This blog is way too long, clumsily written and completely self serving.  Please read it anyway so that I can feel I’ve introduced you to my friend John.  I’ll do the same for you someday when you write a similar post.  Thanks.

K.

In the mid 1990s my job was training public health nurses for the Minnesota Department of Health.  Each year our unit chose a clinical topic on adolescent health that would interest and inspire health professionals to work effectively with teenagers.  One year – I think it was about 1993 or so – we decided to do a training on working with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth.  My training partner was John Yoakam, who was working with the Minnesota Youth and AIDS Project. 

These trainings were day-long events offered in cities and towns all over the state.  John and I would get a Department vehicle, travel to some town hundreds of miles from the Twin Cities, and talk to people about how to understand and work with kids.  In the morning session I would describe adolescent development and how to be comfortable and approachable when working with teens.  The afternoon was John’s, and he would talk about the unique and poignant struggles of gay and lesbian teenagers.  It was quite an eye-opener for the audience (and for me) and John had a wonderful calm, easy way of making these stories real. 

John was delighted to be doing this combination of clinical teaching/consciousness-raising, especially in the small towns and conservative communities where we were presenting.  The professionals attending were amazingly open and willing to understand the niche of adolescent health care we were describing.  By the end of each training day, they had lots of good questions and a new appreciation for these kids.

The car rides, as you can imagine, were long and sometimes prairie-tedious.  John and I got to know each other as we traveled to one town after another.  He said that the best support he got for these presentations was from government employees who really cared about kids.  “Mostly straight white women,” he said, “like yourself.”

So I told him that my partner was a woman, and we laughed about that.  But then we talked about who, in the Departments of Education and Health, had been sympathetic to his eagerness to teach people about gay kids.  Mostly it was straight, white women who had responded positively to his offers to teach.  We explored what might be the reason for this.

And we talked about our lives, my kids, his partner, teaching as an art form, conservative Minnesotans as an audience, Minnesota as a place to live, his farm in Wisconsin, and the quality of food in Fergus Falls Minnesota.  John was a wonderful listener with a quiet sense of humor.  We liked each other, and we loved teaching together.

After we finished our teaching day in Duluth, we got on the elevator together.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the elevator buttons, “they have a whole floor just for us.”

I looked at the buttons and one had “GLB” next to it. 

“Who would have thought that Duluth Minnesota would have a whole floor for Gay, Lesbian and Bi people?” he said.

“I think we have to go to that floor” I said, and pushed the button.

The elevator opened into the “Great Lakes Ballroom.”  We smiled at each other and got off the elevator.  “Pretty snazzy.” I said.

“They need to have a GLBT ball in the GLB” he said.

“The ‘Other Orientations Prom’” I said.

“I’ll suggest it to the manager.” He answered.

***

John visited me twice after I moved to Seattle.  The first time, I took him on the ferry to Bainbridge Island during the evening rush hour. 

Boarding with the herd of tired commuters, I said “Try to keep up!” Then I trotted, jostled and elbowed my way to the front of the boat, and took a comfortable booth. 

John trotted, dodged and sidled through the crowd, staying right at my heel. “Kate, this is a side of you I’ve never seen!” he was laughing.

“Well, usually I settle for a lesser seat, but I wanted to show you the view. Sometimes it helps to have grown up in New York.”  And we sat next to the window and watched parasailors floating over Elliott Bay and the receding Seattle skyline – a glorious day on Puget Sound. 

Knowing how he loved food, Anne had purchased some Dungeness crabs and we had a debaucherous evening of crabmeat dipped in butter, fresh asparagus, and some sort of wicked dessert from a Bainbridge bakery.  We talked about his life, his doctorate, and how eager he was to be done with his own schooling so he could teach.  We talked about what it was like to live near Seattle, raise teenagers and keep your sense of humor.

The second time he visited, several years later, we explored a local winery and I showed him the verdant, bucolic sights of Whidbey Island.  He was full of stories about teaching at a small college north of the Twin Cities and how rich and lucky he felt.  He was clearly in his element at St. Benedict’s.  He compared Anne’s gardening plans with his own, and they talked seed catalogs and varieties of raspberries.  They are both earthy Capricorns, and farmers in their souls.

John and I kept up with each other through Christmas cards and the occasional post cards I got from foreign places.  His last one was from Italy, where he was on sabbatical, writing a paper on his research about gay retirement.  “Perfect timing,” I thought.  He will soon be enjoying same.  I was jealous of his chance to travel Italy.  The food!  The art!

But retirement wasn’t in the cards for John.  Nor more European travel.  He continued to keep me posted on his life journey, though, and for that I will always be grateful.