Oral History with Mark Weber, March 26, 2015 (Ms2015-007)

Mark Alan Weber Interview

Class of 1987, Lambda Horizon Organizer

Date of Interview: March 26, 2015

Interviewer: Tamara Kennelly

Place of Interview: InnovationSpace, Virginia Tech

Transcriber: Bryanna Tramontana

Length: 2:33:46

Tamara Kennelly: Today is March 26, 2015. My name is Tamara Kennelly, and I am here with Mark Weber. Would you please say your full name and if you don't mind when you were born.

Mark Weber: Okay. It's Mark Alan Weber and December 20th 1963.

KENNELLY: Would you tell me about your family and how you were raised?

WEBER: I was born in Northern Virginia; I would say middle class family. My father worked for the federal government and my mother was a housewife. We grew up with everything we needed, not too much more. In terms of our lifestyle, the annual family vacation, good schools in Fairfax County, and going to church 1:00every Sunday.

KENNELLY: What branch of the government was your father in?

WEBER: Department of Army, he was head of military personnel.

KENNELLY: Oh okay. Where did you go to church?

WEBER: Saint Ambrose Catholic Church in Fairfax.

KENNELLY: So did you go to Catholic School?

WEBER: Early on I went to Catholic School, but in third grade I went to public school. Just a matter of we moved and were out of the parish. It was just more convenient to go to public schools.

KENNELLY: Are you still involved with the Catholic Church?

WEBER: No, no.

KENNELLY: How do you identify your own sexual preferences?

WEBER: Gay male.

KENNELLY: Is there a community or communities that you identify with particularly?

WEBER: Say a little more about that?

KENNELLY: Just if you could consider yourself in part of a particular group besides being gay male, if there's any special group. Maybe there's--

WEBER: I never thought of it like that. I have a life that involves family members and friends and activities that I enjoy doing, hiking, kayaking. I enjoy my house in West Virginia on the weekends. I really don't identify with any real particular group.

KENNELLY: Okay. Could you tell me about your earlier or earliest experiences with sexuality or gender?

WEBER: Sure. So, how far back--I had a very good friend in the seventh grade, 3:00and he and I were obviously attracted to each other, and we began to explore our sexuality together. That ended up being, I would say, a long-term sexual relationship all through junior high and high school. At that point in time and sort of in line with our conversation here, I didn't identify myself as gay. That's what I was. My friend and I explored each other and did a lot of things together all the time; I would say best friends as well. At one point in time, we were seniors in high school and I do remember very clearly [he said,] "Do you 4:00think we're gay?" I'm like, "I don't know." So we sort of had this aha realization moment that I guess we're gay. It really sunk in with me; I had to think about it. It wasn't easy to accept the label because that label came with an awful lot of things, negative perceptions and at that time probably really felt like it would change the trajectory of my life, but the label fit the behavior. So we continued being best friends and sexually involved, and it got 5:00to the point in time where it was time when we graduated from high school, and he went off to college, and I went off to college. That pretty much ended the relationship.

KENNELLY: Going to different colleges?

WEBER: Yes we went to different colleges. He was on the West Coast, and I was on the East Coast here at Virginia Tech. So as I look back at that moment it was a very--the parting of--him going to the West Coast and me staying here on the East Coast, it just sort of was a natural evolution of life. The connection we had as friends, it was sad to lose a friend, but it was just more of moving on to the next phase of life. I've looked back many times and thought, well should I have felt more upset of losing this very close friend and this person who I had discovered my sexuality with and everything. It was just more of a moving on 6:00because at that point in time I don't think in my life I really had comprehended the labels and negativity that went with the label of being gay. It was just very natural and it wasn't until, again getting a little older and starting to see and hear what people would say about gay people and things like that, I would say hmmm, the societal pressures or the societal labels started to ingrain themselves in myself.

So that would be I would say the early phases. Also during that time, I met some other friends through one of my hobbies. I love riding trains and going on train trips, and I met a guy through the railroad group on a trip, and we were just 7:00friends and we were hanging out, and one night he said to me "I want to take you somewhere." I was like, "All right, I'm game."

So he took me to a gay bar in Washington D.C. down in southeast. I remember walking in and going, "Oh my gosh." He didn't say where we were going. I guess he just sort of knew. We had never discussed being gay or anything like that. I walked into the gay bar, and I was like, "Ooh, my gosh. Like, wow! I can't believe this place, look at all these people." Gay men, I probably wasn't even labeling them in my own mind at that point in time; again this was still in high school at the end of high school. I remember the very next day--I probably wasn't in school the next day-- very soon after that I found my friend it was 8:00Steven and another friend Ken and I was like, "Oh my gosh. You all have got to see where I've been." So we loaded in mom's Chevy and drove down to D.C., and I took Ken and Steven to the Lost and Found, the bar. I never looked back since [laughter]. That was sort of the--just an absolutely amazing moment.

As I sort of went through life, that was the end of high school, I went out a lot that summer to the clubs again at that point in time you could pretty much be eighteen, and it was legal to drink and go out to the bars. Then when I came to Virginia Tech it was isolating again. My friend Steven had gone off to the West Coast, my friend Ken had gone to UVA and I was here. The only people that I 9:00knew here, to use all the labels, were straight friends that I wasn't out to at that point in time. I moved into Lee Hall, and it was-- just the overwhelming task of acclimating to college, university life the transition again from high school to university classes. That took a lot of my time. I certainly enjoyed going out in the evenings with friends, but never to any gay bars or anything because I hadn't met anybody who was gay here that I felt safe with or had connected with until the very end of my freshman year. I met some folks. I met a guy whose name was Bill. Bill Daly at that point in time, was just getting 10:00started the group that became known as Lambda Horizon. I didn't meet him until the very end of my freshman year. I remember being really hopeful, like, "Oh great, so when I come back in the fall, I will have to find Bill. I've got a new community that I can start to relate with or network with in Blacksburg." So that summer went out to all the clubs and to the bars and stuff like that, and I still wasn't out to my parents yet.

KENNELLY: Yeah I was wondering about that.

WEBER: I still was not out to my parents yet. Steven had come back from the West Coast for that summer. His parents still lived down the street, and we went out. I got an internship in the government that year at the Bureau of Alcohol, 11:00Tobacco, and Firearms. So I would work all day, go out all night--the eternal pattern of college students. That has not changed whatsoever I don't think.

So it was time to come back to Virginia Tech in the fall, and at that point in time, Lambda Horizon was just getting started, and Bill Daly approached me about being secretary of the group. I agreed, I really can't remember the details of how it all came about, but I agreed to do it, and soon after that a gentleman by the name of Greg Edwards who was writing for the CT [Collegiate Times] started to do a series of articles on Lambda Horizon and what we were doing and what it was all about. It was a little series about the history of the LGBT gay community at Blacksburg or Virginia Tech. I was interviewed for that, and I 12:00remember I was afraid to use my last name, and so in that series of articles I was known as Mark W. That didn't last too long in terms of the being scared of using my name.

We put together Lambda Horizon that year, and Lambda Horizon--I'm getting ahead of the question, but I'm going to just keep talking so let me know. In Lambda Horizon we were really a lifeline for each other, which was pretty much what the organization was: for LGBT students to connect with other students here in Blacksburg. The way we did that is we had a phone line. I can't remember what the phone number was, and we moved it around from apartment to apartment, because people--the university wasn't paying for it. It was totally a peer run 13:00operation. We had a P.O. Box at the post office. I do remember that was P.O. Box 686, and we would check that all the time. Then we just had paper flyers that we put all over campus.

The phone would ring, and we would answer it, and depending on the situation, sometimes folks just wanted to meet somewhere to talk; other times we would say we had regular meetings. At that point in time we were having meetings at the Cooper House because folks were afraid to meet on campus. So as I said, it was really a lifeline for each other. It was a connection to other students who were having the same feelings and the same anxieties if you will and camaraderie. It 14:00wasn't all anxiety; it ended up being a really great social network. Lambda Horizon also had some really awesome faculty, community members that were very supportive of the organization. Again, at that point in time, the university wasn't supporting the organization, and we relied on dues from members and donations from faculty or alumni.

KENNELLY: Was it recognized by the--

WEBER: No, it wasn't recognized at that point in time. We did have a faculty sponsor, and I know he was in the Philosophy Department. I think it was that time that we did get recognition from the university I think it was the '83 -'84 school year. I'd have to go back and look at my records to see if I've figured 15:00that out. Again it was a professor in the Philosophy Department. He wasn't gay; he just was an ally at that point in time and was like, "I'm happy to support you all to have a student group." Back to the university, there was no funding. We had become recognized at that point in time. So we really built a great sense of community for each other and support for each other here in Blacksburg and at Virginia Tech between the faculty, staff, and with alumni support and other community members.

KENNELLY: How did they all get involved? Just from the flyers?

WEBER: Flyers, the phone line, word of mouth, you meet somebody, and you happen to get a sense that they might be gay and somehow you would slowly get to the 16:00point of asking them a question or seeing what they are interested in. We used to joke if you had lots of plants. We used to joke that if you walked into a dorm room that had a lot of plants and fancy stuff [you thought] hmmm maybe, or the type of music that folks would listen to. So anyway you would look for these clues, like maybe he's gay? Then you sort of go about trying to find out, and then sometimes they would show up at a Lambda Horizon meeting. So the connections. People are resilient, and we are survivors, and I guess there's a lot to the old saying "Birds of a feather flock together," and somehow we found each other. I will say the lucky ones found each other.

I have no idea how many students at that point in time or faculty members were dealing with feelings. I can't imagine they didn't see a tent card in a dining hall or a poster on the wall, but they weren't able to make that call or make that connection. So I'm labeling the lucky ones who found each other and maybe that was their path, so ultimately and hopefully folks found their way to acceptance of themselves and integrating their lives and living a proud life as to who they are and not in fear. As I'm talking about this now it's just the fear, the discrimination, the prejudice it was just part of life, and it led to 18:00a lot of fear in people's lives. So much fear that I didn't want anyone to know who I was, but I knew who I was. It felt natural, and it was just who I was. So anyway that was a lot of the work that we did at Lambda Horizon. We would have potluck dinners sponsored by faculty members. We'd have parties. We'd rent the clubhouse at Foxridge, and Halloween parties were always a favorite. We did spring trips to Washington or a couple of us would get together and go up to D.C. or go out camping. I'm trying to think of some of the other trips we did, but it was mainly social activities that we did.

Also at that point in time-- and this played a little bit later on into to how 19:00things evolved here in Blacksburg and with the Lambda Horizon-- that was when AIDS came onto the scene. I remember people saying to me here, "That's something that happens in the big cities; we don't need to worry about it here in Blacksburg." It was like in New York and San Francisco, then it spread L.A., Washington, cities all over. When you're in such denial about so many things, and life is--I can't quite think of the right word-- life is what it is as a college student. Those are things that are way far away, but I remember the conversations, and it was a little scary, but it wasn't here in Blacksburg. So let's see that would be '83/'84 my sophomore year and the first full year of 20:00Lambda Horizon. Then that year I was elected to be president the following year. I went back to D.C. for the summer and again worked all day, went out all night [laughter]. I don't know how I did all that, but I did. Then came back to Virginia Tech. That was in '84/'85, and that was the year we really started getting serious about well what is it we're doing, and why are we doing it, and why are we meeting off campus? That was a real struggle, and I remember I specifically adopted an approach, and it still comes up today in situations. It's like we're a student group like any other group of students. We're here to 21:00learn; we're here to laugh. We're here to screw around a little, drink a little, and whatever else comes along with that. We deserved to be treated just like any other student, and that was my core belief. It was like about Lambda Horizon and the students that were involved. Then I started thinking about, and with the group, we started doing things that other student groups would do. I'm probably going to get my years a little mixed up here in the time zone. I'm close enough.

KENNELLY: Yeah that's fine.

WEBER: That was the time the BT [Blacksburg Transit] started. Heaven forbid we have a Blacksburg without a BT that's hard to imagine [laughter]. It was like oh my gosh, we have buses! Groups then started donating money for bus shelters, so 22:00we started a thing bowling for bus shelters. Other groups were raising money for bus shelters; that's what we were going to do. People said, "You can't do that." I thought, why not? We never raised enough money to hit the threshold to get the bus shelter, but the concept was there. There are a couple of the flyers in the collection.

KENNELLY: Where did you go to bowl?

WEBER: Well here at Squires there was bowling. I don't know if it's still here?

KENNELLY: Right. It still is.

WEBER: Then there were also the lanes out by Christiansburg. It was more of an informal thing we did. It wasn't like formal with the university because the part of not being a part of the university is you really didn't have to deal with all of the university rules and regulations. There was a lot of trust within our community too, so when money came in, folks knew where it was going 23:00to go and trusted that it was. The other thing that I remember doing is Doctor Ruth came to Virginia Tech to speak, and she was quite scandalous with her frank sex talks. Of course, probably by today's standards, probably pretty mild. I haven't looked back to hear about the things she's said. So a whole big group of us, like other student groups, wanted to go together to see her at Burruss auditorium. So I went to the Virginia Tech Student Union, I think that's what it was called--it may still be called that. I said, "I want a group of tickets for this student group, the gay student group." They said, "Well we don't really have a way to do this, blah, blah, blah." I thought that was ridiculous, so I wrote a big old letter about why this is ridiculous and how I think we should 24:00change the policy, and I was never shy about bringing the CT [Collegiate Times] into these things. So not only did my letter go to the student union, it also went to the CT, and it got published in the CT.

KENNELLY: As Mark W. or Mark Weber?

WEBER: As Mark Weber. When I became president, I became Mark Weber. That's when that little transition happened. If I remember correctly the head of the Student Union at that point in time was a woman by the name of Mary Thorine [Note: At that time Mary Thorine was assistant director for programs; David Ostroth was director of Student Activities], I believe. I don't know why I am remembering that name. They changed the policy so that student groups could buy blocks of tickets for big events here at the university. Of course, the student union having to deal with the CT, they made sure their letter was published in the CT back.

So it was quite an activist approach using the media available, and at the same 25:00time, the only thing we were asking was to be treated like other student groups, and we behaved like other student groups. That was just a core principle that we tried to follow. Eighty-five to eighty-six, and again I think the bowling for bus stops and that VTU [Virginia Tech Union] thing probably happened in that '85-'86 year too, but '85-'86 we decided to get really serious about HIV AIDS. This was something that was impacting the community. It impacted the health of students. Again, we're students. I know we were LGBT students, but we were students first with the LGBT afterwards.

There was another person, her name was Lucretia Cavin, and I think she was also working with the Virginia Tech Student Union and she had approached the student health center, a woman by the name of Jo Ann Underwood, who was the health educator here for a number of years. Jo Ann Underwood had done a number of sex talks for us in Lambda Horizon as well as health and well- being and sex talks for us about taking care of ourselves. So Jo Ann reached out to Lambda Horizon to say, "Hey, we're talking about this. I think you should be involved in it." I got involved very quickly. We formed an AIDS education committee, worked with the head of the student health center, Doctor Schiffert at that point in time. There was a Doctor Walter Vomlehn--at that time we did not know he had a gay son 27:00who was either very close to death from AIDS or had just died from AIDS.

He ended up writing about it during that period. Doctor Desjardins, there was a Woody Leach involved, Ken, I'm blanking on his name, from the counseling center, and Edward Spencer who was then the head of housing here at campus [Note: director of Housing and Residence Life]. If I forget somebody, I apologize. This group of people got busy working, and I know Jo Ann talked with some folks within the university system to let them know what we were doing. I will continue to say that even though at some times it appears that the university was fighting with us, if it wasn't for the university and the people who worked 28:00within the university, we would not have done what we were able to do. So it was that tension within the community itself, but the real champions and heroes here are people from within the university like Jo Ann and Ed and others. They were working for change from the inside out, and we as students were doing what was right. So we got to work with this AIDS education forum, and one of the things that happened is we had a committee meeting, and we started deciding what would be the best way to do AIDS education, and we decided to do an educational forum and develop some materials and pamphlets, things like that. Again this was all before Internet and email and just how that has revolutionized our way of communicating.

KENNELLY: There were probably mimeographs.

WEBER: Oh yes, we had the ditto machine. No one was sniffing the purple stuff, but anyway the student health center then was Henderson Hall, so we used that mimeograph machine a lot. Part of this whole effort culminated in an AIDS education forum here. It was in McBryde Hall March 1986, I'm pretty sure. It may have been March 3rd if I can remember that correctly. We brought in experts from around the country to speak about what was happening, the virus, how it was spread, what was known at that point in time. At that point in time, if you became infected, it pretty much meant you needed to take care of your business, and death was pretty much the expected outcome at that point. A core value of 30:00mine that has carried me throughout my life afterwards was "nothing about us without us." We thought it was really import to bring people living with AIDS here to Blacksburg to talk about their experience and where their lives were, and how they were coping with the disease. So in addition to these again nationally renowned experts, we went and we found some folks who were willing to come here from D.C. and talk.

Again, I want to preface, the university was supportive of us doing this effort, and at the same time, the university was concerned that we were bringing people with HIV AIDS here. They were worried there would be some kind of emergency 31:00accident and we were required to have ambulances stationed outside of McBryde during this forum. At the time, I guess I didn't quite comprehend the offensive nature of that, however it was the compromise, I would imagine. It's like how do you deal with --I have to laugh now years down the road, but how do you deal with these students and what they're doing. Again the committee was made up of students, faculty, and staff here, but just the dynamics and highly politically charged at that point in time. Here we are this group [thinking] why do we have to be the leader in this particular area of all things? So we had our forum, and 32:00it went really well, again made sure all the newspapers knew about it, and we received coverage in the Roanoke Times and CT, radio and TV were here. Again, I have to laugh because the university P.R. people were probably like, "Oh my gosh," but god bless them and thank them for letting us do it. I would add that the university provided resources in terms of money to help us do this. So it wasn't necessarily the university supporting the students who were LGBT. It was the university supporting a public health effort. Once I learned the process for doing that, I was like well why isn't the student group getting money? Now I know the process.

It was about that time that we submitted our first budget because again student 33:00dues and faculty who were paying into the Lambda Horizon bank account, and alumni were the ones paying for the phone line, which was the lifeline for so many people here. We felt like the university should be paying for that. It is a service we are providing to the university. And the university--we put together a budget, we outlined it, and they agreed. It was not an issue, and I think in retrospect if we had asked earlier we probably would have been funded earlier. We may have been probably afraid to ask a little bit. So the timing was right. We had proved, demonstrated through the education work that we were responsible for the resources, we could follow through on what we said we were going to do, 34:00and we submitted a budget, and we were funded. So I'm pretty sure it was 1985 that Lambda Horizon received its first funding from the university for advertising. We didn't get to charge the parties to the university [laughter]. We would have liked to try, but anyway so that's when we really started with the funding.

The next major step, and I think it probably happened in 1986 was moving the group from off campus onto campus. Again it was going back to the argument of every student group that wants can get space on campus for a meeting. Why can't we? Again, why are we different? We are not. We are students paying for this 35:00university and like to think that everybody here works for us. So we submitted a request, and I actually think our first meeting was in Squires in one of the student meeting rooms. There were a lot of people who were afraid that bad things were going to happen, or that people were going find out that gay students were meeting in a particular place and there would be trouble, but like so many of our fears in life they really were unfounded. That doesn't mean things can't and don't happen, but a lot of the fear was generated by ourselves. We moved onto campus, and we met ever after on campus. We ended up usually meeting over in Pamplin. That ended up being one of our regular meeting places. So we pretty much made that transition from an outside group peer support 36:00network to a legitimate university sponsored organization through that time frame. It was awesome.

Looking back now, I saved all my notes from the meetings, and all the work we did at Lambda Horizon over the years, and I kept thinking I don't know who in the world would ever want this stuff, but for some reason I kept it because I knew someone might want it someday and I'm quite honored that it is now part of the libraries Special Collections. There is an unintentional, but I'm glad we did, documentation of how a lot of these things happened here in the early to mid-eighties as Lambda Horizon transitioned from again outside of the university 37:00world to becoming part of the university. The challenge at that point in time when you achieve equality doesn't mean you have achieved equity in the world. So now the complete university versus the segments of the university that were supporting us. The complete university is now recognizing us as an equal student group with equal privileges and responsibilities because the privilege of meeting on campus comes with responsibilities, but how do we achieve that equity in terms of equity of treatment, equity of acceptance, overcoming again the stereotypes and prejudice that go along with being LGBT at that point in time.

I graduated and finished out my career here at Virginia Tech, graduated March of 1987, extended a little bit, a lot of extra curricular activities that contributed to the exceptional education I received here at Virginia Tech. I would also say. I have a marketing degree--the support I received from the marketing department in terms of the work that I did with the student health center and in terms of public health education was fundamental to and built the foundation of the career that I have led. Jo Ann Underwood planted the seed that 39:00has grown to, and I say this with all humility, the senior career federal official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. All things CDC, all things food and drug administration all things NIH or head start, early head start, all those public education programs come through my office, and somehow I have an opportunity to touch those things, and I go back to the foundation of what I learned here at Virginia Tech. I feel incredibly blessed and lucky to have the opportunity that I did here with people like Jo Ann, the marketing professor Julie Ozanne, who actually is still affiliated with the university. I 40:00had an opportunity to touch base with her. She was awesome; she helped me come up with an independent study program that applied marketing to public health issues. Little did I know at that time there was a whole field of social marketing being developed. So Julie was helping me do it while a whole field was evolving.

KENNELLY: You were part of a vanguard.

WEBER: Yeah. I was doing what I needed to do and this community supported this individual in doing that. It was around some very important public health issues, social justice issues, equality. So sort of a perfect, I don't want to call it a perfect storm, but a perfect mix, and I took advantage of it in a way 41:00that was fulfilling and rewarding. I can sort of go into detail more on these topics as well, you know while I was here at Virginia Tech, or how it's contributed to my career afterwards, or the approach we took as a student group. You got me on a role there [laughter]; you keep going.

KENNELLY: Well I have a few questions, but I do want to talk about all those things you were mentioning just now. When you said you were afraid to meet on campus originally, was there experienced discrimination? Did you ever have that experience?

WEBER: Good questions, yes.

KENNELLY: Or subtle discrimination?

WEBER: All of the above, overt to subtle to we made it up ourselves, and so I'll start with my personal experience, and then expand it to some other experiences that I've heard about. So I mentioned I lived in Lee Hall. The first year I lived in Lee Hall I was in the closet. [I tried to] blend in, mix in.

KENNELLY: With an assigned roommate?

WEBER: With an assigned roommate. Actually started out with an assigned roommate. Then that roommate left, and I ended up with a neighbor from home who was a friend as well, but didn't know I was gay, or I had not verbalized I was. You never know these things. So we were roommates that year, and then my 43:00sophomore year when I came back, I said, no. I'm the secretary of Lambda Horizon. I decided I was going to be really out, so I was very out in Lee Hall. I had made an arrangement with another person to be another roommate.

KENNELLY: Another person who was gay or just--

WEBER: Straight, down the hall and was cool with me. It was somebody I had met while I was here during my freshman year, and he lived down the hall. Anyway, his name was Gordon. So Gordon and I were roommates, and I was out. I was really out. Gordon was very busy with his fraternity, so it was one of those roommate situations where if we happened to be there it was nice, but neither of us was really in the room a lot, and we were good friends through that year. The guys, 44:00I remember, in the room next door, and they were just merciless in their harassment and just trying to agitate me, pick on me. I don't ever recall anything overt about it, but it was a little covert, and it was just obnoxious stuff.

KENNELLY: Like what would they do?

WEBER: It was like shoving stuff through the closet because there were holes in the closets back then. Putting up little signs, something about gay people. Nothing vicious, but it was the underlying, and there was just some tension about it, and whatever it was in me, it just did not bug me. I was like, "All 45:00right, whatever, who cares? blah blah blah." I was experiencing my life. I was making friends. I was getting involved in the university. I was busy. I didn't have time for this childishness stuff. Maybe also it was a way of blocking it out or something or ignoring it. I just didn't let it get to me.

The end of my sophomore year, they called me over to their room, the next-door neighbors' room. I'd never really--maybe I'd seen it or something like that. I thought, "Oh great now what?" They called me in to say, "You know we have harassed the hell out of you for this whole year. You are having the best time of your life." It was like, "We give it up." It was just sort of like, "You go 46:00on these cool things. You do all this great stuff. You just pissed us off because you wouldn't react," and they threw me a little party. I haven't seen these guys ever since kind of deal, but it was like--I remember because one of the things, one of the great perks of being gay in Blacksburg at that point in time. Luther Brice had a cabin out at Claytor Lake, and he would invite folks to come out and go sailing and hang out on the lake on the weekend. So while they were here in the hot un-air-conditioned dorms, I'm going sailing this weekend, guys. I remember that's one of the things they said, "You go sailing. You're going to these dinners," and all this stuff, and I'm like, "Well yeah, I'm just doing what I'm doing." That was a really touching moment for me obviously. I'm 47:00like, they gave up!

It would sort of be fun to go back and find these folks, and I imagine I could, but I haven't. So that was my own experience on campus. First year, in the closet really quiet, nothing happened. Nobody was looking for stuff. Second year really "out," sort of a sustained harassment that obviously took a toll on me, but I was able to bounce back, let it roll off my back. All those kinds of coping skills that sometimes are good and sometimes are not healthy, and they had a party for me at the end of the year to congratulate me for living through it and being gay and not give up. So that was awesome. I'm living through that.

A number of us, friends--the roommate would find out they were gay, and at that point in time at the university, the gay one had to move. You hear the difference? So it's your problem. You're gay. You're the one causing the problem. I know a lot of people that is their memory of Virginia Tech. So as we are talking about doing an alumni group they're like, "Well they made me move. I got through it. I got my degree. I'm done." That's changed. I've definitely heard.

So it's that kind of pressure so if you're the gay one, you're the one creating the problem. The stories that you heard from older members of the community 49:00about how the university would treat gays or that you couldn't be gay and work here. I knew from my government jobs, my summer internship jobs that at that point in time you could be fired from the government for being gay, the federal government. You definitely couldn't get security clearance. People did, but you couldn't--so I was like, "Oh my gosh, now I'm really "out" at school. I've got this government job. I'm like [makes nervous sound]. I just figured I'd deal with it when I had to deal with it. So you had the stories. We just felt the pressure and just the fact that we were meeting off campus. It was secure. We were off campus. It was a place to go away from here and be as comfortable as we 50:00were to meet. I don't have any data or anything like that, but I really don't think that the group suffered by moving on campus and that it ultimately grew to about 200 plus members or 250 I remember towards the end when I left, in our database.

KENNELLY: Two hundred and fifty? From a very small group in the beginning or--

WEBER: Two hundred and fifty. Yeah, I mean it was just a handful of us [in the beginning]. Again that's not representative of who were here, it's just who became involved. Some people were very involved, other people would show up at meetings, other people just showed up at the parties, other people you might see at the bar in Roanoke just like any group, there is varying involvement. The 51:00fear was the fear that we instilled in ourselves based on our life experience. Then, like the old saying, ninety percent of what you worry about doesn't happen anyway. So we moved onto campus, and the things people were worried about didn't happen. It helped as a part of legitimizing the group of students, and we never looked back. Again older alumni, people from my cohort and after, some just really felt picked on and harassed here for being gay. When I say gay, I will add lesbian and LGBT the whole thing. There were a few friends from that letter, 52:00if you will. I will also say as part of the group, we also got to the point where we were trying to be more diverse and male and female. We tried to set up women's issues groups, and just a lot of the same issues that are going on today we were grappling with them once we legitimized ourselves.

KENNELLY: Did it start out as a male group?

WEBER: It was mostly all male. I mean there were a few lesbians involved. The concept of a transgender or bisexual, it wasn't part of the mix at that point in time. I'm not saying there weren't people, who identified that way, but it wasn't something that was spoken or maybe they didn't even feel comfortable speaking. It was more gay, lesbian, much more gay, and it was white guys with a 53:00little diversity. I think the university overall has become much more diverse over the years, but that's how it got started.

KENNELLY: It seems impressive that it was so pretty much, early on, intergenerational in the sense that students are actually mingling with faculty in a social way or mingling perhaps even with community members. Sometimes it seems that with young people they will just stay in there own room, but to go--I mean that seems quite striking and sort of special.

WEBER: I think it's incredibly special, and I think we were fortunate to have 54:00such a strong support network from faculty and staff and members of the community here. I will propose that they maybe found some strength in the resilience of the students.

KENNELLY: Oh I'm sure.

WEBER: Probably thought, oh my gosh, I'd never do that in my day [laughter]. Maybe if I contribute here a little bit and hold a potluck and that's the way of contributing. So there is great richness in working across generations in diverse groups of people. I mean we all have so much to share and teach each other and learn from each other. I'll say one of the events that are happening 55:00here this weekend is we started the Ex Lapide group and that's been an interesting struggle from a few vantage points. We are doing a lunch with students tomorrow, and I hate to admit this, but apparently the students like to hear about the way it used to be. So it's like oh great now I'm like the ancient person, or as I was labeled the ancient gay. That was I think over thirty, so the way things used to be. I pretty much took a twenty-year, twenty-five-year break from Virginia Tech once I graduated. I left in '87, and Virginia Tech essentially, the way I describe it, froze in my mind as 1987, and I came back. I 56:00visited a little bit for a number of reasons, but never really engaged with the university.

KENNELLY: Just visiting friends?

WEBER: Yeah, but again not engaging the university. I came back, It was about three years ago, for a memorial service for one of the faculty members that was one of our great supporters when I was here as a student. His name was Arthur Squires. Awesome man and wonderful that I got to meet this person, hear his stories and his life journey, and just an amazing person. So I came back for his memorial service, and folks had been kicking around the idea of doing an alumni group. It had been kicked around a little bit, but Tom Tillar approached me directly and asked if I would be interested in doing it. I hemmed and hawed a little bit and had the opportunity to meet with some students, and I'm like, wow 57:00things have changed here! Again I was frozen in 1987, and then met with some faculty and then reconnected with Edward Spencer, Jo Ann Underwood, and I'm like, "Okay I will try to do this because of Ed Spencer and Jo Ann Underwood. I will do this because they did so much for us and me when I was here as a student. It's giving back to the university. It's hoping and knowing that students won't have to go through some of the same discrimination and prejudices that we experienced. They still do, not as much.

As I got to know some folks here, I'm like, wow! Now it's like sub groups of sub groups and arguing over university policy and all this stuff. I was like, when we were meeting, we used to have to get a case of beer and stuff envelopes; we were like hanging on. Now you are arguing about subsection three A of the discrimination clause of the university's whatever, which is awesome that they are as passionate about that as I was about writing a letter to the CT or something. You can say more on that in the current state of things, but having that community and the ability to cross generations and share our lives is just totally empowering, and it is why I am sitting here today because of the folks 59:00who helped me along. Driving down here today, I'm like, Why am I doing this? I'm getting the emails coming in right and left for work. I'm like, okay, What am I doing? I remember what folks did for me like Luther Brice, and Arthur Squires, and Dean O'Donnell and Bill and Allen--just so many wonderful folks that helped make things easier for my cohort to grow, and it's my turn. That's why I'm doing it, and there's a lot of passion about it. So anyway yeah the whole generation thing is vital, so this lunch tomorrow is sort of a way of again checking in and 60:00being a resource. I'm not advertising free internships or anything like that, but if you need some help in D.C. or something like that, and maneuvering through the government, I'm happy to chat with folks.

KENNELLY: That's so important. Networking is everything.

WEBER: It's how I got my first job out of Tech, short version of the story, was a newspaper ad I answered in the Washington Post, but the reason why I got the job is because of all the HIV AIDS work I did here on campus.

KENNELLY: Wow and what was the first job?

WEBER: I worked for a non-profit in DC. It was a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control on HIV prevention in adolescence.

KENNELLY: Oh my gosh.

WEBER: So even though I didn't have formal training in terms of health educator, 61:00they were just amazed at the work that I had done, and they were like, "Let's bring in this guy and talk to him," and I got the job. I worked my tail off and met a young man; his name was Bill Travis, who was living with AIDS, and asked him to come speak at a conference I was organizing. So Bill and I got to be really good friends, and he was one of the first people with AIDS that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recognized, and this is around 1987/88. So Bill introduced me to some people at the Department of Health and Human Services at the federal government. They called me in and said, "Why don't you 62:00come work for us?" I was like, I hate the federal government. Why would I go work for the federal government? [laughter]. Three things when I left Virginia Tech I said I would never do: work for the federal government, go back to school, and I was never going to deal with this health stuff again. I did all three things, went back to school, worked for the federal government.

KENNELLY: Why did you take it when you felt that way?

WEBER: On reflection I think I was tired when I graduated from Tech. I had just pushed through five amazing years here. As active in the community as I was with my work and studies, and I was tired and burned out. There's also a whole leadership story here to go with that, but it was like I'm leaving this group. How's it going to continue on? I tried to set up a successor. Things just, well 63:00it was sort of floundering. That was bothering me, and what was all this for? And I'm done.

I'll never forget I was walking along the drill field. My last final was in War Memorial gym, and I walked out of there, and I remember thinking, Now what? There was this huge push of energy to the point of I actually had to drop out one quarter because I just didn't sleep. I was busy doing everything and got sick with mono. So anyway I remember thinking, Now what? Well I know I'm not going to work for the federal government. I am not going back to school. I am just done with school. I'm getting out of this health stuff, and I think I was 64:00burnt out. Again on reflection that was me settling in on those are the things I am going to do. It was the exact opposite, and throughout my career every time I have tried to veer out of that lane, the force puts me right back in.

KENNELLY: Some opportunity would open or something?

WEBER: Oh my gosh, it's amazing. It just is my passion, and I love it. Sometimes you just want a break, and I think I wanted a break at that point. I think literally by those three statements, I was cementing as anchors what was next, and I just think I was feeling tired at that point in time and was a twenty-two year old ready to retire [laughter].

KENNELLY: Then the resilience comes back.

WEBER: Yeah, I took a nap and deviated a little bit from that but then started answering ads. Again to get back, I answered that ad, worked for the non-profit HIV prevention AIDS and met these guys, and they were friends. "Come work at HHS." Okay, well I'll work here two or three years. I asked if they would pay for me to go to school, and they said, "Yes." and I was like, "Okay." I went to GW [George Washington University] for my M.B.A. in marketing again, applying all the same skills. If you look at my M.B.A. program and the body of work I did there, a lot of it is related to health issues, applying for-profit marketing to public health issues.

A turning point in my career very early at that point in time was during the 66:00first Bush administration. The World Hemophilia Foundation was having their big worldwide conference in Washington, D.C., and they had invited the administration to come and speak on HIV and immigration policy. At that point in time, people with HIV weren't being allowed into the U.S. I mean it was U.S. policy. The argument was well they aren't a harm to anybody. They aren't contagious. And so, this is my version, but it's like people with hemophilia at that point in time were perceived to be the innocent victims because of the blood transfusions. We didn't have a safe blood supply, which is one of the primary factors of transmission of HIV until there were the tests that came along. So people with hemophilia were a large chunk of the population of the 67:00people with AIDS. They are the innocent victims. This is the Bush administration after the Regan administration. Immigration is a hot issue. The Assistant Secretary for Health was sent to give the keynote address to this group, and that's who I was working for. There was no one around to write the speech, so I volunteered to write the speech. I wrote this speech on HIV AIDS immigration policy, and next thing you know I was writing speeches, speech writing, scheduling, and advance work, which then I finished up my M.B.A.

I had a desire that I wanted to be the director of communications for a public health agency within HHS. I wanted CDC, but that was pretty big. I managed to become the director of communications for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administration, which is one of the big agencies in HHS. I did that for 68:00sixteen years. This is really the short version, and got a little antsy. It was like maybe it was time, and maybe I just need to get out again. This was one of those moments where I was thinking about getting out of the health communications work, and I was asked to apply for the job as the director of communications for the Center for Disease Control. It was like here I go.

I lined up my advocates, and folks were supportive of this move for me within the Department of Health and Human Services, and just the way things are structured, all of these agencies report to the office of the secretary of HHS. The assistant secretary for Public Affairs, who all of these agencies report to 69:00in the communications work across the department, called and said to me, "If you are willing to go to CDC, would you be willing to come here?" I was like, "The reason I wanted to go to the CDC was to get to the job you are offering." So I was like, "Yes." Hence that is how I became the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services. I jokingly say it's a trillion dollar entity with 80,000 employees that touches everybody's lives everyday around the world. It is an amazing place that does wonderful things, and the federal government has got a lot of problems, but the pride of what we do in our work is amazing. I mean it just is literally incredible what happens that people in this country and around the worked take for granted until 70:00something doesn't work, and then they are paying attention.

So again I get back to my foundation here at Virginian Tech, it was built here. With the people, the passion, the commitment, and the opportunities I had here as a student with organizing students and working with the university. So take a breath [laughter].

KENNELLY: It's very interesting. Back to the time when you were here as a student and the work of Lambda Horizon-- I thought it was very impressive really that all the AIDS education done at that point was sort of major. You put on a major event, and it had involvement from faculty and administrators.

WEBER: One of the things we were really proud of was that Virginia Tech along with University of California Berkley were recognized by the American College Health Association for their outstanding AIDS education efforts, and we were invited to go to New Orleans to speak at the American College Health Association's annual meeting and present on our work. The homespun fun of Jo Ann Underwood, and the fact that we did this, we called it on a shoestring budget. Everything that was in those records we put together a packet--Virginia Tech so 72:00we used rubber cement on poster board for the articles and doing a timeline and all this. We did our "how we did it in rural southwestern Virginia." In a time when the university I'm sure was proud of us, but it wasn't quite thrilled that this was why we were leading the way. Then there were the U.C. Berkley kids, and it was sort of like one of those summer vacation movies. They had their slick booth and the binders and display, and we we're like, "Wow look at that!" It was very impressive, and at the same time the similarities were the heart and the passion for the issue. That was just an incredible moment bringing recognition to the university, bringing recognition to the students and staff who had the 73:00foresight and the hard work that we all put into it.

Then that work continued. Again I think our student health center was quite progressive in terms of the relationship, again they have the fraternities, the sororities, the on-campus housing. Jo Ann Underwood was more like your favorite aunt; you couldn't talk to your parents, but you could talk to your aunt. She was the one who was a little bit out there and more approachable. Jo Ann would just go around, I remember she came in to one of our meetings. She said, "I've lost my diaphragm. Has anyone seen a diaphragm laying around?" We just thought, oh my gosh, who is this woman? [laughter] That was her, and at the same time put 74:00us at ease about how we were going to talk about these things that just are very hard to talk about. It's a real tribute to the university health centers, health system, and the forward thinking of the folks that were working there.

I would also attribute to Jo Ann, and this has been true of my entire life, I've been fortunate to meet people who know how to harness my energy. She was like, "Oh this one's a mess." She said this to me subsequently that she just had to figure out a way to sort of guide that energy in a way that was going to be productive as opposed to counterproductive. In retrospective looking back, my 75:00bosses have all been that way through my career, and it really has helped me a lot. I try to practice always talking to someone about what you're going to do before you do it because if you've aligned with really good people, they are going to tell you that's a great idea, or they're going to say, "You might want to rethink that." Jo Ann was really good about, "You might want to rethink that." [laughter]

I remember a friend of mine--folks had seen that I'd managed to get, that I was doing my marketing work in the student health center, and they were like, "Hmm, how do I get an independent study at the student health center?" I'll never forget this one student did a display in Squires. It was on anal warts, and I 76:00remember Jo Ann going, "I don't know how we are going to do this," [laughter] but they did it, and there was this display with pictures and all sorts of stuff.

Which also reminds me when we were advertising the HIV AIDS prevention forum and stuff, we had some safe sex brochures. We did tent cards for the dining hall. We had some different labels for them, and they were initially rejected by the dining hall. They were like, "These are very unappetizing." That was the reason that they were rejected. I will have to take people at their face value that they just found them unappetizing. But we were able to make the argument that even if they were unappetizing-- read between the lines that you don't want to 77:00read this stuff or you have your own issues about LGBT--even if they are unappetizing, they are important public health issues and messages. That again I don't know who went to bat for us internally at the university, but they [the posters] got approved. Then we were out putting our tent cards. I lost that tent card. I had that thing where they wrote on it, whoever it was at the dining services at that time who approved tent cards. I'm sure they still do tent cards, but probably our archaic old-fashioned tribute to the old ways of communicating. Anyway, so those kinds of messages that you'd get would feed into mmm people don't like us here. We as students at that point in time, as opposed to being outside of the university, we became tolerated. I would say when I left we were tolerated versus now I would say the vast majority are embraced as a 78:00diverse community. Getting back to my comment about equity, there's still a long way to go, but oh my gosh, light years. Anyways I went through a lot of things.

KENNELLY: When you say there's a long way to go what would you be thinking of in the search for equity?

WEBER: One of the things we know, and I need to get back to this in our conversation--my parents-- but one of the things that has the most influence on 79:00determining your destiny as a child are your parents. As a LGBT child, if your parents accept you without question that opens up so many more doors and reduces the possibility of depression, suicide, drug addiction--all those things that come with internal stress, self hate, things like that and how they manifest themselves. So when all parents are accepting of their children as who they are, we'll be there. We will be there.

Are we there? No. Are there more parents? Absolutely I mean it's awesome some of 80:00the stories I've heard from some of the current students here. Their parents they might think about it a little bit, but, "Go for it." At the same time there are still young people who struggle with, what are my parents going to say? There's a young man that I know who's just brilliant, very well rounded, very grounded. He was an intern at SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration where I worked. He was about twenty-five years old, and the fact that he knew he was gay made him sick in his stomach. This is five years ago, 81:00and I'm like, this brilliant young man, this makes him sick. He thought because his purpose in life is to be successful, empowered, in charge, and he knew that if he were gay he could not be successful. He just could not be gay, so he fought it, he fought it, and again, it made him sick to his stomach. He said to me probably about two years ago, maybe three, he said, "Mark you were gay, and 82:00you're successful," and he said, "It just created more conflict in me."

He invited me to sit and chat with him for a while, he didn't come out to me, and I'm thinking, okay what is this guy doing? Come out here. Are you coming out are you, not coming out? It was like, what's going on here? Finally I just said to him, "Are you gay?" He's like, "Yes, but I'm having a hard time with it." Then subsequently he told me the story about how he saw me in my job and all this. I'm like, this is a brilliant young man.

When he told his parents, they were fine. There was a little drama. He wasn't 83:00thrown out of the house, wasn't whatever. So he had made this up in his mind. On the other hand, I hear stories of young people who are "out" with their parents, and it's never been an issue. So that's still there, and one of the things, as we argue for policy number three and subsection AB for equality around the left footed whatever, the internal struggle that we go through as people about coming out and accepting ourselves is still the same. I think more and more have less and less problems with it, but it is still alive and well. So parental 84:00acceptance is key, and oh my gosh, the things parents have to go through with kids, I can only imagine. I haven't done it, but I am a huge admirer. How do you raise a child in a way that whoever they are is who you want them to be? So anyway that to me is the end game of equity, and it's less about laws and it's more about societal change and embracing people for who they are and not trying to make them what you want them to be or something somebody else wants them to be. It's exciting to see the gamut from total acceptance to again this young man I talked about. So we are at a range now. We're not all that way, so it's 85:00progress. It's movement forward. So it's happening; it just doesn't happen fast enough. Anyway whatever we can do to just help that along.

KENNELLY: In your own case what happened when you told your parents?

WEBER: I'm glad you came back to that I would have left that out [laughter].

KENNELLY: You don't have to answer the question if you don't want to.

WEBER: No, no. So when I came out obviously, as I mentioned earlier, I was sexually active very young, and it was very natural. As I look back now too over the years your sort of develop a lot of hang-ups just based on watching TV, or what you're supposed to look like, or going to gay bars and seeing what you're supposed to look like or something like that. Anyway it was just very natural, 86:00and it was who I was. It was just absolutely beautiful experience with my friend, and then we labeled it, and then it became scary. Then there was sort of a withdrawal from the label, and I remember sort of the internal struggle or feeling the gut and probably just repressing it is ultimately what it is. Then hoping not to get caught because now you're bad. So I went through and finished out my high school senior year, because I mentioned that was when I went to my first gay bar with friends and took friends out. Went through my whole freshman year here at Tech again in the closet very quiet, adapting to university life. I 87:00was thrilled that I met some gay people at the end of the year, at the end of my freshman year, and went through my sophomore year without coming out to my parents, but it was getting really hard. Mark Weber or Mark W. is now in the Collegiate Times. This is the transition that happened. I'm out and about, and as I was telling you, the harassment in the dorm and at the same time the happy ending with that and dealing with the struggle. I did all that again with the support of friends, and so I went home between my sophomore year and junior year. Everybody sort of knew, but how is this topic going to be broached?

KENNELLY: I mean they might have noticed you weren't dating girls anyway.

WEBER: Yeah, they had noticed. So my mom, I'll never forget it. She was making pancakes that morning. We were downstairs, and she had her spatula in one hand and a little tea towel over her shoulder, and she was like, "Would you just tell me if you're gay or not?" I was just sort of like [makes startled noise] and I said, "Yes, I am." It was like a little bit of silence, and she started crying and she's like, "How did this happen?" It was the whole what did I do blah blah blah and all the stereotypical things that you may have read about. She [said], "You can't tell your father. This will kill him." I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm out 89:00and freaking out. I ran downtown to D.C., there was a bookstore called Lambda Rising, and I got the book on What if Your Child is Gay? "Here, read this." I told my mom about PFLAG. I knew these things because I'd been out.

KENNELLY: What is PFLAG?

WEBER: Parent Friends Lesbians and Gays. It is more of a peer support group for parents with LGBT children, so I told her about that, and we went to a meeting, a PFLAG meeting.

KENNELLY: You and your mom?

WEBER: My mom and I yes. There were a lot of tears on her part, and she met some other parents, and I will say the love conquers all kind of deal there, but it 90:00was stressful. We now still had the elephant in the room, but my dad didn't know, or my dad was not directly told. My mom said to me, "I can't keep a secret from your father. That's not how our relationship is. We don't have secrets." I said to my mother, the proudest point in my life and the most difficult thing I've ever done, which when you compare this to everything else in life is pretty easy. I said, "Well it's my responsibility to tell him, and I will do it." So I was getting ready to come back to school, and I'm like, "Well if he kicks me out of the house, I'm going go back to school. I'll figure out how to pay for school. I need to finish school because that's really important to me in my life.

KENNELLY: Are you his only child?

WEBER: I have a younger brother. That comes in the picture in a second. So anyway, my dad was about to buy me a car then. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, he's going to buy me a car, going to kick me out. How am I going to pay for the car? I'm worried about the car. Obviously, as a nineteen-year-old that's the most important thing to worry about. We were walking home from church, and again one of those moments on the street corner, there on the corner where I live. I said, "Dad, I need to tell you something," I told him I was gay. His first question was, "How did you get messed up with that stuff?" Like it's drugs or like somebody introduced me to alcohol or something like that. I was like, "Well, no, I didn't get messed up. It's just who I am." So my dad didn't speak to me for 92:00three days; he didn't speak to anybody for three days.

KENNELLY: Wow. Oh my gosh.

WEBER: Upon reflection later in life, that was his process for internalizing all of this.

KENNELLY: Taking it in.

WEBER: Taking it in, but I think his way was just--it internalized it. I don't know. I think it maybe slowly released over the years. So anyway the next thing that happened is, that was it, it was over with. So I went on with my life. I had a couple men who would show up a lot, and I would be dating or something like that.

I ultimately ended up in a twenty-year relationship with somebody I met here at Virginia Tech as an undergraduate. We didn't start seeing each other until after we, or after I graduated. His name is Riche. Riche was welcomed into the family and part of the family. My mother still talks about Riche being her great helper in the kitchen, and it was another pivotal moment in life was when Riche and I decided we needed to separate. We told his parents, which was not easy. It was quite an intense discussion because Riche's dad and I were very close, and he valued commitments, and he treated our relationship like a marriage, even though 94:00legally we weren't married. I believe I have been subsequently forgiven. We remain good friends, and then explaining it to my parents that we were breaking up and again still to this day my mom still says, "I just really miss Richie. He was such a great helper." Then the added story to that is that my brother became a freshman at Virginia Tech, so I was like, "There's something I need to tell you, so when you start seeing my name in the newspaper down here--" My brother's comment was, I remember this, "It's sort of like someone with a disability. If you have like a broken leg, you don't kick him out." [laughter]

KENNELLY: Not exactly.

WEBER: "Well if that's where you're at." It was fine. He and I are incredibly 95:00close. I said that the toughest thing I've ever done in my life was tell my father." That's a sad statement on society at that point in time, like the pressures we put on people. At the same time, whenever I have to make a tough decision or do something really tough in life, I'm like okay I was able to tell my dad at nineteen. I can do anything. Some days you don't feel like you can do anything, or I don't feel like I can do anything, but other days it's like, if I have a really tough situation, I was able to do that. I can do anything. That was incredibly tough. They didn't throw me out, my dad had his way of dealing and my mom was more accepting and more open about accepting, and my brother, it 96:00was a bump on the road. I was like, okay. That was pretty much the coming out story.

My friends Ken and Steven they had pretty much the same experience, my high school buddies, again there was three of us. It was tough, but none of them were kicked out of the house or banished or anything. I have a really good friend; actually I had dinner with him last night. He is in his late twenties, and his parents kicked him out. This is a matter of six, seven years ago. He is still hurt, grieving, and trying to repair the relationship with his parents. I'm just like, "Why is this still happening? I don't blame the parents, but it damages 97:00the individual for some time, and some people never recover from it. It's very clear to me that that's the kind of thing that leads to high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse and depression and suicide in LGBT youth and the issues that plague young people and adults.

I have an older cousin who's gay, and never came out to the family. Finally came out to me, and again it hasn't been that long. He talked to me about how when he was growing up, people kept asking him, "When are you getting married? When are you getting married?" Because that was the expectation. That was the needle that kept going into people. It wasn't that they thought you were gay, which I guess is progress that people start thinking your gay. And he never lived up to that 98:00expectation of his parents that he was to get married. He thought about doing it, and he's early eighties now, that generation grew up World War II, slightly before the Depression, kind of stuff, but he never lived up to his parents' expectation. He carries that with him now. He's very closeted, and I'm glad we finally connected. It's just sort of different generations. It just keeps getting better, but that doesn't mean somebody today is not suffering as much as somebody did in 1930. The patterns continue.

The two stories I shared with you with the young men in their twenties--that could have happened in 1960, but there's more cases now where it's not a problem 99:00and parents are accepting. There's just a range now, and I don't know how we'll find when we have the tipping point where it's more accepting than less accepting. We've got to be close. If we haven't, I'll be optimistic and say we passed it. When you engage with the students currently here at Tech, oh my gosh, the energy and the excitement and the embracing who they are, and that's like this is so cool. I'm going to assume for the sake of this discussion we have passed the tipping point where there are more accepting parents then less. I would say this country probably is at that point. Line it up with gay marriage going through and stuff like that, and it makes sense.

KENNELLY: Did you ever get married?

WEBER: No, I did not get married.

KENNELLY: And you don't have any children?

WEBER: No children. I'm gay from day one [laughter] and didn't try anything else.

KENNELLY: Some gay men adopt children.

WEBER: I have thought about the adopting kids, but I just don't find myself in a situation that I would want to do it right now because it is all about the kid as soon as that happens, and with all due respect to single-parent families and the magnificent people that grow up in single-parent families, I think I would want to have a good solid partner to take on a child. If something were to happen to me or something were to happen to that partner, I'm sure I'd be awesome and adapt, but I haven't hit that point. I sort of miss that. I do have 101:00three wonderful nephews as a result of my previous relationship with Riche, and just went down to visit them in Florida, and they're great.

KENNELLY: You still keep those connections?

WEBER: Oh my gosh, absolutely. Wonderful! One is now a freshman at the University of Florida. His name is Conor. "Conor," I said, "what happened? You're a freshman, and I've got gray hair." He said, "Time marches on." [laughter] I was like, "Thanks." So I've made those connections and kept those.

KENNELLY: When you were talking about Ex Lapide, you were kind of one of the founders to get it going, and you said there were some struggles with it.

WEBER: Yes, I actually was surprised--a couple things that I had to realize. First of all is Virginia Tech did not stop moving forward in 1987 like I had 102:00perceived. What that also said to me was other people who left here in other years, Virginia Tech was probably frozen at that time. So we need to really demystify about how things really have changed, and they have. The acknowledgement of Virginia Tech and the university and the diversity community that Virginia Tech hasn't been all that great at welcoming over the years. There has actually been an affirmative acknowledgement of that. I don't have the piece of paper on me, but that was pretty cool, just saying that. Helping folks who are busy with their lives well, why do I even need to spend time thinking about that? People are busy, and why do I want to reengage with a place that didn't necessarily treat me well. The answer to that is because you don't want it to go 103:00back. I don't think it will go back, but you want to make sure the students here and now have the most best, positive experience, have opportunities to connect with other LGBT folks who are successful in making it in life or not successful, but everybody has a struggle they can share. So it's about the students is the real reason.

I think there's a real opportunity now, and the fact that there is a gay graduation at Virginia Tech. I had to come see it to believe it. There's a gay graduation?! What? I think last year there were twelve students who participated in the Lavender Ceremony, and if you do the math, there should be a couple hundred up there. So that's going to be a sign of equity as that number grows 104:00and that recognition and tribute happens. The alum that I know and friends, I say, "There's a gay graduation now." What! They are just shocked. It is just proof that things have changed. People like Luther Brice who has always been about the students as a premier teacher, instructor, friend, probably "the mean S.O.B." who flunked a lot of people, but he didn't do it because he was being mean. It was like students didn't step up and do the work. Still he guided thousands and thousands and thousands of students through here. He'd walk down the street in Washington, D.C., and people are always walking up to him and saying, "I had you for chemistry." That's what it's about. For that enthusiasm 105:00you really have to experience Virginia Tech again, meet some of the students, and talk with folks, and realize that there is a mechanism. Even if you don't want to engage, but you want to give back a little bit there is a mechanism available for a Lambda Horizon scholarship fund that goes to gay students and helps them with some of their tuition.

I know we are struggling with an identity. It's like, well why do we do this? What is it for? You have to overcome, the university just wants me to give them money, and that's all it is. There was an Ex Lapide advertisement in the Virginia Tech alumni magazine I think last month, and it was combined with the African American group. Folks, number one, they were shocked that it was in the 106:00Virginia Tech alumni magazine and that Ex Lapide was mentioned. Then they quickly, "Well it was combined with the African American group; that's probably how they got it in." Its like yeah, it was, and yeah it probably was, and whatever, but it's progress. Let's cultivate relationship; let's not shutdown. So we have to figure out some ways to engage alumni that are interested. Those who aren't interested no one has the energy and time to try and convert them, but let's go out and find folks who are a little interested, bring them on board, and out of success grows more success.

So we are going to talk on Saturday, and it's about okay we've had some events. A lot of them have been party type of social events. Maybe we need something, not that social events can't be substantive, but something more substantive. Or something organizing. What is our Bowling for Bus Shelters now? What does the 107:00university need, and we can have Ex Lapide sponsor it. People like, oh my gosh, the gays are buying Burruss Hall. We change it up. [laughter]. Something like that. We'll have to think about that. So trying to find some things that people engage in and feel, I don't want to be crass about it, but what's in it for them, or meet them where they are, and how they can contribute back. Again bottom line is about students; that's why this place exists and the future and all that. We will see where Ex Lapide goes. We're just going to keep pushing like Lambda Horizon. We have a handful of people and kept pushing and had some successes and more people showed up and we changed the way-- it was a matter of timing and people involved, to change the way the university engaged LGBT 108:00students. That can happen. We just need to figure out what the magic formula is here. We're working with great people, and the university has been very supportive. There is still a faction of the university, whoever they are, that are uncomfortable with this, but time's going to show them our side of the discussion. Time's on our side.

KENNELLY: It's true. I have a few questions if you don't mind. Some of them are going to be going back in time just to--

WEBER: Yeah, I don't want to screw up the pattern here.

KENNELLY: No, it's great. I just did have a few that I kind of want to ask. There's been controversy about the use of the word "queer," and I wondered if you would comment on that word? Do you think it is a negative kind of word? I 109:00mean I think the university thought that was a kind of step when they stopped using the word "queer," but I don't know if it is or not.

WEBER: Well, two things: one when we were children, we used to play smear the queer. I remember my mother coming out and saying, "I don't like that. Call it something else." At that point in time it didn't have the connotation of what queer could mean today, to some people. So I always remember smear the queer. But think of who probably made up that name and where it came from. I don't know who made up that name or where it came from. Actually, I'm interested now to see what the history is. Here we are as kids playing smear the queer, and we thought it was fun, but didn't understand it. So if somebody likes to be called queer, great, good for them. It's like if someone wants to be called a blueberry, 110:00that's fine. So it's more of a self-identification. It's not one I would identify with. I wouldn't disavow it. I would say sure I'm in that group, but I'm not sure--in somebody who thinks marketing, it's not a great way to position yourself. So the positioning--I certainly respect anybody who feels that is a label that is what they are comfortable with.

Where I get uncomfortable with is when people want to force their label on others. So if an individual wants to be known as queer, great, but don't make me be known that way. It's respect for the individual and how they want to 111:00identify. From a marketing perspective, it doesn't help with our positioning. That sort of being the brass tacks kind of how you move an agenda forward. Again you always need those people who are way out there pushing the envelope that those who are positioning are moving towards. So they're a part of the community. That's my bottom line that they are a part of the community, and they're welcome.

KENNELLY: Initially why did you choose to come to Virginia Tech? What was it about Virginia Tech that you decided to come to school here?

WEBER: The short answer is it was a very easy application, and I didn't have to take three years of a language. I was like, oh I can go to Virginia Tech. 112:00Virginia Tech is actually the only school I applied for. It appears to me that it was much easier to get into Virginia Tech in 1982 than it is today. On the more academic side, I was really interested in their marketing department. I read about it. I was like, that's what I wanted to do.

KENNELLY: So you already knew?

WEBER: Yeah, the marketing aspect of my life came into play in tenth grade I read Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders. It was warning America about how corporate America was hiring psychiatrists and psychologists to figure out ways to manipulate their minds to make them purchase products. I remember thinking, 113:00well if you can do it to get people to buy stuff, you can probably do get people to make healthier choices and decisions. So that's how I wanted to apply it, and I remember thinking that at that time. Then I got the opportunity at Virginia Tech to do it. It was the marketing department description and then the ease of the application that I decided I wanted to go to Virginia Tech. My parents brought me down to visit and also had a friend who was here, a neighbor, and I came down to visit. I just liked it. So I wasn't really hung up on other places. It just fit, and it worked, and damn, it did work out well [laughter].

KENNELLY: Were there any particular restaurants, bars, or gathering places where 114:00gay students felt comfortable during that time? I think there was a bar in Roanoke. Was that Backstreets?

WEBER: Oh my gosh yes. Well there was Backstreets in Roanoke, but we all went to The Park, which was a dance club. Backstreets was more of a--it had a pool table and just a bar, not dancing and stuff like that. It wasn't as much the younger college crowd if you will. Occasionally we would go to Backstreets, but we were always off to Roanoke and going to The Park. Many, many adventures in the evenings off to The Park. One of my, well it wasn't necessarily going to The 115:00Park, but Tina Turner came to Roanoke to perform at the Civic Center, and I dressed up like Tina Turner to go to the Tina Turner concert and made quite a impression in the middle of Williamson Avenue with my outfit and was paraded around the Civic Center; it was quite spectacular. By the time we were done there we went straight to The Park and had a blast that night dancing and carrying on.

KENNELLY: Do you have photographs from that?

WEBER: I do have photographs from that, but not of the concert but of being dressed up that night and going out. The Park, usually like Saturday nights we'd go there or Friday nights. School nights we were pretty good. The awesome, awesome, the funnest thing in my memory, loved The Park had a blast there, but 116:00the Marriott at the time had Jacob's Lantern, which was the lounge, and on Wednesday nights they had "New Wave Night." A number of the WUVT DJ's would DJ over there on Wednesday nights, and it became a really cool mixed crowd LGBT/straight; it was mixed. It was really a great, fun social scene. People who you knew needed to be a member of Lambda Horizon would be there, and eventually you'd see them as a member of Lambda Horizon [laughter]. It was a safe place to 117:00really express yourself. I loved Wednesday nights at Jacob's Lantern. That was the end all be all. If I have to say, that was the epitome. Also every Wednesday night, before we go to Jacob's Lantern, the TV show Dynasty, which had one of the first gay characters on network TV in it. So we had Dynasty nights. We'd get a couple gallon jugs of Gallo wine and mix it with Sprite and have our spritzers, and we'd watch the divas claw each other eyes out and manipulate the situation, and then we would all go to Jacob's Lantern for New Wave Night.

I think towards the end while I was here, I think it was called the Barking Shark. Maybe it was the beginning of Sharkey's. It's not where Sharkey's is now, 118:00and that started to have a gay night theme as the Marriot sort of wound down. Jacob's Lantern, Marriott, oh my gosh. A lot of fun was had there by our groups.

Then of course there were the things we organized. I'll get back to that, like Hethwood or Foxridge. We'd rent out a clubhouse and have a big Halloween party. Someone would have a potluck dinner; we'd socialize around that. I'll go back to we tried to organize student events like other student organizations like going to Dr. Ruth and stuff like that. Jacob's Lantern, Marriott [laughter].

KENNELLY: A lot of dancing there?

WEBER: Oh my gosh, we had a lot of fun there!

KENNELLY: Lets see, when you had the AIDS education, was there any push back 119:00from students who were discriminatory or any problems like that?

WEBER: It was part of my marketing program that I did--independent study was around HIV AIDS education. What kind of messages would resonate with students on a college campus? I still have these [messages], and I need to get them here, so we came up with four messages to see how they might resonate with students. A for profit company would go out to test messages at a mall intercept study where they get people to react. Myself and a friend walked around campus and handed people a clipboard and said, "Open this up, and when you do, write down what you first think." One of the headlines was "risky business," one of the questions 120:00was, "Are you heterosexual?" One of the headlines was just "AIDS." People wrote down their reactions.

KENNELLY: How interesting.

WEBER: Oh my gosh, it ranged from, "How dare you question my heterosexuality," to, "Are you one of those faggots promoting Lambda Horizon?" It all connected in this little student survey. So bottom line I took the reactions. We coded it all. Again my education taught me how to do these things. We did the coding and basically the "risky business" headline really elicited in many peoples minds and raised awareness in a way without turning them off, and they all, not all, 121:00many enough associated it with sexual behavior.

So some of the tent cards we used started out with "risky business." We used that theme, although it wasn't as systematic and sustained as one would do in a major corporation, but it was based on that research and was on-campus research. People would look at me like, what are you doing? Or just hand it back and not do it. So I coded all of that, and I need to bring that here for you to have it here in the whole big collection. It was quite amazing, and it was a gauge of, I can't say representative sample of the college mind, but the people we bumped into--the eighty people that participated in it, what they were thinking and their reactions. I would say that is the most overt example of the variety of 122:00responses around HIV. I don't remember any direct insults or difficult situations as a result of being involved in it. It was more of again surrounded by really great supportive people that buffer you when there are difficult situations.

KENNELLY: Yeah, and I think the AIDS crisis affected heterosexuals too men and women.

WEBER: Absolutely African American women right now in particular are one of the largest groups. Latino.

KENNELLY: A lot of my questions you have brought up. Are you involved in any 123:00activist or political organizations at this time?

WEBER: I am not. When I left Virginia Tech, I sort of packed up that activist part of me and moved into my career. As a result of my career, I've had the opportunity to touch a multitude of issues, and one of the things that, I'll work this in here, again back to the AIDS forum, my co-partner in crime Keith, Keith and I videotaped the forum. I still have that videotape.

KENNELLY: Oh my gosh.

WEBER: We have to hope that there are still VHS players.

KENNELLY: Or that we can get it converted. We'd have to get it converted.

WEBER: I can't believe I have that. So anyway we have hours of tape, and I don't have the hours, but we spent days in the recording studio, probably the predecessor to this wonderful space, editing it down to a one-hour video of highlights. I will never forget, or forgive, Jo Ann Underwood for coming in-- we got it done, and we were so proud; we had worked all night long, and we were passionate--she said to me, "Mark, no one's really going to want to watch this except for the people who worked on it." I'm like, "No, that's not true. This is very important information. People need to hear this."

Well she was right. The lesson I took away from that was that unless someone is really personally engaged or been personally touched by an issue. It's hard for them to care about it because we are so busy in our lives. So at the Department of Health and Human Services I have a parade of people who come to me about all these projects that they're working on, and theirs is the most important. From teen pregnancy prevention to HIV AIDS prevention, cigarette smoking prevention, Hepatitis B for Asian prevention. They are just passionate about it, and this is important stuff, and because they do it people are going to want to see it, and that's not true. I learned that here at Virginia Tech from Jo Ann.

You have to figure out a way as to why it is important to their life, and how it 126:00impacts them so you can draw in folks. There are ways to do that, and we have to be in our communications work in the public arena, set realistic expectations and the expenditures say that the federal government makes now in a way that is realistic. It's not because we do it, people will come. You have to figure out how information resonates with individuals, how it relates to them in their lives, and something for all people is not going to work. It has to be targeted and tailored. So there are some projects that I've worked on at the office, and as a result of some of the work that I've been doing, we are now moving things 127:00from putting it out there and reporting what happens to setting a goal and measuring towards. So that we don't keep doing things that aren't having an intended result. It has been quite fun, and there is a big bureaucracy in changing these things, but it happens a little bit at a time.

I want to go back to the AIDS forum, the videotape. It was a hard lesson learned and again that had applicability to life and in my career. I lost the question in that train of thought, but I know I segued into it pretty quickly [laughter]. Given I write a lot of talking points for people to not answer questions and talk about something else. I get paid to do that occasionally. Anyway I think that was just an important thing, so if you are passionate about LGBT work, 128:00unless you figure out a way to relate it to somebody, they're not going to share your passion. So it's like what's in it for them? Why is it important? I know it sounds a little greedy or whatever, but just because its right and good doesn't mean doesn't mean you're going to have the impact you desire until you relate to the individual you're working with.

KENNELLY: Right. It would be nice to get that video though.

WEBER: I will get it down here. I know exactly where it is.

KENNELLY: Great because perhaps a student could use it as a historical document if they are writing a master's or Ph.D. or whatever. It would have that kind of historical significance.

WEBER: I will also contemplate the video of my graduation party. I'm not sure I want to turn that over [laughter]. No, it's not that bad, but I do have that. I had forgotten I had that. I want to see it now. That would be '87, almost thirty 129:00years ago.

KENNELLY: Yeah and just how things are--

WEBER: Next year will be thirty years ago.

KENNELLY: Wow. Time marches on as your nephew said [laughter]. Are there changes you would like to see at Virginia Tech?

WEBER: I think the changes I'd like to see are happening. I mean they just aren't happening fast enough. I go back to the equality and equity. The bigger change has to happen and is happening in households with parents and their kids and accepting them for who they are not, what they want them to be. That's the bottom line. That will help the LGBT young people immensely.

KENNELLY: Lets see is there anything else you would like to talk about that I haven't brought up?

WEBER: I'm trying to think of a couple little anecdotes. There is one that I thought of, and I'll share that right now. It's a name, a person that I haven't mentioned yet, and I want to make sure I mention because she was critical at that time as well. This was Dr. Sandra Sullivan, who was the Vice President for Student Affairs. Again as a student I had no idea of how bureaucracies work in organizational structures, and Boards of Visitors. It was like who cares. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. I think upon reflection, I think she was one of 131:00our quiet champions in the university. She really, it's my opinion, had to sort of see how far we could go without going too far and taking the heat.

The thing that just sticks in my mind, she came to one of our AIDS education meetings, and she was incredibly supportive. After I worked on that and achieved that, and after some of the other things with Lambda Horizon, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. The next thing I was advocating and we had talked about was condoms in the bookstore. Something happened, I don't remember what it was, but 132:00I got a phone call at my house--my townhouse where I was living--and it was the Roanoke Times, and they asked me what I thought about condoms in the bookstore. I said, "We need to have condoms in the bookstore. People should have access to birth control and HIV prevention, STD prevention," and I just was very candid about it. That's what we had been working for around our HIV prevention and health and wellness in general as well. So there was this big article in the Roanoke Times and it gets syndicated across the state, and it was in the Norfolk Pilot Messenger. I think that's what the newspaper was called in Norfolk at that point in time.

The story goes that there was one of the more conservative members of the Board of Visitors from the Norfolk area and he saw that we were advocating condoms in 133:00the bookstore, and he went bananas. He called Dr. Sullivan and just incredibly read her the riot act. I don't know if any of that is true, but that was the legend at the time. I got a phone call from Dr. Sullivan, and I was like, oh my gosh why is the head of Student Affairs calling me? At that point in time I was like what did I do? Oh I must have won an award.

She really chewed me out. She was like, "Why did you go to the media with this? This is very sensitive," blah blah blah. I told her the truth. I said, "I didn't go to the media; they called me." Well in the job I have today I know how that translates and I think she took a lot of heat as a result of allowing us to move forward. I think she was another unsung hero at that point in time in moving 134:00this university forward. When I left here, I asked her if she would write a letter of recommendation for me--it was very nice, a recommendation that I could use with all of my job applications and stuff like that. So anyway that was another person from within that really helped us begin to change the culture here at Virginia Tech. It's how the politics play out. I talked a little earlier about students just sort of doing what they do up against this big bureaucracy, and people who are inside who are trying to help and probably really align with the students, but have a business to run, you know the business aspect of the university. The incredibly difficult situation that I, myself, and the students can put administration in when they're [administration] probably agreeing with 135:00the students, but they're are looking at that overall institution. Because I look now at some of the things I see, and think I really agree with you, but I just can't make that happen right now. That's not our current policy. So I don't know. I just want to recognize her work as well. I think that's pretty much it.

KENNELLY: There isn't anything that I haven't asked you, or anything else that comes to mind?

WEBER: You know I'm going to walk out of here and think of three or four things. Oh oh oh! I thought of another one. Here you go. You're going to be here and think, well it is six o'clock [laughter]. One of my other stunts, and this is quite fun. So one of the classes I took was Design in the Near Environment, and that was one of those classes that everybody knew that if you take that, you 136:00don't have to do too much work, and you get through, and you get a credit. I'm sure that was never the case, and my apologies to faculty and everybody who worked hard to create that intense curriculum, but anyway so the basic project was you had to do a slide show, and that was it, do a slide show. So I thought, hmm what am I going to do? So I went to The Park in Roanoke, and the female impersonators, and I said, "I want to do a show about you." I went in in the back room, and I'm taking pictures of, asked their permission of them getting dressed and transforming themselves from men to women, and the performers and stuff like that. I had all my slides, back in the days of slides. I got my slides all developed and ordered. I got the music. There's a song called "I Am 137:00What I Am," and this was sort of the gay anthem at that time in the seventies, early eighties. It was something that we would all get excited about when we would hear it played.

So I synced up my slide show of men turning into women and performing to "I Am What I Am." My presentation was in Cowgill Hall in the big auditorium, so two to three hundred students in this room. So it's my turn to do my presentation. So I like loaded up and start playing the music and the slides come on and everybody is like, what is this? Then my finale at the end is I asked one of the performers to come to Tech, so at the end I ran down the aisle way with this drag queen, Marilyn St. James, and stand there in front of everybody. Here is 138:00one of the people who was in the slideshow, and he bowed. Everybody was like, it was just silence. It's over, and he looks up at everybody, and he pulls his wig off. Still silence. Then all the sudden it's like this [starts slow clapping] you hear everybody start clapping really loud, and it was just like this shock. Again I'm just doing what I thought was cool. I'll do drag queens, and blah blah blah. I'll ask one of the drag queens to come and she did, or he did, and did this performance. I got an A+, and I've still got the slides. I guess that's something else we can add to the little collection. It was fun to introduce LGBT 139:00community into classrooms. Through my work I wrote a lot of papers on Lambda Horizon and my thinking about how to position--one of the last things I did, and this is really actually-- I told you I was going to keep thinking of these things. One of the last things I did was I wrote up a proposal that, and this is also a sign of the times, there would be a dedicated LGBTQ person in the student counseling center to help coordinate.

KENNELLY: That's right.

WEBER: A safe place that the university owned. They would hire somebody.

KENNELLY: Yes, I saw that in your collection.

WEBER: [My proposal said] here's why and what would happen. So low and behold how many years later I finally met the person, and the best part is they're not in the counseling center. They're in the diversity center. I don't know exactly 140:00where they are in the university, but the point is it's not something you need to go get counseling for in the student mental health world. When I was here, I'm thinking this is for mental health. You go and get counseling for being who you are, but it never happened in the counseling world. It happened in another part of the university in an affirming way that you are part of the community.

I met the first person. I think it's Catherine. I'm trying to remember her name, but who got hired in that slot, and I'm like, oh my gosh finally. Now there's like LGBT in the career center. I had an informal lunch with some of the staff here at Tech last time I was down, and of course, they were all sitting there and complaining about how things aren't happening and blah blah blah. I was 141:00like, "I need you all to stop."

I said, "Look at the fact of where all of you work across this university and the things you are arguing about." I said, "We had no representation in the university." I wanted somebody in the counseling center. It's like look at this, in hiring and the housing and the diversity section. I'm like, "This is awesome. You don't see that." Unless you disappear and come back, or you tend to you lose where your current place is in the world. So anyway that was really cool to see from the standpoint of the thinking at the time of the counseling center versus where it ended up happening in an affirming way for students that are here. It's 142:00awesome. The other things that it is happening in campuses across the country, which is great and it helps people build a strong sense of themselves and move forward in there careers and lives, and their significant others, marriages and whatever they choose to be, or whatever they choose as their label. And be healthy, happy and successful however they determine that. So, I think with that I am done [laughter]. I know I will think of some more things, but I think that's a really good place to--I'm happy to end there for today.

KENNELLY: That sounds good. I noticed that paper [the proposal] in your collection, and I thought that that was really an idea that was ahead of its time because then things followed. So that's a great.

WEBER: Yeah, I attribute that-- I did a lot of work, but if it weren't for all the great people around me, it would have never gotten anywhere. So the Luther's 143:00and the Ed's and the Jo Ann's, and people like that. They are the real inspiration, and my parents. We went through our tough time, but I was raised to not worry about what other people thought of me. I was who I am, and that is a core element of getting back to your very first question about how we, my brother and I were raised.

KENNELLY: Well thank you so much.

WEBER: You're welcome, what a time machine going back.

KENNELLY: If you would tell me about--was it Mid Winter that you went to?

WEBER: Mid Winter's [dance] yes.

KENNELLY: This is the second part of talking with Mark Weber. This is Tamara 144:00Kennelly. Okay go ahead Mark.

WEBER: So yes, as I mentioned, I knew I wasn't going to be able to walk out of here and be done. One of the other things is in student life of LGBT students is you are pretty much excluded, at that point in time, from all the big events like the homecoming, the dances, the events the university puts on because you're not a heterosexual couple, the expected boy/girl event. So that also contributes to a sense of exclusion, and again it's not an overt message to students, but it weighs on you, so you are excluded, and we were often left to create our own events and entertainment and fun and opportunities for socializing. One of my close friends and he and I decided we were going to go to 145:00Mid Winter's Dance. Everyone was, "Oh my gosh, you can't do that!" I was like, well it's a big event, and again using my logic. It's like we are students. It doesn't say you have to be with a boy or girl or anything like that. I said so we're going to go. So my friend Keith agreed to go with me. I would say we made a dashing couple, and we showed up--

KENNELLY: Both in tuxes?

WEBER: It was coat and tie.

KENNELLY: Coat and tie.

WEBER: Yes so we were very respectful we didn't choose for one of us to wear a dress or anything. Again it was back to my very firm belief that I am a student like any other student. We are going to go, and we are going to participate. So I didn't make any special big pink thing or anything like that. We just wanted to go and enjoy the dance. As a special added feature that night, we were 146:00getting ready to go to the dance, and I happened to know the DJ who was on WUVT that night, and I called up, and I said I wanted a special dedication. They said, "Really. What is that?" I said, "I want to call out to Mark and Keith who are going to go to Mid Winter's tonight, and I want to celebrate the fact that the two of us are going. I don't know if I'd picked a song to dedicate or not. The DJ's name was Roland. I do recall he played "Coming Out of Hiding" was the song. So Roland over at WUVT airwaves that night said, "I have a special dedication tonight." He sort of paused with a little bit of hesitation, and he goes, "It's to Mark and Keith who are going to Mid Winter's this evening."

We got dressed, and we went. We danced and partook of the refreshments and the 147:00entertainment. Then it was time like all other couples to get our picture taken. The theme that year of all things was a tropical theme, so there we are standing side by side with our arms around each other, and across the bottom of the photo are all these pink flamingos, so we couldn't have picked a better year to go. I have that photo with pride. I still have it with me.

So that was Mark and Keith's big adventure at Mid Winter's. Again our purpose was not to cause a problem or make people feel uncomfortable. We were welcomed and nothing was said. I probably was a little disappointed that it didn't create some kind of stir. At the time we participated as students and we had a good time and did what every other couple would do at that point in time, so it was 148:00cool. It was a really really fond memory. We tried to again partake in what the university had to offer in the way that we knew how.

Another actually more serious note that I want to mention as well, and it's going back to the HIV AIDS efforts. I mentioned earlier about a person, a student who was writing for the CT, Greg Edwards, and he wrote that history of LGBT efforts at Virginia Tech and this was again I think '83/'84 in the CT. Greg was actually the first person in my life who called me up to let me know that he had indeed converted from sero- to HIV positive. I remember the energy he 149:00brought to the CT, the energy he brought to Lambda Horizon. He was one of our key supporters. Having the opportunity to work at the CT and being an excellent, just a brilliant writer.

So again at that time there really wasn't a lot of medication, and Greg actually I think well I know at that point in time was preparing to put his accounts in order and take care of what he needed to take care of in his life, and the first thing he thought of was that he had this massive collection of plays because he was very much into the theater and plays. He pulled together that collection, and he wanted to make a special presentation to Virginia Tech with this collection of plays. It was soon after I graduated, I think it was 1989, and we 150:00came back, and the Virginia Tech library set up a special ceremony where Greg came down, and he presented his books to the library and had a special, I believe pink seal with an inscription on all of them, about Greg's contribution to the university.

He used that opportunity to also again true to his form, used that opportunity to talk with students and educate people about HIV, living with HIV, coming out, being part of the LGBT community. There was a really great article in the alumni magazine back in 1991 or so about Greg coming back to work with the campus. I'm really happy to say that Greg is still alive and has had an incredibly great 151:00life with a partner and lived many many many great years. He's very ill right now, and at the same time when I see Greg, he will always talk about those great days at Virginia Tech as a student, writing about LGBT and the theater and giving back. So its part of that--again quite often for many students, once you've been here it becomes part of your DNA. He gave back and really that commitment to Virginia Tech. History projects like this and the work we do in the student groups and Ex Lapide, it's so important to keep all of those memories alive. So anyway Greg was an incredible contributor to moving LGBT 152:00efforts forward here on campus and continued through his life being an open and out and very proud man about who he was, who he is.

KENNELLY: Well thank you. What is his whole name?

WEBER: Gregory Allen Edwards. Again it was a series of articles in the CT he wrote I think it was '83/'84, maybe early '84 when he wrote it. It was a series of four articles. I think one was history, one was focused on religion, one was current issues, and I think the other one was on HIV AIDS. Again the irony, we lost a lot of people from that era and age group to AIDS. Once you seroconverted there really wasn't a lot of help out there or hope. Today there's hope, and 153:00with treatment, people are living long and extended lives and just healthy as anyone else. Ultimately some day there will be a cure, but we lost a lot of people in that time frame to HIV AIDS. Greg is a living tribute to somebody who fought and carried on and has a very successful life.

KENNELLY: Thank you for that story and thank you for the interview.

WEBER: You are more than welcome, I'm glad to be here and be a part of it.