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Daniell, George
Madeleine Winter
George Daniell was born on May 4, 1911 in Yonkers, NY, and graduated from Yale University in 1934. During his senior year of college he realized he was gay. He served in the U.S. Army for two years during World War II; after the war ended in 1945, he resumed his interest in photography and met his longtime partner Steve Doland. The couple moved to Maine in 1960, where they bought a house on Mt. Desert Island and Daniell worked as a photographer for Downeast magazine. He also photographed celebrities including Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Tennessee Williams; his work was published in Life Magazine and Coronet Magazine. Doland passed away in 1983; at the time of this interview, Daniell had continued living in their home on Mt. Desert Island.
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Elze, Diane
Madeleine Winter
Diane Elze was born in Albany, NY, and moved to Maine in 1972. She was involved in the organizing of Our Paper, a publication that focused on gay and lesbian issues; she also helped organize the Maine Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance (MLGPA) and the Maine Lesbian Feminists (MLF). She worked with MLF to help organize the Maine Gay Symposium. She was involved in theater productions of Oklahomo, Stargaze, and Gayside Story, all of which were performed at the annual Maine Gay Symposium.
During the 1970s, she became involved with The AIDS Project as a case manager. She was also involved in organizing the Outright group for gay and lesbian youth in Portland, ME. She was a student member of the Wilde/Stein Club at the University of Maine at Orono (UMO) from 1976-78. She helped organize the greater Bangor Rape Crisis Center and she worked with Spruce Run in Bangor. She also helped start the first ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) movement, which involved protesting at government offices in support of civil rights for the gay and lesbian community.
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Henderson, Susan
Madeleine Winter
Susan Henderson was born in Calais, ME on March 12, 1945. She grew up out of state and later returned to Maine to attend graduate school at the University of Maine at Orono (UMO). It was at UMO where she came out as a lesbian. At UMO, she joined the Wilde-Stein Club, a gay and lesbian advocacy group. Henderson was on the planning committee for the first Maine Gay Symposium held at UMO. After finishing graduate school, Henderson moved to Portland, ME where she was a member of the team that created and published the Maine Gay Task Force's newsletter, Mainely Gay. She was later involved with fundraising efforts for the Gay Woman’s Group (GWP) in Brunswick, ME.
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Neilan, Sive
Madeleine Winter
Sive Neilan was born in southern Ireland in the late 1950s. She was raised Roman Catholic, although she is no longer involved with the Church; she identifies as a lesbian. At 19, she left Ireland, and after spending a couple of years in France, she moved to the United States, where she decided to settle because she felt more comfortable living there as a gay woman. She spent much of the 1960s-70s living in San Francisco, CA, and moved to Rockport, ME in 1978. She opened New Leaf Books, a feminist alternative bookstore, and through that developed a strong following among Maine's gay community.
After the murder of Charles Howard in Bangor, ME in 1984, Neilan voiced strong opposition to the way the murder was covered by Maine newspapers, including the Camden Herald; she felt that the paper displayed a callous disregard for the gay community, and took the opportunity to formally come out as a gay woman. She later served as a board member and president of the Maine Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance (MLGPA).
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Prizer, Peter & Fortuna, Stan
Madeleine Winter
In this interview, Peter Prizer and Stan Fortuna discussed their experiences as gay men in Portland, ME during the 1970s. Both men became activists and were involved in the creation of the Maine Gay Taskforce, which advocated for equitable treatment of gay and lesbian people. The taskforce also published a newsletter, The Mainely Gay, with articles written by local gay and lesbian activists. Prizer and Fortuna described the discrimination they faced during a time when there was a great deal of hostility towards the gay community. After a decade of political activism, the Maine Gay Taskforce was disbanded in 1980.
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Reckitt, Lois Galgay
Madeleine Winter
Lois Galgay Reckitt grew up in Massachusetts, and moved to South Portland, ME, where her husband was stationed in the Coast Guard. After they divorced, she came out as a lesbian. She served as the state coordinator of the National Organization for Women (NOW) for Bath, ME; she was also the founder of Maine NOW and Maine Right to Choose, which focused on female reproductive rights. In 1976, she helped develop the coalition that put forward the first gay rights bill in Maine. She went on to become the vice president of NOW, which took her to Washington, D.C, where she worked from 1984-1988. She later served on the board of the Human Rights Campaign Fund. In 1979, she began working with Family Crisis Services on issues related to domestic violence. She has also served as adjunct faculty in biology at the University of Southern Maine. In recognition of her work as an activist, Reckitt was inducted into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame. She currently represents South Portland in the Maine Legislature.
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Sparks, Ellie
Madeleine Winter
At the time of this interview, Ellie Sparks was a social worker based in central Maine, working with people with HIV/AIDS. She came out as gay during the mid-1970s at Roland’s Bar in Portland, ME (at the time, the only gay bar in the city). She was part of a group of women that formed the Maine Lesbian Feminists (MLF). She also became involved with the Maine Women for a Nuclear Free Future, a group that supported a referendum to close the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant. In the early 1980s Sparks became involved in the Portland Women’s Community (PWC), where she helped to create the PWC newsletter.
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Stickney, Jean
Madeleine Winter
Jean Stickney came out as gay in 1969 at the age of 29. Shortly after moving to Maine in 1973, she became involved with the Wilde-Stein Club, a gay and lesbian group at UMaine Orono that was instrumental in holding the first Maine Gay Symposium. Stickney went on to become involved with the Maine Lesbian Feminist (MLF) group, where she helped create the MLF newsletter, which included essays and poems as well as announcements about events that women would be interested in. She also helped provide workshops on parenting, alcohol addiction, and lesbian massage. After MLF became a defunct group, she started a newsletter called Fruits of Our Labor, which included announcements for events that would be of interest to the gay and lesbian community in Maine. Stickney later received the Lesbian Alliance Award for her work on the MLF and Fruits of Our Labor newsletters.
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Stone, Nan
Madeleine Winter
Nan Stone was born and raised in Iowa. She spent time in Germany before moving to Boston to attend graduate school. During her 10 years in Boston, she organized against the Vietnam War and became involved in the local women’s movement; this was also where she came out as a lesbian. She moved to Palermo, ME in May of 1974, in part because she wanted to get more involved in gay and lesbian activism. Around 1975, she was part of a group of women who founded the Women’s Counseling Service in Bath. Shortly thereafter, she was involved in the founding of the Maine Lesbian Feminists (MLF). After MLF ended, she became involved in the Maine Coalition for Equal Rights. She also founded the AIDS Coalition in Belfast, Maine. In 1987, Stone helped organize the first locally sponsored AIDS conference in Maine. In later years she traveled to Nepal to provide AIDS education to local residents.
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Haskins, Sturgis
Madeleine Winter and Ardis Cameron
Sturgis Haskins was born in 1940 in Sorrento, ME. He attended the University of Maine at Orono (UMO) and then spent a year at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. While living in New York City during the 1960s, he came out as gay. During the early 1970s, he helped form a group called the Hancock County Gays; the group ended up merging with another group from Bangor, ME and they became Bangor Gay Support and Action. He also served as the first president of the Wilde/Stein Club at UMO, and helped to organize the first Maine Gay Symposium at UMO. He later moved to Boston where he served on the board of Gay Community News and created the Chilton Running Club and the Beacon Hill Bachelors, which gave gay men the chance to come together with other like-minded people. After spending several years in Boston, he returned to Maine. He was also the first president of the Sullivan/Sorrento Historical Society and he organized the Maine Antique Boat Society.
Collection of interviews conducted in the Summer of 1999 with members of the Maine gay community who were politically active in Maine in the 1970s.
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