Audio Interview, Ramona Santorelli, December 28, 2012

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I'm just telling you,

this is not even part of the--

EVELYN BAILEY: Today is December 28th, Friday.

And I'm here with Ramona Santorelli who is probably

most well known in Rochester as the woman

who kind of organized and spearheaded the Topfree

Seven in 1986.

But I want to go back because you weren't born in Rochester.

You were born in--

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Brooklyn.

EVELYN BAILEY: --Brooklyn.

And were you out when you were in Brooklyn?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: No, no, I didn't come out

till I came here to Rochester, St. John Fisher College.

EVELYN BAILEY: And you came on a basketball scholarship.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And then you left St. John Fisher

to go to Fordham.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yep, played Division one.

EVELYN BAILEY: Played Division one.

And tell me a little bit about your basketball

coach at Fordham.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: My coach was out, actually, Kathy Mosolino.

She was a great coach, great role model for me

and the rest of the players there.

I was going through a funny, particular time.

It was changing time for me.

I think I was mulling over my sexuality.

I was confused.

I was lonely because I was in the Bronx,

and I had made friends in Rochester at the time.

All my other high school buddies were off to other colleges.

And my coach challenged Fordham to Title IX and she won.

What she found out is that she was

getting paid less than the assistant coaches of the men.

And we were also getting booted out of every gym.

And it was a bad time.

And we were playing high-ranking teams

like Tennessee, Alabama, Texas A&M.

We were playing a lot of really, really big schools at the time.

Baylor, you know, all the schools that you know of,

you hear of now.

And she took us to the regionals.

And the following year, at the end of the year

she challenged them.

And they must have pressured her so much

after that, that she quit the job.

Consequently, I left and came back to Fisher

with my tail between my legs.

I didn't play my senior year, which I regret terribly.

And I was shy fifteen credits in the transferring.

So all my friends left Fisher, and I went off

exploring the South.

I was a sociology major, and I wanted

to see how far this country had come as far as racism.

So I chose Mississippi as a place

to volunteer my services and--

EVELYN BAILEY: Good place.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: --yeah and I contacted

a lot of the Catholic schools.

I didn't know about how obscure Catholicism was in Mississippi,

but off I went.

And I did some basketball camps to make some money,

and off I went.

I took my car and drove along.

I went to Bay St. Louis.

They taught me how to dance on the pier.

It was great.

And then I ended up in Mississippi.

And when I went to the first church in Mississippi,

it looked like my shed in my back yard.

It was really small, and it was hilarious.

And I traveled all the way through till they hooked me up

with someone in Iowa.

They told me to call this principal in Iowa.

And so I drove my car to--

I went all through Mississippi, traveled

and met all these different, really great people,

and drove my car to Cincinnati, and left my car

with a friend, an old basketball colleague, coach.

And they flew me to Omaha.

And then five nuns drove me through to Earling, Iowa,

a little German Catholic town.

And there I stayed for six months

and was a phys ed teacher and a basketball coach.

And I even taught catechism, believe it or not.

BARBARA: Oh my god.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: And I was twenty-two years old.

I had a riot.

It was a riot.

It was it was great.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now did you find an answer to your question

in Mississippi?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah, thank you for bringing me back

to full circle.

While I was there it was really interesting.

I remember very clearly mulling over my sexuality.

And they thought I was mulling over-- they thought I

was contemplating the convent.

I was nowhere near that.

(laughter)

EVELYN BAILEY: Similar callings.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes, yes, yes,

EVELYN BAILEY: God and women.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes.

I had already been out, though.

I already had my first experience with, actually my--

it was my best friend from high school.

She went to Cornell University.

I went to Fischer.

And we went cross country after I left Fordham.

And we did the little back rubs, talking.

She had a crush on a straight couple.

And she told me about it, and I asked thousands of questions.

After Brooklyn, we moved to Long Island, by the way.

So when we came back after eight weeks of traveling,

I said to my father, without even asking Ann, I said,

"Dad, I'm going over to Ann's house."

He goes, "but you were with her for eight weeks."

I said, "she's home alone."

I didn't even consult her.

Drove over to her house, rang the doorbell,

Ann answered the door.

"Mom, Ramona locked herself out."

We didn't even consult each other,

went up the stairs, that was it.

It was just one of those things that we just,

eight weeks of, I guess, foreplay.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you find an answer, though,

to the question how far civil rights had come in the south

in Mississippi?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Oh, thank you, thank you, that question.

Interestingly enough, yes and no.

You know, the people I was meeting with

were mostly white women, white men, you know,

priests and nuns.

Although I did meet one particular set of nuns.

They were called the School Sisters of St. Francis,

and they had a radical background.

And they were protesting for labor rights for mining,

the people in the mines.

And they were really, really active.

And there was one nun who was dead set

against me staying there.

And another nun who was just, you

know, the good nun, bad nun.

The other nun was just so really attentive to me.

And so we sat for hours and spoke.

And the other one was busy, just, you know,

posters, and mailings, and calling on the phone.

And the other one was sat with me for hours

and really philosophize about life.

And she gave me a lot of things that I still remember.

One was that visiting people were the most important thing

in life.

Isn't that sweet?

She said just visiting people, just being present.

And I've always remembered that.

It doesn't matter how big or small your life is.

As long as you sit and visit with people,

it's the greatest gift you can give.

That's what she gave to me.

EVELYN BAILEY: So when you came back to Rochester, finally.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah.

My final-- well I went back to New York after that.

And my father was head of a restaurant in Manhattan,

which I was always very proud of, in the Tribeca area,

down near Robert De Niro, six blocks from the World Trade

Center.

And I, you know, traipsed up and, you know, down

on the east side, the west side, the lower east side

and west side.

I was a really into Manhattan at the time.

And I decided to come back because a friend of mine, John,

was talking to me on the phone.

He said, "you know, why don't you come up here?

I'm living with this woman, Sally.

I know you're going to like her, but I think

you should stay away from her."

So I ended up coming up to Rochester and visiting.

And sure enough, I got together with Sally.

And we booted John out of the apartment.

And Sally and I ended up living together.

And, you know, that became my introduction

to the Rochester community, really.

I actually met Susan Plunkett in 1978

while I was at Fisher, by the way.

She'd back it up.

I went to Snake Sisters on my own.

I was living on Brunswick Street off of Park Avenue.

And one Sunday, I went in on a brunch,

and Plunkett was as cheerful and cordial to me

as she could possibly be.

She was really friendly, as Susan is, and made

me feel really at home.

And we always remember that encounter.

But it wasn't until I came back after that trip from Iowa--

actually Barbara is sitting here with me.

I went to the gay rights rally in.

Washington, DC.

And I went along--

EVELYN BAILEY: In 1983, no.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I think it was '81?

'81.

And I was friends with this guy named John.

He was straight, he loved me, he was very attracted to me,

and I wasn't.

But he was a friend, but nonetheless, we were friendly.

And I went on the bus with him.

I don't know what the bus was, but they

were very, very serious.

And, you know, we went down on this bus.

And I met lots of different people.

But I don't remember meeting anybody from Rochester.

On the way back I went, they told me--

I met some women, though.

And they said, come on the bus with us.

Well, I got on the bus with all the women.

They were all exhausted.

And I find out from Barbara that that bus that went down,

they were partying like crazy.

On the way back they were all exhausted, falling asleep.

So, I missed the boat on both ends.

But a couple of years later, after I was introduced

to the community, meeting Barbara, and Joe Cummings,

and all kinds of people, we were looking through Barbara

[Chance?] pictures.

And lo and behold, in the pictures,

we see me in the front of her pictures,

passing by, in her pictures.

And Barbara [Chance?] ended up being my lover in the early

'80s, as most people know that know us.

And it was just fascinating that Barbara was spotting me.

EVELYN BAILEY: She came across--

RAMONA SANTORELLI: It was like Where's Waldo.

Where's Ramona in the photos?

So anyway, so that's how it happened.

I think I was introduced to the community in '81, John, Jackie,

Joe, Jill, remember all the Js, Joni, Joan.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was Snake Sisters still--

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes.

Oh yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Tell me a little bit

about Snake Sisters and also The Riverview.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Sure, sure, I remember both very well.

Although I seemed to be the youngster at the time,

you know, mostly at The Riverview I was the youngster.

But Snake Sisters was fairly, I think it was early,

mid-'70s when it opened.

And like I said, I went in in '78.

I remember meeting on Sundays, and they

would have, remember, they would have Leo Warner, a brunch,

and, you know, people singing.

And it was great.

I loved it.

I loved it.

We had a real sense of community.

Christine Galvin was the owner.

And she kept the sense of community,

which I think we kind of lack now, which

I'll talk about as we go along.

It was really, a really nice place for women to gather.

And it was all women, always all women.

But I remember women gatherings, you know.

EVELYN BAILEY: There were never men.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Right, exactly.

And, you know, I met so many still

long-lasting relationships, like yourself, Evelyn,

And we would go to Riverview.

That bar I was introduced to by Sally and a few of the others.

They all took me out to-- they took me

on a tour of the gay bars when I first got here

and when they first introduced me in '81.

We went to Riverview.

We went to across the street to, what

was the one on Monroe Avenue?

Oh, come on.

EVELYN BAILEY: Rosie's?

BARBARA: The pub?

Not Rosie's?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: No, the Avenue Pub.

No. no.

Rosie's wasn't--

BARBARA: Friar's.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Friar's.

EVELYN BAILEY: Friar's.

I don't think Rosie's existed yet.

BARBARA: No.

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: You know, oh, what's the name of the--

EVELYN BAILEY: Forty (unintelligible)?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: On Charlotte Street.

Oh, come on, Barbara.

O.K. Corral, remember O.K. Corral?

Alan Street, you know?

EVELYN BAILEY: Alan Street.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah, we all know Alan Street.

And we went on a huge tour of all the gay bars.

I was fascinated, you know, that there were so many

and that the community seemed really tight.

EVELYN BAILEY: There were fifteen.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: At the time?

EVELYN BAILEY: Gay bars.

BARBARA: Really?

Wow.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

Now there's only two, but The Riverview is an institution,

was an institution.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes, yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And many, many women.

For many women that was their only social outlet.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah, yeah, I could see that.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Was it also a political outlet?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I think so.

I think underground people met there to organize.

I did.

You know, there were all kinds of shenanigans going on

at The Riverview.

BARBARA: Who was that woman named Patty?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Patty Evans?

BARBARA: Yeah.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I remember John,

the moment I was talking about, the straight male friend

of mine.

He was very upset when I ended up with Sally.

And he had the audacity to come to that bar and make a scene.

And you should have seen those women rally around

me and escort his ass out, sorry, escort his ass out

of that bar.

He did not come, he couldn't come near me.

You know, he was never going to do anything physical.

I never believed that about John.

He was the nicest, gentlest man.

But he was upset.

He was hoping that I would turn a corner.

EVELYN BAILEY: Turn a corner, yeah.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: And I was turning

another corner (laughter).

EVELYN BAILEY: So, Ramona, there's some kind of a thread

here because you were connected to people,

like the coach at Fordham, who were bucking

the system, who were constantly confronting the,

quote unquote, "powers that be," the status quo.

When did your political activism begin?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Probably, I think my political activism

started in third grade.

Seriously, I challenged a third grade teacher who I thought

was very, very unfair teaching methods.

She favored boys.

Her methods were appalling to me.

I didn't have that word, but I felt it.

And I remember we had what you called lunch and recess.

And I had about an hour to organize.

And I got forty-five out of--

I'll never forget this-- forty-five out

of fifty-two signatures.

I wrote a petition up.

And I had everybody sign this petition to challenge her

and ask her to change her methods.

I don't think I had those words, but, you know,

I wrote something up.

And I handed it to her at the end when

she came back from her break.

And I remember her turning beet red.

And the seven people got rewarded

for not signing the petition.

And the rest of us were, quote unquote, "punished"

and, you know, couldn't do anything.

But the funny part about that is that I

got a report card from her that I have actually

framed upstairs.

And it says, Ramona is very disrespectful and insolent.

She has no regard for authority whatsoever (laughter)..

And here's the other funny part, I had a 100 percent attendance.

I was there every day, never missed a day (laughs),

I loved going to school.

I loved it.

So I think that was the beginning of my--

EVELYN BAILEY: Of your sense of injustice.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes, exact, that's a good word.

And then, also, I noticed that there were only altar boys.

And I couldn't understand why they couldn't have altar girls.

And I remember questioning that in the school.

They had a fit about that because the boys got so much

advantage to being altar boys.

They had trips.

They had parties.

They were always getting pulled out of class

and going here and there.

And then I started playing basketball.

And this is when that started to tilt, too,

because I noticed that the boys had cheerleaders and the girls

didn't.

You know, they had a huge, huge crowds and, you know,

cheerleaders.

And we get there and we maybe have

a parent in the audience or someone, you know, sitting,

not even a teacher.

And I started to really see the injustice, you know,

that it was very clear to me that there

was an imbalance in the gender.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so when you came to Rochester,

and it was 1976.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: '76 began it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Six, '78.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Well, at Fisher

I challenged the athletic, not the athletic director,

my basketball coach.

I had come on a--

I put this in quotes-- "scholarship"

because it was Division Two at the time,

and they gave you a package.

And when I got there, the coach, I'm sorry,

and the dean pulled me in to talk to me.

I had taken a bus from Long Island.

And they said to me, "well Ramona,

you know, since you're here and maybe you want to get in shape

and you want to play volleyball.: I said,

"I don't play volleyball."

"Well, it would be good for you to get to know the girls."

"No, I don't play volleyball," I said.

"I just play basketball.

I'm going to have enough trouble keeping my academics up."

So they couldn't talk me into volleyball.

I said, I'm going to play basketball.

And so the dean says, "you took a bus up here, right?"

I said, "yeah."

He said, "how about we fly you home

and your father, wink wink, can pay us back

when he gets around to it."

My father never paid him back.

They flew me back.

I thought I was high on the hog.

I was like, oh my god, Rochester.

Yeah, it was a great move.

And he recruited a lot of people year.

There was a very-- it was a big recruiting year, '76,

for Fisher.

So, of sixteen women, you know, embarked on Fisher, you know,

to think that we were all going to start.

And it was, you know, like, almost a cat fight

because we were all fighting for a position.

I hurt my knee the first year before the season even started.

But, you know, I felt like I was, you know,--

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, you were certainly there.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I was recruited.

I forgot where I was going with this.

What was I--

EVELYN BAILEY: Your option.

Your activism.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Oh, yeah, right.

So then the following year, I get a notice

that we owe so much money for the tuition.

I called my father.

I said, "Dad, what's going on?"

And he said, "I don't know."

He goes, "I copied verbatim the last thing."

So I went to the coach.

He says, "oh we've made changes.

Your father made changes in the thing."

So I knew there was a discrepancy there.

So they tried to reduce my, quote unquote, "scholarship."

So I challenged it and won because my father never

changed anything.

And all of a sudden, the other players started piping in, Sue

Maroney, who was a very famous ballplayer there,

Kathy [Fraswell ?] a bunch of players started coming knocking

on the door.

"Hey, what happened to my scholarship?"

Diane [Mukis ?] they were saying, "what happened?"

What happened is, the people that were recruited into Fisher

were recruited for one sport, asked them to play two.

Then they would drop a sport because they

couldn't handle it.

And then they would say, oh well, you dropped the sport,

so we're going to cut your scholarship in half.

We're gonna cut your money in half because you're not

playing two sports.

You get it?

Because they signed a contract.

So, you know, people like Sue Maroney were highly insulted.

And I think they got their money back,

Diane [Mukis ?] a bunch of them that stopped playing two

sports.

But that was another little check for me

that I felt like, you know,--

I ended up making The Pioneer.

They interviewed me.

[Kaylor ?] was not happy with me,

but I ended up transferring to Fordham.

And I think that's why, when I came back,

I didn't want to play my senior year there

because I felt like I, you know, had

went against the establishment at Fisher.

So I was on the down low there.

EVELYN BAILEY: But then you stayed on here in Rochester.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes.

Well, like we said, we went back up.

We went to Iowa, came back, went to, you know, the gay pride.

And I ended up settling here in Rochester

for a couple of years.

I wasn't as active.

I was more into socializing.

You know, going here to The Riverview,

going here, going to Alan Street, dance and dance

and dance and dance, and doing our thing.

I never was a drinker or, you know, a big pot smoker.

Although I was introduced to pot.

It was like, those were the days.

EVELYN BAILEY: Everybody is.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Everybody was.

And I was an athlete.

And what ended up happening is, I got an offer to coach

at Queens College.

And so I assistant coached, and I went back to New York,

lived in Brooklyn with my aunt and uncle,

and commuted from Brooklyn to Queens College everyday.

It was quite a trek.

And I coached, and before that I coached in Fredonia State

University.

Here while I was in Rochester, I lived in Fredonia for a season.

And my basketball career was moving along.

And I was doing camps.

And, you know, then I started getting more and more involved

with--

Well, we'll get to the Topfree now, right?

Get into the Topfree?

EVELYN BAILEY: But were you were involved with Women Against

Violence Against Women?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah, peripherally I was involved.

What I would do is, yeah, WAVAW.

Barbara, because she's sitting here,

and a couple of other friends, we would go out and we pasted,

a lot of times, against whatever, whoever.

We were pasting maybe the--

We'd go up onto the, remember the billboards,

Barbara, the Black Velvet billboards?

I epoxy glued, well I don't know if we should say this,

but epoxy glued the Monroe Theater.

They had to call in a locksmith, but we epoxy glued

all the locks.

I couldn't stand that theater.

I still can't.

I don't know why they're keeping it.

But it's historical, I know.

But anyway, you know, little shenanigans like that.

We were totally campaigning against violence

against women and rape.

And, you know, trying to raise awareness in the city.

EVELYN BAILEY: And were you involved with the Rape Crisis?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I worked at, the domestic violence program

is more (unintelligible) I worked

at ABW for a couple of years.

EVELYN BAILEY: And then you catapulted yourself

into this action at Cobb's Hill Park.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes and it kind of

coincided with my activism with the Pride Parades

because first it was the Topfree.

And then I remember I used to go to New York

and go to the Pride Parades for over ten years

while I was in Rochester.

I'd go every year, go down at the end of June

like you're supposed to.

End of June is, you know, Stonewall.

And I would march in the parade and take off my shirt.

And Gail [Neison?] and I went down there with it.

One year we took off our shirts and danced the whole way down,

you know, like, exhausted.

And people were taking pictures.

And it wasn't legal yet.

And that was '86.

And then I kept thinking, why don't we

have a parade in Rochester, you know?

But you want me to talk about the Topfree first?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: OK.

In '85 I lived off of Park Avenue, Girton Place.

And there's a park behind this, the Museum and Science Center.

And that year I was introduced to the Schloss's house.

They had a sauna and whirlpool.

And I was introduced to Naturism through Cathy Riley.

I would have never gone there if it wasn't for Cathy.

I really trusted her judgment.

She said, come during the winter.

And so Barbara and I would trek over in the snow,

you know, and said who we were.

And we'd get in, you know, and give them a donation

and make sure there was no men around.

And we'd go in and swim and go in the sauna and whirlpool.

And Cathy kept talking about we should protest,

talking about the possibility that they're

protesting that we can't take off our shirts in public.

And I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I've ever

heard, I really did.

I thought that is just not something

that I'm interested in, had no connection to me.

I had no passion for it.

I was too busy doing things for raising awareness

for world hunger.

I did, remember, I did a couple of shows

that we haven't talked about yet in '85 and '86, right Barbara?

The Lesbian Variety Fashion Show and the Amazon Utopia Show

which were pretty, in their small right,

successes in the community.

And I couldn't put the two together.

I just couldn't validate it.

It didn't seem like something that I would rally behind.

But nonetheless, I kept going to the Schloss's.

Barbara and I kept going.

We kept hearing in the background,

we should be doing something about

that we can't take off our shirts in public.

And I kept thinking, what are they talking about?

I just couldn't do it.

So anyway, that June, I started in the winter,

and that June of '85, right?

It was '85.

I was in the park, lying on my stomach.

And, you know, at one point, I took off my shirt

because I was really hot.

I'm lying down on my stomach, and I must have passed out.

And all of a sudden, I got a tap.

And I look up, and this man's standing over me.

And he says, "ma'am you're going to have to put your shirt on."

I happened to pick my head up, and I saw a person over there.

And I said, you tell the person over there to put his shirt on.

I'll gladly put my shirt on.

He goes, "you're a woman."

I said, man.

I said, nice observation.

Back I went down.

He said, "I'm gonna have to get the authorities."

Go right ahead.

So he went and got his, you know,

the white shirts of the Museum of Science Center.

Now I had two men standing over me.

He said, "under the New York State penal law,

if you do not put your shirt on now,

you're going to be arrested."

I said, well, "I have to think about this," you know.

I had no witnesses.

Nobody was backing me up.

And so I thought about it, and I thought

as I slowly put my shirt on.

And I said, "this won't be the first time."

I don't know, I think the expression is not

to be the last time.

But I think it was like a foreshadowing.

And I stood up and walked over to the guy.

And I said, you know, "I'm being thrown out of this park

because of exactly what you're doing."

He goes, "why?"

I said, "I had my shirt off, and I was lying down bathing

like you are."

And I walked out storming and went

to the Schloss's and talked to Mary Lou and Cathy.

And next thing you know, we started organizing.

The whole winter, we started talking about it.

Was it, yeah, it was '85.

So we started talking about it, the whole winter,

started plotting.

What would we do?

What would we do?

And then we would, you know, come back again

a couple of weeks later.

We'd talk about it.

As it got closer to the spring, Mary Lou

hadn't committed to it.

And until Mary Lou committed, then I knew I was--

I just had a feeling about Mary Lou.

Mary Lou was just the person that, yeah, she always

was a rock in this movement.

And once she said yes, we started--

EVELYN BAILEY: You were there.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: --forging ahead with a plan.

And so we started calling it the Topless Picnic.

Well, where we were going to do it?

We were thinking of this, that, this,

and ended up at Cobb's Hill.

And I think it was a week before the Topless Picnic.

We were going to set out a press release.

And it kept bothering me.

The word kept bothering me.

I kept thinking, what is wrong with this word?

And then I soon made the connection

that it had too much connotation to pornography

and topless bars.

And so I thought, free, top free.

And I told [Morely ?] I said, "[Morely ?] how about Topfree

Picnic?"

And he looked, and he goes, "brilliant!"

And so we put it on the press releases.

And we started referring it to as the Topfree

Picnic because men take off their shirts and women

doffed their shirts, you know, doffed their blouses,

I should say, bared their breasts.

You know, the whole slew of ridiculous comments and sayings

to call what women do when--

And men do take off their shirts.

And shirtless, clearly, is the genderless phrase.

But we chose Topfree.

And the media still to this day has yet to catch on.

Twenty years later we had, you know, what's his name?

EVELYN BAILEY: They are slow.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: What's his name?

BARBARA: Rush Limbaugh?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: No, no, Barbara.

I'm forgetting his name.

You know, from CMF.

He used to be on CMF.

Come on.

Oh my god, he even talks about me all the time.

It's terrible I don't even remember his name.

CMF guy.

EVELYN BAILEY: I know who you mean.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Barbara, that local guy?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah, I know who you mean, too.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: God, it's terrible.

BARBARA: Senior moment.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yeah we're having a senior moment.

All of us.

Well, anyway, we'll get to it.

They called me, and they asked me

if I would speak for the 20th anniversary because no one,

Mary Lou wouldn't do it, no one would come forth.

And I thought, you know what, this is not

going to turn out right.

This is going to be a zoo if I don't represent.

So I wrote out a very, I thought,

a very thoughtful and cohesive and comprehensive speech.

[Morely ?] said it was the most elegant speech,

on the top three that he's ever heard me give.

And do you think the media picked up one word?

Not one word.

They didn't even televise it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Brother Wease?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Brother Wease, thank you.

Thank you.

Brother Wease.

OK, so that went by, but to the Topfree.

We had our little gathering up in Cobb's Hill.

I just spoke about this with a man who

just did a documentary about--

He interviewed me.

He's doing a documentary about someone in New York

right now who's going around shirtless

in New York calling herself Harvey the Topless Paparrazi.

She's hysterical.

She's 46 years old, white, white, white, white hair.

And she has a camera over her neck.

And she's taking pictures.

She takes all these pictures of all these actors and actresses

and says, I'm the Topless, Harvey the Topless.

And she draws a mustache on herself.

She's hysterical.

And he just showed me the doc--

He just sent me the documentary.

And I'm in it.

He interviewed me because she tells the cops, it's legal.

And she said for twenty years this law has been

in existence and nobody knows.

So anyway, so that's going on right now simultaneously.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, were you arrested?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes, thank you.

So we had a little agreement with the police.

They wanted me to do it on Thursday rather than Saturday.

I said, no that was the whole point.

We wanted to be arrested and bring it to the courts

and make a splash in the media.

And so seven of us chose to keep our shirts off.

And we were arrested and taken to Highland,

at the time, Highland Station.

We were issued citations.

They're merely like a parking ticket, by the way.

And we were to appear in court, which we

did in front of Hermann Walls.

And he ruled in our favor.

Well of course, the district district attorney, you know--

BARBARA: Howard Rome?

Yeah, what did do?

EVELYN BAILEY: Howard Rowan.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: I'm having another senior moment.

Not contested--

BARBARA: Appealed it?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Thank you, appealed it.

And so that was going through the court system.

Well, next two years we start doing things

like going to Tennessee Valley park.

We had a picnic.

Sheriffs came down, drove out, didn't bother us,

two years in a row.

The third year after that '86 case,

we decided to go to the lake.

We thought, what better place to go and swim, you know?

And we always chose June 21st because of the Summer Solstice.

We figured that was the beginning of the summer,

so we thought it was significant.

So a bunch of us went down.

By that time we had gay momentum.

People knew who we were.

I was riding my bike around the city with my shirt off.

I was also riding with a roommate of mine.

He was involved with--

Barbara, what is it?

Who was he involved with?

Was it the fairies?

EVELYN BAILEY: Radical Fairies.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: The Radical Fairies, it was hysterical.

He had these angel wings on.

And I had suspenders on, and he wore a skirt,

and we rode around the city, all over the place.

And people would stare at him and forget me.

And that was the whole point.

It was hysterical.

And we have a lot of pictures about that.

And then one year, one time, Susan David and I

rode our bikes from Girton to Wilmer Street, which

wasn't a far ride on Oxford.

And we got stopped, and I had, you know,

coached Susan David to say, if they stop us,

we're going to give them an alias name.

She goes, oh, OK.

So when they stop us they said, you know, put your shirts on.

We said, we're not going to.

And he said, what's your name, he says to me.

I said, Ann.

Ann who?

I said, Arkie.

So he says to Susan, what's your name?

Susan.

Susan what?

Susan David.

I'm like, oh, god, you know, she just blew my cover.

Everybody laughed about this because I gave him my address

and he said, oh 23 Girton.

Well, Ramona Santorelli lives at 23 Girton.

Hm, I wonder if Ann Arkie and Ramona Santorelli--

It was such a dumb thing for me to do, but it was still fun.

And so we--

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you get another citation?

RAMONA SANTORELLI: We did not.

We did not.

But we got a warning.

And I was told by the lawyer that picked up

our Topfree ten, which I'll get to,

said that if we had gotten arrested,

it wouldn't have been good for the case to go, you know,

through the court system.

We would have had another case.

And it might have been cited as, what did they say, hostile,

or there were all kinds of words that they describe

for, you know, disobeying the law when there's already

something in the system.

EVELYN BAILEY: Harass.

RAMONA SANTORELLI: Yes, thank you, whatever the words are.

No they're harassing us, but I'm saying they call it--

if I disobeyed the law again, you know what I mean?

Anyway, so the third picnic that we

were talking about down at the lake, we started swimming.

We had a great time.

Tierney came there, a woman named Tierney.

She was breastfeeding her three-year-old, which everyone

thought was outrageous.

But she breastfed until her children didn't

want to be breastfed anymore.

That was one of the naturist things.

They were really into, you know, breastfeeding.

And by the way, that's why Mary Lou, you know,

chose to be part of this is because it was an oversight

by the legislatures.

For several years it was illegal to breastfeed

in public in New York State.