Oral History with Beth Benoit, April 4, 2019 (Ms2019-001)

Ms2019-001

Narrator: Beth Benoit

Interviewer: Evan Robohm

Date: April 04, 2019

Transcribed by: Kathryn Walters, July 1, 2019

Audit-Edited by: Clay Adkins, September 12th, 2019

Final Edited by: Anthony Wright de Hernandez, July 20, 2021

Evan Robohm:Hello, thank you for participating. We'll start off by you listing your name, where you're from and when you graduated [Virginia] Tech.

Beth Benoit:OK, my name's Beth Benoit, and I currently live in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts. I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1982 with a degree in computer science. That was before we had the internet or smartphones, OK, so ancient.

R:Actually, I remember at one point someone talking about they were in computer science around that time and having to take their homework down to the supercomputer in Burruss to get it checked.

B:Absolutely. We used to categorize our computer science classes by how many 1:00boxes of punch cards we had to carry around. It was like, okay that's a half box class and that's a two box class. [Beth hits microphone] Woah, I keep hitting this. I talk with my hands too much so I'm gonna go like that [Beth sits back]. So yeah, that's how we used to categorize how big was our program gonna be at the end of the class. Little different than they do it today.

R:Let me close the door. I forgot about that. [Evan shuts door]

B:No worries.

R:In case somebody wants to come in. Alright. You're actually the first person I've done today.

B:Oh, OK. I just got in from the airport so thought I'd come right here.

R:So, when you were a student here what was the climate like?

B:Oh, the climate for lesbian, gay, yeah. Hostile would be the word. Definitely very, very hostile. I'll always remember going with my friend Leroy up to his dorm room just the once, and it made a huge impact on me because as we walked up to the room, these guys were like literally body slamming him and yelling, faggot, at him, and we got to his dorm room and, faggot, was written across the door to his dorm room. People had taken his belongings and thrown them into the courtyard a few times. So, the guys really had it bad. The guys really did have it bad. Women were just mostly oblivious I would say for the most part, but it was definitely not a place to be safe to be out on campus. You have to 3:00understand, at that time, being gay was really considered something very shameful, very shameful. It was like what did your parents do wrong if you think you're gay. Very different than it is today, I know. It was not a safe place. I was a little different than some people. Some people came out or realized that they were gay or lesbian in college. I had had that self-realization while I was in high school which was very unusual. Almost no one came out in high school or realized and then a few more in college, and then unfortunately a lot of people did realize after they got married and had children. Then they realized that they were gay or lesbians which was a disaster for everybody. I came into college knowing that I was gay. Because I lived in town and grew up here, I had 4:00already met part of the gay community before I came and part of a group called the Women's Collective which is a feminist group which had a lot of lesbians in it, so I at least came in already feeling some connection and knowing some people which helped me a great deal.

R:Sounds very different than the way it is now.

B:I am sure, yes.

R:So, I understand you wanted to talk about you coming out into the newspaper.

B:Yeah, that was something- I've been thinking a lot about it since I got the invitation to come to this 40th years commemoration because it's a part of my life I've tried to avoid thinking about. You have to understand that my family lived here in town, still do. My parents still live here. My dad still teaches at this university.

B:For me to come out was just- it wasn't like someone from Northern Virginia who wrote a letter in the newspaper saying, I'm gay, and their parents would never see it and their parents' coworkers would never see it. My dad's coworkers saw it. My mother's friends saw it. My brother and sister got teased in school because of it. I was 19. 19 you're kind of a little self-centered. Sorry, but you are. You're also a little self-righteous, and you think you know what's right. I made life really hard on my family, and they got really mad at me. My parents cut me off for a little bit. They were-- I have never seen them so 6:00furious before or since. It was bad, and I understand why now. I get it now, but I always regretted the amount of pain that I caused them by that short little letter in the editorial section. I have to say that I always remembered 'cause someone from the college paper called to verify that the letter I had sent in was indeed my letter, that I had written it, and that I was giving permission to publish it. I remember that phone call really clearly first, because I got the impression that they had probably done a draw the short straw to say who's gonna call the lesbian. Also, it was one of those moments in your life where I knew this was potentially about to change the course of my life. I could have bailed. 7:00I could have said, no you can't publish it. I've changed my mind, but I told them to publish it. And I've been thinking a lot about why did I do that. What was I thinking? What was I thinking? So, I've been reflecting a lot on that, and what I realized is I had come back from my first CO-OP. Between my freshman and sophomore year I did a CO-OP at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee. I had connected with the gay community there, and I had met people who worked for the government who were gay, and it terrified me. There was one woman in particular that I remember because she was close friends with some of the people I got to be close friends with. She had been married when she got her first security clearance. She and her husband had since gotten divorced. She had since fallen in love with a woman. Maybe the two were connected. I don't remember but doesn't 8:00matter. The rules were explained to me because she was up to be recleared. If anyone asked me about her, I didn't know who she was. I didn't know who she was. If you were at the bar, and she was there, maybe she went to the ladies' room, and somebody came up and asked, have you seen her? The answer was, I don't know who you're talking about. Unless it's someone you personally knew, knew her because if she lost her security clearance, she would lose her job. She lived in terror of being found out.

R:Wow.

B:I watched this and said, I don't wanna live like that. I can't do it. I don't want to do that. So, putting that letter out there was no going back. I'm coming 9:00out. It's in print. The government- if they ever do a security clearance on me again 'cause I had to have one to go to Oak Ridge National Labs, they're gonna find this out, and I won't get my clearance. That meant right away that I wasn't gonna be able to apply for the computer science jobs at the F.B.I. or the C.I.A. They used to come here a lot to recruit. I don't know if they still do. It meant teaching jobs were off the list. Any government job that required a security clearance was a no-go. I didn't want to live in terror of losing my job. That's the real reason I published that letter. It was no going back, burning your bridges, OK, we gotta do this now. It was terrifying, and I think back on it now- I'm still sorry for the pain it caused my family, but I did it for a 10:00reason, and that reason has turned out to be a good reason and a good influence on my life. I regret the pain, but I don't regret that I did it.

R:Seems like a shared experience in the queer community is just some of us being bold and being out there and unapologetic. Not really caring what other people think.

B:Our youngest son is going to school at Northeastern in Boston, and it's amazing to me how many times when I drive in to visit him that I'll be driving down the street, and suddenly there are two young women holding hands or two young men holding hands draped all over each other the way young lovers tend to do. It's funny what goes through my head when this happens. The first thing is, are you crazy? Someone's gonna kill you. That's the first thing. Then I look 11:00around and go, OK no one's gonna kill them. Beth, calm down. It's OK. It's all good. Then I think to myself, thank God for the people who came before me who came up with this strategy of us coming out and normalizing for society how many of us there were, so that everybody knew somebody who was gay or lesbian. That was a huge strategy. Then I thank God that I have lived long enough to see this day come because when I was in college there was no way gay marriage was gonna happen in my lifetime. No way. Wasn't gonna happen. The idea that I'd be able to have a family. There's no way that a gay woman would be allowed to have children and keep them. Not gonna happen in my lifetime. Well, I've gotten to live to see those things happen. I got to have our two sons. Been with my wife for, I was 12:00trying to figure it out, 33 years.

R:Wow.

B:Okay.

R:That's longer than my parents.

B:I've gotten to have a quote unquote, normal life. To me, that's amazing. I look at these young people and go, wow have times changed. The very last thing that sometimes floats through my mind is I almost want to roll the window down and yell, you're welcome! [Laughter] I can't imagine. Even now I won't take my wife's hand and hold it walking down the street 'cause that was a good way to get yourself killed when I was your age. That was not a thing to do, but it's definitely different. Both of our sons had friends who came out in high school in their close friend groups. At least one. Our youngest son- they had the 13:00before prom picture taking at our house, and one of his gay friends brought his boyfriend, and that was part of the pictures. Nobody batted an eye. I had this conversation with him one day when I was explaining to him about this commemoration coming up and what a big deal it was. He said, my generation it's like if you're gay it's like you have blue eyes. It's part of who you are. It's not a choice. It's who you are. Like, OK, you're gay, so what? I still like you. You're still my friend. It's a totally different attitude, but it was a big deal. What we did was a big deal. I'll always remember that day- Denim Day 14:00though because walking across campus you saw people- for that day the Drillfield looked like the U.V.A [University of Virginia] campus, OK. Sorry, but it did people 'cause everybody was dressed up except the people who hadn't thought ahead. I'll always remember this one guy- he's running across the Drillfield. He's clearly late to class, and he's got on these bright red running pants except they only come about halfway up his shin. They're way too short, so clearly, he's borrowed them from somebody and an orange sweatshirt. He just looked appalling, but he was not going to wear denim. There's no way, not gonna wear denim. We knew that was gonna happen, but I think it gave us all a little sense of power that we could turn this hatred against society at large. We 15:00could, for one day only, modify their behavior and make them uncomfortable. Yeah, go ahead. Wear those dress clothes. Have at it. That felt good that we pulled that off, and yeah, it had a major reaction, but that was OK. It really was OK. Didn't expect anything different. Those are my main memories about what happened. It was quite the time. I left shortly after that. I had my second CO-OP up in Massachusetts at the company that eventually hired me after I graduated here from [Virginia] Tech because I graduated at the height of 16:00recession, so I was very lucky that I had done CO-OPs, and I had somebody who wanted to hire me 'cause they already knew I was a known quantity. I got a good education here, but I didn't come back. My parents still live here, and I wouldn't come back to visit very often. I came back a few years ago for my 40th high school reunion which was fun and interesting. I came back maybe ten years ago, eight years ago. My parents were selling the house I grew up in, and my wife said, we're gonna take the kids to see the house you grew up in. So, we brought them down, and we took them on a tour of the campus, especially our oldest son to the architecture department. He applied, and he got in, but he didn't choose to go there. Sorry [Virginia] Tech. He went to Syracuse, much 17:00better fit for him. But yeah, I didn't come back very often. My friends had all fled as well for the most part.

R:When you published your letter to the editor was there any kind of response from the LGBT community here.

B:Well, I knew the entire LGBTQ community here. I think the general response was, wow, you're brave. I couldn't do that. I didn't feel like putting words in a paper was that brave. I thought what Nancy and some of the others did where they would go and sit a on panel in a psychology class and answer very intimate and sometimes very inappropriate questions from people. To me that felt more dangerous than coming out, believe it or not. I guess I was naïve because 18:00professors could have retaliated against me easily. But maybe because they had enough respect for my father they didn't do that, don't know. But I never felt like it made a difference to the teachers, to the faculty. Most of my friends were in the gay community, so it wasn't like I was alienating a friend group outside that group. That's what it felt like to publish that letter.

R:You didn't have people coming up to you saying bad things after that? Any confrontation.

B:No, because again, people didn't know what my face looked like.

R:This is true.

B:It's not like you could go Google me. You couldn't. There was no way. Today I 19:00could Google you and find your picture like that. That wasn't an option, and I didn't have my pictures in any of the yearbooks, so no, people didn't know who I was. There was some degree of anonymity in that. I wasn't immediately identifiable. It is funny how things change. I remember when gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, and my wife and I very quickly organized a wedding- second wedding. We had two kids at that point. It was funny because our kids, little did we know, were going around school and telling everybody that their moms were getting married and wasn't that great. Some people thought two women shouldn't get married, but that was silly. They were just so excited, and they 20:00were so excited about the wedding. We'd be out like on the baseball field taking our kids to play little league, and people would come up to us and say, congratulations, we're so happy for you. I'm like, who are you? [Laughter] Our kids were so excited about that wedding. Then we went to the town hall and got our marriage license, and there was someone from the local paper standing outside waiting to interview because literally there were reporters hanging out outside every town hall in Massachusetts waiting to see if any gay couples came in to register to marry. Then we stopped to talk to him afterward, and we said why this was so important to us and so important to our family. He published our names in the paper and real easy to look us up now 'cause we're in the phonebook. I was waiting for the house to be egged. I was waiting for the crank phone calls. I was waiting (...) nothing. Nothing happened. I guess I've been 21:00darn lucky. I know people have been assaulted or threatened, but I never felt like that.

R:Well Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage.

B:Yes.

R:I guess the culture was at a place where, as you've described, people weren't being awful about it.

B:Yeah, there was still some of that. There was definitely attempts to try and repeal, repeal our Constitution. Really people, really? You got this Constitution that's worked really well for a really long time, and you want to repeal the Constitution. So, there was some backlash, no question, especially political. You would have people; I don't believe in gay marriage. Well, there's nothing you can do about it, so why you saying that. There was some, but not that much. If I think about, especially raising two boys, there must have been 22:00over the last 30 something years thousands of people that we have interacted with as a family between- take your standard baseball team, your soccer teams, your taekwondo, your cub scouts, your boy scouts- all of that stuff and thousands of people, and no one at least to our face ever gave us a hard time about it. I did hear a story once though. I guess our troop committee meeting once- we weren't there, and someone asked if we were gonna be able to pass the C.O.R.I. check because we were gay. She said to them, OK, they're gay committed parents. They're not criminals. They're gonna pass the C.O.R.I. It's gonna be 23:00OK. A few people's minds were still there but never said it to our face. We were accepted and taken for what we could give to the community. So, it was a good thing.

R:Thank you. Do you have any final things to say?

B:No except that I'm really thrilled that things have changed for the young people here.

R:Wonderful.

B:Thank you.

[End of interview]