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.