Grindle, Charles

Interviewer

Gwendolyn Wolf
Johnna Ossie

Files

Description

Charles Grindle is a 66-year-old man from Ellsworth, ME. He is a piano player, as well as a minister. He has been heavily involved in church, music and theater since childhood. He has also done a lot of traveling- he’s lived in Portland, Boston, San Diego and England. He has years of experience working for churches- doing sermons and weddings, etc. In his earlier years, he played piano at many hopping places- such as The Front Porch and the Inn By the Sea. He worked at Blackstones when it first opened. Other bars that he frequented were Styxx and Rollins. He spent a gap year living in London. In 1988, he was diagnosed positive for AIDS. However, he did not let that get in the way of living his life. Nowadays, he writes columns for the Peabody newsletter, as well as continuing his involvement in church, theater and music. He currently lives with his partner, with whom he has just bought a house. His goals for the future are to stay healthy and continue working.

Citation

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.

ISBN

Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine

Publication Date

Fall 11-11-2017

Publisher

University of Southern Maine

City

Portland, Maine

Keywords

AIDS, theater, First Parish Church, Blackstones, chosen family, Ellsworth, The Front Porch, piano bar, Crescent Beach Inn, music, Russell Nype, Marguerite Yourcenar, the gay ghetto, gay community, self-acceptance, gap year in London

Disciplines

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

Recommended Citation

Wolf, Gwendolyn and Ossie, Johnna, "Grindle, Charles" (2017). Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection. 20.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/querying_ohproject/20

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.