Gardner, Ed

Interviewer

Ethan Bent

Files

Description

Ed Gardner is a 62 year old gay male currently living in Falmouth and working in Portland. He grew up in Lewiston Maine and moved to Portland as a young adult. Starting from scratch, Ed was able to buy and sell buildings and found tremendous success over his long career as a real estate agent. Over the course of his life, Ed has fundraised and donated to a variety of Maine’s LGBTQ organizations. He was involved directly with the establishment of the Equality Community Center by first hosting LGBTQ tenants in his office space, and then helping to raise money to purchase the old bank building in which the ECC is now housed. Ed also contributed to the ECC’s project by generously donating a parking lot adjacent to the bank building that will be the site of affordable housing for older LGTBQ and low-income tenants. Ed’s life story and contributions to his community are marked by his kindness and generosity.

Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine Libraries. For more information about the Querying the Past: Maine LGBTQ Oral History Project, please contact Dr. Wendy Chapkis.

Publication Date

11-27-2023

Publisher

USM Special Collections

City

Portland, ME

Keywords

Ed Gardner, Portland, Maine, Gay, Lewiston, Auburn, Catholic, Giving Back, Real Estate, Non-Traditional Education, Coming Out, Family Rift, Religion, Sexuality, Poverty, Relationships, Piloting, Portland’s Gay Scene, Blackstones, The Underground, Styxx, The Phoenix, Equality Maine, Equality Community Center, RBPA, LGBTQ Community, Fundraising, Betsy Smith, Rich Waitzkin, Maine TransNet, Sage, GLSEN, PFLAG, Affordable Housing, Maine Housing, Covid, ECC, Long Creek Youth Development Center, Christianity

Disciplines

History of Gender | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies | Oral History | Women's Studies

Recommended Citation

Bent, Ethan, "Gardner, Ed" (2023). Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection. 114.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/querying_ohproject/114

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.