Bob Rappaport

JASMINE: Okay, looks like we're recording. This is Jasmine Timmester interviewing Bob Rappaport. Did I pronounce that correctly?

BOB: You did.

JASMINE: It is the fifth of November, 2021. Thank you for being here, Bob! The first question I wanted to ask about is--it's not one of the core questions, but I like to ask participants if they don't mind telling me a little bit about your early life, you know, maybe your family life, maybe how you heard 00:00:30about Antioch, and why you chose to come to Antioch?

BOB: Sure. I grew up on Long Island, a town called Roslyn. I was adopted by a couple that--my adopted parents, my mother was a teacher and then a 00:01:00real estate agent. My father had a fabric sales business in the Garment District in New York City. They adopted me when I was a baby and being--having been born by a Jewish mother that--I had to be adopted into a Jewish family, so 00:01:30they were Jewish couple. Interesting, later on in our discussion, I can talk, if you'd like, about finding my birth parents, which I've done recently. I grew up in Roslyn, I went all through school there, I was not a happy child, because [Audio distortion] for many of us, especially back in those days, 00:02:00being gay was a nightmare. Something--the last thing in the world you wanted to be and I was a non-sports little boy who was terrified that somebody was gonna find out that I was a faggot. So I got interested in the arts. I sort 00:02:30of had an artistic bent to begin with, and theater, and I was doing acting in high school, but I hated being in school. I was--I did very well, academically, so I was able to get out to graduate a year early. And while I was in 00:03:00the process of looking at where I wanted to go to college, they--I don't know if they still have them, but there was this big book that had all the colleges and a couple of pages about them. And I was reading through all of them and I came across Antioch, and read about it--sounded very intriguing, co-op program and everything. And then the last line in the section on Antioch it said, 00:03:30"Shoes must be worn at graduation." And I knew that's where I wanted to be [chuckles]. I was a budding hippie back in the days. So that's how I ended up at Antioch.

JASMINE: [Awesome,] and did you--at that time were you still quite involved in the arts? You know, were you thinking of you know, studying art at Antioch?

BOB: Yeah, I just thought I would be a drama major, and an art minor. 00:04:00Started out doing a little of each of those, and, so I've got to give you some history here if that's okay, about what happened. This was 1969. The--my first quarter at Antioch was fall quarter '69. Stonewall had just happened 00:04:30that summer. I didn't know anything about it, even though I lived in--outside of New York, and actually was working part-time in my father's office in the city, but I didn't know anything about it because I was so closeted, and it wasn't something that in those days made--I don't know it probably did make 00:05:00some of the papers, but I didn't read the papers regularly in those days. So I really didn't know about it, besides which, it was summer of 1969, it happened right after the moon landing, which everybody was all caught up in, and the next month in August I went to Woodstock, and so I had a lot of things going on, and I was taking a class that I had to in order to graduate early and go to Antioch. So I arrived at Antioch not knowing anything about what was going on 00:05:30back there. I did my first co-op in winter of 1970. I sort of left things to last minute, couldn't find something that I really wanted to do and ended up again, working for my father. But I shared an apartment in the city with three other Antioch students on co-op. And while I was there, a series of 00:06:00things happened, without going into the specifics, but I ended up having sort of a[n] epiphany about being gay, and I came out to people that I lived with and I started going out and meeting guys and stuff. But not to my 00:06:30family yet. I went back to Antioch for the spring semester. And it was in that during the Spring quarter and it was during that time that Kent State, the shootings at Kent State happened and then students at all the [universities ?] were going on strike. When I w--so I'm sorry, I left something out. 00:07:00When I was in New York I joined the Gay Liberation Front, which was an early gay activist group that modeled itself on all of the other activist groups that were around at the time. Went to those meetings and got involved, met people that way, it was a good experience for me. So when I went back to Antioch 00:07:30in the winter of '70, I decided to open up the local local Antioch chapter of the Gay Liberation Front [chuckles], and I went and put up flyers all over campus and downtown Yellow Springs, and booked a room in one of the buildings, I can't remember where, and said, you know, anybody interested come seven o'clock on this night. And about 10 people showed up, and they had all sort 00:08:00of known each other. Some of them were students and some of them were townies, and they had found each other. There were men and women and they didn't seem particularly interested in politics and political issues, but we had a good time,and I was still just, I think I had just turned 18 or something 00:08:30like that. So I was very young and that--it was great! I met this group of people, got very involved with them as friends, and one of them became my best friend for 40 years until he passed away. And so then Kent State 00:09:00happened, and there was a lot of activity on campus around that. And I had a friend, I won't use her name, but she was a student, I think she was a year or two ahead of me, who I had gotten friendly with, and I liked her. And she was a communist. I mean, an avowed communist. And she, after Kent State 00:09:30happened, she started to organize all this activity, and I went to her and I said, "You should be including the gay community in your activities. We have a lot of things in common in terms of our interests." And she looked at me and she said, "We don't believe--Marxism doesn't allow for homosexuality. It's a symptom of the degraded capitalist society," or something along those lines 00:10:00[chuckles] and I was so hurt, but that happened, so. I left after that quarter to do a co-op in Boston, at an architectural firm, which was very--I 00:10:30was just an office boy, but it was a good experience for me, but I was just drifting further and further into hippie-dom and politics and all of that. And I decided somewhere in there to drop out. And told my parents, I wrote them a letter, I came out in this letter. Told them I was gay and that I was 00:11:00dropping out of college, and of course they were horrified. I moved into a commune in the city, in Cambridge, with a bunch of other gay guys, and I lived there for a while with them. I went to--it didn't work out. And I was 00:11:30so naive and young and, you know, didn't realize how easy it was to get caught up in things that were not really functional. So, eventually I ended up back in--I went back to Long Island, and I decided what I wanted to do that year was to be a drama student and I went to one of the better [audio 00:12:00distortion] acting schools in New York and moved into an apartment in the West Village. And I spent a year doing that and I just, it wasn't me. I'm not outgoing enough, I'm too reserved [chuckles] to be an actor. So I realized that and even though I was having a wonderful time living in the village in 1970 because it was just wild, and, you know, getting involved with the 00:12:30gay community and going to bars and meeting all kinds of guys, I decided I needed to go back to college. So I wrote to Antioch, I explained what had happened, and said I'm gay, and I want to come back [laughs]. And they were only too happy to have me come back. So I did. So that was sometime in '71, I don't remember which quarter I came back for. So I'm going to stop 00:13:00there and find out what more you want to--where you want me to go with this.

JASMINE: Wow, that was as so much to take in. What an amazing series of events, with Gay Liberation Fronts and strikes and going to a gay commune. I mean, that's just amazing to hear about in such a short period of time, and that you were so, you know, even younger than, you know, the typical student 00:13:30in your grade. I mean, there's so many things I could ask here. Going back to, you know, attempting to open the Antioch or Yellow Springs Gay Liberation Front, you know, you said they weren't so interested in the politics of it, but that you became really good friends. Did that manifest as an actual Gay Liberation Front was there, you know, was their political components or was it 00:14:00just hanging out, having a good time?

BOB: No, yeah. They were not in the least interested in politics. I've always been interested in politics and those kinds of issues, probably to my detriment. I think part of that comes from growing up in Jewish and, you know, my parents lived through World War 2 and, you know, we talked all the time about what had happened with the Holocaust and I was always taught that it indeed 00:14:30can happen here, and you need to keep your eyes open, you need to be aware of things. So I was always--I've always been, I think, my friends now find it quite annoying, because I'm always calling out things that I'm seeing happening. So, yeah, it was a purely, it became a purely social group of people that 00:15:00I hung out with. But we had a great time! [Chuckles]

JASMINE: [That's] great! Let's see. So, you know, part of the first question is asking, "What was it like, arriving as a new student?" and I'm particularly interested in that because, you know, you're arriving just after Stonewall, you went to Woodstock before coming to Antioch, and you were, I believe 00:15:3017 years old, right?

BOB: When I got to Antioch I was 17, I turned 18 that December.

JASMINE: So what was that like? And you had been, you know, quite closeted up un--you know, that whole period before then. I mean, that sounds like such an extreme, you know, drastically different series of events from what you have been used to, up to that point. And then you add, you know, the 00:16:00factor on top of that, that you were younger than most other students.

BOB: Yeah, that part of it didn't--well, other than my being extremely naive, but I'm not sure I was much more naive than the students who were 18 and 19, but that part didn't seem to be a big factor. We were all kind of innocents together, and just discovering ourselves. And you know, I lived in one of the dorms for the first quarter and we'd hang out together, and smoke 00:16:30grass, and have a good time, and go to classes. I was in a special--they had a special track for, that had to do with American literature, or something like that. I can't remember, exactly. But one of my professors was a guy named David Schiller. He was also an avowed communist. And so, you know, all of his, the reading we did with [audio distortion] [him was ?] very 00:17:00leftist-oriented, it was a fascinating time and discussion. It would, you know, it would be probably somewhat problematic today for most institutions, most academic institutions because I mean it wasn't just, you know, socialism, it was--they called themselves communists and they were perfectly happy to go to Russia and become part of the, you know, the workers of the world. So 00:17:30I learned a lot. I took a course in women's literature. You know, those things that I never had experienced back in my home town and it was totally a time of exploration. Just finding out what the world was about because I led a very... My parents were very liberal. They, let me--and in those days, you 00:18:00know, there wasn't all the helicopter parenting, I was out and about doing whatever I wanted from the time I was 8 or 10 years old, but it was still--I lived in a town of upper middle class people who were all very comfortable and, you know, there was, other than talking about the history, things 00:18:30were pretty good. So I was finding out about other people, I guess that's what I would say. Mostly what happened in the beginning and Antioch, learning about other people and how other people had been brought up and lived and what--how they interacted in ways that--and again I tend to be a very shy person, so I probably sat and listened more than I talked most of the time.

JASMINE: And the other part of this first question I think is 00:19:00relevant here. It says, "Antioch College has a reputation for having one of the most radically progressive campus cultures in the country. Would you agree with this reputation?" You know, being on campus--sounds like, I think, kind of what I'm getting is, you know, you didn't come to campus and have all these people telling you, you know, "Read the Communist Manifesto. Go to, you know, drag shows," and all this kind of thing. It was just everybody's 00:19:30coming from a, probably a less open, or less progressive space and therefore, you're all kind of exploring this together, is what it sounds like.

BOB: Yeah. Yeah, although the one thing that was not open was being gay. I mean, nobody was talking about that. I think I shocked a few people, when I would say I was gay, or, you know, tried to organize the group. I ultimately 00:20:00did my senior project--I graduated with--a lot happened in between, but I graduated with a deg--with a major in psychology. So, I did my senior report on--or my senior project on adjustment patterns between--comparing heterosexuals and homosexuals. And my professor was fine with that. She was a 00:20:30wonderful woman. I think she died a few years ago, but, you know, it was all just right after Stonewall, most people were not accepting. We still weren't--we were still in the manual of, in the DSM as as a mental illness at 00:21:00that point. So, but otherwise, yeah, it was, let's explore all these wild new ideas and radical thoughts, and that's Antioch to me, which was wonderful, I loved it.

JASMINE: [That's great!] Let's see here. Okay, so kind of getting into that, 00:21:30 you know, being in this new environment--and of course it was kind of abridged because you lived in the commune in Cambridge for a while--how do you think, you know, being in this culture and this environment, how do you think it affected you, if there's more--I mean, you kind of touched on this, but if you'd like to elaborate more, what specifically that environment did for you, and 00:22:00whether or not that affected your own understanding of your gender and sexuality, or was it really just, you know, coming to terms with being open about it.

BOB: Well, it was still a process, but I was pretty comfortable from--I don't 00:22:30want to say too much on a recorded situation, but it had to do with a single night, and a sort of psychic experience that I had back in New York, during that first co-op. And it was like the day before I was a totally 00:23:00closeted, terrified person, and when I woke up the next day, I was, "Hey, this is great. I like being gay." [Chuckles] And I never went back. I never looked back. And I've, you know, for the first 20, 30 years people would 00:23:30push back and say "Don't be so open, don't, you know, don't go around telling everybody you're gay, that's not a good thing," you know. So I had--sometimes I had to pull back for certain things, you know, in terms of work and stuff, but. But no, I was perfectly happy with who I was, it was just a 00:24:00matter of exploring what it means to be gay. And I think, being at Antioch helped enormously because I got to go off on these wonderful co-ops, go to other cities, meet people. It was the perfect college for me. I don't know if that answered your question.

JASMINE: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And, you know, touching more upon the co-op aspect you mentioned, you know, New York 00:24:30City, Boston--it sounds like those two experiences at least, you know, it was more of kind of what you're saying, like meeting new people, exploring new ideas, really exploring the world; did you have other co-op experiences as well? Were those more of the same, of just, you know, exploration, discovering yourself, discovering the world, or were there you know, other aspects missed mixed in, other experiences?

BOB: I had, after I returned to Antioch, I did a couple of--I did two or three quarters on campus and then I went to, I really wanted to go to San 00:25:00Francisco, of course. That's where everything was happening, both as a hippie and as a gay person, it was Mecca. So I found--and I had changed--switched over to psychology--and I found a job in a halfway house. It was one of the listed co-ops, a halfway house for people who had either psychiatric 00:25:30problems, or drug problems, or whatever. And it was as a counselor, but it was sort of a very junior-level counselor. Just basically being there, making sure they had their needs met, and that they had somebody to talk to, and things like that. So I moved to San Francisco and fortunately my best friend from Yellow Springs had moved to San Francisco--well, actually, there was a brief--he 00:26:00had moved to a commune in Oregon, in the hills of Oregon, Southern Oregon. So, I went up and I stayed there for a while with, there were about eight gay guys on this farm, and they had planned to live there for as many years as they could, but their first crop got eaten by a swarm of locusts [chuckles], and 00:26:30their turkeys all died, and I don't know, things happen. So they all split up, and Jerry was moving to San Francisco and I was coming out to San Francisco, and Jerry's friends were moving with him to San Francisco. So, we all got a place in [unclear due to audio distortion] job and, yeah, I think being in San 00:27:00Francisco in the early '70s was really, really cool and fun. And again, met all kinds of interesting people there. My hair was, you know, halfway down my back and I was happy as a clam. My parents actually came out and visited a couple of times and you know, they got along great with my friends. And so it 00:27:30was all good at that point. I went--then I went back to Antioch to finish up, and I graduated in Spring of '75. There are more connections to Antioch, but that's the actual academic cycle that I did.

JASMINE: And that sounds--so it sounds like your family was, you know, 00:28:00supportive of you being gay. Was it, you know, was it like immediately? Like, you know, you c--

BOB: No. [Chuckles]

JASMINE: No, it took some time?

BOB: It took some time. I mean they weren't horrible to me. You know, they 00:28:30didn't say awful things like a lot of kids experience. Didn't threaten me. They just didn't understand. But they came around fairly quickly. And, I mean, I believe that they--their main interest was that I'd be happy. I mean, they would loved to have had grandchildren and in those days, gay people didn't have kids, so it wasn't really going to happen. But they, you know, they came around pretty fast and they were very--they defended me, you 00:29:00know, with people who were more bigoted and yeah, we had a--as with all families, we had challenges in our relationship, but for the most part, we got along well.

JASMINE: [That's good.] Yeah, I think that ties in fairly well with the next 00:29:30question, actually. This says, "Since graduation, have you built a family and/or career? And if so, do you relate these aspects of your life to your time at Antioch in any ways?"

BOB: Okay. So, what happened after I graduated, I went--so I got to go back for 00:30:00a minute to high school. The last year for me of high school, there was a foreign exchange student named Barry from Australia. We--I was involved with the American Field Service, I think it was called which was the foreign exchange student group in those days. And so I met him when he first got there at the reception for the new students, and we had instant eye-contact, and 00:30:30 got very close. I wasn't out, he wasn't out, but you know, we were... it was puppy love, it was very nice. We did things together. He had been placed in a home with a family who was extremely conservative. A Catholic 00:31:00Family with 11 children. And when they found out that he was seeing me as a friend--we hung out together, did all kinds of things together--they forbid him from seeing me. They told him and everybody else they could spread rumors to that I was a radical, that I was part of the SDS, Students for a Democratic 00:31:30Society, which was a communist group that intended to do violent actions, and it was just insane. I mean, I had somewhat long hair and a mustache, and I wore jeans, so in their minds I was a radical. He went to the counselors for the foreign exchange service and they took him out of there and moved him into a family that was friends of my family, actually, just a few 00:32:00blocks away. Anyway, [audio distortion] obviously I left to go back to Antioch, he went back to Australia. So I had to go back to that because when I graduated, I went on a--I got a Eurail pass. In those days--I don't know if they still have that but it was train pass in Europe. You paid one fee and you 00:32:30could just ride anywhere, and I stayed in hostels and I spent three months just backpacking around Europe. And that was great. Wonderful experience, because I'm into art and all this stuff, so I just, was, really had a good time. And met a lot of interesting people. It was really good. When I came home, this is five years after I graduated from high school, after Barry and I 00:33:00had been together, he was coming back for... he was visiting friends in different cities in America and he stopped in Roslyn to see the people he'd been staying with, and they had a party for him, and I went, and we were both out at that time. We went to a... we spent some time together, I took him, 00:33:30drove into the city and we went to a bar where they had dancing and we were dancing together. About 2 in the morning, we drove back to my house, my parents were asleep. And we went out in the backyard and we sat and talked for another hour. And he--I had a beard, and he touched my beard and he said, "It's so 00:34:00soft," and it was like, you know, every little gay boy's dream. I--we just kissed just a brief kiss. He said he had to go home. I took him back to the place he was staying, and I walked him to the door and I grabbed him and just gave him this passionate kiss and--which he was very responsive to, but that was it. I said goodbye. We wrote each other over the years, and kept 00:34:30writing, "You should come here," "I should go there," whatever, it just never happened, and then we lost touch with each other. Where was I going with that? 00:35:00So? Oh, so, okay. So, after that... trying to remember how it all played out--but oh, I went back to to San Francisco. My friends there were going to open an antique shop. And so, I loaded up my car with whatever I could find that I could sell, and I drove across country to San Francisco and moved in with 00:35:30this--these four--three other guys that I had been friend--had lived with previously there. And I went to--and our plans fell apart. We all decided to move to LA [chuckles]. How these things happen, I don't know. But you know, we were somewhat living the hippie lifestyle, so you drift. I ended up in 00:36:00LA living in a house on a little mountain with the these three friends. And I started seeing a friend of one of theirs who lived just a few blocks away. David. David worked at what was then called the Burbank Studios, which was 00:36:30Warner Brothers. At that time, Warner Brothers and Colombia had decided to share this--the Warner Brothers lot, and they change the name to Burbank Studios. It's back now to being Warner Brothers because Columbia moved someplace else, but anyway, at that time, it was was TBS, and I needed a job, and he got me a job as a--he was director of communications for Burbank Studios. And he was 00:37:00about 10 years older than me. And he got me a job there as a temp secretary, and I was sent around to different departments, light, [audio distortion] props, makeup. The head makeup artist, Ben Lane, who has--was from the Columbia side of TBS, and you see his name on many movies from the '50s and '60s, he was 00:37:30a big-time makeup artist--had just, his secretary had just--he drove her to a nervous breakdown. He was a very difficult man [chuckles]. So she left and he wanted me to work for him. So I got this permanent job in the makeup department, met movie stars left and right. Incredible experience for a young 00:38:00gay man who's infatuated with the movies. He taught me, he said at one point, I'd been there a couple years, and he said, "You shouldn't be doing this." His son was gay, so, you know, he sort of took a fatherly position with 00:38:30me and he said, "You shouldn't be doing this for the rest of your life. You should be a makeup artist." Well, I had done a lot of art, so it didn't come that--it was easy to do, and he basically sent me out and, you know, the next day I was on a television set doing makeup on famous people. And I learned on the set, and did a lot of TV, and commercials and all that kind of 00:39:00stuff. [Chuckles] Met all kinds of amazing people! And I went to, I was sent over at one point to work on General Hospital, the soap opera, and they liked me, and they needed a head makeup artist. So, I became the head makeup 00:39:30artist for General Hospital, which was great! I had a career, I was doing really well, I got paid well, they liked me. It was a good couple years. Then another Antioch piece c--this is why I'm going through all this because Antioch came back. I'm a widower. My husband died four years ago, four and a half years ago. His name was Steve. He had gone--so I met him, I 00:40:00won't tell you where [chuckles], but we liked each other a lot, and we went out on our first date. And went to a Mexican restaurant. He was a law student at that time at USC Law School, and he was in his second year. Anyway, 00:40:30we went out on this date, and we're talking and drinking margaritas, and having a good time. Turns out, he had been a professor at Antioch the year--he started just after I left. He had a PhD that he had gotten earlier in American Studies, and so he went to teach--he was from a very small town in South Carolina, very strict Southern Baptist family, but he was really smart and was 00:41:00able to get out of there, go to Duke, graduate, then go get a PhD in American studies. So, he was teaching at Antioch. He got this job at Antioch. And he was the only conservative. He still was a conservative even though he had gotten away from all of that, but politically conservative. He was the only 00:41:30conservative professor at Antioch at the time [laughs] and it was very challenging for him because, you know, they just dismissed him. So he was only there for a year, and then he went to law school. He was engaged to a woman, and they had a place up in Santa Barbara. He would spend the weekends with her and then come down and he had a small room in somebody's house during the week [audio distortion]. But obviously he was really interested in guys he just 00:42:00wasn't able to accept that he could actually live a lifestyle of that--

PAUSE: [Brief technical issue]

BOB: Anyway, he told me that, you know, he could never get into a relationship with another man, and he was going to marry this woman. They were engaged. And I don't know, somewhere something happened. The--I know what it 00:42:30was. The summer after second year of law school, you go and do a clerkship at places you might be interested in working, so they can see what you're like. So, he got a job at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro, it's one of the big firms in San Francisco. And he went up there, spent the summer clerking there, and met gay partners. So it's like, yeah, you can be gay and become a partner in a big 00:43:00law firm. And I think that's what happened, we never really talked about it, but he came back and he said, "I want to move in with you." I was living with my friend Jerry, and he moved in, Steve moved in with us. He had another year of law school, so he did that. He told his fiance that he was gay, and she was furious, never spoke to him again. And when he finished his last year of 00:43:30law school, when he graduated, he had been offered a job back at Pillsbury in San Francisco. And, you know, he was the love of my life, and I gave up my career to go live with him in San Francisco and figured I'd find work as a 00:44:00makeup artist up there or something else. And I thought, at that point, I might try writing. I don't know. I was just still floundering around trying to figure out what to do. About six months--well, I did get some part-time jobs doing makeup at a modeling school. So I was able to make a little bit of money to keep myself going, but about six months into it I had another epiphany, and I 00:44:30said, I'm going to go to medical school. It had been something that I had always been toying with and interested in, but I didn't think I could do the science, because I'm just not numbers-oriented. I'm more picture-oriented. I didn't realize you can be picture-oriented and still be a good doctor. So, I 00:45:00hadn't done any science at Antioch. My science class was like science--my two science classes were geology and lapidary workshop, where we polished stones [laughs]. So, I had no science background. I had to go back to school for two years. I went to San Francisco State University, it was this large 00:45:30campus in San Francisco. And I took science, and did really well. And I got into four schools that I had applied to, and the one that worked out the best for Steve, since he was going to have to--I didn't get into a California school unfortunately--but since we were going to have to move, the one that worked out the best for him was George Washington University in DC because he 00:46:00thought that would be a good place for him to get a job because of his, he was a business lawyer, and also he liked the idea of being in DC, and it was closer to his family in South Carolina. So, [audio distortion] we moved to DC in summer of '81. And I started medical school at GW. So, that's the other 00:46:30Antioch--big part of my life, is I never would have met my husband. Or I ne--I might ha--I met him, but I might not have had that intimate connection that we found sitting in that Mexican restaurant in LA, both having 00:47:00Antioch as an experience together. I'm going to stop there and see--.

JASMINE: That's an incredible story!

BOB: Sorry?

JASMINE: I said that's an incredible story.

BOB: Yeah, things happen [laughs].

JASMINE: Yeah, and I mean, now I'm so curious, you know, did you--how did your journey with medical school go?

BOB: So, I finished four years of medical school. It was really hard. I did, I 00:47:30got an internship. I thought I'd go into internal medicine, and I got a residency in internal medicine at GW. I didn't want to go anywhere, I didn't want to leave DC because Steve had a job at the biggest firm in the city 00:48:00and he was already a partner, and, you know, the last thing I want to do is screw with his career again. So, I applied to, you know, just the local schools and I got--for residency, and I got a residency in the--there's a match program that you have to go through to get a residency, and I matched with GW, so that was great. I didn't have to do any changes. Halfway through the last year of medical school, after the match, I took my neurology rotation. 00:48:30And I fell in love with neurology. But I already was matched into internal medicine. But halfway through my internship--and I did not like internal medicine, for a lot of reasons--halfway through the residency, the director for the neurology program, who knew that I really liked neurology, 00:49:00contacted me and said that one of the people who was starting residency the next year had dropped out from the program, and did I want that? So, I did finish my internship and then I did a three-year residency in neurology. My mentor was also a sleep medicine expert. And so I started doing a lot of sleep 00:49:30medicine with her. And when I was getting ready to finish my residency, she asked if I wanted to stay on a do a fellowship in sleep medicine. So, I stayed another two years at GW doing sleep medicine. And it was around that 00:50:00time, I was just still there and I was on faculty, and I was having a pretty good--it was good, I still well--it wasn't the right career for me, but it was okay, but I wasn't sure what else I could do, having invested so much time and effort, and money--it was very expensive going to medical school, I had all kinds of loans to pay off--what else could I do with this medical 00:50:30degree? And I sort of was forced into it because my chair, who I had great respect for, left, retired, and they brought in a new chair and we did not get along. And, so I had to leave. My previous chair, who had retired, said, "You 00:51:00 should think about going to FDA. They're looking for a neurologist." Went out to FDA, interviewed, they liked me, and next thing I knew, I was a medical officer for the FDA. Turns out I really liked that work. It was science, but, you know, facts and important public health issues, and it 00:51:30didn't have all the things, the issues that I didn't like about working in internal medicine. It's not worth going into all that, but I did love the job of reviewing--it was called a medical reviewer and we'd review all the data about drug trials, and decide whether it was a safe and effective drug. It was a, you know, entry-level bottom-line reviewer position. And I liked it, but 00:52:00I really wanted to do more, and see more, and one of my colleagues was asked to be a division director in the division that oversaw development--I was in the Neurology Division. They took Cynthia and she became the division director in the Pain, Anesthetic and Addiction Division. She was there for a few 00:52:30months and she called me and said, "Please come over. I need help. This place is a disaster. Come over and work with me." So I moved as a team leader with her, and a few months later she made me her deputy. So I was deputy director in the pain division, pain, anesthetics and addiction issues, addiction drugs. And this is all when Oxycontin is blowing up, and it was our drug, and 00:53:00you know, it was a real challenging situation. Cynthia left a couple of years later, and I became division director. So I led that division for over 12 years, and it was great. It was really such an interesting career. I had to 00:53:30really learn stuff at, you know, it was like, constantly broadening my mind. I had to learn new disciplines, I had to learn about pharmacokinetics, and chemistry and manufacturing issues, and regulations and law. It was so fascinating and the people I worked with were so smart. So I really enjoyed it, although it was extremely challenging and being a supervisor of a large 00:54:00division, having, you know, people who have--aren't performing well, or are troubled and having to deal with that. So it was, it was hard. It was really hard. I worked seven days a week, you know, 12, 14 hours a day for many years. And I didn't want to keep doing it. I wanted to do... I wanted to do art. I was you know, ready to go back to my instinctual interests. I was 00:54:30able to retire at 62 because of various administrative things I stayed until I was 63. And was able to retire with, you know, a full pension and all the benefits and stuff. I still look back on it with, you know, a lot of fondness, 00:55:00and I have friends who--colleagues who I still keep up with. So, you know, it's not--wasn't a bad thing, it was a fabulous career! I loved it. But it was exhausting and I didn't want to do it anymore. I wanted to do art. Meantime, Steve had developed some serious medical problems. And so he'd had some major 00:55:30surgery, and... But he was doing okay, and we had a big house here in Arlington, and we had bought us a little condo in Sarasota, Florida, on the beach that we could use during the winter. He was retired at that point. He had 00:56:00retired partially because of his medical problems, but he was seven years older than me, so he was ready for retirement. [Audio distortion] And I retired at the end of October, 2014. Just that January, he went down to... he 00:56:30had been really sick, and I tried to convince him not to go down to the condo. And I wasn't able to go, I can't remember. I started a consulting firm. So I was consulting for the pharmaceutical industry, and I had started to get some jobs. And, you know, it was part time, it was just to have some extra cash, and also to keep my interest up in that field, but also allow me to do the 00:57:00things I really wanted to do. I had started to take art classes, I got a studio near the house and was painting. And I didn't--I couldn't leave right then, and he insisted on going down there. And, he got sicker, and just in the first week he got sicker and sicker and sicker, and next thing I knew he was in the hospital, and I, you know, I said, "I'm flying down the next day." Next 00:57:30morning, I was able to get out to a flight and this was late at night, I couldn't get a flight. I got down there and I went to the room that he was in, and they said, "Oh, he's in the ICU. He coded." So he had arrhythmia and stopped--they had fortunately, the cardiologist had come to the room just at 00:58:00that point to see him, to do is consult, so they were able to resuscitate him. But he was in the ICU for weeks, and then on the floor for weeks. It was months in the hospital and it was awful. He was never quite the same. He was, he had problems with the medications, and he was so weak, and you know, lost almost--I mean he was a strong guy and he was, he looked like a scarecrow 00:58:30at that point. Finally got him home, after months and months of doing, taking care of him in the hospital, and then I had to take care of him at home, he had all these therapists coming in. It was a struggle to get him to eat, it was--we got him back in shape! We actually got him back in shape, enough to get back home. We bought--we sold the house, because it was just too hard for 00:59:00us with, you know, a big house and three floors, and all this stuff. And we bought this condo in Rosslyn. So, I grew up in Roslyn, I now live In Rosslyn, I will probably die in Rosslyn. This Rosslyn has two S's, that one had one S. And, we were okay for the year, and we went back down in 2016 around 00:59:30Thanksgiving down to Florida. And everything was fine, except he was developing some problems with his eye, we went to an ophthalmologist and turns out he had what's a type of melanoma behind the eye. So then we had to drive back and forth from the west coast of Florida to the east coast of Florida every 01:00:00other week, and spend days in a motel while he underwent radiation therapy, and various treatments for this--and, you know, I mean, he had just recovered from this horrible ordeal, and now he had cancer, he was getting really depressed. But they got rid of the cancer in the eye! So, you know, it was looking up. And this was towards the end of 2016--no, it was the beginning of 01:00:302017, and then he started to feel sick again, and then, the end of--no, beginning of April, he was so sick, we went to the hospital and he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They couldn't operate. We fl--had him flown up here because he wanted to come home, and we went to the hospital that we used 01:01:00here locally, but he died two days later. So, it was... [audio distortion]

JASMINE: I'm sorry, you cut out again there. What did you say?

BOB: I'm in a--I'm in a new place and I never have been by myself before. So, 01:01:30for the last four years, I've been learning to be a single person. I mean, we were we were together for 40 years, married for 2. Oh, I forgot, we got married after he got out of that long hospitalization, because they had just had the Supreme Court decision. So, um, I'm here. I'm doing much better, and I'm doing a lot of art. I started sculpting, I'm painting a lot, and that's where I 01:02:00am today. Long story [chuckles], sorry.

JASMINE: That's an amazing story! And no need to be sorry about the length, you know, any kind of--anything you want to share is welcome. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing all of that with me. It's an amazing story.

PAUSE: [Technical issue]

JASMINE: This [next question] is, "Are there any ways in which you think your life would be different, had you gone to a more typical liberal arts college?"

PAUSE: [Short break]

BOB: Obviously, my life would have been different. I--how exactly, I don't know. But I imagine it would have... I would not have had all the opportunities I had to explore the world and people, and to meet a lot of fascinating people, I wouldn't--I doubt that I would have ended up going to 01:03:00medical school. I don't know how that all works together, but it happened, partially because of Antioch and Steve and the way things turned out. Things would have been very different. I just don't know what they would have looked like. I do want to remember to tell you about finding my birth parents, because that's more recent development.

Jasmine: [Okay!] Let's see. So, I just have a--the other question that I have 01:03:30 is kind of a good closing question. So if you'd like to talk about, you know, finding your birth parents and everything involved with that, then I think it might be a good time for that.

BOB: Okay. So, my parents died back in 2004 and 2005. And I was thinking about, 01:04:00you know, looking for my birth parents. I don't know if you know any adopted people, but it's one of those things that, in closed adoptions like from when I was born, it's--there's a piece of you that you don't understand. You don't understand where things came from, what, you know, and I was very different from my adopted parents. They're a beautiful, couple, very athletic, 01:04:30very popular, very gregarious people, and I'm not that way [laughs], but I did get along with them great and we also had the same interest in education and various things, so it worked out fine. But I just wanted to know where I came from. I didn't need to replace my family, I just wanted to know where I came from. So I was looking around various services that try to find 01:05:00out, but New York still still doesn't have, they still won't--they were, they were changing recently, they may have changed now, but at that time, they were not giving out any information from closed adoptions. But then the DNA thing came out, and I put my DNA in 23andMe and nothing happened for about a year, a bunch of fifth cousins, and, you know, nobody that I could possibly 01:05:30really connect with. And I got a message on 23andMe one day, about a year later from a guy who said, "We seem to be first cousins." So I wrote back and said, wow, and he, turns out he's 30, he's probably not my first cousin, but 01:06:00could be! 30 year old gay guy who lives in New York. And we talked a little [audio distortion] and I was really sort of excited about that, and I had been looking at some records with a friend who does a lot of genealogy as a hobby, and she had found all these records. And one of--the only person who fit, 01:06:30when you look back at census information about--I knew I was born in Manhattan at Lenox Hill Hospital, and obviously the date of birth, but you know, that's all I knew. And it had to be a Jewish mother. We looked and looked and looked at all these different documents, and we came up with one person, but her name was Audrey Dunn. Which doesn't sound Jewish to me. Maybe Irish? I don't 01:07:00know. So I'm talking to this guy, and I said, "You know, the only name we came up with in all this searching is Audrey Dunn." And he said, "Shit, Audrey Dunn is my grandmother. Was my grandmother." So he was my nephew. And his mother, Lori, is still around. We talked, I talked with Lori. She had a twin sister and a brother who were deceased, but she's about ten years younger than 01:07:30me. And, so I found out all about my mother, Audrey. I met her sister, Audrey's sister. Older, sister, actually. My mother Audrey, my birth mother, Audrey, gave birth to me on her birthday, on her 17th birthday. She 01:08:00lived in the Bronx, her mother had severe MS and was bedridden. She lived with her mother and her father, and her sister. Her father was not a nice person, and she hid the pregnancy from them until just before she was ready to give birth. And she told her father, and he took her into the city, and they had 01:08:30put me up for adoption through the Jewish adoption agency, Louise Wise at that time. And that was that. Then she never told anybody who the father was. She got married to an Italian guy and had three kids. One of whom is my half-sister, Lori, who I still communicate with, and I've met twice now. One of 01:09:00the interesting things is when I was 10 years old, when I was going to be 10, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said I wanted a pony. And they said, no, we can't keep a pony in our yard. What else do you want it? So I said, I want a parrot. Miraculously, they found--my grandfather who was a jeweler in Manhattan, knew a lady who had a macaw parrot who, she 01:09:30couldn't, she was getting married and she couldn't keep it. So I ended up with this macaw parrot. And it said two things: it said "Hello" and it said "Audrey". Because the previous owner's name was Audrey. Wasn't my mother, Audrey, but, weirded me out when I found this out. So, nobody knew who my mother 01:10:00was married to--or who my father was in that family. And so, for the next year and a half--and during the pandemic, when Jan and I were on the phone all the time, going through the genealogy records, and trying to figure out who my father was, and she was--Jan's much better at this than I am. She called all 01:10:30people all over the country who she thought might be a cousin or, you know, a relative based on the DNA and the records. And she finally found--we'd been following these two people, two guys, brothers, but every time she sent them a message through, I can't remember if it was Ancestry or 23andMe, they 01:11:00didn't respond. She finally made a connection to an older man [audio distortion] named Stan and she was talking to him. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife. And she said, you know, "I've been trying to find this Alexander and Ernesto who are brothers, but they never responded." He said, "Oh, those are my grandkids." Turns out, his brother was my 01:11:30father. This guy's brother was a man who was named Irwin John Friedman, grew up in the Bronx, around the same time as Audrey, not far from her. He graduated from high school. He was an artist. He graduated 01:12:00from high school and pretty much left soon after that to do his art. He moved to Europe and traveled around Europe, doing art, drawing and painting, he was really a talented guy. And he changed his name to John Friedman and he married a 01:12:30Danish opera singer. And they moved--they had four kids, and they moved back to the United States. Unfortunately, she was killed in a car accident. So here he is with four kids. This is like early '60s, I think. And he became a sort of hippie-artist. He met another woman named Holly, and they traveled around and lived on communes, and he 01:13:00did art, and made money at it. He, for a while, and I never quite figured out exactly where--when this happened. He lived on the Spahn Ranch. I don't know if that rings a bell for you, but it's where the Manson family lived. And 01:13:30 he didn't live with them, he lived in a different part of the ranch, but he knew them all. And, when the Manson family girls were arrested, one of the girls had a two-year-old baby, who was, I forget her name, but the father 01:14:00was Bobby Beausoleil who had murdered somebody, and was in prison. And they, she was going to jail or prison, and they called, somebody called Partee--oh, my father had changed his name again from John Friedman, to just Partee--I don't know why. But that's what he then started signing his artwork 01:14:30with, Partee. They called Partee and Holly and they asked them to adopt this two-year-old child. And that child became part of the family, with the four children. His name is Bucky, and I've talked and emailed with him a lot, really fascinating man. He lived with them for a while, but then he decided he didn't want to live that hippie lifestyle 01:15:00and he went to Texas with Holly, who was separated from my father, and that's how he ended up in Texas, and he went to high school and college and all that. Meanwhile, Partee met another woman named Windy, and they had two more kids. Of the first four, one died of drug and alcohol problems, two live in San Francisco, one of them is 01:15:30a musician and functional, one's non-functional and then... so, [counts the siblings] two, three, oh, and then there's [audio distortion] a another sister in Northern California, which is where Partee had an actual studio and print shop, and you know, was very successful for a 01:16:00while with that. And then he would travel around as well, selling his art. He had two more kids with Windy. The first one was a boy who lived until his twenties and died of alcohol abuse. And the second one is Bianca and she is a wonderful person. She's married and has two kids, and does art and design, and 01:16:30they just moved from Northern California to Salt Lake City before the pandemic started. So I've been in touch with her a lot, and I intend to go visit these people, I've talked with them, but obviously I'm not traveling until things are really cleared. So I discovered this whole new family and things about my father, and my mother that made it so clear, what--who I am, and it's 01:17:00been, it's been really, really interesting. It's been a revelation of sorts late in life.

JASMINE: Yeah, I mean especially like, that obvious connection of like, your father having lived in different communes, while you know, you had lived in a commune and you knew people who were living in communes, so that is interesting.

BOB: And being an artist!

JASMINE: Right, and the artist connection.

BOB: I have a bunch of his art now. Some I found online, Jan gave me one that she bought from a dealer, and Bianca sent me a whole pile of various types of artwork that he'd done over the years.

JASMINE: Wow.

BOB: So, yeah, it's really cool.

JASMINE: [For sure.] Let's see. Okay, I was there anything else you might want 01:18:00to cover before we do the last question? Which could just be a quick wrap up, or, you know.

BOB: I don't know. I don't, I can't, I mean there's nothing specific that I think is particularly interesting, that was like something I never thought would 01:18:30happen, and did, and got, I mean, the Manson connection freaks me out. But you know, whatever. I still find it fascinating. No, I can't think of anything that--there're probably a lot of things I'll think of afterwards, but not right now.

JASMINE: Okay! So the last question is, "Is there any message that you would give to the current and future students of Antioch, if you could? And any message for the current and future LGBTQ+ youth in general?"

BOB: Antioch students? I don't know that I have any specific message. I mean, I read the newsletter and the various things that they send me all the time and it seems like, I mean it was horrible those years when the school was closing and, you know, all of the alumni, myself included, were so upset, and, 01:19:30you know, talking. We had meetings and were talking with various people to try to pull it together, thank God we got it together, but it seems like things are on a good track now, and I would just say, you know, I don't know that you--I want to say, I don't know that you all appreciate what you have 01:20:00there, but I think you do. So, I hope you do. Because it really is a unique and amazing education that you get there, that's, you won't get anywhere else. You really won't. And it opens up all kinds of doors and ideas. In terms of the LGBTQ community, make sure you learn the history. I've been watching some 01:20:30movies recently, TV series and movies where it's about gay people struggles back in the '40s and [audio distortion] '50s [unclear] Oscar Wilde. Things were awful. I don't know how much young people appreciate how bad it was. 01:21:00And, I think it's important that you look back and see how bad it was, and how it--why it changed, and who changed it, you know. Wasn't just Stonewall. There was a lot of things that happened over the years, and even today, I mean, it's not, it's nowhere near perfect, but it's so much better. I 01:21:30am so pleased to see the way that young people are able to accept themselves from, you know, as early as 8 or 10 years old. It's remarkable. Yeah, I think you know educating yourselves about the LGB--I can't keep it all up, but 01:22:3001:22:00the queer community history is critical, because if that's lost... One of the people that lived on the commune in Boston, in Cambridge, Allen Bérubé wrote a book, he died a few years ago, I think of AIDS, but he wrote a book, a history of the gay movement, but that was 20 years ago. Now, I'm sure 01:23:00there are lots of other histories written since then and you know, but I do think this kind of thing [this interview] is great, because you're getting documentation from people like me who lived through it. I just wish we had done the same 20 years ago with the previous generation.