[THEME MUSIC]
Jasmyn Morris (JM): It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR… and this season, we’re sharing stories from LGBTQ people across the country in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City.
I’m your host, Jasmyn Morris… and in this week’s Father’s Day episode… we’re celebrating dads.
Josh Davis (JD): People say it takes a village to raise a child…but I was raised by the village people…
JM: That’s Josh Davis. He was raised by a single gay dad in Cincinnati, Ohio… in the 80s.
And as he told his partner, Elliot Long, at StoryCorps, his dad had help from a group of friends, who were really like extended family.
JD: My first birthday party was at a leather bar called Spurs, which closed down for the occasion. But there were turquoise balloons fastened to all the brass fixtures and there was an elaborate cake. There were all these gay flourishes to the occasion…
Elliot Long (EL): How did you come to first understand that your dad was gay?
JD: I was seven when I found out that my dad had AIDS. He stuck me on the couch in front of a Dateline special. And here came this list of populations who, at the time, were deemed to be likelier to contract HIV and AIDS. The folks on the list were hemophiliacs, and IV drug users, and homosexuals.
My dad was in the kitchen. And I remember walking into the kitchen and he was standing at the sink, and I can still see his ratty blue bathrobe. And I said to him, ”I don’t understand. You’re not a hemophiliac, you’re not an IV drug user and you’re not gay.” And he cleared his throat and he said to me, ”How do you know I’m not gay?”
[MUSIC]
JM: Fast forward two decades and Josh is now a father himself.
During their StoryCorps conversation, Josh and Elliot talked about their decision to start a family together. Josh is a cis queer man and Elliot is transgender, and they put a lot of thought into what this means for them as a family… and for their son.
Here’s Josh again.
JD: When did you know you wanted to be a parent?
EL: I think when I was younger, and I had first come out as queer, I didn’t think I would ever be a parent. And I was okay with that. But when we started dating, I started thinking more about having a kid. I was living in this community with a lot of other queer and trans people who were starting families and having babies. And, it no longer felt like something that couldn’t be mine as well.
What concerns did you have about starting a family with me?
JD: I have had concerns about having a child, but I’ve never had concerns about having a family with you. I can think of no one better with whom to do this.
EL: I remember I’d had this very, very long labor. Finally, at 9 AM, the third day, Ira was finally born, and… can you describe the first time you saw Ira?
JD: I remember feeling very small. More like a child, and less like an adult. And I remember thinking that that nurse must have thought, ”To whom am I handing this baby and can he handle it?”
EL: I remember feeling like I didn’t want to… let anyone else hold him. At least that’s how I felt at first.
JD: I find myself destroyed at the prospect of something happening to our child. You know, as if, as if you and I–however well-intentioned we might be–we can’t make him guarantees.
EL: Are there times that you felt hyper-aware of our family being different?
JD: Oh, I feel that way every time we go to the daycare.
EL: I think about when his class was talking about families, last week, was it?
JD: Mm-hmm…
EL: And beside every other kid’s name it was one mom, one dad, and Ira was the only one where it had zero moms and two dads.
JD: There is another layer to the difference. You’re trans.
EL: Mm-hmm. I’ve tried to talk to him about what it means that I’m transgender. And I don’t know how much of that he absorbs.
Right now we don’t have a lot of other families in our lives who look like ours.
[MUSIC]
JM: That’s Josh Davis and Elliot Long in Tampa, Florida.
And while being a new parent is tough – especially for queer couples without a support system – the path was – in a way – already paved for Josh and Elliot… or at the very least charted… by Josh’s parents.
Josh was 11 years old when his father started dating a man named Brad Harrison…
EL: How did you first meet Brad?
JD: Well, my dad and I moved to Florida when I was 11, and he wanted what he called a fresh start. We had not been there a year, I wouldn’t say, when my dad started spending more and more time at Brad’s place. That’s the place where we were the happiest, probably.
Brad and Josh sit down for an interview after this short break. Stay with us.
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[XPROMO]
JM: Welcome back. Josh’s biological father died in 2010, but Josh also has a ’second dad’… his father’s longtime partner, Brad Harrison.
At StoryCorps, Josh and Brad sat down to remember when they first met…
Josh Davis (JD): What was your first impression of me?
Brad Harrison (BH): That was an evening that I’ll never forget. You were so smart. Do you remember walking on Daytona Beach boardwalk?
JD: I do.
BH: By the time we finished our walk, I knew that you were something very special.
JD: Yeah…
BH: I loved your dad. He was very kind. He’d give you the shirt off his back. And I admired him in so many areas. But you were the icing on the cake.
JD: How do you think becoming my second dad, my other dad, changed you?
BH: I honestly look at my life as pre-Josh and after-Josh. [laughs] Truly… There was a learning curve for me. There had to be milk in the house all the time. You know, the boy needs to eat three times a day.
Just because you say it’s bedtime, doesn’t mean it’s bedtime.
JD: Uh-huh.
BH: What I wanted to give you, I started realizing, was trying to pass on… I guess morals and lessons and, I mean, you were a good kid but, um, it made me feel good to pass something on to you.
JD: Do you recall when I told you that then Elliot and I were gonna have Ira?
BH: I do.
JD: I do too.
BH: Oh God, he was so beautiful. I mean, I guess every grandparent says that.
But, um, truly, it’s just amazing how something inside me changed. I started looking at you differently.
JD: Huh…
BH: My little boy is not such a little boy anymore.
JD: I mean, for what it’s worth, I had a child when I was 30, so the little boy thing was pretty long over.
BH: Well, not in my eyes. You’ll find out.
What does it mean to you that you do have this second generation?
JD: I mean, I have a sense of a kind of lineage but it’s not altogether happy. It’s because of the AIDS crisis and all the loss.
BH: I mean, you from an early age, you were surrounded by people who were dying. And you always had a fear of your father dying, and maybe even me.
You know, I never thought I would be a grandfather. Hell, I never thought I’d be a father.
JD: Right…
BH: But, uh, I’m just going to say that I’m very proud to be your parent.
JD: And I feel very lucky to have you as my dad.
BH: Thank you.
[MUSIC]
JM: That’s Brad Harrison with his son, Josh Davis, in Tampa, Florida.
And before we move onto our next story, we want to leave you with some thoughts from the youngest generation of the Davis family…
Ira Davis (ID): My name is Ira. And I’m three years old.
I like my baba and dad. And they take care of me.
JD: So, Ira, is there anything else you would want people to know about what it’s like to have two dads?
ID: No, that’s it!
EL: Alright. We love you, buddy.
JM: That’s Elliot Long with his partner, Josh Davis, interviewing their 3-year-old son Ira on the StoryCorps app…
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While Elliot and Josh have found some comfort and guidance from the generation before them, many LGBTQ people don’t have that legacy in their family… people like Patrick Haggerty, who grew up in a small farming town in Washington state.
Now in his 70s, he sat down at StoryCorps with his daughter, Robin, to remember a day when he performed in a high school assembly as a teenager.
Patrick Haggerty (PH): I’m riding to school with my oldest brother, and on the way to school, I’m putting glitter all over my face. And my brother said, ”What in the hell are you doing?” I said, ”I’m putting on my costume.” And he said, ”Well, I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that.” So he dropped me off at the school, and he called my dad up, and he said, ”Dad, I think you better get up there. This is not going to look good.”
So my dad drove up to the high school. And he had his farmer jeans on and they had cow crap on them and he had his clodhopper boots on. And when I saw him coming, I ducked around the hall and hid from him. And it wasn’t because of what I was wearing…
Robin Bolland (RB): [Laughs]
PH: …it was because of what he was wearing.
So, the assembly goes well, and I climb in the car and I’m riding home with my father. My father says to me, ”I was walking down the hall this morning, and I saw a kid that looked a lot like you ducking around the hall to avoid his dad. But I know it wasn’t you, cause you would never do that to your dad.” And I squirmed in my seat, and I finally busted out and I said, ”Well dad, did you have to wear your cow-crap jeans to my assembly?”
RB: [Laughs]
PH: And he said, ”Look, everybody knows I’m a dairy farmer. This is who I am.” And he looked me square in the eye. And then he said, ”Now, how bout you? When you’re a full-grown man, who are you gonna go out with at night?” And I said, ”I don’t know.” And he said, ”I think you do know. And it’s not going to be that McGlocklin girl that’s been making goo goo-eyes at you but you won’t even pick up the damn telephone. Now, I’m gonna tell you something today, and you might not know what to think of it now, but you’re gonna remember when you’re an adult. Don’t sneak. Because if you sneak, like you did today, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you’re doing the wrong thing, then you’ll ruin your immortal soul.” And out of all the things a father in 1959 could have told his gay son, my father tells me to be proud of myself and not sneak.
My reaction at the time was to get out in the hay field and pretend like I was as much of a man as I could be. And I remember flipping 50-pound bales three feet up into the air going, ”I’m not a queer. What’s he talking about?”
RB: [Laughs]
PH: But he knew where I was headed. And he, he knew that humiliating me and making me feel bad about it, in any way, was the wrong thing to do. I had the patron saint of dads for sissies, and no, I didn’t know at the time, but I know it now.
[MUSIC]
JM: That’s Patrick Haggerty remembering his father, Charles Edward Haggerty. Patrick went on to form the band Lavender Country, and their 1973 debut album is the first known gay-themed album in country music.
That’s all for this Father’s Day episode. It was produced by Afi Yellow-Duke and me. Special thanks to Jud Esty-Kendall, Nadia Reiman, Josh Christensen and StoryCorps facilitator Luis Gallo. Our engineer is Jarrett Floyd. Our fact-checker is Natsumi Ajisaka.
And remember, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall… we’re asking you, just like Elliot, Josh, and Ira did… to pick up your mobile devices and record on the StoryCorps app, as part of our effort called Stonewall OutLoud. We’ll be sharing some of your interviews here. Like this one, from Christina Cipriani Xavier… interviewed by Amanda Barry.
Amanda Barry (AB): What has being a lesbian mom meant to you?
Christina Cipriani Xavier (CCX): Being a lesbian… just like a mom is just a basic part of me. It’s not a separate thing. So there isn’t a moment that you don’t carry your child in your heart with you, right?.
You know, being a parent…it’s not easy. It’s constantly a struggle. You worry; they scare you. They do terrifying things that you wish they wouldn’t do but, overall, it is the most
amazing experience and, I think, anyone who wants it for themselves should not be denied that.
JM: Head over to storycorps.org – slash – outloud to learn how to record your own story, or an LGBTQ elder in your community for Stonewall OutLoud.
As always, you can see what music we used in the episode, and the original artwork created for this season, on our website – StoryCorps dot org.
For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Jasmyn Morris. Thanks for listening… and happy Father’s Day.
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