vietnam. And we went out to dinner and we did a few things that were a lot of fun, the young women who had just finished basic with me. They got me an orchid and we had a really good time. We ran into these two guys. Maybe that's sort of worth mentioning. My friends from basic, the young woman and I had gone out to dinner. And we were finished dinner and I had had my hair done that night for the first time in my life. I don't know why, but I did. And so it was a little bit different. But after dinner, people started to sort of dance and things. And this guy started walking over toward our group and I thought, oh jeez, here we go. And like, are you alone? No, I'm with these four women. I thought he would be heading over toward the 21, 22-year-olds and instead he asked me to dance. Well, that was funny. But he was a few years older than they, so that made sense. But it was really amusing to me at the time. So we're dancing and he's in uniform and I'm not. And he's saying, well, tomorrow I leave for Vietnam. And I said, well, me too. I thought he probably thought, oh my God. Of all the luck I could-- you know, anyway. We spent the night together in the form of going from one bar in San Francisco to the next, all night long, and we talked all night long. And I really enjoyed it. It was quite an unexpected event. Anyway, I had while I was in basic, obtained a guitar from Tijuana so that I would have a not take my good guitar to Vietnam. But I had an old guitar to take. And poor [? Lauren ?], he and I sat together all the way to Vietnam on the airplane and he sat with my guitar between his knees. And poor guy. Anyway, Warren was with the infantry and we decided that was not a good place for him to be. But we'll get to that. Well, I had just taken out, what's her name? Margarethe Cammermeyer's book, Serving in Silence, before this interview because I wanted to see what she said for lots of different reasons. And I would say rather than my trying to discuss my thoughts about Vietnam, I'm going to do two things. I'm going to one, refer you to her chapter on her year in Vietnam, which I think pretty much says it the way it was. And by the way, she got there about four months after I left. And she was in a hospital, which had just been built about a mile from where I was. So we had some of the same experiences. She was much busier because she got there during Tet. But that's the only difference. So I would refer you to her chapter in her book Serving in Silence. And the other thing I've decided to do is to just read some things that I wrote about it. Because good, bad, or indifferent, or what anybody else thinks of them, they're things that said what I wanted to say. And so that's what I'm going to do. Pause. 
00:08:33 
FF:	OK, this is entitled "Vietnam." I was just writing it down. I was there from, by the way, October '66 to October '67. And this was June of '67. Is it possible to say something that will hold meaning for another? Is it not more probable that one will spew forth so much drivel and call it prose? Or much worse, poetry? It is raining as it has been off and on all day. The water descends with a fierceness wholly unrelated to the familiar rains of spring. It pelts crevices in the ground, it pools in depressed areas, it overflows the margins of each. And in a frenzy, tears at the sides of drainage ditches. It comes abruptly and it stops in like manner. It is slow to say, I control me. I bridle this ferocity at will. This is called "Pre-op." Pre-op is a military equivalent of an emergency room in a hospital. And I was working there that night. They come to this room. They come for identification and for the purpose of being pronounced dead. They come to be cared for. To be healed. This room, with its concrete floor and harsh fluorescent lights, they come here and it is cool and dry and welcoming. The room is empty now. It's 0100. A steel pot lays discarded in one corner. A bottle of insect repellent tucked securely in the headband. An M16 rests against a chair. On the floor is a small olive drab bag, piece of papers pinned to it. Reynold, James E. PFC. Outside there are boots. They are muddy. Some are smeared with blood. There are no pairs. Seven who came here tonight are described simply as KIA. Their clothing has been cataloged, their recent presence duly noted in the evening report. It is quiet. One could hear the clapping of typewriters in A&D, and the hum of the hospital's generators. On the pad, a helicopter's warming up. The room has been cleaned and restocked. It waits to be of service again, as it most assuredly will be. It waits for that is all it can do. Item number three. This was also written in 1967 after I'd been there about six months. 42 casualties to the 93rd. The 93rd was the 93rd evacuation hospital. Don't shrink from the knowledge of an account of leeches crawling in open wounds from the knowledge that the wounded, dirty, crying soldier is 19 years old and that our own artillery did this. Do not dwell on a vision of the rice paddy from whence he was lifted. You have not earned that right. And then in July, a slightly different approach. Maybe a little bit offhand. I listened to helicopters stereo and artillery. I drink beer from a can. I'm not proud. I sweat and work and wait. I miss my home. But where is that? I wear Bermuda's made in Hong Kong. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] sitting on a sand bag 10  rows back from Elvis Presley until it starts to rain. I tend the harvest of a war from 8:00 to 4:00. 
00:13:00
FF:	Let me digress a little bit and say a little bit about what Vietnam was like. When I first reported in I was called in by the chief nurse and instructed to keep a very close eye on the what we called mamasans. They were Vietnamese women working for us in the quarters. And she said that there were rumors that they were supposed to plant explosives sometime that week. And so I was to let her know if there was anything suspicious. So that did set a tone. And about a week later, it wasn't the mamasans at all. There was a huge explosion and my first thought was an atomic bomb. It was interesting in not having heard explosions like that before. So I headed for the door and there were a few guys there that night that we were sort of partying with. And the lights went out and everything. And this guy grabs me and flings me on the floor. And I have to interject that when I was telling my nephew this sometime later as he was anticipating joining the Marines, he said, oh, the old I'm going to protect you thing. So, anyway. But I went outside and huge area in the sky was all illuminated. And then the next night we were told to sleep in our uniforms because they were expecting some action. So by then I was feeling like I was in a different situation. I was feeling like I was sort of in a war situation. We had a few more events like that, but those were the most dramatic probably that occurred. And of course, by and large, we were 98% safe throughout the year I would say. Because you just aren't out carrying the weapons shooting at people. And Vietcong probably weren't that interested in whether these nurses were running around this hospital or not. 
00:15:36 
FF:	I had a couple experiences that had to do with lesbianism. This one nurse approached me and she was- I don't know, New Jersey or from New York or something. And maybe I don't do her justice, but she say, hey. Hey Ferington, come here. You know, this doesn't have to be a hard year. And I said, what do you mean? Well, it turned out that this nurse was part of a medical civil action program that the government was strongly behind its military medical people participating in. And we were going to win the hearts and minds you may recall. I couldn't believe it when that expression came up relative to Iraq, by the way. So we were going to win the hearts and minds and we were going out on these civil patrols and setting up clinics and treating people and giving them medications as indicated and whatnot. Doctors and a few nurses. And some of the medics. This nurse was doing that too, only she wasn't going out setting up clinics and things. She was going to this orphanage where the Vietnamese nurses were taking care of the kids. And it doesn't have to be a hard year, Fay. And she had them taking care of her too. She would bring them supplies from the hospital I found out later and they would cook for her and do whatever she wanted I guess. 
LL: 	She had her own mamasan. It sounds like you're describing that she had her own mamasan. 
FF:	 Well, that really was a mamasan I guess. Or mamasans. The woman was not a good nurse. Anyway, much less to find out this was most dismaying. She left shortly after that and went back to United States. The other thing was the first couple of weeks I was there I didn't have a bed to sleep in. So they weren't sure where they were going to put me. And finally they decided to put me down-- oh, one day I was walking down the quarters. The quarters was a quonset hut that had 72 people in it. And I was walking down the hallway, which was that space which was between all of the boxes and suitcases and everything that you can imagine that people had stacked in there to try and wall off some privacy for themselves. So I was walking down the hallway. And this woman is walking toward me and, oh my goodness. There was just something about that encounter. And then I went on about my business. And a couple weeks later, look at what I've done here. So I just saw this woman coming down the hall and we said hello to each other and that was that. I was quite impressed. And finally a couple weeks later they decided where they were going to put me in this quonset hut with the 72 other folks. And because everybody had an area that was 5 feet 10 inches square and you could put a cot in there and hang your clothes up and stuff. And they put me right next to her. And as things would work out, that was fortuitous from the point of view of a relationship. But in terms of my keeping terribly quiet and closeted in the military, it may not have been the most fortuitous thing. But we had a good relationship. Of course we were in an open bay quonset hut, so it was, you might say, restrained. We did go to Japan on R&R together though. That was rewarding shall we say. Anyway, her name was Pat. She was an anesthetist and very devoted career army person, devoted to her anesthesia pursuit. 
00:20:38 
FF:	I guess I could say that it was the longest year of my life. I was a little bit scared that I might not get out of there alive. Not that that was terribly realistic. I mean, but accidents did happen all the time. I thought, lord, I'd probably get hit by a bicycle or something. It was very isolating because we had no contact with the outside world at all. You could write a letter and I timed it. If you wrote a letter tonight, the other person would get it five days later at the earliest in the States. And then vice-versa, it would be another five days at the earliest before you could get letter back. And of course, you couldn't call anybody and there was no TV. Oh, there was armed forces TV. They showed old movies. So there was no news or anything. There was no contact with anybody. So it was quite isolating. It was trying from a different point of view for me because-- well, I wasn't going to go into all that. But anyway, remember how I had said when I was little I would always take the hardest job and work hard and try to show I was so strong and everything? And of course, I did that in grad school too. And then that job I had was so challenging just after grad school where we built a hospital. Well, I went over there as a psych nurse. I had my master's in psych. So they didn't know quite what to do with me. So they put on a ward. I mean, I imagine they didn't know quite what to do with me. You could go on any unit really and make a lot of use of interviewing and listening and whatnot. But they put me on this unit where we had one wing was psychiatric patients, two wings were surgical patients, nothing-- as one of the doctors said, you put the light stuff here, like deep wounds and not amputations. You didn't put amputations on that unit and stuff. Really bothered me. I mean, how are you going to cope if that's the way you've always coped? And I really felt guilty for not being where the real action was, which was down the emergency room, the operating room and some of the other units. There really wasn't a lot you could do about that. At one point, I noted that I felt rather useless. And then I thought, isn't that ironic? Because it's not as though you were meeting the needs of all these guys that you're working with here as patients. You know, you're not meeting all their needs. It was a constant theme throughout the year. 
00:24:13
FF:	I guess that sort of sums it up, that, and a couple things that I wrote. I did keep a log for most of the year, although we were forbidden to do that. I also found it shocking that people are not nice on either side of war. I never ran across anything like they talk about nowadays with torturing prisoners and things. With our torturing them. But in the field, if you're watching people get killed and you're killing people and you're getting all sorts of things, both sides get very primitive. And so it was kind of a shock to me to find out that, gee, sometimes our guys did some things that were pretty awful. Never on the scale of My Lai, but just little things here and there that were pretty bad. So that was very much a jolt. And I guess the last thing about that was before going to Vietnam I had a couple of tough jobs in nursing. And I thought they were pretty tough anyway, working with neurosurgical cancer patients who nobody would treat except as under research conditions. I thought I'd been around. I'd worked with delinquents from downtown Detroit and so forth and so forth. Oh, and I'd gone down to Tijuana, don't forget, to buy my guitar. You know, I'd seen that level of poverty. I was just amazed to see people living in cardboard boxes or in the dry season, they'd have five months, say that they could live in a culvert and that would be very good protection from the sun and everything. It was amazing to see what people did not have. And in the nearby village, which was supposed to be a couple thousand people, was probably 30,000 40,000. And they were refugees. And they had just come in there and there was no provision for sewage or anything. It was shocking. But other people that I've talked to, in or out of war situations, they get around it and they've had similar experiences all over the third world, so-called third world countries. 
00:27:31 
FF:	So then I can say I guess that about sums up that year. Until I got home I wrote down a couple things then. I guess I'll read those when I got home. Most of these things that I had written down outside of the log were written when I was there about five to six months. And then, after I was home, I wrote a couple other things about experiences from that year. And one was in '72 I was in Washington while the various demonstrations were going on and while Senator Kerry was throwing his metals into the whatever. And others were too. And I was sitting there one afternoon and I was thinking about it. And so I wrote, twists of ribbon tear upon a metal, littered sidewalk. Or fade beneath a dusty sun come through the window of a high rise. It's irrelevant. The purple should be red. It should remind us of the dead. It should be smeared, not uniform. It should twist and tear, then fade. People do. And another thing I wrote in 1976 while I had gone out on some of these civil medical patrols. I had run across this baby who was blind and an orphan. And he was lying on this straw mat. And he must've been about six or eight months old, maybe. Maybe older. He might have looked six or eight months because of poor food and stuff. But anyway, it bothered me a lot. And I could never write anything about it. And one day I was going shopping. As I say, this was '76. I was going shopping and I thought, well, I'll stop in this little pet store. And I went to the back of the store and there was this little puppy. And you know how vulnerable and beautiful in this cage in the back of the store. And I didn't like it all, but I left and I went home and I wrote about the little baby who was blind. And I said, you must have hoped the darkness would be soft this once. And so I made it and warm upon your back. The arch of bone fit perfect to my palm. 
00:31:15
LL: 	Fay, I was curious. I don't want to assume that you represent all women who were in Vietnam, or all women who were lesbian in Vietnam, or all nurses who were in Vietnam. But I'm curious based on conversations that I've had with you and some of the reading that I've done and interviews that I've read of other women who served in Vietnam that many did not really encounter the full experience of what they endured in Vietnam as nurses. And it was compounded by the fact that they were often forgotten amidst all the discussions, which included the ones for and, at times, even against the returning vets. But often, women and nurses were the forgotten vets. And I'm just curious on what your feelings may have been later in life when you looked back at that time and when you looked back at that experience. 
FF:	 Well, it brings to mind a couple things. Thousands of women served in Vietnam. Red Cross workers, US aid workers, 5,000 or 6,000 nurses. A number of the Red Cross workers and certainly the aid nurses who worked in the hospitals and lived in the communities with the Vietnamese had a far different experience than I did. A far less secure, a far more isolated, a far more-- it must have been very trying. I can't imagine what it must've been like. So there were all those other women. I think when I got back from Vietnam I was on this one assignment. I was working nights and I was talking with a sergeant. And he was a black man it so happens. And we talked about one thing after another. And finally he said, you know, women don't realize it, but they're black too. And I said, wow. What do you mean? I says, it never occurred to me, you know? And he said, oh, and brown people too. He said, it's all the same. And it turns out that that discussion was the beginning of my very, very first time in my life that I had any awareness of anything having to do with women's rights, or feminism, or how women were viewed, or what options we did or didn't have, or anything. Again, that was '68 by now. And I read The Feminine Mystique and that was very enlightening. And within short order, the women's movement was to the fore. And I was so angry during the whole women's movement. I must have put some men through some exquisite paces. And just imagine, gosh-- this is anecdotal. I lived on the ninth floor of this one building and I was going home one night and this guy opens the door for me, the elevator door, and steps aside and invites me in. I said, no, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, no, you ahead. No, I said, you go ahead. So he got in the elevator and I got in the elevator and we were the only two. And we're going up to the ninth floor and he says, I could rape you, you know? And I guess that was his reaction to how bad everything was and how angry I was. But that was just a brief situation. But that's how intense things were at the time. 
00:36:18 
FF:	Looking back at being a lesbian in Vietnam, I was not angry about that at all. People in that combat zone and I imagine in every one, clinging to whatever tenderness they can find. And that includes married, single, gay, straight, whatever. So the issue was never raised and we never displayed it in any way. And I didn't feel particularly terrible about living in an open quonset hut because eventually we did get some areas that were closed off. And I didn't get angry with the army either about that issue. Because I knew when I joined. I mentioned that Cammermeyer's description of the year in Vietnam pretty much laid it right out there like it was. But one thing that didn't make sense to me was of her own volition, when she was seeking a top secret clearance, told the investigator that she was a lesbian. Now, she went into the army before I did. I went in in '66. She went in five and a half, six years before I did. You mean she didn't read that little part about five years in jail or $10,000? Or did she think that the world had changed that much by the time '84, whatever it was, rolled around? Because it hadn't. Anyway, that never made sense to me. We never identified as lesbians in the army. We didn't not identify either. We had friends. Many women would have a housemate. And I, of course, read into all this and I'm sure some of it was gay and some of it wasn't. I thought what I preferred to think. But there was one thing that intrigued me and that I have kind of missed as a civilian, is that when we had parties we didn't have gay or straight parties. We had friends. Now there would be so on so and her housemate, so and so and this couple that maybe shouldn't have been seeing each other, this guy and this gal. But they were seeing each other and so they were invited to the party too. So there was a mix. There was a mix of just friends. Some of whom were gay, some were straight, some were paramours and whatnot. But I liked that part of it. We didn't have friends depending on what their orientation was or anything. We really never even thought about their orientation I guess. That probably seems maybe a little naive too, but I didn't care. I just thought, friends of friends. Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, anger. 
00:40:10 
FF:	Well, I didn't get really angry until the early '70s in the women's movement and stuff. But when I was in Vietnam, I wasn't terribly angry. But I will say that you could not walk outside of your immediate sleeping area without getting immediate attention for being a woman from any man, other than the ones that you worked with daily on the unit. But if you went, say over to the air force base and across the way, men would come walking up. I haven't seen a round eye in four months. Oh my God. Another time I had some men-- I was working on a little project with a friend of mine outside the quarters. I was manufacturing a bookcase. And of course, our area was all separated with barbed wire. And so I looked over and here are these young enlisted guys. There were several of them there. And again, I wasn't angry, but it was unpleasant. They said, ma'am, we know we shouldn't be, but do you mind if we watch you? And I said, no, that's all right. Because I thought, how pathetic? And of course, I could have responded almost any way I wanted. But it was pathetic. Another time I was walking down a road and a GI came up to me and he said, oh ma'am. He said, this is an insecure zone. He said, you're really in danger out here. Come on in here, come us with us. So I thought, well, I didn't know. So I went in this building with him. And it was a car wash, except car washes were done by children while women were in the building inside servicing the men. So it was a weird experience. Because all the Vietnamese women were just floored that I came in there. But anyway. We built a club. The enlisted people built their club. The officers built their club. Never the twain shall meet. It does, but anyway. It was a nice little club in many respects because when the lights were down, you couldn't tell that our curtains were dyed sheets and things like that. We did have a stereo recorder and it was very nice. And we did liquor. But as soon as anybody found out about it, then the troops would come in from all over the area. And you couldn't go there and talk or sit or be quiet or anything. Because the guys just assumed that, of course, if you were there, you were there for them. Unlike the enlisted men who apologetically said do you mind if we watch? So we just quit going to the club. We quit doing much of anything. And we'd just stay in the quarters most of the time. Unless you could get a ride over to the air force base where they had a good [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. So anyway, does that address some of-- 
00:43:58 
LL: 	So I'm going to bring us back to the storyline. You've left Vietnam and you're still in the service. And you stayed in the military and the army from 1968 to '77. Do you want to talk a little bit about those years and what your decision was to leave the army? 
FF: 	Well, I was from '66 to '77, of course. But '68 after I got home from Vietnam. Well, yeah. I met a person who turned out to be the love of my life shortly after I got home, about six months after I got home. And we were both in Texas for different reasons. But, lo and behold, when orders came out, we got assigned to the same place. And so I had every opportunity to get to know her. How are we doing time-wise? 
LL: 	We've got time. It's 4 o'clock. We've been recording an hour. 
FF:	 I lost my clock. OK. So I thought, well, we'll drive off to our new station. We mine as well drive up there together. A couple thousand miles. I think I'll just call her my love. She agreed that yeah, driving up there together made a lot of sense. So we got in our cars and we're off driving down the road. She takes off like a bat out of hell. She's going down. I'm not slow, but I don't drive routinely at 70 miles an hour. So pretty soon she had left me in the dust. And I thought, well, crying out loud, if that's the way you want it, fine with me. I was perturbed. And about an hour later I was driving along and there was her car parked on the side of the road. And she had just stopped. She needed to rest. So anyway, so we drove the rest of way to our new duty station. We maintained two separate apartments. We were that leery of the situation. And then we'd stay in one for a week, and then we'd stay in the other for a week. And sometimes these friends of ours would say, boy, we never get a hold of you. And well, gosh, darn. Just keep calling. I had a really good assignment there. I was teaching a six month continuing education class for the psychiatric nurses who had come out of basic and then they are taking the extended course. And then also, I was teaching a clinical phase two of the medics, psychiatric technicians, the medics courses. And most of my medics were draftees. These classes were held close on one of our psychiatric units. And so I also had a therapy group that I worked with three times a week and for a couple of years. And involved the students in all of that too. We had a wonderful therapeutic community, believe it or not, in this psychiatric unit. It was very structured. It was very supportive. It was very fair. It was very open. I mean, if you were absolutely-- well, say loosely speaking, crazy, there was nothing to hide because it would be brought out in the community meetings that, well, George, I guess you were saying the other day that you're hearing voices about thus and such. Whether you were depressed, or psychotic, or bipolar, or what you were. You could have been one of those sneaky malingerers too. No matter what you were, it was public knowledge as far as the community was concerned, and you were a valuable part of that community regardless of who you were. It was a very good experience. It was about two and a half years actually. And I met every week with the draftees just to talk with them. We talked a lot about the patients and their troubles and trials. But we had our group conference every week. I know that I contributed something to their welfare. And one of the ways I know that is the army, especially back then-- now you have all these contracted services and so forth, like Black Water and stuff. Anyway, we had no contracted services. We still had KP and the soldiers still cleaned up their rooms after themselves and so forth. As I said, one of the ways I think I contributed something to their welfare is some of the jokes they would pull. So they were supposed to be cleaning up our classroom after we used it. One morning, one Monday morning, I came in there and I don't like plastic plants at all, but I had one in that room for some reason or another. And I noticed there was a note on the plant. One of the guys had written a note to the other medic student and said, be very careful of this plant. It's plastic, but Captain Ferington thinks it's real. So they had jokes like that and stuff. We had really good-- had over a hundred of those guys. I don't know where they are now, of course. But the nursing students were very good also. I ran into them, worked with them, some cases later. That was the assignment with my love. Except after we'd been at the new post for one year, it was her turn to go to Vietnam. Which she did. I wrote all sorts of colorful things to her. And I got maximally sentimental when they showed Bob Hope entertaining the troops on TV. And it was raining, as it would be, of course. 
00:52:36
FF:	We had planned that we would both put in for the same area. You put in requests for your assignments. And sometimes that's like a needle in a haystack. But with a smaller organization, like the nurse corps, people tried to accommodate you. And if it fits in with your career, if it makes sense with your stage in your career. So we had a school of nursing in Washington that was in conjunction with the University of Maryland. And so I applied to teach there. And it was army nurses all had to have their master's. But they would be then appointed by the University of Maryland to teach. It was a scholarship program. And so I put in for that and my by then partner put in for-- there's like Fort Belvoir, Fort Meade. There's Walter Reed. There's all these places around here. So she requested Walter Reed. And of course, our school was on the grounds of Walter Reed and she was assigned to Walter Reed and I was assigned to the school. So we were there for the next seven years in Washington in different assignments. But my assignment in teaching was-- it was probably one of the best if not the best of anything I ever did professionally. It was very satisfying. There I did do psych. In Vietnam it was a mixture of surgical patients and psych. But I taught psych here at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing. As I say, these were scholarship students, so they were sharper than a-- I don't know what. The army had declared in '68 that they would like-- they would establish the school for 10 years and they would like 1,000 graduates. And that's really what occurred actually. And they would get like about 1,500 applications for 100 spaces, 120 spaces. So these were sharp kids. And they'd get their first two years at a university of their choice and then the second two years would be all clinical there at Walter Reed and different hospitals around the area. In psych, my job as a teacher was to teach them. Well, we had lectures and things and whatnot. But basically, what I considered significant was the clinical component of my job. Which was teaching them, as we called it, how to establish, maintain, and terminate a therapeutic relationship. And that's what we did. They had a six month rotation in psych. So by the time we got through working as a group-- we worked in small groups. And at the end of that six months, we had established, maintained, and terminated relationships with ourselves and with our patients. 

00:56:49
FF:	That kind of experiential learning is so invaluable because you can read about something like that. And they did in their texts, forever. I had a student who is now a good friend of mine. This was in January '71. And she goofed off. She goofed off because you know we didn't have-- with her lectures she had to go do those. She had to take tests and stuff. But she would come into the clinical area and she would socialize with the patients and stuff. And well, she had to pick a one person she would work with. And she did. And then they were supposed to come back to the group and they were only supposed to, they did, period. Maybe that was because the army. But they had no choice. So they would come back to the group and share with the group what their session with their one-to-one contact was. And of course, the patient knew this was all above board. It was part of the formal contract that they had with their patient and I had with them. Anyway, she was fluffing off. She would say, oh, he wasn't available today and all this stuff. And this went on for two, three months and I began to get more demanding of her. She began to come around. She was very self-conscious about any kind of feelings and feelings, of course, were part of the experience among ourselves and among the patients and the nurses. And they had to be examined. That's the only way we were teaching it. She began to come around some. She did change her behavior quite a bit. And her term paper at the end of the semester she called "Cop out." And she wrote about her experience and what it had meant to her and why it had been so difficult. And how she had finally determined that there was reason to take this seriously and to really delve into and that she was equal to gradually establish a relationship with her patient. And I still have that paper actually. And I see her ever so often, conventions, or meetings, or this or that. She stayed in the area as a career. Oh, by the way, she had a reputation for being kind of unruly, obstreperous student too. She wasn't too much or she'd been kicked out. Instructors were leery of having her and her friends for students. But anyway, despite this she stayed in the army for career. And I went to her retirement six, eight years ago. And she was full colonel. She had gotten her PhD. Well, she had graduated from our nursing school in the army and then she'd stayed in the army and the army had sent her for anesthesia. So she had done that, and then she had gone on and gotten her PhD at the Uniformed Services University sponsored by the army in pharmacology. She was responsible for a large aspect of the nuclear, biological, and chemical training and operations that were carried out among the medical people in Saudi. She really got around. And as I say, I went to her retirement. And I told them, I said-- her students were there too, which was kind of-- because back then she was teaching anesthesia. And they had a master's program in anesthesia. And her students were there. And I must've looked older than God because she was-- their 48 year old faculty person. And so I told them, I said I went to [? reign ?] under these circumstances and this is what I anticipated and so forth. And I heard about these students I said, oh my God, I ended up with one of them in my small instruction group. And I said, it was Colonel Keeler. So we had a wonderful time. I'm going to go down and see her in Florida one of these days, but she invited me over to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] to see her while she was there. Boy, I should have made tracks and done that, but I didn't. So anyway, that was a tremendously meaningful three and a half years. We reworked the curriculum in the school of nursing University of Maryland. I mean, we really revised it. And that was a growth experience too. 
01:02:23 
FF:	Then I went onto my next assignment. And I guess I should hurry up a little bit. But I did want to enlarge on that. I went onto my next assignment, a staff officer on the chief of the army nurse corp, on her staff. I am not cut out for that kind of work. Almost all of it was administrative. There was one part that was very enjoyable and that's where you would go out in the field and you need all the officers who you were responsible for and you would counsel with them and so forth. That was very enjoyable. That was about it. That was for another three years or so. And I decided that I wanted-- I decided I wanted to get my doctorate. And I guess I had always toyed with the idea. Because when I was a sophomore in nursing school I used to tell some of the other students as a joke, I said I would just love to walk into a patient's room and say, hi, I'm Dr. Ferington, your nurse for the day. And we all laughed. So that all did come to be. However, I got out of the army. And they wanted me to go to Europe, and then they would reconsider whether I could go to school or not. And I was afraid. By then I was 40. And I thought, boy, if I go to Europe for three years, I maybe won't even go back to school. And I was confident that they would send me because I had a good record. Now I look back and I think, probably my main regret in the army was I didn't take that assignment to Europe. It would have been wonderful. It would have been wonderful in the late '70s. All this time I'd been with my partner. We were still in Washington, September '77. And I left her. I went to Chicago and went to school. I don't know what I thought she was supposed to do for five and a half years that it took me to get my doctorate. But we hung in there for a while, and then we didn't anymore. So we were basically together from '68 to '82. And we just grew apart. And I guess that's enough said about that. OK? 
01:05:38
FF:	I don't want to delete or to minimize Madison. When I finished my doctorate-- it took me five and a half years because I thought I should know everything about everything that could ever be known. And of course, you can't. But I just kept trying. So finally, I decided I better finish or I never would. And I finished in '83 and I came to Madison. 
LL: 	Here we go. 
FF: 	So I finished a school in May. I finished my doctorate in May of '83 and I was going to stay there for a post doc there in Chicago with the VA because I thought, wow, what a good-- a triple dipper retirement-wise. Because I had all that federal surface already. And then I stayed in the Reserves too. Well, they had me all set up for a post doc there in Chicago. And about four days before I was supposed to start work they called and said the chief nurse had died in Milwaukee and they needed me there. And I just went into a private panic. Because I knew I needed more training and research. And the person I was going to work with to do the post doc with there at the VA in Chicago was a graduate of our program from a couple of years ahead of me. And we got on real well, so I was really looking forward to that as a great experience. So I had this private panic for a couple days and then I thought, well, I'm not active duty. I don't have to go to Milwaukee if I don't want to. And I thought, where would I go? So I got to thinking about how much I enjoyed Ann Arbor years ago. And Madison's college town. And I didn't feel like moving for some reason or another. I guess I'd moved enough. And I thought, well, I'll just put all my stuff in a U-Haul and up I'll go to Madison. It's a college town and I bet I'll enjoy it. So I came up here and interviewed for a job with the school of nursing. They had the interview and you were interviewed by many professors. And then you also had an interview with somebody in the medical school who was doing research that you were interested in. And like a colleague thing they were trying to set up. Then the next day you're supposed to present your research to the faculty. And then they would let you know in a week or so if you got a job. So I told them I wanted to present my research the first morning. I thought I would feel much better going in there doing it without knowing anything about them. And I did and it went well. So I was relaxed, totally relaxed, for all the rest of the interviews. At the end of the second days of interviews, I won't say who but one of the faculty told me, well, you will be offered a position. So just bragging a little bit. I got a kick out of that. 
[01:09:32.09] 
FF:	The school of nursing was-- I found out a couple things. There's Madison and there's the university. And so I was at the university for a number of years before I knew anything about Madison. I didn't know it had-- it was the gay rights state and all this stuff. Because I was at the university and I was just pounding away on the computer and trying to write. And having a terrible time and getting depressed. And I loved my research. I did enjoy teaching. It was an incredible workload. And this one year I presented papers on my research nationally, locally, internationally. I had five thesis students. I was teaching an undergrad course and a graduate course. That's not a heavy load for the regular university faculty. I mean, people think these people don't work. But my God. I mean, some people think they don't. So that was not a heavy load because the school of nursing was trying to give priority to their new assistant professors so you could make tenure. So anyway, I had done all that and I was counseling elderly people out at one of the nursing homes. And I gave up. I just gradually did over the years. And as I said, I wrote some. Not nearly enough. And I did get rather depressed about two things. It wasn't that different than being in the doctoral program. You were so alone. And then secondly-- oh dear. What was the other thing? I don't know. But I guess it tied in with the being alone business. I had one life-saving thing. That was playing tennis. They wanted a fourth to play tennis, so they asked me if I played tennis when I first got there. I was going to say first reported in. And so I played and I told them I hadn't played but six weeks in my life and that was 20 years ago. But they really needed a fourth person. So my partner and I played. We played for several years in that foursome. And my partner, Pat, and I didn't win a set for two years. And it wasn't because of Pat. She's a marvelous friend nowadays still. Very accomplished professor turns out. So anyway, I was not an accomplished professor except that I thought I was accomplishing an awful lot. And I didn't care to accomplish much more than I was trying to accomplish. And as I say, I just sort of gradually gave up. I realized I couldn't write very much. And I just got more depressed and finally I sought out someone here in town for counseling, therapy, whatever you want to call it. 
01:13:15 
FF:	But as I became less engaged because while you're in that position, that is-- I never knew there was a State Street until I'd been here about five years. Because you worked, played tennis, you went home. Worked in my yard, got out all of my stuff for work. Either worked more there or went down to the computer lab and ran data. But as I gradually disengaged from that, I discovered that there was a town here. There was a State Street that was kind of interesting. And one of the therapists who shared an office with my then therapist, Ann, one of the therapists-- I don't know what her name was. It turned out she was having a workshop. Something about gay relationships or something or other. And I thought, well. I'll just go to that workshop. After all, that doesn't say anything necessarily about me. But by the way, when I got out of the army I was shocked because I had thought that the freewheeling civilians of the late '60s and early '70s were probably pretty liberal. Hah. I was really shocked that nobody was out that I knew any place, in Chicago or here. But as I say, I went to this workshop and one thing led to another. They'd start a conversation about, are you out? And I said, well, I guess I am now. I've heard there was something called the United here in town. I decided to check into that. This was all occurring over two, three years. So I went down. They were on the square at the time. And I walked in and I wouldn't say I was defensive, but a woman by the desk said, can I help you? And I said no. So I looked around and I looked at the books and things and I left. I can't remember exactly how, but I decided I would do some volunteer work with them. And by then they had moved over and become Outreach. Now remember, I really enjoyed groups. And small groups and things. And they had peer counseling. And I thought, well, this is right up my alley. By now, a number of years had gone by and I was getting closer to my own retirement too. I mean-- oh, I forgot to tell you. From the university I went out to Badger Prairie and worked as a clinician for a number of years. So anyway, this gets mixed in with starting at Outreach. So I volunteered there at Outreach for five, six years maybe in the peer counseling thing. And I tried the groups, but by then I wasn't hearing well enough to-- I could not work in a group with people because I couldn't hear in groups. I could just hear in one-to-ones. But you know, I didn't realize that particularly. 
01:17:05 
FF:	As part of my therapy, my therapist had suggested that perhaps I'd like to go to Al-Anon. And I said to her, well, do you think I'm-- no, what did I say to her? I said, well, I didn't feel comfortable about that because well I mean, my brother was an alcoholic. But I didn't know if that qualified me for anything particularly. And my grandfather, of course, he had been an alcoholic too. So I decided to go. And afterwards I went back to her and I saw her and I said, no wonder I never met any lesbians in Madison for Christ's sake. They're all at Al-Anon. So that's where we met, Linda. And how long ago was that? 20 years? 
LL: 	Probably. Yeah. Because I've been sober nearly 25 years. I remember. 
FF: 	You were on the wagon for a number of years. You had been. I remember the first meeting and this, who has turned out to be a mutual friend now, Rhonda. There was quite a big group there that night and I sat way out on the periphery, as far as I could. And this friendly person way across the room kept looking over and smiling. And I took heart. But anyway, so that was nice. She was very thoughtful and kind to people who were sort of not sure where they were at the time. I mean, position-wise. Al-Anon turned out to be a wonderful experience. I hadn't anticipated that it would because-- now remember my group background and my relationship background is you dialog with people, and you give feedback, and you validate with them if that feedback was on the spot and whatnot and so forth. And this you go in and you don't say a darn thing. I mean, everybody takes their turn and nobody says anything about them, at them, or to them. And I wasn't sure I'd care for that at all. But it really became a very valuable and safe and sharing experience. I was not of the mind that I was the only person in the world who was depressed. Or the only person in the world who was a lesbian, of course. It was nice to be with people you didn't have to explain everything to. And this was the first lesbian group that I'd ever been part of. As a group, I mean. Many lesbian friends here and there and whatnot. So we did that for how many years? 
LL:	 Lots. 
FF: 	Five, six years? I don't know. And then things grow out of that. Now mind you, I never knew anything about Madison being anything-- having any gay people in it or anything when I came here. But it was enlightening. So then, what? Our sports programs grew out of that. We had softball team and we had the volleyball team and an erstwhile basketball team. Then we started-- I don't know, maybe you folks had already been doing this. But it was new to me that we started having holiday dinners. Was that new? 
[01:21:13.41] 
LL: 	We had, I think. You were a part of it very early on. We may have met once or twice, but I think Rhonda being one of the people at the social center, she was always reaching out to who she felt were orphans. We used to call them our orphan holidays. Many of us weren't orphans, but we may have been estranged from our families. Or we may be living too far away from our families to be with them. Or our families had-- our close family members had passed away. But more than anything, we wanted to share our holidays together with people who you could walk into a room, as you said, and you didn't have to explain yourself. And so you were one of those first people that became part of that tradition. 
[01:22:06.25] 
FF: 	And my life was really looking up because now I had friends and I had friendly acquaintances before, at work. And Pat, my tennis partner from the university, turned out to be a really good, close friend. So the others I would say were not really-- I was not out to anybody. There was nothing. I wasn't out to Pat then, but she didn't care I guess one way or another. So it was a relief to not have to explain yourself and to be with people. And then we started doing other things and it just broadened and the whole horizon broadened. And we got to know each other in all different situations. That was and is a valuable part of my life. And you are a valuable part of my life as a result of those early and ongoing years that we shared. A lot of other people too, here in town. I don't want to omit the fact that prior to having gone to Outreach to volunteer, while I was seeing Ann. [? Ann Schaeffer ?] was her name. While I was seeing her for therapy, and after I'd gone to Al-Anon and met people and whatnot. In 1989, they had a pride parade. And I decided, well, I'd march in the pride parade. I was a little afraid I might run into somebody I knew. But I thought, what the heck, you know? And it was freezing cold that day and it's amusing that it was so cold. Nobody would have recognized anybody anyway because everybody had scarves and whatnot on. That was a really good experience. Now unfortunately, that was on a Saturday. My father had died on a Thursday. I was going home for his funeral on a Sunday. I specifically was not going home until the funeral, so that I could march in the parade. And I made a joke at the time in honor of my father I'm marching in the parade. Well, dad had been a perfectionist. And try as I might over the years, we had never been close. I mean I had worshipped him when I was a little kid. But eventually, that really went by the wayside to say the very least. And then I went on and as I've told you already, I went on and went to Michigan. And I got my degree and my master's and whatnot. And he and mother came out there and he decided that my relationship with this woman was not quite good. He never said anything to me. He and mother were out there in Michigan for three days. He never said one word. But he went home and 20 years later I found out my brother, Dale, that he said, that girl could bring more shame on this family than any one of you. Like we're all going to bring shame on them, of course. But that one would bring more shame than anyone else. Well now, that's a pretty screwed up way of thinking. Even if it had nothing to do with being gay. I guess dad did the best he could, but to he had a terribly constricted and denying life. This was just too much for him when he surmised this. So now I'm out here and 20 years later I found out that's what he had said back then. And I wasn't out to them, of course. I wasn't out to anybody in my family. So I made this joke. Well, I'm marching in honor of dad. He died last night and I'll march in the parade tomorrow. I don't know. I don't even feel sad about it really. I mean, you could think, well, that was a sad joke. But it wasn't. So anyway, let's see. That was the parade. I have great, huge number of pictures of that parade. And they had a section of the quilt in town too. And I got a whole bunch of pictures of that. 
[01:27:21.28] 
FF:	Socializing, sports, holidays. One of the things that's nice about living for a long time, or a relatively long time, is that you can relive various passions throughout your life. And when I had been 14 I had really gotten into photography. And then over the years, three, four years I'd be doing that really passionately. And then I'd go off and be involved in something else. And so this happened every few years. In Vietnam, photography was my salvation. Because after I'd been there three or four weeks I thought, I'm going to have to find something to do with myself or I'm not going to finish this year. So I was really into photography in Vietnam. And had been not so much in later, more recent years. But then I gradually started getting more and more into it. And now, of course, I have thousands. Probably 20,000 pictures on my computer. I get my pictures together every so often and have exhibits and things. Could do it a lot more, I guess. But I'd rather just be taking the pictures. This is getting a little fragmented, isn't it? 
[01:28:45.57]
LL:	 Well, one question I'd like to ask you from that period of time is that you were in the Army Reserves. And one of the things that I remember very poignantly was when we found out that your unit-- and you'll have to correct me if I'm using the wrong terminology. But you were going to be deployed to Iraq under the first President Bush. And I remember Rhonda, of course, and her partner at the time, Donna, decided, well, we need to give a going away party for Fay. And do you want to talk at all about what that was like to be back in another-- even though they didn't say it was a war zone, it was a war zone. Even though you were maybe removed from that as you had been to some degree in Vietnam. Do you want to talk a little bit about that experience? 
FF: 	OK. Gee, a couple of things. I was still in the Reserves, yeah. I got off active duty in '77. So I was in Reserves until I retired when I was 60, whenever that was. I guess in '90-- I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I was very careful. That's one of the reasons I was concerned about somebody might recognize me in that pride parade, by the way. Because of the Reserves. Because then you would just get booted right out if they knew. So anyway, now we're up to '91 and I told the people at work. I said, you know, this alert is not going away. We're going to have to go. So we waited a couple months after we'd been alerted to go. Now, I did not go to Saudi. I went to Germany. Hardship tour. At last I got to Germany. I found out gradually-- I had a couple of thoughts about that. I know we weren't going to Saudi before we left the country. We were going to Germany. I was downhearted because I thought, now another whole generation is going to get contaminated with war. Then as we got to Germany, of course, everybody anticipated that they were going to use chemical warfare. Now if you put some chemical-- so a chemical in an artillery shell, of course depending on the wind and whatnot and so forth, but it could burst among a group of 300 people. You'd have quite a mess. I believe at the time they were teaching that it would take 45 minutes for 3 people to decontaminate a casualty. So I thought we were walking right into the middle of hell. The Army planned for 3,000 casualties to arrive in Europe every day. And that's what we set the hospitals up for. And we had beds where you wouldn't even dream to put beds. I mean, we had them this far apart all over the hospital. I would preferred to have been in Saudi. You got to work hard. You got to prove yourself. The fact that I had acquired asthma 20 years before precluded any consideration of that at all. I wasn't there. I felt apologetic for it. I mean, stuff gets in your-- you know? 
01:33:37 
LL: 	I just want to comment that there's a theme throughout your whole story where you've talked about not being able to go where the war is. And you've mentioned that from reading Little Women and then your brother going to Korea and every story that you've shared. So I just want to add that comment because it reinforces the feeling that you just shared. 
[01:34:05.73] 
FF: 	Well, I was glad we were mobilized. Well, I think in a situation like that, especially when you know what it is and especially when you know so many people involved, you think you should be there. I came home from Vietnam in October of '67 and the Tet Offensive was in the end of January I guess, of '68. And most of us who were in this course, this career course, they call it, had come back from Vietnam. So most of the people we knew were in Vietnam. What we'd do is just get the newspapers in the morning and spread them out and going to school seemed so stupid. So yeah. If you've been in that situation, then you have reason to think that maybe you should be again. As it turned out we had, what? 360 casualties or something. I'd hate to be one of those ones that died for Saudi. I mean, wow. I think it probably was a correct war up to a point. I think George Bush was absolutely right in not going into Iraq. I guess we learned that lesson didn't we? I never believed, I never supported Iraq, the Iraq war. I had great conflicts thinking about it. But as far as I was concerned, what it came down to, the bottom line was you just don't tromp into a country and attack them. You don't do it. And of course, that was among the worst things that happened for the next eight years, all during my retirement. 
01:36:36 
LL: 	I'm going to switch tracks again, only because we discussed this before we started our interview today that you wanted to come back and talk about your family some more. And I know that there's some benchmark dates coming up regarding your family. And you've shared with me a little bit, a story in the past of your relationship with your family. And there's some significant occurrences that come up, so let's go back and talk about a little bit more. You've buried your father and now what's left in the relationships you have with your family? 
FF:	Well, I said mother had six boys and me. The first boy died as an infant and that left the five brothers. And by '89, one of those brothers, the oldest one, had already died. He'd been an alcoholic and he had, more or less, been estranged from the family from the day he left when he was 17 to join the army. He'd been kicked out of the army because of his alcoholism. And he never experienced, I would say, any real success in life. He had a number of children, a couple of whom were fetal alcohol children. Overall, he just never had a chance. And my next brother went to Korea and he had his problems. We all did. As I said, I think mother and dad did the best they could, but it took me 50 years to decide that. Especially during World War II. Mother had six of us at home under the age of 12 by herself because dad was gone working in the hauling machinery around the defense plants. He'd be gone two, three days at a time and she didn't drive or anything, so she was stuck there with us. It was too much for her. She couldn't handle it. I mean, she handled it to the extent that she could. But it almost did her in. It almost did us in sometimes. In '46 we moved to the farm and I told you about my experiences there. It was much, much better for mother. Well, for dad too I suppose. He always had wanted a farm. He had grown up at a farm. Mother had grown up in the city. In '46 he was able to buy this farm for $4,000, a hundred acres and the buildings included. And so he was there then and they were together so they could share the responsibility of us. We gave them fits when we were teenagers. As I said, Dick going off and joining the army. Then Norman went off and joined the army. But the reason they did that-- and eventually, Dale, the third oldest then, he took off too. But he didn't join the army. He's the only one of the six of us who wasn't in the army. Or the service. Dad, I think in direct relationship to his father and how his father had mistreated him and so forth, decided he was going to have a perfect family. And a perfect farm. And everything was perfect. And if you were one iota short of perfect, that was very offensive. So the boys just took off as soon as they could. And his dream was to buy out the valley and he and the boys would farm the whole thousand acres. And they just took off, one right after another. And of course, when I could-- of course, Fay's going to be a nurse. So I went off to nursing school. 
01:41:10
FF:	I had two younger brothers still at home. Dale was two years old than I. Dale met a wonderful woman when he was 14, 15 maybe. She was 12 or 13. They got married when they were 19 and 17. Dale built a home for them. And Dale who was the least angry, probably of any of us, said, I never let him touch one thing while I was building that house. He said, he'd come up there and say, well, you ought to do this. I never let him do one thing. I can see why, you know. Dale and Lois had a wonderful family. They had four children. There are only two left now. Dale was my big brother unbeknownst to me. We sang and played guitar. Played guitar because I was going to be a country singer and he sang. He and I sang in church dinners and things around town. They wouldn't let me go until I was 16, so he occasionally would-- he and Lois would take me on one of their dates. That must have been wonderful for them. And things like that you know. Not that we were that primitive, we weren't. But we just didn't know certain things. And there were no feelings shown in our family and nothing except anger. Dale began to learn how Lois's family lived. And I guess we were all sort of driven in response to this, you got to do stuff thing and things have to be right. So he started bringing some of these behaviors home. And it was very shocking. He started hugging people. I mean, my God. And other things he did that were intended to bring us forward as a family, and certainly did bring me forward in terms of seeing what he was doing. And started giving dad father's day presents and things, which dad was very uncomfortable with. And then as soon as Lois and Dale could get married, why they did. And Dale had spent the year working at a Ford plant in Buffalo, and then he had built a house for the two of them. And they had their four kids and stuff. And when they were 40, the kids were getting-- there was one who was still like about freshman in high school I guess. And they were going to start a new business. He had built up a trucking business. He had about 10 or 12 tankers, milk tankers. And he and Lois had done that together. So with the kids more or less growing up and everything, they decided they would buy this men's store in this little town in Western New York. It turned out to be the beginning of the end, really. Lois started to get sick and Dale called me one night and he said-- this was in '76. And he told me her symptoms and things. He said, I only hope it's Lou Gehrig's disease. And it was. It was astounding because she lived for 17 years. It really, more or less, destroyed Dale. He hung in there for about 10 years and he took care of her. Absolutely with no help at all. And of course, that was terrible. But she could do nothing for herself. She could eat. She could swallow. And of course, her head was still clear as a whistle. 
01:46:10 
FF:	And our family fell into a hiatus of illness. I mean, Norman had a brain tumor, and then he developed Parkinson's. And Lois got ALS and dad became more depressed than he'd been all his life and had to be hospitalized. It took a long time for things to sort of settle down. And when they settled down, they settled into Dale's fantastic sense of loss and disappointment and anger and depression. And he died two years ago and that's what he was like when he died. That family's had a very tough time. Lois was an extraordinary person and she could make sounds that her care provider could understand. So all this time she can't move or anything. She's setting up dinners for her family. Her kids had done well enough financially that they bought her her own little house because she and Dale by then were-- And in New York you don't get any assistance unless you're divorced. Or at least that's the way it was. She had her care providers preparing meals. She'd pick out the menu. And they could figure out what she was saying. She decorated her little house. She lived to see eight grandchildren born. But two years after she died in '94, Dale's oldest son died at 40 years old. He had a coronary. Bang. Kevin was the light of the family. Everybody looked to him that way. So that was very hard. 
01:48:24
FF:	 And the years went by and Dale would intermittently be very angry with me and then he'd be close with me sometimes for a year or two. And finally I told him, just no more of this. If we're going to have any relationship, you're not going to be abusive to me. And he said-- that was in '05. And he said, well, I've made a lot of mistakes in the last 10 years. And that's all he said. But we started relating to each other again. By this time, mother had died in '99. That's one of the things he was angry about me about. He was angry at me about because I didn't behave the way he thought I should regarding that. And Norman, my other brother, had died from the Parkinson's. And so now it's '05 and we had this encounter. And I told him, you know. So we started relating again. And we were talking that day and he mentioned the war and I told him what I thought of it. And he said, oh, thank God. I'm so glad you're not for that war. He said all of his kids-- Western New York's a big republican area and all of his kids were for Bush. And Dale was adamant just saying that it's criminal. It's terrible. Fight them there so we don't fight them here. You mean, it's better to kill Iraqis? He said, it's better they should be killed? He was just so stirred up and so was I. So we had lots of contact for about two years. I did certain things reaching out to him and we got closer. And I went to see him in the summer of '07 in August and I left on the 26th of August and he died on the 20th of September. And I would say finally, I grieved for a human being in my family. It was only after he died that I realized, I have no one now to share any of my childhood with. Because my two other brothers, we're quite close. As Keith says, well, you never know what's going to happen. So we're quite close now. We're in touch. But they were five and seven years younger than I was. And boy, do I miss Dale. And his family, his second son died about six months ago of alcoholism. So there are two kids left now. And I think of all the love and the hope and the promise and what they all went through. And that Cathy and Gene, the two survivors, have their families and their kids and they're doing very well. And I'm out to them as I came out to Dale-- I don't know-- Sometime along in this situation. When I was living here, so it was after '83. came out to Jerry because I thought Jerry knew and Jerry just about had a heart attack. Looked at me like I said I was dying. And so I've never revisited that. Dale said something to his kids and they said, well, for crying out loud, dad. Fay never dated. What the heck did you think? Did you ever see her show any interest in a man? So we laugh about it now. So I'm out to all of my nieces and nephews, except for Jerry's kids. He has three boys. And wives and children and whatnot. It just never was to be with them. 
01:52:52
FF:	Oh, I can tell you a couple things and that's the end. I bought a shirt from the women's music festival. And it turns out it is a quotation of that Cammermeyer wrote. And it says, who are we, on the front. And then on the back it says, we are your soldiers, your teachers, your police, your mother, your sister, your-- and it goes on down through your electrician, your mail deliverer and whatnot. And it says, and we love you and whatnot and so forth. And we care for you if you would only let us. If you will let us. So big thing. I decided the other day, God, I'm going to wear that. And I thought, if anybody asks what it is, I'll just say well that is a promo line for the LGBT community. And then I'll show them. Well, I boldly went off as they do in Star Trek. I boldly took off into the community and nobody asked me a damn thing. No one ever even noticed. Nothing. All day long I'm tramping around advertising the promo line for the LGBT community. So I thought, I'll wear it the next day. So I did the next day and nobody said a darn thing. So that's where that all is now. But a couple things. What I'm going to do now. I've taken classes at the senior center in all kinds of very advanced subjects, and it's been really great. And the senior center has turned out to be a marvelous community facility, which you don't want to necessarily approach it too soon in your life. That's another whole story because people are quite frightened, I think, of that. So that's been wonderful. Met a couple friends there. One gay, one straight. Male. Gay male friend. Harry who works at Outreach says, oh hell, Fay. He says, just put a mop on Jim's head and take him home. We're very close. And then as for things right now, I'm taking classes and of course, this photography. And my guitar and jamming and I have a wonderful dog. And I contacted a nursing home in Verona who had an ad in the paper a couple weeks ago and Mariah, the dog, and I are going to the nursing home this Wednesday. And she and I are also going to go to classes to calm her down. She's good. She's real good, but she has two or three areas-- jumping and zest. We got to calm down those areas because nursing home patients might not survive. And then I found out the VA also has a dog visiting program. And I thought, oh, I'll just put my own boonie hat from Vietnam and go over there, by God. Well, maybe I shouldn't mention it, but I will. There was a message that came out regarding an old-- you probably saw it. An elderly lesbian who needed somebody to visit her. And I contacted them about that because I thought, very interesting. That would be interesting. And then I got really into genealogy. And got into Plato as a result of that. And this is the last thing. Currently am anticipating in a week or two, the start of this group that forms. It's a Plato group and they meet for like 10 weeks, every Plato session. And it's about exploring the meaning of life. And the idea is you join and as the guy said to me, we're on this journey together for 10 weeks. So that's what's going on right now. 
01:57:29
LL:	 Before we end this interview, I want to give you an opportunity to fill in any last words that you may have. But I wanted to thank you for letting me share the journey of your life as you've unfolded your story. So before we end, I just want to give you this one last chance to say anything that you need to. But first of all, I just wanted to say thank you for what a truly engaging and compelling story that you shared with us. 
FF: 	Well, I'm glad you found it to be that. I do want to mention one more thing that I had neglected. I mentioned that my mother died in '99 and I mentioned that things were hard sometimes when we were kids. And that it took me 50 years to realize that mother and dad did the best they could under extreme circumstances. They got married six months before the Depression started, by the way, in '29. But anyway, she and I reconciled about five years before she died. I mean, I would visit her and I always wrote her, but I never really had much of a relationship with her. And she apparently had decided she was going to-- she had never flown, but she made all these flights, set up all these flights to visit her kids. And I think she was saying goodbye to all of us. And she made the rounds from Wisconsin to Alabama to Georgia and back to New York. When she was here, I was really apprehensive about what we would do. But we had a wonderful time. We sat on the back porch and picked dead blossoms off my begonia plants, or whatever the heck they are. We went over to the plant-- 
LL: 	Olbrich Gardens. 
FF:	 Olbrich Gardens. And we took photographs and I bought her because she used to like to take photographs. She was terrible at it, but when she was real young during World War II she used to like to take pictures. So I bought her a disposable camera and off we went. She wanted to know what I would want her to make me for food. I had her make my favorite upside down cake. And I took a picture of her. And then from there on, in the next five years until she died, I called her every week and I visited her back to New York two, three times every year. And you may say, well, you don't deserve a medal for that. It took, for God's sake, all your life. But when I had left home I had left kind of in a survival mode and I was not inclined to ever return. Until I got older and I thought, well, you should try to see if you can relate to some of those folks. 
LL: 	Fay, I just want to thank you. The short version of your story is Fay's going to grow up to be a nurse. The ending of your story and Fay's going to explore the meaning of life. Thank you, Fay. 
FF: 	You're welcome.