Larry Copeland SR 11233, Oral History, by Kenty Truong & Emily Bowen

Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN)

2011 February 17

COPELAND: Larry Copeland KT: Kenty Truong EB: Emily Bowen Transcribed by: Kenty Truong & Emily Bowen, ca. 2011 Audit/edit by: Pat Young, ca. 2011 Reviewed by Larry Copeland, ca. 2011

This oral history interview was conducted as part of the Portland State University LGBT History Capstone course, Winter Term 2011, with Instructor Pat Young.

Introduction

Larry Copeland is a gay-rights activist. In this interview, he describes what life was like in Portland during the 1970s. He talks about his work with Portland Town Council (PTC), which was a gay-rights organization in Portland, Oregon. And he discusses the AIDS epidemic.

This Oral History Interview may be used according to the following license: Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Copeland SR 11233

Interview 2011 February 17

KT: Hello my name is Kenty Truong.

EB: My name is Emily Bowen. And we are interviewing Larry Copeland.

KT: So Mr. Copeland to begin, when were you born and where were you born?

COPELAND: I was born in 1947 right here in Portland.

KT: Oh wow. And have you been in Portland all your life?

COPELAND: Pretty much except for about maybe a total of four or five years, and a little bit in Reno, Nevada and California.

KT: For your childhood was it basically in Portland then.

COPELAND: I moved. My family moved to Redmond, Oregon when I was in the 4th grade and we stayed there until I came back here to go to college at Lewis and Clark College, which was in 1965 I think.

KT: So basically Portland since you went to college then.

COPELAND: Yes yes yes. It’s my home yes.

KT: Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood?

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COPELAND: Yeah. I had 1 brother who was two years older than I am. We grew up here as little kids here in the Portland area and then moved to Redmond. Gee. I haven’t thought about this for a while. (laughs) My brother was quite the sportsmen and played football, basketball, all that. I was more the bookworm, shy and retiring gay one I guess. So my parents own a store in Redmond and I worked in there variety store for years and years and years.

EB: When did you come out?

COPELAND: Somewhere around 1967 or 8.

EB: So right after college?

COPELAND: It was my second year of college, yeah.

EB: Do you think that being back in Portland had anything to do with that or…. I can’t imagine coming out in Redmond (laughs).

COPELAND: (laughs) I couldn’t either and that’s why I left as quickly as I could. Definitely coming to Portland made it possible. But I was 20 just going on 21 at that point and it was definitely time to come out.

KT: Did you have good responses or bad responses from your friends?

COPELAND: Good responses from my very close friends. Luckily I was going with a girl in college who was an actress and we liked each other a lot and I finally had to tell her one night after a date we parked in a car and you know, I think I may be gay. She wasn’t happy to hear that but since she had been an actress she had been around a lot of gay

Copeland SR 11233 people so she was very reassuring and kinda key in my whole coming out process. She was the first person I told that as accepting of that.

EB: Great.

COPELAND: Cause it was a really different time back then. Coming out was not anywhere near easy. I know it’s not now sometimes but it was scary back then actually.

EB: How did your family react?

COPELAND: I went away. I took a trip to Vancouver BC. I decided one weekend while I was there I would write a letter to them and tell them who I was finally. And so I did and my mother read the letter and cried and said I still love you but I want you to see a psychiatrist. (laughs) You may have heard this story before. And I’m not sure if she ever told my father or not I think she probably did but he was the kind of person who wouldn’t talk about it anyway. So mostly I dealt with my mother and that took a period of maybe 3- 4 years and at the end of that 3 or 4 years she kinda got use to the idea. Did some studying on her own and did some reading and listening and the person she sent me to was a psychologist actually who was on T.V. at the time and only person she knew so she said go see him. And turned out we became friends. He and his family. And you know it’s like what’s the problem here? So over the years my mother’s gotten good about it. My father died before we really ever talk about it. And yet a couple different times I brought my boyfriend up to Redmond and we’d go camping with him just the three of us and stuff like that. So he was pretty accepting. As long as you didn’t want to talk about it you know. (laughs)

KT: So you went to Lewis and Clark during all this time?

COPELAND: I did.

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KT: What were you studying?

COPELAND: Business administration. I was actually on a scholarship with US Bank that I got from the Redmond branch of the bank and I was going to go to school a year and work a year and go to school a year and work a year and so I had to study business. But over the years I sort of devolved into mind and music classes and philosophy and ethics. It seemed more of my home.

KT: More culture?

COPELAND: Yeah.

KT: Did you stay working at Redmond or moved here to Portland and…

COPELAND: No I finally after a year and a half, well mid way through the second work extent, I decided since it was Vietnam time and the time of the draft that I didn’t want to deal with maybe getting drafted that year and maybe throwing everything into um… I couldn’t stand that decision so I decided to volunteer for the draft and get it over with. So I went and volunteered and I took a physical and was classified as 1-A which meant I would be called up next time they needed somebody. Luckily I was called up a year and a couple weeks later and since it had been a whole year since I had the physical, I had to get another physical so they gave me a physical again and the eye doctor said your eyes are too bad you can’t go and I said thank you very much I got to go home now. (laughs) And I had already sold everything. I had gotten rid of my stuff and I was ready to ship out. It was come to Portland, take the last physical and ship out the next day. I was clutched from the jaws of something.

EB: Yeah

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KT: Wow

COPELAND: Yeah. Scary.

EB: Never thought having such bad eyes would have such a great impact.

COPELAND: Yeah yeah. The one pay off.

KT: Wow it sounds like around that time a lot was going on.

COPELAND: Uh huh

KT: When did you start coming onto to like the gay scene?

COPELAND: Well after I came out it was really like I said was just almost 21, but I couldn’t go into the bars yet, so I wouldn’t, uh, the area of Morrison and Yamhill downtown was called the camp. It was like where a lot of gay men just by walking on the street and the cars would circle and they would look and make eye contact and all that. So my first sexual experience was that way because that’s the only way I knew how to do it. I had no frame of reference what so ever from this activity. I just started walking and sort of figured it out. So it took about, I don’t know, a couple of boyfriends that first year.

And then started meeting people and then started going… I was 21 by then… I started going dancing, and that sort of thing, but for me, especially for most people back then, what you did was go to the bars. I mean there’s not much else to do. (laughs). There wasn’t even a gay church at that time you know. So I loved to dance, drinking and dancing and meeting men. It was fun. A lot of fun. It was also pre AIDS so were talking 1970… early 70s. You work all week totally straight, tell your friends about your girlfriend. I

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mean your coworkers about your “girlfriend” (laughs) in quotes, and make up stories, and then on weekends you go out the bars dancing, having a good time. It was a lot of fun but it was also very much split personality type thing. I mean Monday morning you had to start covering your tracks. “What did you do?” well I went to see a movie with a friend. I hated that. You have to always making up stories.

EB: Where were you working during that time?

COPELAND: I was working at the bank. I quit this program at one point. I skipped that point. At one point, half way through the 2nd year of college, I decided I couldn’t deal with not coming out. So I quit school and moved to San Francisco. Which you may have heard of (laughs)

EB: Briefly (laughs)

COPELAND: Anyway, so I stayed down there 4-5 months you know. Dealt with that and I hadn’t come out to my parents at that point yet but… so anyways I didn’t feel like I was home there so I came back to Portland and went back to the bank, working for the bank, but not for the scholarship program. So that point I was just working at the bank, going out on weekends, that sort of thing.

KT: So at that point, did you feel like you had to live that double life because you may have been fired or something from your boss?

COPELAND: Yeah

KT: Or was it just a standard for everyone?

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COPELAND: It was a standard for everyone, I mean you didn’t… um you were just afraid. I mean when I grew up in eastern Oregon you would be driving around the country side, on the side of a bridge or building there would be a sign painted god hates fags or kill queers. People didn’t talk about it. I mean, if you were gay you would keep your mouth shut basically and cover your tracks. If you had a lover or live with someone you would say this is my friend or my roommate. You had two bedrooms so when your parents came; you know this is where Joe sleeps over here. It’s almost hard to imagine now but it just wasn’t something you did. (laughs) to talk about it except to gay people.

KT: So what were some of the bars you were going to at that time?

COPELAND: Well there were a lot of them at that time, a lot more than there are now it seems like. I would go to a place called Riptide which was on Stark and 10th maybe and just a big, fun open dance bar. Lots of men and women mixed together. Certain number of straight people. But just a lot of fun to go and dance with my male and female friends. Just have a ball there. Also the Raptors which was on the corner of Yamhill and Park at that time, behind Nordstrom. And there was a bar downstairs, which was called the Embers, and the Raptors was upstairs which was another really fun dance bars. And there were tons of little taverns around downtown. A few women’s bars¸ which I never went to, but I remember one called The Other Side of Midnight, not sure if you’ve heard of that or not.

Anyway, mostly those two, you’d go during the night, probably like it is now, you go from one to another, different times, get bored one place go to the other place. And then at 2:30 when they close, lights came on, which was the really scary time (laughs) then you’d go to breakfast somewhere, all night breakfast place. But there were a lot of bars, there was a place called the Family Zoo, which I didn’t go to a lot, but it was like an old hippy bar, real counter culture. And then there was CC Slaughters, which then was on

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Stark, which was very much a country western bar. I mean back then there was always line dancing and stuff. Not like it is now. It was more real country.

KT: Much different then now (laughs).

COPELAND: (laughs) Yeah. Thinking back then, there seemed like there were people into different scenes. You know there was kind of a uniform for gay men wore Levi’s and white t-shirts sort of things and people who went to Slaughters wore cowboy boots and western shirts and the hippies wore what they were wearing. There was more of a segmented, not that people didn’t mix, but there was of a segmented population back then I think.

EM: I think CCs only has a western night every once in a while.

COPELAND: Yeah (laughs).

EM: I was reading that you did a lot of fundraising for Portland Town Council, like you would sell buttons in bars, pretty much anywhere you could. What’s the weirdest, strangest place you had to fundraise?

COPELAND: Actually I wasn’t the primary fundraiser, I was kind of like the organizer that ran the office. I was one of the founders of Portland Town Council. And I was kind of like the coordinator, whatever you want to call, I never had a title, didn’t want a title, or cared for a title.

EM: They call you co-coordinator on the internet just so you know (laughs).

COPELAND: (laughs) Good, good. We did all that, we planned meetings, certain people back then, anything back then, people did things they were good at, and we had people

Copeland SR 11233 who liked to go the bars and I couldn’t no more walk into a bar and someone hand me a microphone and talk to a bunch of drunks. That’s not going to happen. (laughs) But there was a man named Leo Gull, who was connect to the drag courts, very well known in that whole group. And Susie Shepherd, one of our people – loved to do that. She would go out and do it. And sometimes, I would go, and we would take people like Yuko Forry (sp?) who was at that point probably still a lobbyist and then became a state representative later.

But yeah so there were people who went out to the bars, sold buttons, talked, asked for donations, invite people to meetings and all of that. We had a series of something called courtyard follies, which was out behind a bar, behind meaning in their backroom, which was opened to the elements, at a place called Wild Oscars, which was on 3rd, near were the Red Sea was, and what is there now, the Silverado moved down there. Anyway so there was an alley way out back, and then another building, which was open too, we’d bring in bales of hay and things, that was one of the things we had the most fun doing and was the most profitable, but it was fun, it’s like let’s have a show, you did talent show and people would sing and dance, or whatever they were doing, tell jokes. One lady was the hand whistler, it was her thing, she did it every time we had one, I think we had 3 or 4. Anyway she was good. And those things would raise $100 or $200 at a time. The weirdest things, gosh… those were pretty weird (laughs). I don’t know what that would be.

EB: It sounds like Courtyard Follies was pretty… strange.

COPELAND: (laughs) And back then we didn’t need too much money. We would always ask for donations at the meetings. I’d send out the newsletters and ask for donations obviously. It wasn’t required you send one to get the newsletters. But we pieced it together however we could.

EB: Very grass roots.

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COPELAND: Yeah. At the meetings we’d pass the hat. Whatever happened, happened. We were lucky in that I think just that the times, everybody seemed to gather behind us. All the bar owners, not all but most of the bar owners, would allow us to do fundraisers and or just come in and talk. And the drag courts, which were huge back then, they were like the social force of the whole city. Hard to understand now but yeah. Just a huge fundraising, social, organizing group of people were always behind us and they would do benefits for us and send us a check. It was wonderful (laughs). And they kinda have a history of being philanthropist. They would do all sorts of fundraising over the years. And I have no idea what it is like now in terms of the drag community but back then it was absolutely huge.

EB: They still do a lot of Fundraising now.

KT: Since we are talking about the Portland town council and everything, let’s go back to the beginning. How did it all start and how did you start getting involved in all that. So very beginning.

EB: Was there like a specific moment where you were like okay we really need to organize?

COPELAND: For me it was personal, but yeah, there was a time, let’s call it 1974. I would have been a disco bunny at that point. I mean I wasn’t out, I wasn’t out to my family, I was out to my friends, obviously we would go out drinking and dancing at night, I worked during the day and whatever, was full social at that point having a great time. Somehow I arrived at Portland City Hall, where they were debating a resolution on gay rights for the city, I have no idea how I got there anymore, but it was the moment that catalyzed it for me.

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I just remember listening testimonies from right wing Christians and people who hated us, and back then they weren’t polite about it. They weren’t debating civil marriage or marriage; they were like your sick, you’re child molesters this and that. I was so outraged it was like a rebellion. It was like I’m not dealing with this, I’m going to get to the bottom of this. We’re going to fix this right? So at that meeting, they announced, they being I think Vera Katz was there, she was going to be introducing a new resolution to the state legislature and she said you guys better get behind me because I’m going to be doing it again this year. It did fail the year before and I need your support. So somehow at that meeting at City Hall there, was announced there would be a meeting of this brand new group, called the Portland Town Council, which at that point was a drag and bar group, an umbrella organization which served to coordinate social events in the city. So being that it was an umbrella organization, somebody thought we should meet under that banner. So I went to the first meeting, and it was wonderful looking back what happened. Somebody would say ‘who wants to be the communication person’ and I would raise my hand. Who wants to be the lobbyist, who wants to do this, who wants to raise money you know. So it was very, very grass roots and was the thing that I liked about the movement then.

And so once I had my foot in the door it was like, a gas explosion or something. We were all just crazy to do this thing. And we started out you know a core group of 10 people, and maybe by the next month’s meeting there would be 20 people, then 50, and I don’t know where it ended but we kept moving to bigger and bigger halls. It was just, I think it was just the time, it was happening all across the country at that time. Starting in 1969, when the Stonewall Riots, if you’ve heard of those, slowly we became more brave and that’s how I became involved. (laughs)

I was there for about 2 years full time and another 2-3 years on the board, hanging around and doing stuff like that. I don’t claim to be the founder or anything else, but I was the one who was in the office all the time so I was able to sort of guide things.

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Experience things and learn a lot and I learned how to write a newsletter, how talk to politicians and all that. And also I have to say a lot of support around us, ACLU, Charlie Hankle, Gretchen was there. At that point Gretchen was a Lobbyist for NOW, so she was very pro-gay, very open about it. It was like what do we do now? Call Gretchen. This is what you do now and so it was pretty exciting time. It was very alive time. Very non bureaucratic.

KT: So since we’re talking a little about that time era there, we’ve like seen the movie Stonewall. Outside of the movie, what was it like? Was it on the news? Would the Straight community understand about something like that?

COPELAND: I can’t say that I knew about it when it happened I might have. There might have been a squiggle in the newspaper about that happening. But that happened in 69. We started organizing in 74. There was a previous effort in 73. So there a few years there I wasn’t really reading gay newspapers, if you could find one. And unlike now, the newspapers, the conventional media didn’t cover, they wouldn’t be covering something like that. So unless you had friends, or there was a gay newspaper you were subscribing to or something like that, you wouldn’t know about it probably. But it came a legend as people organized and got talked about.

KT: So when it was happening, people didn’t really know about it?

COPELAND: Well it was in New York. I’m sure people in New York knew about it. Because that’s where some really, really big groups like the Gay Activist Alliance and the Mattachine Society and so on started. But, it wasn’t like now, where you read about it, like the thing in Egypt. You wouldn’t be reading about it because it’s not censored per say but it’s not talked about. I don’t know if that makes any sense. But after that happened, probably 2 or 3 or 4 years, people were kinda doing what we were doing, getting together and having meetings, lobbying the legislature and all that. It happened

Copeland SR 11233 pretty fast. I think of it as going 0 to 100 in whatever amount of time. In terms of movement, it was like, in the air. It had to happen. A feeling we all had.

EB: I’ve heard stories about you, actually sleeping in the offices of Portland Town Councils, to answer phone calls in the middle of the night.

COPELAND: Well that may have happened but I don’t remember it (laughs). I think this is an urban legend that Susie Shepherd has…

EB: Perpetuated (laughs).

COPELAND: (laughs) I think I did a couple of times. I kinda remember saying I better stay because this person has been calling and he feels suicidal or something. But I certainly didn’t live there on a regular basis. But it was the kind of thing you did because at one point, I mean I guess form the beginning, when we started putting out press releases and having meetings, we had a lot of requests from the general public and media for interviews on TV or newspaper, and we became kind of the go to place for gay people because it was one of the few numbers in the phone book… or not in the phone book but find around in the bars on a poster about gay rights meeting or something. So we would get calls from all the way from… “I just came down from Seattle where is a good bar to go to?” To you know, those whispered phone calls “I think I’m gay and I’ve come out and I’m scared.” Or whatever or “my parents threw me out of the house because I’m gay.” And on and on and on. So it was almost like being… we weren’t just a political organization even though that was our charter we were there to respond to people who called us and we got a lot of phone calls like that. A few hate calls, but not a lot. So yeah.

EB: How and why did you stop working with PTC or did you transition into a different role in that?

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COPELAND: I kind of… well for a couple of different reasons. One: I had been doing if probably for 5 or 6 years for pretty much full on either the time I was in the office a couple of years and organizing, and being on the board afterwards and then there was the thrift shop which I ran for awhile and because it was started and I needed a job and seemed like a good way to transition out and mostly I was kind of burnt out, number one, and also I know I felt like in order to be really successful we needed to be bigger, we needed to have an executive director who had some experience maybe, hopefully somewhere else and raise more money and become a bigger organization and I knew it would become, when it did that, it would become something I wouldn’t enjoy quite so much as I had the free-flowing wild-and-crazy grassroots thing that was what I loved because of all the people I worked with was just amazing to have a group of people that were going in the same direction all the time and very supportive of each other because we would meet and socialize together and go through different affairs and council our friends as they went through other affairs.

Anyways I was getting kind of burnt out but I thought that we should become something bigger and so at some point we put out a national ad in the gay media because there were more newspapers by then, this was probably in the late 70’s, and this would have been the ad that resulted in Jerry Weller becoming the executive director and bringing a whole new level of sophistication to it and serious politicking and campaigning for people in office and raising money and giving out 10’s of thousands of dollars which is part of the process. So there was all that and I had met someone that I was falling in love with, that I had fallen with. The PTC schedule didn’t allow much private time, I mean there was all day in the office and then there were fundraisers at night and political campaigning and on and on and on and interviews and this and that an the other thing.

So I just felt that I wanted to do something else, plus there came a point where I had been pretty visible in the community and I would go places and people would go “Oh

Copeland SR 11233 you’re the Gay one.” So my identity had become, I thought, a little bit narrow. I got tired of being “the Gay one” I didn’t mind being gay I didn’t want to be limited to that so it seemed like time it was kind of organic thing over the years. I would hang around and go to meetings and stuff even after I wasn’t involved anymore, that wasn’t the game I wanted to play anymore I guess you could say. Although I continue to be supportive to this day also there was the fact that I went though two legislative sessions and was going into a third when I quit and there was a lot of progress in the community with individuals and sort of as a community we were coming out and getting stronger but politically it took us over thirty years to get this one bill passed which was our reason for being and it was pretty frustrating on that level.

EB: Definitely yeah.

COPELAND: (laughs)

EB: What would you say one of your best or most rewarding experiences was with PTC?

COPELAND: Wow. There were so many. Overall I’d have to say that the way that it let me grow as a person. I mean I was pretty shy; I’m still pretty shy. In that time I was forced or let out of my shyness by the power behind this movement and my commitment to it and so I really, I don’t know if I could even say it looking back it was probably one of the most powerful times in my life. We needed a newsletter so I learned how to do that. I had to fundraise, which I didn’t like doing. I had to learn how to do that and certain aspects, leading meetings and all that kind of activity that I wouldn’t have done anywhere else and it just made me pretty strong and pretty adventurous in later life that I know I can do that, I started something from scratch, help start something from scratch. There is no reason I can’t do this new job. I guess, again kind of a generality, but the thing that I liked most about it was the fact that it was this core group of people that were just amazing to work with. Just, let’s do it, and we’ll figure it out as we go and it was like a, I don’t know

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why, it was like a mini revolution. And to watch people come out in their own ways and get stronger and I guess I liked the personal aspects more than anything else. The hearings we would go to were painful in fact in the sense of hearing the negative things about ourselves but I wouldn’t say they were the best things but they were very stimulating to a person’s self worth,

EB: Do you still keep in contact with the people that you worked with?

COPELAND: Not much. It’s been thirty-five years, people have died or moved away and changed partners and some live at the coast, that kind of thing. I still see Susie Shepherd. I still see John Baker at the gym, when I go there. Jerry Weller is pretty much not real social right now. So I see people around and people recognize me and say “I know you, are you…” (laughs) But no, the answer would be no, and I don’t really want to, I’m not too interested in being very outgoing right now… So, no. (laughs)

KT: So what was the biggest obstacle in starting all of this?

COPELAND: The biggest obstacle would be, sort of generalized hatred… (laughs)

EB: Personal safety…

COPELAND: I mean really it was like; it really felt dangerous out there. People didn’t talk about it. If we sent a newsletter out, we had to do it in a plain, brown wrapper with no return address. I mean it was like that. We’d ask people who were members on the board of this gay rights organization, this liberation movement, who felt like they couldn’t talk to a newspaper, or a TV station or go on record anywhere as being gay or having a partner. So I would say that was the biggest obstacle was just that extreme suppression, oppression. Everything else we could deal with, raise money, stay up late, write a

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newsletter, or go to a meeting. That was the hard part was dealing with all of the negative feelings coming in.

KT: At what point did it become easier then… there was less hatred? At what point during that time did that happen?

EB: Or was there a point? (everyone laughs)

KT: Was there even a point?

COPELAND: Well, it got easier because we had our own group to hang out with that was becoming rather large. I mean we had, I don’t know, when I left there were probably three to four hundred members on the mailing list. Meetings were sixty-five to seventy people and to work on campaigns with a lot of people. The politicians in Oregon were very; well the Democrats anyway, were very open and supportive and wanted to help. It seemed safer because we were in our own milieu, sort of thing; but I don’t know if it changed much on the outside until way later when I wasn’t involved like that. The state Measure 9 was it…, which was sponsored by the churches, when they were still hating us and still wanting us to disappear (laughs).

So I guess that is not a very dramatic answer, but gradually things got better I think one thing I found out as negative things would happen, the anti-gay campaigns, it makes you stronger. It really does. I mean you mobilize, you get bigger and you raise more money, more people come out. More people are outed accidentally because they are talking about it (laughs). But, I don’t know, I don’t know at what point, probably in the eighties, I guess it got easier. You didn’t fear so much anymore for your safety. I don’t know, even today the worst thing that you can call a high school kid in high school is faggot, right… Isn’t it still the epithet of choice (laughs)?

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EB: It is.

COPELAND: I hope it’s not taken as seriously as it was, but I don’t think is. It doesn’t feel that way, but still I hear that on the bus and I go “Oh my god. Still? Even now?”

EB: You ran for city council in 1982…

COPELAND: Shhhh secret. (laughs)

EB: You were the first openly gay person in Portland to run for an elected office.

COPELAND: I guess that’s true.

EB: Yeah, I looked it up on the Internet (everyone laughs). How did you make that decision that you were going to run and that you were going to run openly as well?

COPELAND: Well it was part of this whole process… I had been through PTC and dropped out of PTC, but I was following the whole thing and active with still seeing people around. People were really discouraged; there was gay entrapment by the police department. There were the anti-gay measures, the chronology isn’t straight in my mind. I think I ran in 81 or 82… anyway I had gone to this place where a friend of mine worked and there was kind of a down mood in the whole community. I was talking to him and he was saying “You know, I’m really afraid for my life.” There was a feeling of violence at that time, so I thought I don’t know what to do next besides to work my butt off for the next 35 years… was just to keep the issue in front of the people. To declare my candidacy, stand up and say the truth and let the chips fall where they may. I didn’t think I would get elected, I wouldn’t mind if I did, but it was mostly a visibility campaign to say “We’re here, we’re not monkeys, we’re people.” (laughs) Like the Elephant Man “I am not an animal!” (everyone laughs) So does that answer your question?

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EB: Yeah.

COPELAND: And I think I raised five thousand dollars and I got five thousand votes. I wasn’t the least amount of votes, but I was running against a very anti-gay person named Mildred Schwab, who would just not, she was on city council and had been for a long time and we all thought she was a closet case (everyone laughs) but we’ll never know… She’s dead now. But her big thing was, you know, “I can’t support you people because this is a choice you’ve made and we don’t legislate lifestyles. Therefore I’m not listening to you, I don’t want to hear about…” She was the one I ran against, so I got a little chance to debate with her. It wasn’t a bad experience but it was… good, it was okay. It wasn’t set up to be a success; I guess you’d say it was a tool.

EB: Do you think that you faced a lot more criticism because you were openly gay?

COPELAND: Oh yeah, there was a lot of animosity in interviews and things with people and even I got some gay people wouldn’t support me because they thought, you know, I didn’t have a lot of experience. Which was fine, I understood that. Being gay and running for office isn’t the only reason someone should vote for you, but then again it was a chance to interact and dialogue with people and confront them and say “We are not afraid” that kind of thing.

KT: We’ve also heard that you were a huge part of Right to Privacy…

COPELAND: Hmmmm… no. What happened, in the later part of my career with PTC, Jerry was hired, I was still around and on the board probably but that’s when it became really big and actually at one point, this is a little detail… Not so little detail, during our development we developed into doing a lot of counseling. We had tons of counselors, gay or pro-gay sensitive counselors on our referral list. So we did a lot of that, actually I

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think that we almost had people on staff that they would schedule appointments … Anyway at some point the organization broke into Phoenix Rising, which was a counseling center, and I guess at that point Right to Privacy pack that was a pack that started… But I wasn’t really a part of it, I was still around but they were forming boards with thirty people. You know the kind of boards that happen in cities…The VIP board that meets twice a year and it was a lot to maintain that I wasn’t interested in being involved in that level. So no, I really wasn’t. I think I went to a couple of their early dinners but I can’t say that I was really part of organizing it. (laughs)

KT: I am interested though, you said that they split into Phoenix Rising and Right to Privacy; can you talk a little more about that? What was Phoenix Rising?

COPELAND: Well Phoenix Rising became just a counseling center with psychologists probably only psychologists there may have been a psychiatrist on staff. Specifically available to gay people who were having trouble coming out, or self-image you know the usual self-image stuff that you deal with when you are trying to be who you really are. Having family troubles with it or whatever. I wasn’t really involved with it on a daily basis but I mean there was a big service with the community, I really don’t know how or where it went to. I mean at some point AIDS happened and there was Cascade AIDS Project, this was all after my really active time. I was aware of it all happening but I wasn’t involved in it all.

KT: I see.

EB: If you could go back and do anything differently with PTC or with any of your activism, would you do anything differently or would you pretty much stay the course on that one?

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COPELAND: Well, let’s see… I’m glad to say that I’d stay the course. I mean there were things that I could’ve done that were smarter in terms of more politic. But I was very happy with the way things went and I’m real clear on my role as we’re talking about what happened later, my role was to be part of that really active, spontaneous uprising of people and that is what I liked and that was what I was really good at. I didn’t want to be the leader of the pack or anything, but to be part of that group was central to my experience. I don’t think I would change that but to think that we could go back and change this or that, but I don’t think so. I think that it needed to happen, that initial part, it maybe had been chaotic for some people. It was very important.

EB: Do you think that the timing, both politically and socially, during the seventies and the late sixties/ early seventies, do you think that had an affect on you to become an activist? If you had been born in a different time…

COPELAND: (laughs) Yes.

EB: That it wouldn’t have happened?

COPELAND: (laughs) Yeah, I think that is totally right. I think it was just…

EB: The right time?

COPELAND: You could feel it in the air practically. I mean once you got wind of it, you wanted to be there and I’m not an activist type. That’s the point I guess, to call me forth to do whatever I needed to do. I guess, thinking about your earlier question, what would have I done differently… It became part of my, I won’t call it dissatisfaction or disillusionment, but it became part of my change of mind about the political thing seemed to narrow to me after a point because every two years you take the same bill to the legislature and it would get defeated (laughs). Hundreds of thousands of dollars later

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or whatever, and all the effort and it became apparent to me what needed to happen was that people needed to change their hearts and minds. I’m talking about gay people. Until that happens where enough people come out and do whatever they need to do with their families or friends to make it okay, which I think has happened, finally. But back then the political grind seemed a little like beating your head against the wall. It was important, but it wasn’t where the soul of the movement was to me. It was like what was behind that, it was a way to focus your energies and say, “I’ve got to come out. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to talk to my mom.” Or whatever it is. So again, the personal stories and the need for self-acceptance.

I noticed a lot that in the early years that we had a lot of fights, not fights, disagreements in our meetings and things. I shouldn’t say a lot, I should say some. It seemed to me that people were angry about something and since you couldn’t reach out into the public sphere because you weren’t accepted there, that it would come back into the group and it was just a way to spar and get that energy off, off of yourself… Whatever that means. So that seemed a little odd to me, it’s not like we did a lot of infighting, that wasn’t necessary because we had people who weren’t able to reach out.

KT: You’ve mentioned a couple times during the interview about the AIDS epidemic and everything. We’ve read some about it in class, but I’m interested to ask you when was the first time you heard about it? What was your reaction? Just what was going on?

COPELAND: Well… The first time I heard about it… Well, they didn’t know what it was at first, you probably know that already, gay men are getting sick, it was a gay cancer. It was this, it was that. But either you die of Kaposi’s sarcoma or you go blind. People didn’t know what was happening, so it was pretty weird. I don’t know where I was when I first heard about it but it was a real sense of… a real ominous feeling of being, of having gone through this sort of liberation for years and years, for ten years maybe. Then all of a sudden there is something out there that is threatening you from somewhere else so it

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was really odd. I don’t… the first couple of years there was just… you read a newspaper story you’d be terrified. Nobody knows exactly what caused it and I guess terror would be the first reaction. Gradually people started to organize that too. I thought, “Oh, this is going to kill the gay movement” because people will be afraid of gay people because they’ll think it’s contagious, they’ll think it’s in the air or something. That didn’t happen, what happened is that the general public rose to the occasion to help raise money, helped to raise a lot of money and sort of got behind the gay community as well. The AIDS community I guess you could say. (laughs) I don’t know, do you have other questions about that because it was kind of an unknown time; I mean you didn’t know what to believe in the very beginning. Then people started dying and it was like “This is too weird!” (laughs)…

KT: How long did it take for people to kind of understand what it was?

EB: Or accept?

COPELAND: I’m not sure I can answer that… I don’t have any sort of hook to put that on… But I’m thinking probably six or seven years, I don’t even know when the beginning was, 1984 was it or something like that? Do you know?

EB: ‘83 or ’84.

COPELAND: Because there were years of similar bullshit as the political movement, I mean you couldn’t get into a pool with someone with AIDS; you’re going to catch it. You know if there is someone in an accident, you don’t want to touch them, you have to wear gloves… But anyway it was a scare tactic not only in the community but in the general public that these people are like lepers. You can’t be around them at all. So that died out, I guess within five or six years, but it was pretty nasty also in the beginning. Meanwhile you’re dealing with friends dying and so on. I was lucky, I didn’t have that a lot of friends

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KT: So we’ve talked a little about your earlier years and everything… College. PTC. Moving into the late eighties and nineties, what were you doing with your life?

COPELAND: Okay, one thing I did was in about the late eighties, I guess, I moved to Reno. I’d gone there with my parents a few times and something caught me about it. I liked the casino atmosphere; I liked to gamble also (everyone laughs). For about three years I was a 21 dealer in a casino in Reno. I came back to Portland, I always came back to Portland, but I liked to get away once and awhile. And then I entered in probably the late eighties, early nineties I was doing odd jobs basically, because I would move back to town and I wouldn’t have a job. And then in the nineties I got a job in a catering company and I was there for about eleven or twelve years. I started out as a waiter and then I became, what they call, a scheduling person in the office and then I became an event planner, which is a really cool job to have (laughs). Then I became the manager of a pretty large company, this was all in the same company.

Then I met my current partner, Frank, and we decided to move to California. We did that for about three years, moved down to the wine country, Sonoma County. I always wanted to go back to the country and have kind of a rural lifestyle, never quite happened but at least being in the wine country was a little more… a little closer (laughs). And then we came back here and bought a coffee shop downtown; we ran a coffee shop called the Black Rooster Cafe four about four years. It was down near Powell’s on the other side

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of Burnside from Powell’s. Then sold that about two years ago and bought an antique store in Carlton, which was another attempt, again, to get out into the country. Had that for a year and then it went broke, that happened in 19… or 2008, when the economy collapsed. We collapsed right along with it. So, we came back here and I started getting Social Security at 63. Now I work part-time gardening in the summer time and giving interviews in my spare time (everyone laughs). There’s a lot more in there, but basically I have a pretty quiet life.

KT: You have a pretty relaxed life now.

EB: (agrees)

COPELAND: Pretty…

EB: After having such a crazy, you know….

COPELAND: Well really, the PTC years were pretty… probably in terms of sheer activity the epitome… the apex of my life. Not saying in quality but in certainly terms of engagement. Now I’m more like I… it seems more normal now to be a little more private and to be…

EB: You’ve earned it!

COPELAND: (laughs) I hope so, I hope so…

EB: Well I don’t have any other questions…

COPELAND: Enough about me, let’s talk about you…

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EB: Exactly, if you have any questions for us, I mean definitely. We’ll answer your questions too.

COPELAND: I don’t know, the class, you see this wouldn’t have happened thirty years ago…

EB: Oh yeah.

COPELAND: It’s kind of cool that there is a LGBT history class at PSU.

EB: And it’s people from all different… you know… He’s a Communications major; I’m a Language major. There are all different types of people in the class. People who are straight, gay, people who have gay parents…

KT: Lesbian moms.

EB: Yeah, lesbian moms… everybody.

COPELAND: Super.

EB: It’s kind of interesting to…

COPELAND: Is it a special class for you? I mean do you… or not?

EB: It’s, it’s a capstone for us, it’s one of our senior classes and we all choose to take it, but I love it. I think it’s great. I wasn’t quite sure the history so much in Portland. I have a lot of friends who are really involved in the community right now, who do a lot of stuff for Q Center and that kind of stuff and it’s kind of an interesting way to find out about how everything started and all the pain that everybody had to go through to get to this part.

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COPELAND: It’s pretty incredible struggle, looking back on it. At that point, I was doing it, it was like I was driven to do it, but looking back to go through all the different phases, you know… you get the anti-gay measures and stuff… Anyway, what was I going to ask you? Have you read the book that was written about the local history book? I can’t think of the guy’s name right now…

EB: Oh, ummm….

COPELAND: He’s organized a lot of things for the Q Center too.

EB: Yeah.

COPELAND: I can’t think of his name… Anyway, there’s stuff in there that I didn’t even know was happening. There is also that aspect that there were things going on when I was running around like a mad man that I didn’t even know about. Or wasn’t able to participate in… There were softball leagues…

EB: Bowling leagues.

COPELAND: Women’s groups and that point the women’s movement was pretty… the women’s movement was just happening and there was just a lot of, we called them lesbian separatists back then, that didn’t want to have anything to do with anything if there was a man involved, not going there. So that was an interesting time… (laughs) But that book is pretty interesting.

KT: It’s like A Community or The People…It’s like a purple book…

COPELAND: Yeah and it’s huge!

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EB: We have a copy of it. There is so much information in that book it’s insane.

COPELAND: Yeah, he did a lot of research.

KT: There are so many references about Portland…

EB: Pat gave us this (hands over a paper), which is hilarious. It’s about stereotypes (LC laughs) that it goes from different points of view what…

COPELAND: This is from April of 1982?

EB: Yeah, what gay men think about each other. What lesbians think about gay men. What lesbians think about themselves. What gay men think about lesbians. It’s interesting to see how stereotypes have changed and how they haven’t in some cases.

COPELAND: I’m just reading the first paragraph talking about “Who’s ever been to a three hour long political meeting that no one ever wanted to end?” (laughs). It’s true, it’s true.

KT: Some of that is pretty funny (everyone laughs).

COPELAND: This isn’t an extra is it?

EB: You can have it, definitely.

COPELAND: Are you sure?

EB: Oh yeah.

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COPELAND: I can make a copy too, if you want.

EB: Oh, no. I have an extra one.

COPELAND: I think I’ll do that instead of taking up the next fifteen minutes… It looks funny though.

EB: I, personally, like what lesbians thought about gay men because that’s, it’s so strange and bizarre. Now…

COPELAND: (laughs) It’s changed.

EB: Yeah, now it’s the gay movement. It’s an entire community now; it’s not so separated between lesbian and gay. That was one thing I had no clue that it used to be so very separate. Especially here in Portland where… I mean I had no clue that…

COPELAND: Yeah, I was part of it, I knew about it and even so when I was at the Q Center giving that speech that I sent you, there were like six or eight of us on the panel and at the other end there were two or three women who were active at the time. I knew of them, but they described their activities and whoa… I never even knew what they were doing. I mean certainly we were focused on our own work, so there wasn’t time to reach out and discover I mean but we wouldn’t have been welcome anyway.

EB: They were so separate, yeah.

COPELAND: (laughs) Yeah and there was a lot of stuff going on, I mean there were lesbian mechanic groups and all sorts of things. You weren’t, you didn’t hear about either one of those talks, those history things did you?

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EB: I haven’t…I’ve read some of the excerpts from them, but I haven’t been able to find the full interviews.

COPELAND: It’s okay, how could you? I thought maybe you might have to interview a lot of other people…

EB: You’re the only person; it’s from what we’ve gone through. We’ve spent a lot of time, well I’ve spent a lot of time looking for information and then on top of that, what we’ve learned in class. We also are organizing a bunch of archival stuff to be put into the archives in the Oregon Historical Society and we’re going through a whole bunch because apparently people just brought in boxes and boxes of stuff. It’s anything from old Just Out newspapers, senior housing, court cases, political measures, movements, pretty much anything…

COPELAND: You know there were a couple of gay newspapers before Just Out; one was called The Fountain I think…

KT/EB: (both agreeing and laughing)

KT: We saw that one.

COPELAND: The Northwest Gay Review, I’m not sure which on came first. There was even a gay hotel for about nine months, The Saint George Hotel. (laughs) It’s kind of a fun time. If you ever see a book called The Legislative Guide to Gay Rights, it has a yellow cover.

EB: I think Pat had a copy of it!

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COPELAND: She does? It was a thing we did after we lost the 75 session, we had a year and a half to prepare for the next session and to address the specific problem to get materials we decided to write a book which was this guide which we did in the office there. We were pretty proud of it, we printed it and then sold it across the country to other gay groups. We also gave a copy to each legislator, in the next session, but I haven’t seen a copy in twenty-five years or so. I’m glad there is still one out there. (laughs)

EB: They’re still out there.

COPELAND: They probably seem a little dated by now.

EB: But they are all really important moments in time to keep. That’s also another part of why I wanted to do this class because I knew we were going to be interviewing people and it’s such an important part of history. Thank you so much for letting us interview you!

COPELAND: It’s a little weird, I’m glad to do it!

KT/EB: Thank you again!

COPELAND: Of course!

[End of Interview]

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Key words:

Larry Copeland Susie Shepherd Portland Town Council Right to Privacy Phoenix Rising Bars City Council Gay Scene