It was another packed night June 20 at Dorothy Downstairs, 2500 W. Chicago Ave., but it wasn’t for a party. Instead, the West Town lesbian bar hosted a sold-out panel of LGBTQ+ seniors to share their stories and experiences to an eager young audience.
This now-annual panel event is a collaborative effort between the LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project and the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. While it was primarily younger people in the room, there were plenty of older people in the standing-room-only audience.
The event started three years ago as part of Dorothy’s Pride programming. One of the Dialogue Project’s coordinators, Karen Morris, said that before the first event in 2023, the elders were worried that no one would show up. But elders have been sharing their stories to a sold-out room every year.
“I remember sitting in the back that first time and thinking, ‘I’m watching all these beautiful young people silent, listening to the elders [for] as long as they wanted to talk,’” she said. “And that was just so beautiful. Clearly, we’re all hungry for this.”
Morris named significant events in LGBTQ+ history to start the panel. The elders were in their twenties when the Stonewall Riot took place, and homosexuality was still considered a sociopathic personality disorder. Morris said she wanted to give context to what the world was like when they were young themselves.
“I’ve learned that it’s a way for young people to be able to connect better to the elders by saying, ‘Hey, this is what was happening when they were your age.’ And I think for them, that gives a better point of connection, rather than it seeming so abstract,” Morris said.
All four panelists spoke for about 10 minutes, sharing memorable moments from their past and important lessons they’ve learned growing up. They prepared a slideshow of photos, as well, and the room erupted when they got to see decades-old photos of LGBTQ+ people living their lives. Every person was in their seventies, except for Terri Worman, who is 69.
Worman (she/they), a pro-choice feminist lesbian activist, has dedicated much of her life to fighting for women and LGBTQ+ rights. She worked for AARP and has dedicated her life to advocating for aging people, and for several years, brought seniors on the AARP trolley during the Pride Parade. She was photographed by a “Younger”–a young participants in the Dialogue Project–included the photo in her slideshow. When her wife, Paula, saw the picture, she asked why Terri wasn’t smiling.
“I realized that photo actually revealed my inner pro-choice, feminist lesbian, hardcore activist self that comes out strong in times of need,” Worman said. “To look people in the eye who wish to do us harm and say, ‘Don’t mess with my friends, my family of choice, my community. You will not erase us, and we will not go away. We belong here, and we’re going to keep making good trouble together. Don’t mess with my people. Now, turn around and just walk away.’”
Carmen Garcia, who grew up on the West Side of Chicago and worked as an artist, currently volunteers with seniors at the Center on Halsted and lives in the Town Hall Apartments, where she feels safe to live authentically. She said that two lesbians were murdered in her old neighborhood, so living in an LGBTQ+ residential building has been a good experience.
“It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Garcia said. “There’s so many gay activities, and I’m always busy, and I’m in the right neighborhood and I don’t constantly have to worry about who’s going to kill me because I’m a lesbian.”
Pat McCombs described herself as someone who is, and always has been, rebellious. She volunteered for a lesbian hotline in the late ‘70s and ‘80s to offer resources and a listening ear to women who needed to talk. She was one of the only women of color who volunteered for the hotline and could provide appropriate advice–including about resources on the South Side–that the others did not know about.
She also co-founded Executive Sweet, a south side based social organization that hosted parties and built community. It was important to her to build a safe space.
“We would create our own spaces, emphasize our values and meet our own needs,” McCombs said. “My activism was born out of my passion and love for women to feel seen and valued. I was involved in creating a space for socialization, celebration and self love.”
Lizzie Maricich, a trans artist and lifelong resident of Chicago, showed a photo one of her friends took when she was in her twenties–more than 50 years ago. She said the photo was taken right around the corner from Dorothy’s. She showed images of her art and several photos of herself throughout her transition, including a Polaroid from 25 years ago of the first time she ever went out as a woman. She is unapologetic these days and has participated in similar storytelling events across the city.
“There is no one or no government entity that will ever make me feel ashamed or make me apologize for the person I am,” she said to uproarious applause and cheers.
The panel was recorded and will be added to Gerber/Hart’s archive and will be part of a collaborative living archive project between the library and the bar. Most archiving of LGBTQ+ spaces takes place after they have already closed, and archivists are left scrambling for the scraps that are left.
Gerber/Hart Community Outreach Manager Jen Dentel emphasized the value of creating physical spaces to learn from different generations. And to record it for a living archive makes it that much more accessible. She said that Youngers getting to see LGBTQ+ people grow old allows them to believe that they can do the same.
“It gives people options, and it’s extremely validating,” Dentel said. “And it’s dangerous to people that don’t want them to be a choice for someone. Having these abilities for us to connect with elders is incredibly important.”
Multiple audience members, like Morris, expressed a particular hunger for opportunities to connect across generations. Audience member Mia Isabel Hodges spoke to it specifically.
“We’re all begging for opportunities like this,” Hodges said. “A lot of us don’t have role models to look up to and [we] see you guys.”
She went with her partner, who had to reassure her on the way to the event.
“I was like, Oh, I’m gonna cry for the whole thing,’” Hodges said. “And she was like, ‘No, it just shows us during such turbulent times, people have gone through it and survived, and we can do it too.’”
Youngers from the Project hand-printed t-shirts to sell at the event. Gerber/Hart also created a display of books and archival materials to flip through.
Facilitator Morris admitted that programs like the Dialogue Project are hard to make work. One of the biggest barriers is accessing sustainable funding. But next year Morris and the rest of the Project’s facilitation team are piloting ways to make intergenerational connection possible. They’re working with the Chicago Public Library and the Museum of Contemporary Art to create public opportunities for LGBTQ+ people across generations to build community and engage in dialogue together.