Oral History with Ann Kilkelly, October 29, 2014 (Ms2015-007)

Interview with Ann Kilkelly

Date of Interview: October 29, 2014

Interviewer: Amanda Lilly

Place of Interview: Henderson Hall

Length: 01:05:40

Transcriber: Bryanna Tramontana

Amanda Lilly: Okay this is Amanda Lilly with Dr. Ann Kilkelly on October the 29th 2014. We are in her office in Henderson Hall and it's about two in the afternoon-- a little bit after two. So thank you for doing this [laughter] once again. I guess I will start out with the first question, which is: can you tell us your name, date and place of birth and about your family and how you were raised?

Ann Killkelly: Okay well that could take us all day [laughter]. Ann Kilkelly, middle name Maureen. I grew up in a little town on the St. Croix river in Minnesota, Bayport Minnesota, on a very beautiful wild river. My parents were (what I would call) working class in some ways, but slightly upwardly mobile. My 1:00mother, her father, my grandfather, was a wild boxer and sort of a really crazy plumber and swimmer and lots of physical stuff, and my mother was a lot like that and she was also very independent minded and rebellious and known around town as somebody you didn't want to mess with on political issues or--I would say she's an activist, but we wouldn't really have used that term. But she was very very profoundly interested in civil rights, well I wouldn't call her a feminist either; she did take matters into her own hands. I wrote a story about her called 'Revolution,' about when she and her friend Elvira took apart a stove 2:00piece by piece and hauled it to the junk yard because it wasn't working properly and she was fed up. Never told my dad. And we were not very wealthy people at all, and he [Kilkelly's father] was very habituated to his perfect time schedule, having lunch at a certain time. So they took a sledgehammer and a pickaxe and demolished the stove, got a friend with a car, hauled it to the junk yard and then brought cold cuts home, which was huge. That's why I called it a revolution because that was like--anyway that's my mother [laughter].

My dad would have called himself 'lace curtain Irish' and I'm like second generation, we're not sure, or third generation Irish. Not having much money, the family was an old family and so there was a lot of sense of we're genteel 3:00people even though we're not wealthy. So I grew up with that on that side with a lot of sense of propriety about what it meant to be a woman, and much more scrupulous Catholicism. My mother was kind of a wild card, a convert who converted to Catholicism because she wanted to have a crucifix [laughter] and not for any reasons of faith, but for the fact that she had seen in the movies that it kept away vampires. So that's that, so what else--let's see what else.

I went to school there, but I was quickly transferred to other schools that were bigger, in a larger city and eventually college. My education was very tended by my sister who was much older than I, eighteen years older, and at that time was 4:00a school teacher. And she taught me to read when I was really young, like three, and I went subsequently to school early, and then I went to high school early and then I went to college early, and so forth. So that was a huge priority in my family was education, and I was the first one to get a Ph.D., I think, in the family. Unfortunately, neither my mother nor my father were alive when I finished all that, but I think it's owing to them that I probably did, more to my mother. So that's--what else did you ask me with that question?

LILLY: How you were raised.

KILLKELLY: I was raised to be pretty independent because my older siblings left home, and I was the forth, and they were by that time really enjoying having their own lives and having friends and playing cards--they were very social 5:00people. I guess I was raised with a pretty ferocious sense of justice about people that were poor, especially in people that were unlike other people. The race thing was kind of a deal in our town cause it was mostly Scandinavians and the few Irish families were looked on pretty much as suspiciously colored people. You know, the Irish were categoried as colored people at one point in history-- but it wasn't like that, but it was a fierce consciousness of our working class origins, of our need to assert our rights in a way that was somewhat compatible with 1950s thinking [laughter]. My mom did not make a very 6:00'Leave it to Beaver' housewife image, very athletic, very wonderful dancer, brainy, read tons of books--tons. Neither one of my parents had a college education, but my mother read five, ten books a week. So I was raised to read, I was raised to be good at math, I was raised to dance and sing, even though I never got to play an instrument, because all of that disappeared as time went on. So, I was raised by a Minnesota democratic liberal-- Democratic Farmer Liberal party in Minnesota, which was really a unionized-- a pro union thing. It's quite characteristic of the upper Mid-West, especially Minnesota, so politically, all was very liberal.

What else can I say? I was editor of the school paper. I was Minnesota 1962 State Champion in Water Ballet. I learned to cook very early and did, and I went to the University of Minnesota for my B.A., majored in English, but did a whole lot of dance and a whole lot of theater as well. And I graduated Magna Cum Laude, or one of those three, I think it's a Magna, and got married right away to a--I was a Vietnam protestor, I was also very much involved in the Catholic church's anti-war stuff that happened and I graduated in 1969. So that was the major, major time of the political conventions and you know student protests 8:00stuff and I was very--on one hand I was really very naïve and really younger than most people and fairly innocent of many things, yet I had a certain kind of radical politics. My brother Dan, who also died when I was quite young, was a history, not professor, but he studied history at college and when I was in high school he--you don't mind a little story do you?

LILLY: No, go right ahead.

KILLKELLY: When I was in high school, maybe even junior high, he came home one day as he often did and said "I wanna take you to something." And I would go anywhere that he wanted to go and it was usually the zoo or something really cool. However, this time he brought me over to the University of Minnesota, Northup Auditorium. Huge, huge, like Burruss, and I think sat like four thousand 9:00people. The speaker was George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, famous racist politician, legacy of unbelievable stuff in the South. So George Wallace was speaking and he told me nothing, I knew nothing about George Wallace at the time and he told me, he said "I just think this is something you really need to hear." So we went over to Northup Auditorium and there were protestors everywhere, students with these black arm bands and signs about racism and all kinds of stuff. And then we went in and he [Wallace] made this highly rhetorical southern lecture, which I thought was so elegant in my naiveté. So when we went out he [Dan] said "well what did you think?" and I said, "Oh I thought it was 10:00really interesting and I don't quite understand it, but I thought he really spoke beautifully and there is some sense in this alabaster cities he was talking about" and he just looked at me and he said "don't you ever forget what I'm gonna say now. He is talking about white people and black people and he is responsible for the suppression of black people and you see all those people who are protesting? That's why they're protesting." So he said like "you better get smart."-literally- and he started giving me books so I had that, and my upbringing was like having six parents and then having them all go away. So from baby, sort of pampered baby to very isolated and on my own. So it was both things.

LILLY: So were you the youngest?

KILLKELLY: I was youngest by- my closest sibling, my brother Dan, the one that I was talking about, was twelve years older than I am, and then one sister 11:00fifteen, one brother eighteen.

LILLY: Wow.

KILLKELLY: And I was like their responsibility. My parents were very loving, but they were a little bit handsoff with me, which I think was probably a really good thing. Stuff I wouldn't let my kids do [laughter] or kid. It was a little town, everybody watched out for other people.

LILLY: That's good. And you said you went to the University of Minnesota for your Bachelors and the University of Utah for your Graduate?

KILLKELLY: Yes. Very good [laughter]. Good memory. Yes I did go. Once I graduated and I got married right after that--by the way to somebody I didn't even like. Part of it was my father was quite sick, he had had a major stroke and he subsequently died like right after my wedding and by that time I knew I was making a horrible mistake. I was also really young, I graduated at I don't 12:00know, I was nineteen or twenty.

LILLY: Oh wow.

KILLKELLY: My family was really concerned given how sick my dad was, that I would be taken care of, and so they really pushed me. I don't blame them at all, but they really thought the answer was for me to go ahead and get married and what not. So I did that. And then I spent a year in Graduate School at the University of Utah studying English, but also dancing and doing Theater History--I always did that combination. After the first year, my husband was transferred, assigned, to Torrejon Spain.

Here's another story for you, you'll like this one. So this is 1969, so he's been doing--he has a background in meteorology, studying meteorology [sic 13:00metallurgy?], very talented and was on his way to Graduate School in that and got hired by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, three M, which was a young company then and they were looking for young smart kids to make copper coins; to bid for that so he worked on that bid. And they didn't get the bid and he subsequently changed to psychology and prepared to be a graduate student when he found out from his mother--who knew somebody on the local draft board--that he better be careful because Vietnam was happening. So we debated, would we go to Canada? Would he go to prison? Or go to war? I was much more ferocious about that than he was, but he was also pretty anti-war. So in the middle of this an 14:00Air force recruiter sort of got him convinced that he could be a psychologist in the Air force, which was complete B.S. I mean, they'd tell any lie to get people to enlist, but he enlisted as an officer so he didn't see combat in Vietnam, so that was the one thing that was okay about that arrangement, and then we were spent to Spain. Meanwhile, when he filled out his application form he cited his work experience and abbreviated Metallurgy to MET. And the Air Force made him a weather man. Meteorology, Metallurgy. He knew nothing about weather, and he had to get a masters degree, without any preparation for that at all, in six months. 15:00Because it was like the novel Catch 22-- sorry man you're in the Army, or Air force. So it was an amazingly difficult thing and then he was an officer and he was assigned first to go to Spain, Torrejon Spain, and predict the weather. Which he never was very good at, he mostly called me and said, "which way is the wind blowing?" [laughter] Anyway, the story of my marriage goes on and on, but we went back to Utah after that year. I finished a masters and started a Ph.D then. But we'd been in Europe, well Spain then Germany, we'd been in Europe for four years I guess. I taught for the Air force, taught high school equivalency English and then I was an agent for a Danish furniture company and traveled all over and sold furniture.

LILLY: Oh wow [laughter].

KILLKELLY: I had to do something, then I had Dan, he was my son who was little. So that takes me up to return to the United States, husband can't get back into Graduate School, I get into Graduate School at the University of Utah again and graduate later. And when I graduated, I split up with my husband. And then there's years after that, but you should direct me to another question.

LILLY: I guess one of the things I would ask is how do you identify yourself now?

KILLKELLY: Sexual orientation? That's complicated because I was a very confirmed heterosexual for most of my life, as was the expectation. That I never questioned it and I was very pretty when I was young and I didn't have a very good self-image, but I acted out the highly feminine role, I think, and that 17:00began to degrade because the women's movement was growing and I was much more, much more aware of feminist stuff. I found that in Germany, when I had a lot of time to read and raise a child, I read Adrienne Rich and I read all the early feminists so my sense of the breadth of what sexuality meant opened up in a big way for me then. I always thought of myself as someone who was open to most possibilities in that range, in that spectrum, but still not outside of the heterosexual boundary. But seeing other things and understanding sexuality in a 18:00different way.

I actually only started to identify as a lesbian when I met Carol, coming here and that was in 1991, but I had been the director of a Women's Studies program, before that I had been teaching Women's Studies. I've been around women and I knew at that point then that it was a matter of what happened next for me and I was more and more bonded to women as friends. So, even though I understand the argument, I am not a person that would say I was born one way or the other-- I know that I was not. And I really happily went into a relationship with another woman and we happily, but with difficulty came out very clearly, and openly and 19:00have not really looked back on that. She was someone who was bisexual, but at that time was married and she was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. It was a big deal, I was one administrator and she was an Associate Provost and it created quite a little stir among those people who cared. So identification is--I identify with the LGBTQ category, if I had to pick one I'd probably say Q. But I have theoretical issues with all kinds of things, which I'm sure you're aware of, but that's theory, that's different from the way you live your life. So I live my life with one partner, a woman, and our children are both grown up 20:00and they're both healthy.

And Women's Studies had a whole lot to do with my understanding of all that, of really watching the dynamics of what played out, especially with the few people I actually knew that were out at Virginia Tech. When I came, I was bringing a male partner that I had been with for a number of years, but the university failed to actually support-- this is a fierce irony. I had asked for him to be brought here on a partner hire, and there were several people including the then Provost, that were really supporting me in that, but by a series of what you would find extremely bizarre incidents-- some man that is still around was a 21:00friend of somebody on the Board of Visitors who had the ear of the then President James McComas. And the Board of Visitors wrote a letter and said, "you cannot hire the partner, that it is Virginia Tech's policy." Apparently they had just made the policy really clearly, just then, on that we do not hire the partners of unmarried couples. So that gives you a measure of how things have changed, so they wouldn't give him the job even though everyone had vetted him and approved it. The Board of Visitors would not. As it turned out, it was for me the better thing that happened because I met Carol and etc. So I hope that 22:00gives you a picture--I think it's complicated. I try to say to my students that I think the question of sexuality is too complicated for anybody to say absolutely on a spectrum what they are, you know--

LILLY: I agree.

KILLKELLY: This is my feeling and I think that the political piece of it about marriage and all of that is important for a certain kind of legitimation, but I have critiqued the hold of Christianity over marriage and you know what I'm talking about, I'm sure. I can't do it, because I think the institution is the problem, but certainly people who want to be in that system should be able to be. So you know, it's that shifting your politics around to be intersectional and to balance a lot of different balls. You know I did teach in, or I said I 23:00was the head of Women's Studies for seven years and was in that department for a long time. So I've made it my business really to include that in my teaching and as my own understanding shifted over the years of those issues and what part of me was relevant. So before I came here and when my son was small, it was very much about motherhood. I thought about motherhood and I was very influenced by Adrienne Rich and Motherhood as Institution. Do you know that book at all?

LILLY: I haven't read it.

KILLKELLY: She's a poet, a lesbian poet, she's so important. And she wrote this book of essays called On Lies, Secrets and Silences and she talked a lot about 24:00the institution of marriage and it's oppressive structure for women. But she did it autobiographically with really talking about having a different structure of raising her sons, she had three boys by herself and this was like--it completely opened my eyes. So anyway, I like to think of it as complex rather than having a clear answer.

LILLY: I understand, I completely--

KILLKELLY: I doubt I'll ever have another partner, but I don't know what's going to happen in the next-- the few years, the twenty years or so I'll be here [laughter].

LILLY: [Laughter]. I completely agree because I identify as bisexual so I understand how--and sometimes I think that the labeling is not always good.

KILLKELLY: I think it comes back to hit you in the face.

LILLY: Yeah.

KILLKELLY: You can argue that people can't help it, that they have no control 25:00over it. You're taking a certain kind of agency away from them in a big way, I think. I know a lot of gay people who would disagree with me radically because that sense that I am who I am--

LILLY: Of identity--

KILLKELLY: Of identity, but I don't know I'm more of a post-modernist or materialist feminist, I don't see it that way. I see it as very contingent.

LILLY: So you started at Tech in '92.

KILLKELLY: Yeah '91, '92.

LILLY: '92, and that's when you met your current partner. Did you have--correct me if I'm wrong, when you married when you were young, did you have a child with your husband?

KILLKELLY: Mhmm, yes I did.

LILLY: So you have a total of three children?

KILLKELLY: No I only have one [laughter].

LILLY: Oh okay, I thought--

KILLKELLY: Well no I have two because of my partner's daughter I would count in that.

LILLY: Oh okay, I was thinking that--

KILLKELLY: I know I loop around; I have no sense of the chronological, that's a lousy historian.

LILLY: So when you came here and you met her you said that you and her came out together as a couple. What was that like? Did your colleagues, did they treat you differently, did the university treat you differently, or her?

KILLKELLY: It depends on how you look at it. I mean, but for the most part, our closest colleagues were very helpful and both of us were tenured professors, both of us had reputations in the university for doing some good stuff and so I would say we were both pretty respected. But as the director of Women's Studies, I was already the enemy in some places and that was said very clearly. People 27:00made sure I knew that someone had said that about me [laughter]. So it wasn't that big a leap because people probably assumed that I was a lesbian anyway, but they didn't because they remembered this deal with my partner, it was really a mess. But I don't know--where was I going with that? Give me your question again?

LILLY: It was how were y'all treated differently by people in the community, your colleagues and the university in general?

KILLKELLY: Well yeah on some level I think what happens to a lot of gay and lesbian, LGBTQ people, what happens to a lot of them is failure to thrive. I think it's not--I know there's a ton of overt hostility and discrimination, but I think in the university system, the most powerful thing is silence. Is having not supportive community, is having people not acknowledge. And that, I think, 28:00in terms of your progress through the system, I think has a subtle, but strong, impact on people. I know that, it's odd that when you do that you don't know who knows and who doesn't for one thing, and also other people don't necessarily know in the institution, so you don't know what people know or what they're saying. I always had the sense that-- even though I always faired very well in the university- I was promoted and all that-- I always had the sense that there was this opposition out there that I lived with. And I think Carol felt that too, only Johanna, her daughter, was just like ten when this happened. But I 29:00will say that turned out well also, but it was very very hard, this being a close knit community. But what we did was we set ourselves up deliberately to go to people before some rumor mill got to people, we went and said, to our deans, to the provost, that we're with each other and it's very important that we have your support, it's very important that you understand that the way people treat us might not be the same. We did that with a lot of people that were in supervisory positions to us and also people in-- she was a member of the Presbyterian Church, which she left because at that very time they had determined that weren't going to ordain elders that were gay. So she, in protest 30:00basically, left that and I think also happily, 'cause that went with the whole picture. With the family and the religious credibility and all that. So yes I think people talk, but I wouldn't say--I mean I think on the other end of that the bonds you make with people in those circumstances make you a much richer person. I think I had the intellectual understanding to, both of us did, to know what the underlying issues were, the assumptions and stuff. Because people generally find me approachable people would come and ask me questions and the kind of questions they asked were the ones that, "what is this really about? Do 31:00you hate men? Do you not like men?" You know that sort of thing. People will say really stupid stuff, and you know it happens all the time. So yes definitely. And our families.

But at Tech, I think at that point, which would have been '93, '94, really was changing in terms of the visibility of LGBTQ people. Not a lot, but you could see it, you could perceive it the university was changing and Virginia was so repressive in those days. It's a miracle we can even marry in Virginia even if I don't want to. It was in the air, the issues were. There certainly weren't 32:00classes, there wasn't a caucus. I think there was a women's network that I belonged to and there was a group of gay women, or lesbian women that were a community, but we didn't feel like we belonged exactly to that community partly because of our position in the university. But partly because of the way we identified, which was much more open I think. Nonetheless, it was a huge change in our lives to be together, but we were very lucky. We were smart about the way we did it and our children were fantastic. Because we raised them to be that way partly, but also because they had support from other parents. So yes, but also 33:00have good fortune on the other side of that too, I think we're a lot of people's favorite lesbians [laughter], cause we're nice. And people always think I'm straight because of my curly hair [laughter], anyway.

LILLY: You said this was around '93, '94. Is this before the Safe Zone started happening?

KILLKELLY: Well before it, but things like that were starting to come up and the big issues for me then were racial, racial stuff of all kinds with football players being--or with the football program being sort of attacked for very good reason, but also in a racist way over a very serious rape incident that 34:00happened. It became a very famous case--Christy Bronkowski [sic Brzonkala].

LILLY: I think I remember that.

KILLKELLY: Probably, you might. So we were talking openly in Women's Studies, that we knew the critique that black women had made of white feminists and a lot of people had started writing about these issues. So the issue was more out, much more out, people were starting to talk about marriage, were starting to talk about rights. Not that they had them, but that the questions were in the air. Not too long--when did Shelli [Fowler] and Karen [DePauw] come here? Do you remember the date?

LILLY: I think it was 2002-2003.

KILLKELLY: Yeah, by that time there was sort of a critical mass, I think, of people who went to bat for them. It wasn't just sexuality, but it was this 35:00outrage that they would do this in a closed rather than an open--I forget the name of the committee, it's an executive committee of the Board of Visitors and they made the decision closed session, which is not legal. Those sessions are supposed to be public.

LILLY: Actually we can probably go into that if you want.

KILLKELLY: Sure, might as well.

LILLY: So what exactly happened with Shelli Fowler and Karen DePauw?

KILLKELLY: You don't even want me to try to answer that do you [laughter]? I mean you know some of the facts right?

LILLY: I know that there was a spousal problem with hiring Shelli because she 36:00was--Karen was hired right?

KILLKELLY: As a Dean, right.

LILLY: It was a problem with hiring Shelli because they were together, so that's what I've got in a nutshell.

KILLKELLY: Yes. So they could tell you specifically to be accurate, but I will tell you what I know abou that in a nutshell if possible. It would have to be a big nut. When they came, after Karen was hired, there was a period of time where the English Department was vetting Shelli and had agreed to bring her in with tenure, wanted to hire her and were excited about it, was all set to go. The last stage of all this was like in June of the year they came. Where the Board of Visitors, the same Board of Visitors made that decision that they would not 37:00hire Shelli and it just blew up. For some reason, they decided to stay and fight. If you know Shelli, then you know she's a real activist. Do you guys know her?

LILLY: No, I don't know her.

KILLKELLY: If you get a chance, take a class from her because she is really special, so is Karen I think. This is when the protest, when Carol and I organized the protest, and she collected a lot of letters and then we did this Take Back the University March with duct tape on our mouths and academic regalia and what not.

LILLY: Wow.

KILLKELLY: There were only about thirty five of us, there weren't many, but we walked in our regalia over and we stood in front of Burruss Hall and various things. It got some play in the newspapers, although they all said "it's too bad 38:00hardly anybody came" [laughter]. But then a lot of stuff happened because of all the letters. The shocking thing that happened in June happened when they were moving here and but they still had the option of not coming and they decided to be here. So that went on in various political issues that sort of involved them. I can't remember how to reconstruct it, but it was about taking on the Board of Visitors. Which was directed by a guy named Rochovich [sp], who's notorious and who did a lot of anti-affirmative action work, and specifically anti-gay work in 39:00Virginia many years ago. He is a real deal, but he's gone from the Board now and the Board has changed spectacularly; they approved putting the language in the Principles of Community. I helped start that Principles of Community stuff and we fought about that issue, we just fought to get to be included, for sexuality to be one of the terms or whatever the term of the moment was and we could not get it through the board. They also, for a short time, wanted to vet every decision we made about every speaker in class. I got a call from a Congressman because we were doing women's month and Barbara Ehrenreich, I think it was her, 40:00came to do a lecture on the sexual politics of meat. The other speaker they identified was one Thank God I'm a Lesbian Mother, which was presented by the religious program and gender studies. And they threatened us, well they didn't threaten us directly, but there were all these editorials saying if Tech turns on the lights for these things we should not put one penny of the state's money into any of this. Fortunately those things didn't happen, but we were still in the culture wars.

LILLY: Yeah.

KILLKELLY: So what happened then was through various administrative maneuverings Shelli was given a full-time job by the unit that she is still in, which has 41:00changed names, and given the status of a tenured faculty rank and all that, and she was also working with the English, but she did not get a tenure track job in English, and that's what she was prepared to do with a African American literature and critical pedagogy and all of that. I think both of them have been incredible agents for change in the institution. They were very very brave. They had hate mail, they had death threats. It was really ugly and they just walked through it and it was an amazing thing to see.

LILLY: I think what shocked me about it was when it happened in 2002-2003 because I was thinking that's so into the twenty-first century that this is 42:00happening. I wanted to ask, at that time, did Virginia Tech have anything or any sort of language in their hiring that no discrimination against sexual orientation or gender at the time?

KILLKELLY: People had tried to get it and were also trying to get partner benefits and all that. The conversation came up--well the irony of the situation I described, was that they shut down a hire of a heterosexual kind in my case and that became the defacto reason or the explanation.

LILLY: Oh because you weren't married.

KILLKELLY: Yeah, right. So it had a pretty bad effect on that, which was the irony of ironies. And then when the Principles of Community were developed there were several different attempts to include that language and the first time the 43:00Board had approved it is this year.

LILLY: Really.

KILLKELLY: About how many months ago? I don't know, three or four months. Isn't that incredible?

LILLY: Yes that's very incredible.

KILLKELLY: As I think of social change like that and social justice as something like steering a houseboat. You may make a tiny adjustment and after three hours the back end swings a foot in that direction. It's like way behind the consciousness of many people.

LILLY: So not really at Tech, but just in Blacksburg in general, since you've moved here in the early '90s and to now. Has there been any communities or safe 44:00spaces for the LGBTQ community in Blacksburg, that aren't necessary part of the university, that you have been a part of, or that has been a safe space. Especially in the early '90s, because now I'm pretty sure it's probably a lot different now or maybe more.

KILLKELLY: I think it's fine. I never call anything a safe space, so I will try to answer that in the spirit which most people take it. A PFLAG [Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays] chapter started here and so initially when we had the PFLAG chapter initiated it was mostly LGBTQ people that were attending the meetings, so telling our stories and doing things like that. Once it became an 45:00actual PFLAG thing we backed away from it because we thought it was really, really important for the parents and friends to have their own space, to be safe talking about it with each other. I've done a lot of work on the academic level I think. Not as much as I would like to I've never taught a class or course studies, which I could do. Just partly circumstances.

I'm trying to think of other things. This was the university though, I was on the commission for Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. I don't know if 46:00they call it that still. It's a university committee it oversees a lot of different initiatives, so these subjects came up pretty frequently and there started to be a little opening for the discussion of the issues, but actually I got off the committee because as far as I was concerned, it was going backwards in terms of Women's Studies and wasn't doing anything like enough. I have sometimes participated in caucus events, that has helped a lot. I do a lot of work with Jean Elliott, not a lot, but I do stay close to her projects and help her with her projects. Sometimes behind the scenes. Other organizations and community groups I would say no. Partly because we don't, very comfortably, fit 47:00into the women's community. Partly, it's an odd thing because we feel completely supported politically and personally, but the lesbian culture in Blacksburg, it's not that it didn't appeal to me, it isn't that I didn't love a lot of the people, but we had these major full-time jobs. We were very visible within the institution and that socializing wasn't something we do with anybody. As far as attending events in the community, performances. At one point I wrote--I interviewed a lot of people, faculty and staff and had planned to make a piece 48:00called 'Power Outage' and never did that for various reasons, I was disgusted and cynical probably [laughs] to do that, so I didn't put myself out in that way. And other people have done a lot too, so for me I don't feel like I have to kind of carry the burden of being a leader in relation to that issue that I used to feel. [phone rings] That's Carol.

LILLY: So I guess now I'll ask you about the Shamrock Bar and performing there. That's in Bluefield right?

KILLKELLY: Right and it's sort of--I can't even remember if it's Bluefield West Virginia or Bluefield Virginia because the line goes right through.

LILLY: Is it still there?

KILLKELLY: No, not as it was. I don't know what the state of it is right now because the building next to it was collapsing. When it was there--when the Shamrock was operating as a bar. Carol was getting her hair cut and her haircutter, who is a dear friend, his partner grew up in Bluefield, and as a gay teenager he found the Shamrock Bar, which was where gay people went then. And for a time also the African American community had its own place in the same 50:00building. Early before the Shamrock came about there was a largely African American bar that gays went to also. So Carol got really interested in this story of this woman Helen Compton [sp] who was about sixty-five, seventy then. She died maybe five years after that. Grew up in coal fields of West Virginia and had stories about the Klu Klux Klan burning crosses on people's yards when they found out somebody was having an extramarital affair, but also one of her stories says the way she found out about gay people was that she saw these two 51:00guys kissing and told her dad and he said oh yep there will be a cross burned sometime soon.

So she decided that she was going to make a bar and a place where people could be and feel safe. She herself sat at the door with a gun in her lap and watched the street to make sure--she was an amazing character, amazing. If you ever want to see a video, Carol would probably show it to you. She made this video 'It's Reigning Queens in Appalachia.' So what happened, as Miss Helen told it, was that she was sitting around with a group of men, and she was a lesbian, although not openly out even in that community. Even though everyone knew, she didn't even tell her son, straight ahead. Anyway it's crazy, but Miss Helen determined 52:00she was going to have a place, she was gonna open a place that she would say 'the gays' would be welcome. And so she started this bar that was sort of a lunch room during the day and actually there were some female prostitutes that worked there. Sometimes business men in the community would come there for lunch and a little something else, so it was this odd local joint during the day, but at six o'clock it would become a gay bar. Helen would say, well right about five o'clock every night, she'd say, "I'd say 'well you know, in a little while it's gonna get awful noisy in here, these young people, they just make so much noise and I really think you should….'" Basically she made them leave, but with that 53:00little trick. So they're sitting around there talking, she's talking with a group of men, gay men, and they're saying, they're talking about how much they love wearing their mother's clothes and Helen says "you wanna do that here?" and they said "Lord yes Miss Helen, we'd like to do that!" That's an exact quote from her [laughter]. So she said, "well you can do that here." So these guys went out and started collecting--I mean apparently they'd come back from the grocery store with cucumbers and cauliflower and just all kinds of vegetables and they'd go to the thrift stores and had a very hard time finding shoes --it's a whole story. So they started performing and having drag shows there very often.

In this process of getting to know our hair dresser and his partner and finding out about Helen, Carol went and met Miss Helen and talked to her about it and said what she wanted to do this project where she took photographs of the drag queens and that she would interview her and interview the drag queens and she subsequently did. So I went along, of course, to most of these things and helped her with whatever was needed. The place was- it was really a dive; it had kind of a nice bar, but they had made these homemade chandeliers out of aluminum foil, all this fringe, but the place had the atmosphere of like a, when there was a drag show, like a community basement or a church basement. It had a little 55:00railing, and when people went up to stuff money into somebodies outfit in the cleavage it was sort of like communion [laughter]. So we hungout with the drag queens and she would take photographs in the dressing rooms while they were getting dressed. I ended up being a judge for a Miss Gay Virginia, which was a drag queen. And they tried to do a Mr. Shamrock and have the women do it, but Helen couldn't get the women to dress up. So she liked us so much because we played music, and she said "what I want for my birthday is for you to come up here and perform and get the women to perform." So we rounded up the women that we knew which we knew and liked very much, so many of them, and they complied, and I did a Motown performance. I studied Motown with a major Motown 56:00choreographer actually, part of it was that he was a tap dancer too, so I got the original Temptations backup choreography for 'Ain't too Proud to Beg' and taught it to them.

LILLY: Oh that's awesome.

KILLKELLY: We put on suit jackets and mustaches including Carol's daughter who was like thirteen at the time [laughter] and we just had a blast, I mean it was a lot of fun. Largely speaking, I would say, safer than a lot of spaces I have been in. Not safe either because up in that neck of the woods there's a lot of gun violence and stuff.

LILLY: Yeah, maybe just more comfortable than other places.

KILLKELLY: Yeah. It was interesting that way and it was very eye opening to watch this whole costume construction process and the make-up. I don't know if 57:00you saw the photograph of one of the drag queens with hair--what was his name her name? Miss Nikki was what he/she went by and applying make-up but doesn't have the wig on, doesn't have the jewelry, doesn't have the fingernails yet, so it's this transitional moment that's just really interesting. So that's the story, and this went on for quite a while. She made the video, the photographs went to the Smithsonian Archives and people have studied them and we still--Miss Helen died and when she died she had a surreal funeral, but Carol had gone to see her a lot because they got pretty close as well as the men, and we don't see 58:00them much anymore because there was another gay bar there that a lot of the people went to. The man who owns it was an early attendee at the bars saw it in a different location, but the place just deteriorated because the building next door was already collapsing. You should see the picture of the front door, it's just this really kind of wrecked section of town- it's on main street, right by railroad tracks, totally visible, it just has this little tiny sign that says 'Shamrock' and there's a cardboard cutout of a Shamrock on the door and that's it. The windows are not- you can't see in, although Miss Helen could see out.

LILLY: Now I think the closest bar, they do Gay Miss America there, is The Park 59:00in Roanoke. I think that's the closest one to here or to this area.

KILLKELLY: There's one in Johnston City, there's the big one in Johnston City because we went around a lot to gay bars, then to drag shows to sort of study drag shows. And our curiosity about that continues, but we really don't go out to any bars. We didn't before that and we don't now, we're not bar people [laughter]. But it was quite a chapter and it was amazing learning and the video's lovely. You may want to see it.

LILLY: Yeah, I'll make a note of that.

KILLKELLY: I mean maybe you're interested outside this project. It's an amazing thing that she did. It's a little rough now, because she wasn't working digitally entirely. Now of course she could correct all the sound problems and 60:00stuff and have better equipment, but it's an amazing piece of work.

LILLY: So I guess to kind of wrap up, is there anything that you would want people to know if they listen to this. Is there a message that you want to give people in the LGBTQ community or just in general. Is there anything that you think- any advice, any kind of message?

KILLKELLY: I'm not a believer in single messages but, [laughter] which will come as no surprise, but one thing that I really believe is that education on these issues is absolutely important because nobody gets the depth of the systemic 61:00issues. I mean, the culture is so saturated with heteronormativity and even people in the community need that recognition of what the systemic--I think that for the sense of isolation and the kind of dangerous isolation that is true for so many. One way to understand that, that I think is really important, is to go find classes. We have one, but go find that class, but also, I think, women in Gender Studies is absolutely, really critical for people to know that in the world or a world that's larger than this little place, that there are all kinds 62:00of people that are talking really seriously, in very comic ways and in performative ways and all that, that are talking about these things. That it's not, they're really not by themselves, but it needs to be studied because if it's not, then I think our assumptions we go to default a lot. We don't examine some of that stuff. So that's not exactly advice, it's just a strong recommendation that people find out historically what's been happening around here, what's been happening in the rest of the world. So that they're equipped, actually, to deal in a much more open way. Now, we're going to have these conversations in a much more open way and it's not gonna go well a lot of the time and the change is slow. So I think that information and study and finding 63:00the people that really can help you with that aspect of it and art, I think art is-- performance all that, I think that's key. Because it has a way of creating a space where things can be said that can't always be said in a serious way, not in a--I don't mean that in a serious way, I mean that just aren't said usually, with a structure of metaphor things can be looked at in a deep way without people feeling endangered or exposed too much, but they have the opportunity to enter into a world that way. I don't know if you know Jeff Mann, I hope someone is interviewing him.

LILLY: I have talked to him I know who he is, English right? Yes I've talked to him.

KILLKELLY: Yeah, he's wonderful and he has a lot to say on that subject. But I 64:00think using the arts--I don't like the word using, but working in the arts as way to really expand communities that understand and care about these issues and plus it's very pleasurable you know, potentially. Even if it's about bad stuff, even if it's people telling stories, horrible stories, it's still in the realm of metaphor so that people can look at it with a different framework. To reframe your experiences is absolutely important, to tell stories for example. Yeah that's what I would say, tell stories.

LILLY: Tell stories.

KILLKELLY: Dance, tell stories. Most of us dance.

LILLY: Alright I guess we will stop there thank you so much for doing this.

KILLKELLY: No problem it was fun. And I am just so thrilled that it's happening. It is very moving to me that someone like David is doing what needs to be done in a very systematic and complex way, you know. So that we're not just saying "oh what we need are a few more gay people here, some representative there," but somebody who's paying attention to what people are experiencing. So I am so grateful to him.

LILLY: yeah I'm glad he's doing it too.

KILLKELLY: You like that he's your teacher?

LILLY: Yeah [laughter]. I'm really glad I took this class.