Kathryn L Beranich Transcript
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Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project Oral History Initiative Interview with Kathryn L. Beranich January 17, 2017 Interviewer: Julia Greider Interviewee: Kathryn L. Beranich Date: January 17, 2017 Location: Roanoke College Library, Salem, VA Duration: 97:03 total Transcribed by: Kerri Taylor 0:00= Childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and schooling (1953 – early 1970s); studying telecasting at Milwaukee Area Technical College (1974-1976) 1:44= Finding work in the television industry (c. 1976) 3:40= Moving to Roanoke at the age of 23 (c. 1977) to work at WSLS; waitressing at Macado’s 5:23= Looking for other lesbian women in Roanoke (late 1970s) 6:36= A women’s softball league in Salem (late 1970s); dating players on the softball team 11:47= Taking a job at WDBJ-7 (1980) 12:50= Getting into a car accident in Bedford County (1981); lesbian gatherings at Community Hospital while she recovered 15:15= The early foundations of First Friday (a lesbian organization) in 1981 16:46= Childhood in Milwaukee (1950s – 1960s) 18:30= Attending various high schools (late 1960s / early 1970s), including Milwaukee Independent School; exploring a heterosexual relationship (early 1970s) 22:56 = Involvement in women’s theater, women’s cooperatives, and the feminist movement in Milwaukee (mid-1970s); coming out as a lesbian 25:46= Reflections on her family; relationships with mom and dad; her Slovenian heritage 27:47= How she first realized she was a lesbian; coming out (early 1970s) 30:24= Exposure to feminism 32:00= Reflections on family and having a gay aunt 37:45= Coming out to her family (1980s) 39:42= The lesbian community (or lack thereof) in Roanoke in the late 1970s 43:10= First Friday: origins; the Roanoke Valley Women’s Retreats (1980s); publishing Skip Two Periods; internal dynamics and leadership 49:58= First Friday demographics (race, age) 51:10= First Friday and bisexual women 52:28= First Friday and men 53:44= First Friday activities: Fabulous February Fling; publishing Skip Two Periods 57:38= The role of lesbian history (or herstory) for Kathryn and First Friday 59:28= The Roanoke Valley Women’s Retreats (1980s): activities; structure; the feeling at camp, and upon leaving 1 1:14:12= Struggles finding a location to hold the retreats 1:15:19= Lesbian Herstory Archives 1:17:05= Conflicts within First Friday 1:18:40= First Friday meeting spaces 1:20:26= The effect of the AIDS crisis on Kathryn (or lack thereof) 1:22:15= Butch/femme lesbian culture; lesbian gender expressions 1:27:47= Leaving Roanoke and First Friday 1:29:55= Kathryn’s life now 0:00 JG: All right, this is Julia Greider, and I am with Kathryn L. Beranich, in the Roanoke College Library on January 17th, 2017 for her oral history. So to start out, just tell me a little bit about when you were born and where you were born, and a little bit about your childhood. 0:21 KLB: Okay, I was born on Thanksgiving Day [laughter] in 1953. My mother was thrilled because she didn’t have to eat my grandmother’s dressing. I’m the oldest of five kids. We were raised kind of middle-middle class to lower-middle middle class. Raised Catholic, went to St. Sebastian’s grade school. And a couple years of Catholic high school. Ultimately I dropped out of high school and went to a free school called Milwaukee Independent School which was formed by a handful of students from around the Milwaukee area and some educators from the University of Wisconsin. So I went there for the last year and a half of my schooling and they had something worked out with the colleges that they would accept our graduates since we really weren’t graduating, we were just leaving. So then I was a theatre major for about a year and a half, and realized, “Okay, I’m not gonna be an actress, this isn’t going to work out,” and decided I wanted to go into television production to help change the way women were portrayed on TV. So I signed up for the telecasting course at Milwaukee Area Technical College and I entered there in 1974. It was a two-year program. I graduated with honors in 1976 from the telecasting program and while I was there I worked for the public station, which the school owned on a part time basis, as well as the local NBC affiliate. And every job that I’ve had, starting with those two, I was the first woman that they had hired in that position. And so not the first woman in the universe, or the world, or the state, or the country, but at that particular institution. And so it really set the stage for my career because that continued throughout my career, that I was always the first woman that they had hired in that role, so I was constantly proving myself and always having to be 150% rather than just 100%. So I graduated in 1976, and I took a trip across the country interviewing at different stations and where I stopped on this trip was based on where I knew people, so I could stay for free. I 2 got an Amtrak pass and took the train. What I didn’t know at the time was that nobody needed to hire somebody as green as I was for a director’s job, which was what I wanted, and they didn’t need to hire someone from out of state for a production assistant job, which I didn’t really want anyway. So needless to say I had a great trip, but I never got a job from that. So next I sent out 75 resumes and for some reason I decided I wanted to live in the Southeast, so I sent out 75 resumes and got a call from a station in Roanoke, and they flew me down for an interview. It was WSLS, and I was offered the job. And so I went back to Milwaukee and packed up my stuff and moved down here. I was 23 years old. I was a producer/director, just what I wanted to do. And there was one particular engineer at the station who was just aghast that they would bring a woman in, so he took a week’s vacation my first week on the job. Then he came back, and of course the first week, I just observed, I didn’t do anything. So, my first week on the job was his week back from vacation and that was… I got a good laugh out of that because he was just a jerk throughout my tenure there. So, they didn’t pay very well. I remember that I started out at $7,200 a year, and in order to have enough money to live, I also took a job waitressing at a new restaurant in town that had just opened called Macado’s. I would do that, I’d work the lunches, and then go change clothes, and go in and direct the 6 and 11 o’clock newscasts [laughter], and in between the newscasts we’d do other programing, so there would be church shows and various public service stuff. I did some commercials, but my favorite was doing these church shows that would air on Sundays and they would always send their youth director in to talk to me and try and get me to come to their church, and all I would have to say really was that I had been raised Catholic and that would usually shut them up [laughter]. So that was that. I was also “out” as a lesbian, not out to the world—I, you know, was a practicing lesbian at the time, and had a really hard time finding women. There really weren’t any bars at the time, and I remember I wrote a letter to a friend of mine in Detroit and I said, the only thing I know that I said about it was that, “I am really having trouble finding women, there’s gotta be women around here.” There was nothing salacious in it, there’s nothing about sex, I mean nothing. That was basically what I said. Well, because I was 23, and really a dope, I wrote it on company stationery and the letter came back. For some reason my friend didn’t get it and the letter was sent back, and so the upper office people opened it. The woman who saw was appalled and she left it in the women’s bathroom so other people would see it, and I found this out years later, I had no idea. As hard as I was trying to not be a lesbian—well, not not be a lesbian, but to look straight [laughter] and act straight, and not have that come up, they already knew which kind of cracks me up. 6:35: JG: So how did they respond to that? 6:36: 3 KLB: Well, because I didn’t know that they knew, I couldn’t tell. But I was friends with a reporter there, and she told me years later, that’s how I found out. And so, even though we were friends, every now and then she was probably a little weird, because again, this was ‘77. So, it happened sometime between ‘77 and ’80 that that happened, but it didn’t really affect anything. It finally came to me that oh, if I want to meet women, [go to a] softball field.