Audio Interview, Dorr Williams, September 4, 2013

DORR WILLIAMS: OK, we'll do it over, if you want me to.

EVELYN BAILEY: Today is September fourth, or fifth?

DORR WILLIAMS: Fourth.

EVELYN BAILEY: Fourth, 2013, and I'm

sitting talking to Dorr Williams, who

was a florist here in Rochester, had a shop on Monroe Avenue

that I knew, may have had other shops prior to that.

DORR WILLIAMS: I was the head designer

at Sauers for Flowers where the millionaire's high rise is

at the corner of Scio and East Avenue.

The Sixth Floor is there now, but I

had four windows on the corner of Scio and East Avenue

that I did.

And it was right across from Christ Church next door

to Marissa's Dress Shop.

EVELYN BAILEY: And Dorr has a tremendous memory

for information about the city of Rochester

and the people who were very, very

much a part of society life in the forties, fifties, sixties?

DORR WILLIAMS: Late forties, fifties, sixties--

EVELYN BAILEY: Seventies.

DORR WILLIAMS: --seventies.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so he was just

talking to me about Nancy Quince Fairchild Sibley Watson Dean.

And you were telling me--

DORR WILLIAMS: Not Quince, Prince, like the Prince Street.

That's where Prince Street got its name was from the Prince

family.

EVELYN BAILEY: Prince.

And you were telling me about Nancy backed who?

Who did she back?

DORR WILLIAMS: I think she backed--

put her money into the Genessee Co-op,

which was originally in the fire house on Monroe Avenue.

It started upstairs in the firehouse,

I think in the nineties-- early nineties.

And I think she also might have invested something

in getting Abundance started.

The health food store on Marshall Street.

She was very active in the Democratic Party too.

And I think she was fully aware of gay life,

because her four children.

She had three boys named Fairchild, and a daughter.

She had problems with her children, like everybody does.

They were very unusual kids.

And I think that the daughter might still be living.

And is it possible that one of the sons is too, like out

in the West somewhere.

When her mother died, of course, I

think she was maybe in San Francisco.

She had a lot of problems.

And she lived in my building for a while, the daughter.

I can't think of--

her last name was Fairchild.

I can't think of her first name at the moment.

But she was badly beaten up by a lover or something

in San Francisco.

And it may have shortened her life.

I don't know if she's still living or not.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, when you were growing up in Rochester,

was there any information out there

or were people talking about homosexuality?

DORR WILLIAMS: Well, yeah, because when I first

came in 1948 I was looking for a job.

So I looked through the want ads.

And there were these strange little ads

in there for companions.

And my aunt managed an estate out

on Elmwood Avenue at 3500, the McCumber estate.

Her and her husband were there right across the street

from Senator Keating.

And so when I landed in Rochester

at seventeen or eighteen, in 1948, I stayed with them.

And of course, they were delighted,

because my aunt only had the one daughter, Beatrice Child.

She married Jonathan Child of the--

it's still there.

One of the sons still runs it at the corner of Marshall street

and-- what is it?

Rochester Fire Equipment Company.

And supposedly they were related somewhere

or other to Jonathan Child, the first mayor of Rochester,

maybe a cousin or something, not directly descended.

EVELYN BAILEY: Jonathan Child was the first mayor?

DORR WILLIAMS: Yes.

Jonathan Child was the first mayor.

And the mansion is still there.

I think it was the Edwards Fine Restaurant

on Fitzhugh Street moved there, but didn't make it

in that location.

And so they went out of business.

EVELYN BAILEY: That's down by--

DORR WILLIAMS: It's a huge--

it's still standing, that beautiful mansion.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes, behind the--

I know where it is.

I've seen it.

I've been by it.

Edwards moved.

DORR WILLIAMS: My first time that I went there--

I'm an astrologer too.

I studied astrology for fifty, sixty years.

And I went there to get a horoscope

of the city of Rochester.

And I met this Dorothy Francis that was

at one of the theosophical--

they had a Theosophical Society then.

There were about fifteen or twenty members.

That was in 1962, I think, that I went there and met her.

I didn't go there to meet her, but she happened to be there.

And then she wanted to know what my planet positions were,

and I told her that my moon was in Leo,

and of course, she was very interested,

because she had of stellium of five planets in Leo.

And so she immediately fell in love with me.

Gay or not gay--

it doesn't matter to her.

So anyway, we spent ten wonderful years together.

And then she decided to move to San Francisco or the Bay Area.

And the last time I heard from her,

I got a letter when I had my shop in Greenwich Village.

And I told her I was going to close it, and she said, "Oh,

please, come out here."

And then the next time I heard of her daughter had called me

and said that they had found her dead in her apartment.

Apparently she had committed suicide.

We were such close friends.

It was really very tragic.

And I often thought I should have gone out there.

Maybe that would have--

(knocking)

--helped her depression.

EVELYN BAILEY: Come in.

DORR WILLIAMS: I locked it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh.

(pause in recording)

DORR WILLIAMS: From the Seneca reservation in--

where is it now?

It's down in is it Cattaraugus County?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

DORR WILLIAMS: Allegheny?

EVELYN BAILEY: Allegheny.

DORR WILLIAMS: It's next door to Allegheny, anyway.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Yeah.

DORR WILLIAMS: And his name was Kenny Toothacher.

And I don't think he'd still be alive,

because he probably died an alcoholic, like so

many of the Indians.

UNKOWN SPEAKER: Uh-huh.

Yes.

DORR WILLIAMS: But he was a delightful kid.

He was only about eighteen at that time.

So I went to all three of those Indian bars with him.

There were three of them on lower Monroe Avenue.

UNKOWN SPEAKER: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you remember their names?

DORR WILLIAMS: One of them was called a Friendly.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: (unintelligible)

think about that.

DORR WILLIAMS: It was called a Friendly Bar.

It was anything but friendly.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: It's good to see you.

DORR WILLIAMS: Yeah.

Likewise.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Thank you for coming in.

Have a good day. (unintelligible).

EVELYN BAILEY: The Friendly--

DORR WILLIAMS: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: --Lower Monroe.

DORR WILLIAMS: Uh-huh.

It was an Indian bar.

And someone that also went there once,

they said that when they had gone there,

that some Indian was carrying a Tomahawk for protection

in a brown bag in the bar.

But as long as I was with an Indian--

EVELYN BAILEY: You were fine.

DORR WILLIAMS: I was perfectly fine.

Let's see.

Where else did he take me?

I can't remember the names of the other two bars,

but there were three of them.

It was as bad as Corning before the flood.

Main Street in Corning had forty-six bars

before the flood.

Now there's hardly any.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

Now you remember Front Street.

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, definitely.

When I came here in '48, that was jumping.

And my friend, Phil Long--

it's too bad he's not still living,

because he would be in his late nineties,

but he would remember.

He came here when he was eighteen too.

He came from New York, because his uncle

had some administration position at the University of Rochester.

And he came here with him.

Maybe he just came with him to see it, for the interview.

Whether the uncle took the job or not, I don't know.

Maybe not.

But he had seen Rochester, and he got a job in New York

with a Jewish family taking their retarded

son-- in those days, people hired companions

to take them out of the city and give them

money to travel and go anywhere they wanted to, just

so they didn't have to deal with their son.

He'd remembered coming here and seeing Rochester

with all these trees, what a beautiful city it was,

because in New York, everything was concrete.

And so he brought him here.

And the kid he was taking care of loved it here too.

It was so pretty.

He'd had some education.

He was very intelligent.

And his father and mother had been lawyers.

And when he was two, someone was babysitting him.

They were on a weekend trip or something

in New England from New York.

And they were killed in an automobile accident.

And so he became an orphan.

And I guess his uncle just looked

after administrating his money and so forth to take

care of him.

And then he got some education.

And he got a good job as a pharmaceutical representative.

So he made a lot of money.

And he did a lot in meeting all the gay people in Rochester.

So he told me an awful lot of things, especially about

Ma Martin.

Ma Martin sort of ruled the gay community,

and I don't know if anyone ever said how she looked,

but she always wore a dirty old wash dress

and sat sort of slumped in her chair in the bar,

keeping an eye on everything down there by the waterfront.

And I've seen her because she was still living, I think,

when I first met Phil.

He was telling me quite a bit of all the things

that he knew about her.

Apparently, everyone knows now that George Eastman was gay.

EVELYN BAILEY: I'm not sure that that's fact.

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, of course it's a fact.

EVELYN BAILEY: How do you know?

DORR WILLIAMS: Because I knew the people that knew what

his tastes were, and so forth.

And he would call Ma Martin, and she would pick out

the one that would be the most sensible and reliable gay boy,

that was clean and wouldn't cause any trouble,

because she knew them all very well.

And she would ask him, I guess, if he

would like to go see George.

And so George would send his car and pick him up,

and he'd go for the night.

EVELYN BAILEY: Are you serious?

DORR WILLIAMS: I'm serious.

EVELYN BAILEY: I have never heard anything like that

about George Eastman ever.

DORR WILLIAMS: Well, it's still kept very quiet here

in Rochester.

No one ever would ever face the truth.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh my god.

DORR WILLIAMS: But he had--

his tastes were explicitly--

he never married.

He had all these women, they came for tea and everything,

but he was not interested in--

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh my word.

DORR WILLIAMS: You didn't know that?

EVELYN BAILEY: Let me say this.

There has been much talk about George Eastman being gay,

but when I've asked for corroboration of that fact,

people have itemized the number of women friends he knew,

but who never got married and who

had huge flamboyant parties.

But no one ever was able to document

why they thought he was gay, other

than he never got married.

He kept company with women, they thought, to put on a front.

DORR WILLIAMS: That's right.

That's true.

EVELYN BAILEY: And the historical record does not

identify any liaisons at all.

DORR WILLIAMS: Of course, in those days, like in England,

sometimes their sexual contacts with the aristocracy

was limited to their male servants.

They sometimes had a gay butler or a gay groomsman.

It's the same as in England that you now

see on Downton Abbey, and places and things like that.

And that was very true of the aristocracy in Rochester.

And there were many--

I'm sure many-- now, probably David, my friend,

would be able to recall names of some, because he was born here,

and he grew up with them-- with the gay crowd.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, let's go back to Ma Martin's.

DORR WILLIAMS: I don't know much more about her, except that--

EVELYN BAILEY: She was on French street.

And it was a restaurant, as well, wasn't it?

DORR WILLIAMS: Probably.

Most bars serve some kind of food.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes, I think Ma Martin's

was a restaurant during the day and more of a bar at night.

DORR WILLIAMS: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you recall other establishments

on Front Street?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, along the river.

There was a lot of secondhand clothing places hung--

because I used to walk around looking to see,

like I'd go to consignment shops now.

I was looking at those things hanging out for sale.

I was a little prudish then, because I

didn't want to wear anything somebody else had had.

One of the first things I did was open,

when I started earning money, I opened up an account

at Edward's Department Store.

I can't remember his name now, but this old gentleman

that lived at the Ambassador at Oxford Street,

we used to walk from there downtown to Edward's store.

He was almost ninety years old then,

when he was still walking down there

to the manager of the hotel-- the manager of the clothing

department of the Edward's Department Store.

EVELYN BAILEY: Where was Edward's?

DORR WILLIAMS: Edward's was the lower one.

It was down towards--

it might have been across the bridge,

either near the bridge or just before you cross it.

EVELYN BAILEY: On Front.

DORR WILLIAMS: Yes, closer to down there.

And of course, they tore all those down and built--

EVELYN BAILEY: Sure.

DORR WILLIAMS: --the hotels and everything.

EVELYN BAILEY: What about Dick's?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, Dick's on stone street.

Yeah, sure.

That was--

EVELYN BAILEY: Or do you recall other bars on Front street?

DORR WILLIAMS: No, because I wasn't going to bars then.

I was too young to be interested in those things

and not very much acquainted with the gay people.

But I think I started telling you

before this tape went on how when I first came,

and I looked in the newspaper when I was looking for a job,

and I saw where people were advertising for companions.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

DORR WILLIAMS: And I mentioned this to my second cousin.

She was very beautiful, and her mother used to model--

my very first cousin, Beatrice Forrester.

Her second husband, she married the Child.

And then her second husband, they divorced,

and her second husband was a Forrester.

And she lived with him out on Allens Creek Road

in later years.

Anyway, she was a very beautiful woman.

And she was still modeling for Sibley's and Forman's fashion

shows when she was fifty-five.

And she said, "I think I should retired from this."

They said, "Oh no.

It's your age groups that spend the money.

And we want the clothes that they'll buy on you."

Because she had the perfect figure at fifty-five.

And so I learned a lot about Rochester from her too.

And then, of course, she had been the secretary

to I think his name was Hale, the head of the lawyers

co-operative downtown.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, along with Ma Martin's on Front

Street and Edward's down there, my understanding

is that there were a lot of purveyors.

DORR WILLIAMS: Yeah, there were.

EVELYN BAILEY: Meat industry.

DORR WILLIAMS: Everything you'd want was there.

EVELYN BAILEY: And it was also called the red light district

of Rochester.

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, I'm sure there

were a lot of prostitutes, because there

were odd-looking people wandering around.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you recall, Dorr, hearing anything

about vaudeville in Rochester?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, in the Cook's Opera House was still

on--

Saint Paul runs into-- is it Court?

EVELYN BAILEY: Andrew?

DORR WILLIAMS: No.

Let's see.

EVELYN BAILEY: Cook's Opera House?

DORR WILLIAMS: Cook's Opera House.

EVELYN BAILEY: I haven't heard that name.

DORR WILLIAMS: Well it used to be right in there

where-- what is the name of that?

Where they have all the events now downtown.

EVELYN BAILEY: Manhattan?

DORR WILLIAMS: No.

The big--

EVELYN BAILEY: East End?

DORR WILLIAMS: No, right down there,

where they tore down that beautiful security trust

building, the granite one, to put that thing on it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Midtown?

DORR WILLIAMS: No, no.

It's--

EVELYN BAILEY: Corner of St. Paul and--

DORR WILLIAMS: Yeah, across the street from St. Paul.

What is there now?

I've never liked it.

It's where they have all the events.

EVELYN BAILEY: A new store?

DORR WILLIAMS: It's where they have all their conventions.

The convention center, isn't it called?

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, OK.

Yes.

DORR WILLIAMS: That's all through there.

That's where I think Cook's Opera

House used to be, on the way to the library there.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what kind of--

well it's an opera house, but was there

opera here at that time?

What year are we talking about?

DORR WILLIAMS: Well, when entertainment started

in the late 1800s, I imagine the Cook Opera

House had all kinds of things booked there.

There were still old posters crumbling on the walls

when I was in there.

And the pigeons were flying in and out.

Back in the 1960s, I was somewhere at a bar.

And he's still living.

I don't see him anymore.

His name is Jerry Porter, and apparently--

I don't know where we met, but we ended up

spending the night together, and I learned a lot about Rochester

from him because he was born and brought up here too.

His father was a dentist.

And so he was in the hippie era.

And he thought about opening up a leather store.

It was called the Leather Soul, and he

was in that old opera house.

He rented a section of that old opera house.

And that's how I happened to be going through that place

when it was falling down with the pigeons flying around,

because he had a section of it for his business.

EVELYN BAILEY: So the city must have taken that and kind

of renovated it for small business.

Were there other businesses in--

DORR WILLIAMS: Not really.

I don't know.

It was just one section that it wasn't so dilapidated.

I don't know who owned that.

EVELYN BAILEY: I'll do some research on that,

because vaudeville--

I've not been able to find anything

about vaudeville in Rochester.

DORR WILLIAMS: For sure, because a lot of gay people

would have been in that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

And I had never heard of the Cook's Opera House.

So--

DORR WILLIAMS: Well, someone certainly

has written about the Cook's Opera House,

because it had entertainment from all

over the country came there.

That's where anybody went that wanted to have fun,

I would imagine.

EVELYN BAILEY: So when you came back in 1948

and came back to Rochester, you had been in New York City?

DORR WILLIAMS: I went down on my senior trip.

I was from a little town called Addison near Corning

in Steuben County.

And we got on the train, and the train stopped right in Addison

at that time.

We got on the train and we went to New York.

And we went to see Oklahoma!

Oh, you know how senior trips are.

They were unforgettable.

I even have a recording at home.

I don't go to many of my class reunions.

But maybe I'll go for the seventieth, see the seventieth.

I guess that would be it for 1947

and seventy would be seventeen, wouldn't it?

And there's not many of the boys left.

Actually, there must be ten girls anyway,

I think, that are still living.

EVELYN BAILEY: So after your senior trip and so forth--

DORR WILLIAMS: Well, I came back,

and once I got out of Steuben County, I wanted to see places.

So the first thing I thought of was Rochester,

because I had an aunt here where I did land.

So I came here.

And my first job was with Albert's Florist,

at the corner of Alexander and East Avenue,

where the Bar Fly--

or they used to call it the Bar Fly.

I don't know what's in there now.

It's still a bar.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

DORR WILLIAMS: And every one of those arched windows--

it was one of the Hiram Sibley buildings--

was kept like a garden.

It was this old--

EVELYN BAILEY: (unintelligible).

DORR WILLIAMS: Pardon?

(unintelligible) was in there at one time and Harriet Thomas

before her.

And that's another story about her.

What a character.

She was still doing decorating in her nineties, you know.

She had a clientele.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

Wow.

So Albert's Florist was your first job here in Rochester.

DORR WILLIAMS: Yes.

And Mrs. Sibley, of course, was still

living in her mansion over there.

And she wasn't very old at that time, I thought.

I remember I thought maybe she was in her forties,

but she probably was just well made up and so forth.

She came in and ordered a corsage for Eleanor Roosevelt

from me.

I think at that time they wore three great, big lavender

orchids that come right down the front of your bosom.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh wow.

DORR WILLIAMS: It kind of covered up the whole front.

And they were sizable orchids, generally,

and I think they were-- of course,

she was a sizable woman she could carry three orchids

dramatically.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, now they don't cover up the front,

do they?

DORR WILLIAMS: They don't bother to cover it up.

(Williams laughs)

EVELYN BAILEY: And after Albert's

did you go to New York City?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, I couldn't get along--

the old man that had run that place--

it was just phenomenal.

The ceilings were like fifteen, twenty feet high in there.

And we had palm trees that were like fifteen feet high.

For Palm Sunday and Easter, we carried them up the street

to Third Presbyterian Church.

And they just carried them through the streets,

because you couldn't get them into anything.

And so Albert--

Felix-- his name was Felix Albert,

that had the flower shop before he died.

He hit his head on the back of a truck, and he died.

And his mistress, who had been his sister-in-law as well,

she took over.

And she was hell on wheels.

And I only stayed oh maybe--

I don't know if I stayed two months.

She was impossible to work for.

So everybody had gradually left.

All the florists evolved out of Felix Albert's flower shop.

That's where Marie (unintelligible)

started her place on--

EVELYN BAILEY: Really?

DORR WILLIAMS: --on Park Avenue.

And Blanchard-- he worked there--

John Blanchard.

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: So there were no other real florists

in Rochester?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, there were other florists,

but all the successful ones evolved out

of Albert's because that was the best,

and they knew how to do things.

And apparently the old man wasn't that hard to work for,

because when Elsie (unintelligible) her name was,

that took over, before long that was closed down, because--

(unintelligible) was another one.

He opened up right next door in the Valley Cadillac building,

I believe.

And eventually when he left, it died.

The one I worked for, Sauers for Flowers, moved from East Avenue

up to out of the Astor Estate, when they started tearing down

the Astor Estate.

That was the building that was where--

well, it's called the Sagamore East now, I guess.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now what was the name of the Florist

that you worked for?

DORR WILLIAMS: The longest?

Downtown?

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

After Albert's.

DORR WILLIAMS: After Albert's, I left there,

and I went down in the Sibley building to Wilson's Florist.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wilson?

DORR WILLIAMS: Wilson Florist.

And there were nine old ladies there.

And they all hated one another.

And every one of them told me, they

said, "If you want to know anything,

come and ask me, because she doesn't know anything."

And then there was one old man--

the principal thing in those days were funeral sprays.

You sent out funeral sprays all day long from a flower shop.

That was the biggest part of the florist business

were funeral sprays.

You had to learn to make a funeral spray.

So there was an old man out in the back room

that put moss, sphagnum moss over a board on a small board

and tied it on with string.

And that was the basis for picking

in-- that would be kept wet, and then you'd

pick in your gladiolas into that and other flowers, of course.

And then the main thing in those days

were, if you had any money, you didn't just

have a casket spray, you had a blanket.

And that was made on screen.

You put like a screen for a screen door--

you put that on a piece of canvas, and it draped.

It draped over.

And then you put it on like big sawhorses.

Then one guy got under it, and they actually

sewed these flowers on it.

They pushed the needle through to the way up above.

And they would be made of anything elegant,

like lilies of the valleys.

And I learned to work on those.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

DORR WILLIAMS: And so--

EVELYN BAILEY: After Wilson.

DORR WILLIAMS: After Wilson's, let's see.

Did I try to work in the flower shop again there?

I don't think so.

I got more money if I went over to Weed's Hardware, which

was on Exchange Street.

It wasn't far away, because I wanted

to buy some nice clothes at one of the department stores,

because I wanted a gray flannel suit, because it was getting

close to the late forties, when everyone started

wearing the gray flannel suits.

There was a movie made called The Man in the Gray Flannel

Suit, wasn't there?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

DORR WILLIAMS: Yeah, probably Gregory Peck.

EVELYN BAILEY: I think so.

DORR WILLIAMS: He was such a handsome man.

I had a crush on him.

(Williams laughs)

I loved him.

EVELYN BAILEY: Many people did.

DORR WILLIAMS: I imagine.

This was a weird place.

Imagine, me being artistic, handling

nuts and bolts all day.

You went around in all these places.

You got a list of the name of the hardware,

and a list of what they needed in their retail store.

And Weed's wholesale hardware place provided it.

So I filled those orders.

So I made enough money that I bought some clothes.

And then I went back to Steuben County for the summer

anyway, before I moved on.

But I always kept coming back to Rochester.

Then I went into the service.

And that was quite an experience,

because I was telling Bruce--

I think it was Bruce that was in here, or one of his companions

there that day--

I went back to my apartment and tried

to find from my scrap book on my service this thing

that they actually issued in the army about how

to beware of homosexuals.

And it had a picture on the cover

of their conception of what a homosexual looked like.

And he had wings.

I hope I haven't lost that, because it was a gem.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh my gosh.

DORR WILLIAMS: It's missing from my medical book.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

DORR WILLIAMS: Because I was in the medics.

And so I really quite enjoyed being

in the army, because most of the boys that were in my unit,

in the medics, they tended to be-- they

picked that because it was less-- well,

I had just two choices when I went in.

I knew that I'd be in the infantry

if I didn't sign up for a school.

So I said I want to go to school.

And I had a lot of background, and I did well in high school.

I fooled around, and all I did was the school paper.

I was interested in running the school paper and the yearbook

and all of that.

But I did get the highest mark in business law.

I had this lovely, gorgeous Italian lady

from Hornell, the Argentieri family.

And there are still Argentieri.

I met one of her grand-nieces here in Rochester

while I still had the shop.

She came in.

I took her name--

Argentieri.

I said, you're not related to the Argentieri of Hornell.

She said, I certainly am.

I said, oh, I just loved your aunt.

She was my favorite teacher.

And with her as a teacher, I got the highest mark

in business law in the state of New York that year-- '97,

I think.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow, that's great.

DORR WILLIAMS: So then they put my name up in--

you know, what you got in the Regents

in the hall in the school.

And so the boys that were going to go away

to study to be lawyers, they wrote in my yearbook something

about you're going to be a future judge

or something like that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Not quite, right, Dorr?

Not quite.

DORR WILLIAMS: I'm judgmental, but not.

Most gay people are very judgmental.

EVELYN BAILEY: So in the army, you became a medic.

DORR WILLIAMS: Yes, because they gave me

two choices for school--

telephone lineman.

Communications, they called it.

I said, "What's that doing?"

They said, "Climbing telephone poles."

I said, "Well, that's the first place you get shot off from

is a telephone pole."

So I took the medics.

Of course, I knew I was going to pass out just talking

about the blood flowing.

And so it took me a while to get used to that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, what was the attitude in the army

about homosexuality?

Did you run into any of that?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, you know.

When it came time I could tell that my friends were gay,

but it was never discussed in the service.

But I know that one of my best friends--

I knew he was gay.

He was a sergeant or something.

And so unfortunately, they were shipped off to Korea.

And I probably would have been killed in Korea, because

at that time, if you were a medic,

and you were bending over taking care of somebody,

they came up behind you and bayoneted

the North Koreans in the neck didn't even take prisoners.

They killed my best friend because he went about three

months after it started.

So he didn't have a chance.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you were in the Korean conflict.

DORR WILLIAMS: I was in the Korean conflict.

So I was at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

My basic was in New Jersey.

In the sand.

I even knew all about that sand when we just

had that big sandy thing down there, because I used

to march through that sand.

And you make one step and then you fell back, you know.

And I only weighted a hundred and fifteen pounds,

and they put an eighty-five-pound pack

on my back.

And you imagine me back trying to get through that sand.

I did pretty good.

I loved it.

But I loved it more late in February,

it was about time for March.

We went to Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

And it was spring down there.

The gardenia bushes around the barracks and everything

were all in bloom.

And it looked like paradise.

It was just gorgeous.

So I had a good time there.

Then I had gotten ill.

I had had my tonsils out in the army.

I remember they tied a bandanna around it

and didn't numb them very much.

And it fell off in the middle of it.

And here's these bloody shears hanging out

of my out of my mouth.

And then after I finally got over that, they rolled me out.

They strapped me to a gurney and put me in the hall

and forgot about me for about three or four hours.

And then they put me in the hospital.

It just didn't heal.

So they kept giving me penicillin

until I got allergic to that.

So I itched all over.

And it was just one thing after the other after that.

But that kept me from going overseas.

EVELYN BAILEY: Overseas.

DORR WILLIAMS: It saved my life.

Eventually I worked in the hospital

handling papers and things.

EVELYN BAILEY: How long were you in the army?

How long?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, it was about two years,

I guess it amounted to about.

And they put me in a holding company,

and I got worried about that.

And so they sent me to a psychiatrist.

And his name was Dr. Wheat And he

said he wrote pages and pages about me because he

was gay too, Dr. Wheat because I found out in later years,

when I was in New York, that Dr. Wheat was

famous with the gay people in New York.

He was very popular.

That's where he went after he got out of the Army.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you go there also?

DORR WILLIAMS: Where?

EVELYN BAILEY: To New York after you got out of the Army?

DORR WILLIAMS: Oh, eventually, yeah.

I didn't run into him.

But I went.

I kept going, visiting.

My friend that's coming from Florida.

He had my shop before I did.

And I was down there.

And he was giving it up, and I said, "Oh, I want that shop."

Because it was in the West Village.

He'd moved from the East Village over to the West

because it was a better location.

And so anyway, Dr. Wheat interviewed me with all this.

And he put in all about my--

because the one I went to first before I

was interviewed by Dr. Wheat they sent me

to the head psychiatrist.

And I could tell there was something wrong with him.

And I said, "What is wrong with that man?"

They said, "Oh, he's on dope."

He was in Korea, and he's addicted

to two things they said that everyone seemed to know but me.

So I went into the hospital.

And I took all my--

I had been collecting antiques in the army in San Antonio.

Whenever I got free time, I'd go down to the antique shops,

and I'd buy stuff.

And I had filled my foot locker full of them.

And, of course, when they came around for inspections,

they thought I was stealing the stuff.

They said, "Where'd you get these things?"

you know, the officers.

I said, "Well, I bought them downtown."

And well he couldn't believe it.

And then when I went to the hospital,

I took them all with me.

I set them all around me all by my hospital bed.

And so they thought for sure that I was nutty.

And then Dr. Wheat interviewed me.

And so he said, "I'm going to line you up for a discharge."

And I said, "Well, that's good."

So they sent me to the holding company.

And I was in there for a long time

and through several seasons.

And I got to thinking, one of these days

they're going to decide to send me to Korea if I

don't do something about it.

So I went to see the captain that

was the head of the holding company.

And he interviewed me, and he was strange too.

And apparently he was on some kind of drugs too.

He said, "Were you close to your mother?"

And I said, "Yes."

He said, "So was I."

And he started to cry.

So we cried together there in the office,

and he said, "I'm going to recommend you for a discharge."

And I said, 'If you think that would be the thing to do."

You know, I didn't want to act too anxious.

But I was thinking, well, this is my way

out of this situation, apparently,

because I got everything going for me.

So I came up before a board, and they

asked my friend, my main witness,

if he thought I was gay.

And he said, "Oh no, I've known him for a long time.

He's not gay."

And so they gave me a--

EVELYN BAILEY: Honorable.

DORR WILLIAMS: --Section 8, an honorable discharge,

not the usual homosexual one.

It was an honorable discharge with full benefits,

so I got out with the G.I. Bill so I could go to college.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.