Video Interview, Jamie and Sally Whitbeck, November 1, 2012
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.
- First question's going to be really easy.
- Let's start with you, Jamie.
- First I need the correct spelling of your first
- and last name how you want it put onscreen.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: OK.
- It will be Jamie Whitbeck.
- Jamie is J-A-M-I-E. Whitbeck is W-H-I-T-B-E-C-K.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Sally, same thing.
- SALLY WHITBECK: I'm Sally--
- S-A-L-L-Y-- Middle initial S, Whitbeck.
- W-H-I-T-B-E-C-K.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: All right.
- Well for you guys, I want to get first
- a sense of your involvement with the gay and lesbian community
- early on.
- As if I know nothing about you, tell me
- not only so much how you got involved, but more importantly,
- why.
- SALLY WHITBECK: OK.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: We moved from one house
- to a new one at a different neighborhood.
- And when we had settled into that neighborhood,
- very soon after that, we had a car
- at our house on a Sunday afternoon
- in the early part of the summer.
- Actually, there were two men.
- One of them was carrying four drinking glasses--
- four goblets-- and the other was carrying a bottle of champagne.
- And they introduced themselves at our front door
- as, we're your neighbors and we came to greet you
- from the neighborhood.
- And those two men, over a period of fourteen years,
- we lived in the same proximity with them for that time.
- And our daughters got to know their dog, which
- was a lovely dog.
- And we got to know this couple as two very, very nice men.
- SALLY WHITBECK: And so did our daughters.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And the daughters liked them and they liked the daughters,
- and it was a nice arrangement.
- One of of them was a--
- both of them were horticulturalists.
- One of them worked for the parks.
- And our older daughter still is--
- well she's a PhD in--
- SALLY WHITBECK: Biology.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: --biology and water stuff you know,
- the swamps.
- And that is a link between what he was doing
- and what she now does.
- We realized, though, that these guys were really, really
- closeted.
- And both of them had good jobs, big jobs.
- And if they had been outed, they might well have lost their job.
- And that was the--
- oh, we have to be careful of what we say to anybody else.
- And we have to find a way to make a better deal
- for these two very nice guys.
- And I think maybe that--
- SALLY WHITBECK: That's what started our interest.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- So then talk to me about maybe some
- of those first conversations between you
- and Jamie about these two guys being your neighbors,
- and who they were.
- But again, maybe something that you couldn't really
- readily talk about to your other friends.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Well we really didn't talk much about the fact
- that they were probably gay.
- They never used the word.
- And we used to get together for dinners with them
- and some other of the neighbors.
- It was a fantastic neighborhood.
- And so they never used the word gay.
- We didn't either.
- So we never discussed gay issues.
- But probably in the early eighties or we
- moved from there in 1984.
- And it could have been soon before that.
- We saw, and it might have been in the City East newspaper,
- that a vote was going up in the assembly for SONDA.
- Or maybe it even was the Senate.
- Probably the assembly.
- And so we realized that since our neighbors, who
- were executives, couldn't be out,
- it behooved us to be out, in the sense of supporting.
- And so we wrote a letter to our legislator.
- And about that time, Jamie had noticed,
- in City East, an ad for a gay play given at Calvary St.
- Andrews.
- And he wanted to go.
- He loves theater.
- And I've learned to love it with him.
- And I was hesitant.
- I thought the gay community might easily not
- want straight people there.
- So we didn't go, sadly enough.
- The second time we saw another ad a couple months later,
- maybe.
- And it said all are welcome.
- So we went.
- And we walked in and it was called Conundrum Players.
- And the man who got that started moved soon
- after that to New York City.
- But we saw a fantastic play, or maybe more than one.
- I'm not sure.
- One we specifically remember.
- The Watched Pot.
- And we remember who the actresses were.
- And when we walked in to buy the tickets,
- we were just overwhelmingly welcomed.
- We felt so embraced.
- So we felt very comfortable.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- I want to, you know, move back just a little bit.
- You've got these neighbors who came and introduced themselves
- to you.
- And you became good friends with them.
- Your families became good friends.
- But what was your knowledge or your impressions
- of the gay community before those introductions?
- SALLY WHITBECK: OK.
- Who do you want to talk--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It doesn't-- whoever starts Brian will
- follow you.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I discovered at a later time, actually
- when I got involved in the GAGV and the activities
- here, that during my youth, there
- had been times when I had--
- well I'll give an example.
- I went to a guy school.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Prep school?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: And I liked working in the theater then.
- Even then, I guess.
- Because this was just the high school level.
- And there was another young guy who actually was about a year,
- or a year, or maybe two years younger than I.
- And we did backstage work in the theater.
- And after a while--
- and I don't know how long the while was--
- I began hearing other people in my own class,
- making snide remarks about my association
- with this young fellow, who was a year or maybe two years
- younger than I.
- And I just wanted to back up.
- Something very similar to that happened to me in college.
- Again, it was with the theater.
- This guy had a dorm room, a solo dorm room.
- And there weren't very many of those.
- He was an upperclassmen.
- But still there were lots of doubles, but very few solos.
- There's the obvious connection there
- that, OK, nobody wants to be in the same bedroom with him.
- And I got familiar with him.
- I was doing the hands-on work.
- He was doing the how does he want this play to work.
- I had the same kind of response.
- I didn't just back away altogether.
- I just made it sure that when we had conversations,
- we had him in a more public space.
- I felt more comfortably about that.
- But of course, again, that's a homophobic response.
- So, you know, I've had that.
- I've done that downstairs in the activities
- down there to try and explain that, how
- that happens to other people.
- So I think that's the sort of thing
- that I had as a preliminary.
- After that, there was so much other stuff going on.
- And then there's where the hole is.
- That's where the gap is.
- From those two points to meeting our new friends.
- I can't remember anything that was related.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Um-hm.
- So I guess the next question is, then, these two guys show up
- at your door with champagne and I
- would have assume, at some point,
- you started putting two and two together.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Sure.
- Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Did any of that homophobia
- start to rear its ugly head again, or--
- JAMIE WHITBECK: These two guys, if anything, were angelic.
- They were tough, but they were also very sensitive.
- So--
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So, you've got these two guys in your life.
- You start going to plays at the church and all that stuff.
- What, then-- and you started writing letters
- to your legislators.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Do you want me to say anything
- about gay or not?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- Sure.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Oh, OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- It's more difficult trying to interview two people together.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I move onto the next question
- and the other one's just, like, well, wait a minute.
- So just jump in, yeah.
- SALLY WHITBECK: OK.
- My perception of gay people was very dim.
- I don't mean negativity dim.
- I mean just dim.
- I didn't think much about it.
- I went to Smith College, which, at that point,
- was not a bastion of gay liberalism.
- Graduated in '62.
- But there were women professors who lived together.
- But I only remember two who were already retired.
- And one of them would come to our dorm
- and visit with our house mother and was there after dinner.
- She was more notable for smoking those cigarillos
- than anything else.
- Nobody ever mentioned the fact that they
- thought she was gay or lesbian.
- It just was accepted or it was, well, that's the way--
- never associated-- I never knew anybody my age who was gay.
- But I didn't grow up with any negative images of gays either.
- So it didn't have much of an impression on me.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So at what point did this little light bulb go
- off, saying, you know what, there's
- more work to be done here that we could help with?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Oh, that light bulb.
- More work to be done in what?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: In regards to gay and lesbian civil rights.
- In regards to gay and lesbian awareness and visibility
- and everything that goes with that.
- It sounded to me like the first little initial spark was
- that letter to your legislator.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Um-hm.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: How did that then
- evolve into more actual activism?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Let me see.
- Our activity first began with the letter to the legislator.
- And we had been involved in supporting the black community
- through Metro-Act, which is now a Metro Justice.
- And I'm not sure if soon after that--
- well there must have been some years in there
- where we didn't have any opportunity to do anything,
- or if we saw something in the paper,
- we would write a letter to a legislator.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: And we're raising two young girls
- at this time, so--
- the church?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Well the church--
- yes.
- I guess then our church worked on becoming
- a welcoming congregation.
- And so we were on the committee.
- And so we worked on those activities.
- And I'm not quite sure when Bill Pritchard and the Gay Alliance
- were working on activities that preceded the Empire State Pride
- Agenda nationally.
- This was just locally.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: The political caucus.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Political caucus.
- Somehow, we got involved in that.
- So it was advocacy.
- And it was that kind of support.
- Civil rights, except we did have these two friends.
- So they were certainly in our minds.
- And we realized that they could get very hurt
- or any gay person could get very hurt by speaking out,
- so it was up to us.
- So it was an easy thing to do.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about getting
- involved with the Gay Alliance.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Remember to preface it.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I want to say something
- that is a little bit maybe ahead of that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I've gone blank for a second here.
- SALLY WHITBECK: You're thinking of political caucus
- or you're thinking--
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I'm thinking of the--
- SALLY WHITBECK: Well, another question?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Give me another question.
- I'm--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's go back to the church then real quick.
- Well first of all, just for my own knowledge,
- which church are you talking about,
- that you were working to become an all-welcoming church?
- SALLY WHITBECK: The church we were
- working with to become a welcoming congregation
- was the First Unitarian Church on Winton Road.
- We had both been brought up as Episcopalians here
- in Rochester.
- But we had started going to the church
- and became very active almost immediately in January of 1978.
- And it was sometime in the eighties
- that the church worked on becoming
- a welcoming congregation, which the church
- throughout the country had already passed a resolution
- to become welcoming.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you talk to me a little bit about some
- of those conversations or those meetings about,
- OK, if we're going to be an an all-welcoming church, what
- does that mean?
- You know, in regards to what (unintelligible)--
- SALLY WHITBECK: (unintelligible) educating.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: --becming an all-welcoming--
- JAMIE WHITBECK: One of the things
- that we did as a part of that, the church had
- had a history of, during the summer time part of the church
- year, they would have periodic movies shown on weekend
- evenings in the big room.
- So we picked up the idea, OK, it's been done before.
- So this is another iteration of it.
- But we'll do some gay movies.
- And that's when we got involved with the ImageOut concept.
- I didn't know where to find gay movies.
- So I called up Bill Copper who was then owning and running
- the Little Theatre.
- And I asked him where I could find some gay movies.
- I don't know what he said.
- But he said, "There's a guy here in my office
- that probably could help you."
- And the next thing, I'm on the line with Larry Champoux.
- And Larry was agreeable and said,
- "You know, come over to my art gallery on the--"
- SALLY WHITBECK: Pyramid.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Pyramid Art Gallery, which at that time,
- was on University Avenue and Prince Street.
- So I went over and he gave me some catalogs
- and gave me some suggestions.
- And we worked on it.
- And we got some films going.
- Enough to do through the summer, maybe five.
- I don't remember.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: We did it on video.
- That's what we had, videotape, then.
- And we'd get in from the library or from wherever
- else we got it.
- And then we'd talk about them afterwards.
- And that was-- there was a social effect.
- And there was the learning effect.
- We started out with On Golden Pond,
- which only had the value of having
- an older man and his wife, a daughter, and the daughter's
- son.
- So we had levels of ages where things don't always
- work very beautifully.
- And we ended up with something called Desert--
- SALLY WHITBECK: Hearts.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Desert Hearts.
- And there it was, you know, fluff.
- But it was clearly a lesbian movie.
- Well that didn't take much of a leap to move into,
- let's do some more movies.
- But let's get involved in something a little bit more.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So this was prior to the Gay Alliance
- involvement with what was called the Watch A Lesbian Film
- Festival then.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yes.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Just immediately prior.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Right.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I think at some point, you then--
- JAMIE WHITBECK: ImageOut opened in '93.
- In October of 1993.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Well talk about Larry inviting you.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Oh, yeah.
- After-- Larry had made this offer to me for these booklets.
- He called me up a month or two--
- I don't know-- and said, "We're going to have a meeting
- to start up our film festival.
- Would you like to come to the meeting?"
- So I said, sure.
- And it was at the Gay Alliance on--
- SALLY WHITBECK: Elton.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: --Elton Street and Atlantic Avenue.
- And I had never been to that building before.
- I went in and we were in that living room
- part of the building.
- And I didn't know anybody there except Larry.
- And by the end of the evening, I was absolutely hooked.
- Just like that.
- I knew I had to be part of this activity.
- It just had the same kind of energy
- and the same kind of excitement that the things
- that I had been able to do at high school level,
- and at the college level, and even doing some here at RIT.
- Yeah, RIT when it was downtown.
- I've been hooked ever since.
- And that's where--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: We're going to get back to Sally.
- When Jamie came home and said, "Well
- guess what, I'm going to do a queer-- a gay and lesbian film
- festival," what were your thoughts?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Well when Jamie came home and said
- that he would like to do this, it was fine.
- Jamie is the kind of person who jumps in and says-- if somebody
- asks him if he'd like to do something,
- he jumps and says sure.
- I'm the kind who says, well, wait,
- I've got these things I have to do.
- Do I have the time?
- So he became involved and I worked behind the scenes,
- like helping with mailings for the publicity committee
- when that came around and that sort of thing.
- But I didn't join a committee officially probably
- for four years or so.
- It was fine with me that he was working on this.
- It was really great.
- He was excited and it was an exciting thing to do.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So aside from the excitement of all that,
- wanting to jump into this activity, did
- you have any thoughts in regards of what else
- this film festival could do for this community?
- Did you have any thoughts about, OK,
- it could be more than just a film festival?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Um-hm.
- It certainly was more than just a film festival to me.
- It was an entirely new world to me.
- It was a world of people, many of whom were my age,
- some were a good deal younger than I.
- And the diversity I had never, except for two
- friends out on the hill there, really
- had a relationship that was kind of a business relationship,
- where we've got to do this thing together.
- And so it really was involving.
- And it was a rich kind of activity.
- It lasted for-- you know, there was a build up,
- and then there's the event, and then there's a little let down.
- And then that comes around again the next year
- and you're still just as excited about it.
- And we still have been.
- But does that help on what--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: --what you need?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Kind of expand on it a little bit.
- That first year or two of putting this film festival
- together and getting people to actually
- come to a movie theater.
- When you start seeing the theater filling up with people,
- what were your thoughts?
- In regards to what you were at that moment.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- I remember telling some straight person, after the fact,
- that if you have never been in a movie
- theater of three hundred people, nearly all of whom are gay,
- you have not really been to a movie.
- I felt it was a sea change.
- It was an entirely different perspective.
- Maybe I cooked that up in my own head.
- You can do that kind of thing.
- But the energy that was in those early, early years was--
- well it has made a difference in how I live
- and I think Sally gets it the same way.
- SALLY WHITBECK: One thing I remember
- is that many members of the group
- that we were in church to educate the church
- community to become a welcoming congregation, which they did.
- It was an educational process.
- Many or maybe all of those people
- came to the opening movie, which was Evelyn--
- Dr. Evelyn-- I can't remember.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Hooker.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Hooker.
- Her A psychiatrist from San Francisco, whose--
- many of her clients were gay men.
- And she's really, I think, the first person
- who stated within the psychiatric community
- that being gay was not a psychiatric situation.
- The gay people, the gay men, she treated
- were exactly like the straight people she treated.
- So it was a fantastic movie.
- And then church members came to several movies.
- And I think we sold out the Dryden Theatre the first year.
- First year closing night.
- Five hundred and twenty some seats at that time.
- And maybe sold out closing nights for a few.
- Sold out a lot of movies back then.
- It was a new experience, exciting.
- And it was exciting to get some straight people.
- And it educates us and we have fun.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: One of those Dryden Theatre closing nights
- was largely women.
- And the Eastman House staff went bananas.
- They got extra cops in.
- There were all of these women.
- And of course, lots of them came on motorcycles.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Yeah.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: It was absolutely a real stitch to see
- these rent-a-cops--
- they're nice man, I'm sure.
- But it was unbelievable that was--
- it was like the sort of stuff that you
- might see if you stayed up and watched
- that the Academy Awards, you know?
- That kind of fuss and nonsense on the curb.
- It was something else.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You know, it's been twenty years now.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What do you think
- ImageOut provides for this community,
- other than showing good movies?
- What has made ImageOut a success that's
- been able to last twenty years?
- SALLY WHITBECK: I was thinking about what
- ImageOut has provided for the community, both gay
- and straight.
- And the first thing is a sense of community.
- There is such a sense of community
- when everybody gets together to go to the movies for ten
- fantastic days.
- So the sense of community and showing movies depicting
- the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex
- movement with this last year is educational.
- And also, there are the features, which
- can be educational and fun.
- So I think it's provided a sense of community,
- especially for the gay community.
- But the gay community has welcomed any straight people
- who want to attend also, which I would love to get
- more straight people attending.
- And the second thing is volunteers.
- I think the fact that ImageOut started
- as a volunteer organization--
- the people who started it-- there
- were a few people who worked extremely hard.
- And then there were a lot of other volunteers.
- And it's kept going mostly through volunteer effort.
- And I think, as a volunteer, I feel
- that I own a part of ImageOut.
- It's a part of me.
- And I think other volunteers must feel the same way.
- It's our event and we're very proud of it.
- And I think the community sense and the volunteers
- have kept it going.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- I absolutely concur.
- It's that sense of being there, of owning it
- in that particular sense.
- And we look forward to it.
- And I think the whole community does.
- They're talking about it months later.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What do you think it says about Rochester
- as a whole-- as a community--
- that here we are, we're this small little city.
- We're not a big city.
- But yet, we have a film festival that can outdo any film
- festival in any major city.
- We've got a number of gay and lesbian support
- organizations, a number of different gay and lesbian
- social groups.
- There are larger cities in this country
- that would be very jealous of what we have in Rochester.
- What does it say about Rochester and who we are?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I've thought about that a little bit more
- recently.
- But it is a little confusing.
- Why would this happen?
- I'm thinking that it could be--
- the bigger cities have so much going on that there's no--
- there isn't enough concentration.
- We have maybe a good size.
- And we have enough people to fill the theater.
- And we have enough energy for the volunteers
- to participate and work it out.
- We have some very smart people who
- are very smart in their daytime activity.
- And they're equally smart in doing something like this.
- And so we have lots of skill, lots of knowledgeability,
- whatever that means.
- But that may be just a part of it.
- Now, tomorrow I might have a different thing about it.
- But I think there might be an optimum level,
- where you have the energy, you have the tools,
- you have all of those and they happen to be available here
- if we continue to care for it.
- SALLY WHITBECK: I was thinking about the question of why
- ImageOut and why the strong gay community here.
- And I think a lot of it goes back to the seventies
- with students who were at the U of R who started publishing
- the Empty Closet, and were--
- they had enough guts to come out, which was not
- acceptable at that time.
- It was after Stonewall.
- So things were opening up but certainly not in an employment
- perspective.
- So there was a strong group of people at the U of R--
- students-- and they started the, as I said, the Empty Closet.
- They started the Gay Alliance, I believe.
- And from that core, I think the gay community has grown.
- So I think it goes back to them.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Stepping outside of ImageOut a little bit.
- Because I know you've been--
- well (unintelligible) activists (unintelligible) activists.
- You've been working in the churches.
- You've been working with politics.
- You've been working with youth groups.
- You've been working with a number of organizations
- for LGBT issues.
- Let me first ask you just to talk
- to me a little bit about some of the work that you've
- been doing.
- And then I'm going to ask you why.
- But give me a sense of some of the things that you've
- been involved with and the kind of work that you've been doing.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Preface it.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: What other things that I do
- are, honestly, taking care of myself.
- I like to walk.
- I like to be active in that sort of business.
- I like to-- well, as an example, we've got an election coming up
- and I've been helping one of the candidates
- to support their bid.
- Actually, both of us are doing that.
- We've got a lot of political stuff in there.
- And I'm try to think of what other things that are--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well let me ask it to you differently.
- We'll jump right down to the why part.
- You've been there at the forefront
- for the gay and lesbian community
- in many different ways.
- Through your church, through ImageOut,
- through working with the politicians,
- through working with the youth in the youth center and all
- that stuff.
- Why?
- That's really what I want to get to.
- I want to know why.
- It would have been so easy for you to just stay home,
- raise your children.
- You know, have your token gay neighbors,
- and you could have left it at that, but you didn't.
- You became uniquely immersed as a heterosexual couple.
- Uniquely immersed in the gay community.
- And there's something there that--
- there's something that pulled the trigger for you guys
- to make that decision.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Maybe this is part of it.
- When you get involved in an organization that
- does things for you, as well as other people,
- everything that we've done with the gay community
- has resonated within us, at least that's my perspective.
- We hop on the bus and we go up to Albany.
- And we try to change the legislative agenda so
- that it's a little bit better.
- And to continue to do that year after year, it's a goal.
- We see where the problem might be,
- and where can we get the fix for it?
- So that kind of thing.
- And when we go, largely it's older people like us.
- But there is now a growing number
- of younger and younger people who are getting into that.
- Sometimes we interact with them, sometimes we don't.
- They've got their agenda.
- But it is a vibrant kind of activity to do.
- And when you're doing something like that, you're alive.
- We don't have a TV set.
- We had one for a while, but it got awfully dusty.
- I mean, we just didn't use the thing.
- And we moved.
- It was too big to go where we live.
- So we went without a TV.
- But that doesn't seem to bother us.
- There are so many other things out there that need to be done,
- or you need to get into it in order
- to participate to find out what's going on.
- And this election campaign this year
- has been a very fertile one.
- Lots of activity going on, lots of ideas going on,
- lots of friction going on, but it's maybe a good friction.
- SALLY WHITBECK: I think it's a sense of justice.
- Looking back, somehow I think I've
- always felt for the underdog or defended people.
- And as I said, we were involved in Metro-Act with the black--
- trying to get the black people support.
- One example was Sibley's used to hire--
- Sibley's which became--
- I can't remember now.
- Different department store.
- Sibley's downtown, big department store
- hired blacks only in custodial roles.
- And so, as Metro-Act members, we picketed.
- There have been times when I've gone outside my comfort zone.
- Jamie, his comfort zone is way out there.
- And mine isn't.
- But I've gone outside, not in the picketing
- at Sibley's, but other things.
- Oh, speaking before the city council
- for the domestic partnership law.
- I felt that we couldn't speak because we
- weren't city citizens.
- But Jamie found out that that was fine.
- And so we-- he, mostly, probably--
- got together a speech.
- We rehearsed it.
- It had to be three minutes or less.
- And we went and spoke and made some friends.
- Got connected with some people.
- So it's a sense of justice.
- And it's something that's very important to me.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Years ago I remember talking to you guys,
- and I think I asked you pretty much the same question.
- Why?
- And you talked to me about the whole extended family values
- that guys found with the gay community.
- That the gay community kind of readily accepted you.
- Kind of embraced you.
- Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
- About being kind of an extended family for you guys?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: At one--
- yeah-- got to start again.
- Sally and I went to the Gay Men's Chorus concerts a lot.
- And, of course, they had been there long before Sally and I
- got to there.
- And one evening after a concert--
- or maybe it was during the intermission--
- a couple of the singers in the chorus
- came over to where we were sitting during intermission
- and encouraged me to get on the board of directors
- of the chorus.
- So I thought about it and I decided, well, I could do that.
- So I did it.
- I did it for three years.
- I learned a lot about what managing a chorus was.
- I learned a lot more about the people who were in it.
- And when you have singers, you have some real hot shots,
- and you have some real--
- got it for me, different kind of activity,
- but everybody's trying to make the music the best they can.
- And it was interesting.
- It was a different kind of a train to ride for a while.
- I went for than the required three years.
- I think I enjoyed most of all of it.
- I think I generated some activity that was constructive.
- I then stepped down, as I did when
- I was in the early years of the film festival.
- You know, I did it for three years
- or whatever the program was.
- And then, OK, we need to have somebody else in this seat,
- because I don't want to be hogging this one.
- That sense of it.
- SALLY WHITBECK: I think you should talk about it,
- because you're the one--
- you didn't really answer Kevin's question.
- It was about the community embracing you or us.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Well when you're there
- in a room full of singers you have an interaction.
- You're talking to each other.
- And there would be some that would support me and others
- that didn't.
- In the film festival, I think everybody supported each other.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well let me ask you this then.
- In your involvement with the gay community,
- again, you took a job at the Gay Men's chorus,
- the GAG, political caucus, whatever,
- was there ever a moment where you felt maybe
- we don't belong here?
- Was there ever a moment where maybe there
- was people who were a little bit skeptical of your intentions?
- You know, any times they were challenging,
- that made you question what you were doing?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I have--
- I don't think I have enough chutzpah
- to try to break into another organization
- that I think is probably doing very well by itself, please,
- and I can't really generate anything.
- But there must be something in this organization
- that I can contribute in some way that
- will be of some value to the organization
- and hopefully of some value to my own sense of,
- I'm glad I did this.
- Let me change that little bit.
- I'm a blood donor.
- And over my life since college days, I have donated blood.
- And when Sally and I were in the Peace Corps,
- I donated blood there when there was a road accident at the--
- so I've done that a lot of times.
- All of a sudden, I discovered sometime
- in the last ten or twelve months that I had already donated
- one hundred pints of blood.
- That's a lot of blood.
- I've never thought of it as a contribution other
- than I think I should do this.
- I have the ability to donate that blood.
- It's known to be a safe operation.
- So why not?
- Another example of that.
- This must have been the second or third year of the film
- festival, our film festival.
- If you've been in the Little Theatre, especially in the two
- and three section, when that was just
- all there was plus the one, there
- was a long walkway that took you out
- to the street to the parking lot.
- And in that walkway corridor, there
- were little notices put up here, there, and yonder.
- And one evening, when I was waiting during--
- there was a film going on and I was
- going to be opening the door and that kind of stuff--
- I saw this ad for blood donors to go for AIDS vaccine test
- arrangement.
- And I thought about it.
- I tore off the little telephone number,
- and took it home and thought about it.
- And I talked to Sally about it and for a while
- we played around with it.
- And then it got to be Christmas and I got serious again.
- And so I went over there or called--
- I guess I called up to see if they still
- were interested in vaccine test volunteers.
- So they said, yeah, sure.
- And Sally and I went in.
- I think Sally wanted to come in.
- I asked her to come with me, but I
- think we both wanted to know what this entailed
- and what was the risk, to be quite honest.
- What was the risk of being a vaccine test worker?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Subject?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Subject.
- Yes.
- But it happened to me the-- was in the film festival.
- And I got included into the AIDS vaccine test.
- It ran for-- my stint in it ran for about two years, a year.
- About a year and a quarter, it was very intense
- and then it got spread out.
- And when they said, "OK, we might call you
- in another two years from now just for fun
- to see what would happen."
- But my test was negative.
- I mean, all the stuff that--
- I got a double whammy.
- Two in one arm and one--
- at any rate, it was not a useful vaccine.
- But I went through the process and nothing bad for me.
- But I felt after that, that--
- and I still do.
- I still do.
- I think that's one of the things that I feel most proud of.
- Because I did it at that moment.
- Other people had done it earlier than I.
- And I learned of those people and had the same kind
- of sense of awe that they did.
- We did something that might make a difference.
- Tangible difference.
- That's the part of it that, you know--
- well that was the kind of idea that I'm trying to say.
- That is something that I could go down to my grave
- and be comfortable on that particular point.
- SALLY WHITBECK: The gay community
- has certainly supported us all the time, I'd say.
- We went to a birthday party of one of our lesbian friends
- once.
- And in one of the rooms of the house,
- a woman was speaking very strongly
- against straight people.
- And I just went into the next room and kept my distance.
- Today, I might engage somebody like that after the fact.
- But the gay community has really embraced us.
- At one of the dinners that we've been at,
- an older man came up to Jamie and said
- he was just so happy that we were there and wishes
- that his deceased partner, who was never out
- could see the fact that straight people were in the community,
- and it might have given him the impetus to be out
- and to be much more comfortable with being gay.
- That seeing that there are straight people who
- accept, embrace gay people.
- But the gay community has embraced us.
- We've always been accepted in ImageOut.
- It's been marvelous.
- And a great experience.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Is that the greatest part of it?
- Is that-- creating the dialog between straights and gays
- to be able to open doorways so that we can see each other,
- and get to know each other, and get to understand each other,
- is that what drives you?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Seeing each other,
- being a member of the straight community
- within the gay community, being an advocate
- is certainly important.
- I still say the community is important.
- But I would like to see more straight people become
- comfortable with gay people, get to know them,
- go to movies so that they see different things that
- are important to the gay community,
- that they may not even think about.
- To me that's very important.
- And it's a part where I certainly
- haven't been as successful as I would have hoped,
- getting friends to come with me to the movies.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: In regards to when
- you had children to raise--
- you had children to raise.
- And I can only expect that these values
- that you have in the work that you're
- doing with the gay community and the values
- that you have in regards to understanding people
- and accepting people for who they
- are, you have to have had handed that down to your children,
- right?
- And talk to me about that, the importance
- of what kind of messages we're handing off to our children;
- off to our future generations.
- In the work that you guys have done,
- you've played a big part in that.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Do you want to say something, or?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Why don't you start?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Oh, OK.
- The importance of being in the gay community
- with our children--
- I guess we've been involved more in the gay community
- since the kids have gotten older.
- But certainly having our two neighbors and the children
- being a part of that experience, they've never felt--
- they've always felt comfortable being with gay people.
- They're both politically liberal.
- And I think that they certainly know how we feel
- and they have felt the same way.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: How about you, Jamie?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: I've been thinking about the fact
- that because our--
- maybe I'm going to put this around here.
- I feel that the amount of energy going toward our daughters
- relative to the gay community, I don't think I've
- been able to do that as much.
- I don't think either of them, for instance, are really
- involved in gay film.
- And I know-- well see, I don't know
- enough about our daughters' activities.
- We know a certain very homey slice,
- particularly for her daughter who lives here in town.
- And she's got a full plate.
- Our other daughter is a scientist and she
- also has a full plate and has had a lot of--
- SALLY WHITBECK: And is very politically active.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- She's politically active.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Very politically active.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Especially with the Green Party.
- But she gets out there and will go
- for any of the issues that are what she feels
- are valuable for her experience in New Orleans.
- That's about as far as I maybe--
- I'd like to generate more of that.
- But they have their plate and I don't want to spill it over,
- you know?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Well they're liberal.
- They certainly saw that we were involved.
- We marched against the Vietnam War.
- They remember that.
- They were young then.
- And I think that shaped their politics.
- And I remember them coming home from high school saying,
- "Oh, don't use the word gay."
- So there was this negativity at school in the early years,
- in public school.
- But on the other hand, they knew our friends.
- And that's so important.
- I think if you know somebody who's
- gay, or lesbian, or transgender, intersex, that opens up
- the whole relationship.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Looking back at the years,
- how do you want history to reflect your lives?
- What are you most proud of in what
- you've done with the gay community,
- for the gay community?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Well I think that kind of event--
- the fact that people that we really had no other contact
- with except the film festival, there
- are so many smiles and good to see you again,
- that sort of thing.
- And it's not always in the Little Theatre.
- There are other places that it happens,
- not just the Little Theatre and the Eastman House.
- There are times when, oh, yes, it's nice to see you again.
- SALLY WHITBECK: When I think about my heritage,
- I had never thought about that.
- I never thought about how I would like to be remembered,
- except is a good friend in a general way.
- But I think as far as our relationship
- with the gay community, I would like
- to be remembered as a person who was in the gay community.
- And that's thanks to Jamie, who made that first step.
- And it's been a beautiful experience.
- And the gay community has embraced us.
- We love it.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: We had an event that was early on.
- Sally reminded me of it the other day.
- And it certainly is that kind of thing.
- This was one of the first few years.
- There was a party after the film festival at home.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Oh yes.
- No.
- That was an Empire State Pride Agenda dinner.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: It was?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Not a dinner.
- Are you thinking the dinner at our house
- that I was talking about?
- JAMIE WHITBECK: No I'm talking about the dinner--
- the lunch.
- The two women at home.
- SALLY WHITBECK: That was Empire State Pride Agenda.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Oh, OK.
- So it was a Pride Agenda event.
- But we went over there, the two of us.
- And we weren't bar people.
- We just didn't go there.
- And we went in and as we went through the door,
- Sally said she saw him some.
- More than I did.
- It was Don (unintelligible).
- SALLY WHITBECK: Don't say the name.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Oh, I'm not supposed to say the name.
- Alright.
- SALLY WHITBECK: OK.
- Anyway, we had been involved in the political caucus.
- And then this was later.
- It was an Empire State Pride Agenda event.
- But we didn't know any gay people other than--
- or maybe it was not after the political caucus.
- We knew our neighbors.
- And one man we had met, I guess through the political caucus,
- looked extremely surprised to see us.
- And I thought, oh, should we be here or shouldn't we?
- And then we walked in and you can finish the story.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Well two women, whom we still see from time
- to time, they were a couple.
- They just sort of set this up and said, come on,
- let's get something to eat.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Took care of us.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah, right.
- Took care of us.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Took us under their wings.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: They welcomed us into the party.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yes.
- Took us under their wing.
- And I've seen the woman do that over with other people.
- It's beautiful.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Here's an interesting question.
- And you're one of the very few people I've asked this to.
- Here you are, being interviewed for a documentary that's
- going to be presented during the twenty-first ImageOut film
- festival; a film festival that you helped start.
- Kind of coming full circle.
- How does it feel?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Try and be succinct.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You're going to be up on the big screen
- during the film festival that you helped
- begin twenty-one years ago.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: During this film festival,
- we saw some of our friends that were taken, perhaps
- by you, at the Eisenhart Auditorium, the preliminary
- to the--
- and their pictures were up there, and their comments,
- and that sort of thing.
- I don't see any problem with that.
- I think it would be kind of fun.
- But it's not a need.
- It would be like a little extra something.
- There's-- a lagniappe.
- SALLY WHITBECK: (unintelligible).
- Oh, yeah.
- A lagniappe.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: A little extra.
- But it's the whole mechanism.
- It's the whole event.
- It's the whole family that is doing this.
- And of course we're going to relate
- to each other and different people, different times.
- But there's so many.
- And there's so many good ideas and good feelings.
- Looks OK to me.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Sometimes if I look back and I think,
- OK, it's been twenty or twenty-one years,
- I begin to realize how old I'm becoming.
- And I hope that I can continue for a few more years at least,
- or several more years.
- Does put a little actuality on our lifespan.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Glenn lost Elizabeth a year or two ago, right?
- SALLY WHITBECK: Right.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, but it is kind of interesting.
- I can't imagine twenty, while you're
- trying to start a film festival, that you would ever
- figure that twenty years later, you would be up on that screen
- as part of this festival.
- SALLY WHITBECK: No.
- Didn't think like that.
- We were in the moment and doing what we enjoy.
- And I think with volunteering, to be successful,
- the person who volunteers has to receive something,
- or else they'll go somewhere else and volunteer.
- And we've certainly received a tremendous amount.
- JAMIE WHITBECK: Um-hm.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Makes us very happy.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Alright.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Thank you.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: We'll call that a wrap.
- SALLY WHITBECK: Yeah.
- Good.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: That's a lot.