Elver Barker Oral History
Elver Barker (1920-2004) was a significant Denver-based homophile activist in the 1950s. I interviewed him on the evening of March 21, 2002, at Barker’s apartment at 1315 Columbine Street, No. 105, in Denver, Colorado. Barker’s apartment also served as his art studio and he taught painting there. He called it Timberline Art Studio. Elver was born on January 2, 1920, and died on August 19, 2004. At the time of the interview, I was living in Pocatello, Idaho, and working at Idaho State University. I was in Denver to attend the annual conference of the American Society for Environmental History and had made previous arrangements to meet with Elver to conduct this interview. Note, for some time during the years of the Mattachine Society, Elver used the pseudonym Carl B. Harding, as he explains in this interview.
Peter: So this is an oral history with Elver Barker in Denver, Colorado, on March 21, 2002. And so Elver, why don’t you go ahead and just for the record state and spell your name for us.
Elver: E-L-V-E-R. A. B-A-R-K-E-R.
Peter: And when were you born?
Elver: January 2nd, 1920
Peter: And where were you born?
Elver: Newcastle, Wyoming
Peter: And were you raised there?
Elver: Yes
Peter: How many years did you live there, in Newcastle?
Elver: Till I was 19.
Peter: And when you lived in Newcastle – this was before World War II – did you have a sense of feeling an attraction to men?
Elver: Since I was 5 years old.
Peter: Did you understand what those feelings were when you were a teenager?
Elver: The Gender Identity Center classified me as a transgender male because I have known since I was a small child that I have a feminine mind and a male body. I was very aware of it. I have no desire to cross-dress, am not a transvestite. No way would I undergo this partial procedure to bring my body to conform as much as possible to my mind. So I am not a transsexual. But I am transgender. That made it very difficult for me as a boy because I was a sissy and did not fit in. And so I was taunted, as far back as I can remember. And in the fifth grade, well I’d usually done well in school. Well my grades took a drop, and my mother went to the teacher to see what was the matter. She said some boys in class would shake their fists at me and scold me; they were going to beat me up, which they did. They had me living in terror. Why the teacher didn’t speak to them herself, I don’t know. But my mother talked to the boys’ mothers and the beating stopped. And my grades came up again. Well, in later years, those same boys treated me with respect, so I was able to forgive. But I was fifty-two years old before I stopped awakening in the night from terrible nightmares about the Damon boys beating up on me.
Peter: In high school did you have to worry? Were you taunted in high school or just in grade school?
Elver: Both
Peter: What kind of community was Newcastle?
Elver: It was a small town of two thousand people when I graduated from high school.
Peter: What kind of economy did they have there?
Elver: Well, it was a ranching community; got its name from Newcastle in England because of the coal mines that used to be in Cambria. But the coal ran out. There was no longer a coal center. But later, they had an oil boom.
Peter: Did your family actually live in the town of Newcastle? And, then, did some of the kids live outside of town, or did they all live in town?
Elver: Well, we had school buses.
Elver: I was about 10 when Cambria, the nearby town, closed its coal mines because the coal ran out. And then Cambria became a ghost town and we kids used to like to go up there and explore the buildings.
Peter: And so then as a kid you did have friends, not just people who taunted you?
Elver: Oh, I had friends, sure!
Peter: Did you have siblings as well?
Elver: No, I was an only child.
Peter: When you had these problems in 5th grade, were your parents, did they understand that it was something to do with you being a sissy?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: And as you grew as a child, did your family, your parents, how did they feel about your behaviors?
Elver: Well, I never dated girls. Never. So they knew I was different. My father wanted a son who would be a baseball fan. I had no interest in sports whatever. So I was a disappointment to him. I was always conscious of that. He was a ranch foreman and cowboy and a real he-man and here I was a little sissy. And I was painting since I was five. And both my parents encouraged me in that, and my teachers, but I had no interest in sports.
Peter: Would you say, then, as far as your childhood goes, did you know of other children that you thought might be like you?
Elver: There was a boy I met in seventh grade who was also a feminine-type gay male, and he was my best friend through high school.
Peter: And so you met him in 7th grade. Was he new to the community?
Elver: Well, yes, because I didn’t know him before that. And he was valedictorian of his class. He is deceased now. But he was my best friend through high school. And then at the age of 14, a boy and I were showing one another our peters. And I got all excited and he did, too. He had an erection and he and I started having sex. And then a big strapping fellow of 17, a basketball fellow who was bisexual, he seduced me between the legs front ways. And we were on a hike. And he and I had sex often after that. I was 14. And then he later married and had children. I hadn’t heard of bisexuality, so I was kind of surprised that he’d get married. But when this other boy and I, we’d go to the newsstand and read Sexology magazine. It was a slick publication, written by professionals, but for laymen understanding. So we were pretty well versed on sex.
Peter: And they had that publication in the small town of Newcastle?
Elver: Yes, and we’d go out to the town dump and pick up the copies the dealer had thrown out with the covers torn off. Take them home and read them secretly. In there I read Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld of Germany. He was a gay physician, said homosexuality was inborn and I accepted that until the age of 24 and then I became converted to the falsehood that homosexuality is a mental illness to be cured. And I made the biggest mistake of my life. Six years fighting my nature. I nearly had a breakdown.
Peter: How did this happen at age 24?
Elver: Well, one thing. I was involved in a love triangle that was painful for all of us. And I decided, well I am going to be heterosexual, and I fought my nature.
Peter: And when you were 24, where were you living then?
Elver: Denver
Peter: Denver. When you were 19, you left Newcastle?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: And why did you leave Newcastle?
Elver: To go to the University of Denver.
Peter: And when you were at the University of Denver, how many years of schooling did you have there?
Elver: I went to the University of Southern California first, my freshman year. And then I transferred to the University of Denver. I am glad I did because I just loved Denver. It is my adopted home ever since. And I had sex with other gay male students, who were totally self-accepting.
Peter: So it wasn’t difficult to find partners when you were…
Elver: No.
[Note: One of Elver’s cats started playing with the recorder and we had to take a short break to deal with that.]
Peter: Well, as far as World War II goes, was there any question about you going into the military? Or did you serve in the military?
Elver: In the non-violent sense, a conscientious objector. And then because of Hitler’s goal to conquer the world, and Nazi genocide program, and so forth, I thought, well, I’ll compromise. Many conscientious objectors went into the medical corps. They had to wear the uniform, which I would have hated. But I wouldn’t have been trained to murder and destroy. And I went through my physical and passed it. Came to the last examining officer and he said, “What about your sex life?” And I said, “I’m a homosexual.” [He said:] “We can’t take you, you’re sick.” Put me in 4-F. Well I knew there were gays in the military because I had sex with them. But I didn’t know they were discriminated against if their nature became known. So I was put in 4-F.
Peter: So you did not serve then?
Elver: No.
Peter: But during World War II, you were pretty much living in Denver? That would have been 1941 to 45.
Elver: I was going to DU, and I wanted to know what to plan. I knew my draft number was coming up. So I went down to volunteer for the medical corps and that’s when this happened. I was 4-F.
Peter: But you continued to live in Denver after that, for at least the war years?
Elver: Yes. Now let’s see. After graduation I taught school for awhile, but I wanted to be in world peace work. That was my major interest. Still is and always will be. And I went back to Philadelphia and worked with the American Friends Service Committee, which took the Nobel Peace Prize. It was Quaker sponsored. And I was there over two years. That was a great experience. But I was eager to get back to Denver. So when an opening came up and the executive secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which is a pastors’ group, married , leaving an opening—her husband was a minister and they moved away from Denver—I applied and got the executive secretaryship for the FOR. Well that was the best job I ever had. And I was in that two and a half years. And then some of us became enthusiastic about the world government movement – the United World Federalists was organizing around the country. And I left the FOR and worked for them and I was with them two years. Well then, the liberals and the conservatives of the UWF divided, and we lost some of our endowment, and I went into social work. Then I wished I had never left the FOR. So there were not openings in Denver at the time, so I went to Fort Morgan, Colorado, and was in social work there for two years. While there I subscribed to ONE magazine.
Peter: So what year was that, would you say?
Elver: Let’s see. I graduated from DU in ’43. Oh, I know there is a time lapse here. Oh, I went back to, after my work with United World Federalists, I went to Fort Morgan for two years in social work. And read about the Mattachine Society in ONE magazine. And ONE magazine was the first homosexual publication in the United States, I believe. And one of its issues was held up by the Post Office. And ONE took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won in 1958. Well, that opened the way for gay publications.
Peter: So you were living in Denver when you subscribed to ONE magazine, sometime in the early or mid 1950s when it started publishing?
[At this point in the interview, Elver was having a bit of difficulty with the exact chronology and one of his cats kept playing with the recorder. So there is a bit of an interruption. Elver then went on to read something he had written about the world movement and then returned to the gay movement.]
Elver: I am going to read a section because it is so very important. I think you will want it for your records. “There were secret gay social clubs long before social action was [?]. The first gay organization in the United States was the Chicago Society for Human Rights founded in 1924. It was short lived because of negative publicity and they harassed some of its members. The accelerated discrimination against gays prompted the founding of the Mattachine Society in 1950. ONE magazine, the first gay magazine in the United States, was the product of a Mattachine discussion group in Los Angeles. It began publication in 1953, eventually achieving a circulation of five thousand and ceased publication in 1968. The magazine gave rise to a second organization, ONE Incorporated, founded in Los Angeles in 1952 by the late Jim Kepner, early pioneer in our cause and prolific writer, the late Dorr Legg, and Merritt Thompson: M-E-R-R-I-T-T T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N. Out of ONE Incorporated grew the ONE Institute of Homophile Studies. When the Post Office held up the October 1954 issue of ONE magazine for no other reason than it was about homosexuality, ONE took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court and in 1958 won. That landmark victory opened the way for the great many gay publications today. The Mattachine Society published the Mattachine Review from 1955 to 1965. Chapters were organized in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. The Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian organization, was founded in 1955 in San Francisco by partners Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. DOB published the Ladder. Del and Phyllis came to Denver to be in the Grand Marshals contingent for our Pride Fest in 1995. Mattachine, DOB, and ONE cooperated closely. In 1959, the national convention of the Mattachine Society was held in Denver at the Albany Hotel, since demolished. Representatives from ONE and DOB were there. We had breakthroughs in publicity in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. We invited the police department, which sent observers. Among our speakers were a state senator, a psychiatrist, an anthropologist from the University of Colorado who spoke on the berdache among Native Americans, and an attorney. Only in recent years did it become known, through the Freedom of Information Act, that our three organizations were under surveillance by the FBI. We were totally unaware of that. Today the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis have been replaced by other organizations. ONE Institute has survived with headquarters in North Hollywood. ONE Institute is in charge of the International Gay and Lesbian Archives, founded by the late Jim Kepner. The Archives are housed in the Doheny Library of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.”
Peter: When you lived in Denver, going to the University of Denver, and then again in the 1950s, you said you had sex partners. Did you have any sense in those years of some sort of gay community in Denver?
Elver: No.
Peter: Was there one existing that you didn’t know about it. Or was it just before there was such a thing?
Elver: I think that was before there was such a thing. Now I did hear about a gay bar in downtown Denver on 17th Street. A football player who was bisexual told me about it. And then school let out, it was summer, and he wasn’t around, and he never took me there. But I remember taking a bath, putting on clean clothes, and walking down 17th street on one side and up the other, listening. He said there was a piano player and I listened and I listened. I couldn’t find it. I was looking for a gay place. Well later, the Snake Pit, that may have been it. I don’t know, but it was in the basement of the old Drexel Hotel, since demolished. There was a straight bar upstairs and as you went in there was stairway going down and that was gay down there. Well it was a plush place with a jukebox, and I met some nice gay fellows there.
Peter: Do you remember going to it before the Denver Mattachine?
Elver: Yes, it was before the Denver Mattachine.
Peter: Okay, so at least in the early 1950s, but not when you were in college?
Elver: Yes, after college.
Pater: After college. You did leave for a while and then you did come back?
Elver: Yes. I worked for the Fellowship for Reconciliation and then for the United World Federalists and then in social work in Fort Morgan. Well I wanted to be active in the Mattachine Society. I read about it in ONE magazine, so I transferred in social work to Oakland, California. I was there four months and went to work one day and was suddenly dismissed. And the administrative assistant wouldn’t give me a reason. She said, “If you want to talk with the director, I will arrange it.” Well, he wasn’t going to give me the reason either. But I said, “How can you dismiss someone without giving a reason?” And he just roared at me: “It’s the L-A-W.” And why he said it this way: “We live in glass houses around here, both in our personal, our social lives, and business lives.” Well, then I knew I was being discriminated against because I was gay. And there was another gay fellow in our department, who had told me he’d been let out and said they wouldn’t give him a reason. Well, I was let out right away after that. Well how they knew, I don’t know. They may have seen me in the proceedings of the Mattachine or one of the gay restaurants in San Francisco. There was a gay nightclub in downtown Oakland. It was plush and had dancing and entertainment and I used to like to go there. I may have been seen in there by investigators. Because this was during the days of J. Edgar Hoover, and Senator McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy.”
[Here is a bit of a gap due to changing tapes while Elver kept talking about leaving his job and what he did next.]
Elver: Well, let’s see. We were out pretty far in Oakland, California. I went over to the University of California, laid my cards on the table. Is that still on?
Peter: Yes, it is still on.
Elver: And the personnel director for academic personnel said, “I believe it’s the place of the university to help people in your predicament.” And I got a job in the biology library. Well I loved biology. And I did desk work, waiting on the students and faculty, also did office work. And I had wonderful people to work with and all this time I was active in Mattachine in San Francisco. Well, that was a great experience of my life, and the hours of the library were so long, 8 o’clock till 10 p.m., that I was able to get in a few graduate courses in my special interests. But I was eager to get back to Denver.
Peter: Why were you eager to get back to Denver?
Elver: I like Denver.
Peter: Even though there was such an open gay community [in the Bay Area]? Denver was more important than that?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: Because why?
Elver: I just love it here.
Peter: [laughing] Okay.
Elver: And so I returned to Denver in ’56 and [?] teacher’s certificate. Taught fifth grade in Aurora for four years. Well, it was good experience. But when I came back to Denver in 56, I organized the Denver Mattachine Society.
Peter: So you were the instigator yourself.
Elver: I instigated it and I got together with the late Harley Beckman, H-A-R-L-E-Y B-E-C-K-M-A-N, and Rolland Howard Karcher, R-O-L-L-A-N-D H-O-W-A-R-D K-A-R-C-H-E-R. And we founded the Denver Mattachine.
Peter: The three of you?
Elver: [Nods yes.]
Peter: And they were friends of yours living in Denver?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: And they were about your same age?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: And they were gay men?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: Did you know them before?
Elver: I knew them before.
Peter: And when did you meet them?
Elver: I met Rolland through the World Government Movement, and I can’t remember how I met Harvey. But anyway, we founded the Denver Mattachine Society.
Peter: And you used the name Carl.
Elver: I was teaching 5th grade in Aurora, so I used the pen name Carl B. Harding, C-A-R-L B H-A-R-D-I-N-G.
Peter: Where did that name come from?
Elver: Just out of my head. I liked the name Carl. We had both male and female people involved.
Peter: How many people?
Elver: Our membership never exceeded nineteen. But we had a number of people interested who came to our meetings who didn’t actually join.
Peter: And where were these meetings held?
Elver: We had two kinds of meetings, twice a month. One we called our “public meeting,” when we’d have a speaker and we’d even tried to get notices in the papers, which we did a few times. And then the other one was a discussion group meeting held in private homes. Now you’ve read all the newsletters.
Peter: I read all the newsletters.
Elver: Beautiful covers. Now, Harry Bateman – the late Harry Bateman, H-A-R-R-Y B-A-T-E-M-A-N, made those beautiful covers. He took great pride in them.
Peter: Well I thought maybe you had a hand in them…
Elver: No, I didn’t.
Peter: …because of your background in art.
Elver: No.
Peter: They are absolutely stunning. I could not believe looking at these basically monthly newsletters and thinking that somebody took the time to make these.
Elver: Yes, that was Harry Bateman. He is deceased now.
Peter: Did you have problems getting it printed up? Did you have your own ditto machine?
Elver: We had, I had, I owned a mimeograph. And we cranked it out on our mimeograph. We had work parties. We’d assemble it in my apartment.
Peter: And your apartment was in Denver our Aurora?
Elver: In Denver.
Peter: Was it just a small work group?
Elver: Oh, we had it at my place – seven or eight or more would come together and get it out. It was a fun time.
Peter: Well, one of the things I wanted to ask about the Denver Mattachine is: was it really pretty much just Denver? Did you have any members or success in mailing it to people in other communities in the Mountain West or was it pretty much just a Denver thing?
Elver: It was pretty must just a Denver area thing.
Peter: Did it have a significant impact on a gay movement in Denver?
Elver: We were the pioneers.
Peter: You were the pioneers in the Denver movement?
Elver: Yes, we, and it meant a lot to us. Cause we’d come together and could talk about our past and it was a fellowship. It had a great meaning to us.
Peter: Outside of the meetings, the people who went to them, you were friends with each other?
Elver: Oh, yes
Peter: And so you socialized outside of the Mattachine as well.
Elver: Oh yes, yes.
Peter: Did you go out to bars in Denver at that time?
Elver: Well, we would sometimes go out to meals together. We’d have a Thanksgiving dinner together. It was a fellowship.
Peter: And there were some women involved?
Elver: Yes, mostly men, but we had a few women.
Peter: Did all of you have pseudonyms or remain anonymous?
Elver: Rolland Howard Karcher, well, had a state job. He is still living if you want to interview him. He is in Denver. He wrote under his first two names and he did most of the writing for the newsletter.
Peter: What were the goals? When you first started the Mattachine in Denver, did you have any specific goals in mind for this organization?
Elver: Why yes. We thought of ourselves as a social change organization to help educate both non-homosexuals and homosexuals, too. Self-acceptance is the key to personal adjustment. Social acceptance the key to justice. So we had two goals to help gay people themselves and help the public understand us.
Peter: Do you feel that when [the Denver Mattachine] was around – well, the Denver Mattachine lasted just a few years – do you think that you had much success is achieving those goals?
Elver: Yes, yes, yes! We felt real accomplishment.
Peter: So do you think that you had an impact on how broader society viewed gays in Denver.
Elver: Yes, yes, we sure did.
Peter: Was there any specific example that you think of where you made an impact like that?
Elver: Well, we did get published in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News when we had our national convention here.
Peter: Yes, that was a big thing. How was it that you were able to get that here in Denver?
Elver: Well, we just mailed it in, and it was published.
Peter: Well, I mean how was it that you were able to get the national Mattachine to meet here in Denver?
Elver: Well, we had a very active chapter. We invited, we wrote the national office in San Francisco, and the national board of directors agreed, we will go to Denver.
Peter: The Denver chapter was really the only one in the interior West, isn’t that correct? It was really unique here in Denver. So why do you think it happened in Denver?
Elver: Well, I am a good organizer. That is my specialty. And I organized it myself. Well, Rolland and Harley helped, but I instigated it, and I was the prime organizer throughout its existence. Well, then, in 1956, I had a great desire to go to San Francisco and study art under my two favorite artists there. So I did and I left the secretaryship--I was secretary locally in Denver–in the hands of a fellow I thought would do well with it. Well, he wasn’t an organizer. He wouldn’t even go to the mailbox and get our mail.
Peter: So that was shortly after you started? The Denver Mattachine began in what year?
Elver: 56 to 60. It was 60, 1960, that I went to San Francisco. Now what did I say?
Peter: I thought you said 1956.
Elver: Well I was wrong. It was 56 to 60 that I was teaching in Aurora and the Mattachine was very active locally. In 1960 I went to San Francisco to study art. Well, I have to interject something here. It was very unfortunate. Harold Call, he liked to be called Hal.
Peter: And how do you spell that?
Elver: Harold, and put in parentheses Hal, Call, C-A-L-L, and Donald Lucas, Donald Lucas, L-U-C-A-S, were the proprietors of Pan-Graphic Press in San Francisco, which published the Mattachine Review. And they wanted to make a living off of our movement. Well that caused a big controversy, especially with the New York Chapter. And those two men in San Francisco, when the convention met in Denver, they brought their battle to the business meeting. And it was a big division. And ultimately Hal and Don and the national board of directors tried to revoke the chapters, the charters of all the chapters, all the Mattachine chapters, not just Denver, and demanded that we give up the name Mattachine. Well, New York held out. They courageously kept the name Mattachine. The others did give in and the Denver Mattachine became what was called “The Neighbors.” It didn’t last long because this fellow I’d hoped would carry on what I had been doing was not an organizer. He let it flop. Well, when I went to San Francisco to study art, I went to the Mattachine office, and I’d saved my money, so I had some savings to go by. And I later got a job in a community center, which helped a lot. So for a while I didn’t have to work and I wanted to volunteer at the office. Well, Hal Call put me to work reviewing books for Pan-Graphic Press. I started to do it. And then I said, “Well, you know this isn’t what I came here to do.” And Hal said, “what should you be doing?” I said, “I should be working on the convention.” And he later admitted I that I was right. Well, I was given names of people to write, who were speakers, and Donald had selected them. And we organized the convention. And after the convention, and it was successful, and Karcher was made member of the year that year for his writing, I wrote the letters of thank you to the speakers and Hal and Don declared the Mattachine Society itself a business. I said, ‘Well Mattachine is not itself a business. Pan-Graphic Press is a business, and not the Mattachine.” [The answer that came back was:] “Oh yes, Mattachine is a business.” And it was at that time that they tried to revoke the charters of the chapters.
Peter: What was the purpose of revoking the charters?
Elver: Because they wanted total control of the movement to make a living off of it. And I never forgave those two men for destroying the organization we had taken such pride in building. I never forgave them. Hal is deceased now, died about two years ago. I don’t know whether Don is still living or not. Now, according to the 1959 newsletter, the librarian of the Denver Mattachine, that was Bill Matson, B-I-L-L M-A-T-S-O-N. Would you like to work at the table?
Peter: No I’m fine, thanks.
Elver: Was sentenced to 60 days in jail, fined $100, for sending pornographic pictures, of course, in correspondence. Now what the police confiscated was the card file of the books we had. And Bill went to jail. And he was a very sensitive person. It hurt him a lot. And he was let out of St. Joseph’s Hospital. He had a good job there. But he was let out because of his arrest and one of the nuns who liked him so much cried when he left.
Peter: And what kind of a job did he have?
Elver: It was an office job.
Peter: So you remember that incident.
Elver: We had just had a great, well very successful convention, and publicity in the Post and News, and then what followed was this article about our librarian from the Denver Mattachine Society, and our hearts just sank.
Peter: So why was he arrested? Do you think that the police were following members of the Mattachine? Or was something else going on in his life?
Elver: Well when Bill moved to Denver from Nebraska, he stayed at my apartment for a period till he got his own apartment. He received some of that so-called pornography at my place. And what they were were photos of nude men, some of them had erections, but there were not sex relations in the photos at all. Well because he had received some of them at my apartment and the address was on the envelope, I came home from work one night from a PTA meeting and here were two detectives in the lobby waiting to see me. Well I don’t keep pornography. It doesn’t turn me on. I want the real McCoy and didn’t have any such thing. They searched, and they opened my desk drawer and came to the Mattachine mailing list. And I said, “That is the Mattachine Society mailing list and that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.” And I was relying on a newspaper report that the NAACP, I believe in Arkansas, had their mailing list confiscated. They took it to court and won. Well, all the while I was putting on a brave front, but I was trembling on the inside because I thought they might call the school. Well apparently they didn’t because I never heard anything about it. But I had no pornography. They had nothing to arrest me for.
Peter: And so they then tried to trace Bill Matson?
Elver: No, they had already arrested him, and this was after his arrest.
Peter: Well how did they know that he had this pornography? Do you have any idea?
Elver: No, I don’t know. I don’t know that.
Peter: So that was toward the end of 1959. Were there any long-lasting effects from that? Did the members in the group get very frightened at that point?
Elver: I don’t think we did. We stood behind Bill. No, we didn’t let up because of that.
Peter: And what happened to Bill after that?
Elver: You know, I am still wondering. See, I went to San Francisco to study art. And Bill, after his jail sentence, went back to Nebraska and worked at his parents’ grocery store. And I heard, and it may or may not have been true, that he came back to Denver and committed suicide. Now I had a lady friend who is no longer living, but who worked in the Bureau of Vital Statistics, and I had her check the records, to see if Bill Matson died in Denver. She had no record of his death. And we don’t know what happened.
Peter: And he just basically disappeared. And it was because of this?
Elver: He had lost his job, and if he committed suicide, I don’t know why, but he was a very sensitive person and didn’t deserve this treatment at all.
Peter: Let’s go back and talk a little bit about that 6th Annual Convention of the Mattachine that was held in Denver. That must have been a real exciting time?
Elver: It was, and it was a very successful convention.
Peter: And why would you say it was successful?
Elver: Well, we organized it well, and we had an anthropologist from the University of Colorado speak on the berdache. And we had a state senator speak. We had a psychiatrist speak. Let’s see, what else?
Peter: Were there many people who attended the conference?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: Were they Denver people or did they come from around the country?
Elver: They came from around the country because it was a national convention. There were delegates from New York, Chicago, San Francisco.
Peter: What did you do when you weren’t in the convention? Did you have social events?
Elver: We had, besides our speakers, our business meeting, we had a banquet, we had one fellow who played the piano; he played background music. It was a great convention.
Peter: Did you guys go out to bars or anything?
Elver: No, no, we didn’t. Maybe some did on their own to bars.
Peter: As far as the annual convention, do you remember any problems with the broader public at all?
Elver: No. We had these two policemen in uniforms sitting in the front row listening.
Peter: Do you think there were people from Denver who came who weren’t gay or lesbian, other than the two policemen.
Elver: I don’t know.
Peter: So what about your life after? Well, you left for San Francisco, and can you tell me some of the things that happened after?
Elver: I studied art over two years. And my mother died, leaving my father alone. He was over 80. My father didn’t cook. I thought, well, I would just go home and be with my dad.
Peter: Which was about when?
Elver: That would have been in 1962.
Peter: So you left San Francisco to go back to Wyoming?
Elver: Well, I thought I won’t have any rent to pay. I’ll just paint at the store and sell in the Black Hills and Denver. Well, I was talked into teaching. I had no intentions of teaching art, none whatever. But my hometown had an artists’ guild and they invited me to participate. And they gave me a special place on the stage in the church hall. And people began to beg me to teach.
Peter: Now, did they know you were gay?
Elver: No. Well, I finally agreed, and I am glad I did. Because I did know a method and I was able to convey it. I teach as I was taught, showing how, right on the picture. After that, I taught art in six towns, four towns at a time for eight years in Wyoming, and I held workshops in Wyoming on my finger painting technique: Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. So I was kept busy and I had a station wagon. I could carry whole exhibits in my station wagon.
Peter: And your sexuality, you just kind of put it on the back burner?
Elver: Yes, I had no relationships. I had to come 325 miles to Denver to make love. I did not know any gay people in my hometown.
Peter: So did you occasionally go to Denver during these years?
Elver: Oh yes, because I exhibited here in restaurants, banks. I did well, too.
Peter: So you did have a gay lifestyle then; it just wasn’t in Wyoming?
Elver: Yes. And then my father died, leaving at 88. And right after he died, a fellow called me, whom I remembered when he was born. Someone gave me his name. A Newcastle fellow. And he invited me over and here he had this nucleus of gay men right in my hometown; I didn’t know they were there. Well of course I left right away. I sold the property and went back to Des Moines, Iowa, to work with the American Friends Service Committee for a two-year commitment. There were no openings in Denver. Well that was good experience. But I was missing Denver. I could hardly wait to get back to Denver. So I came back here and opened Timberline Art Studio. And I have been teaching art ever since.
Peter: And that was 1972, right?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: A couple things I want to clarify, or at least one thing. When you started talking tonight, you used the word transgender. Now do you see yourself as transgender or a gay man?
Elver: I am a transgender male. There is no doubt about it.
Peter: Okay.
Elver: Because I have known since early childhood that I had a feminine mind and male body.
Peter: So if I write about you, you would prefer that I say transgender male rather than gay. Is that correct?
Elver: Well, isn’t a transgender male automatically gay?
Peter: Well, not necessarily. These terms have changed so much over the years.
Elver: Yes.
[Note: we discussed this for a while, and I came away with the sense that Elver saw himself as gay but had this older understanding of a female mind in a male body.]
Peter: You also mentioned tonight about having sexual affairs with men who were in the military. Now was that during the war years?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: At the same time, you were at the University of Denver?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: So there were a lot of military people coming through Denver at this time?
Elver: Oh, tarnations, yes.
Peter: And so how did you meet these men?
Elver: At gay places.
Peter: At what gay places?
Elver: Well, there was the Snake Pit, which I have already mentioned, in the basement of the old Drexel Hotel on 17th Street; it’s now been demolished. They would go there in plain clothes, but they would tell me they were in the military.
Peter: Were there other parks or street corners that people would go to? Other gay places?
Elver: There probably were, but I didn’t frequent them.
Peter: What is the place called? I’ve read about it. Capital Gardens or something like that?
Elver: Well, the Capital Circle or State Capital building is a cruising ground. I guess it still is. I was never there.
[changed tapes]
Elver: I mentioned being taunted as a transgender boy.
Peter: A sissy, I think you said.
Elver: Yes, if I had been born into one of the Native American tribes, I wouldn’t have had those bad experiences because they have what they call a two spirit society that encompasses gay, bisexual, transgender people, and they led the gay pride march in Denver. It was either last summer or the summer before.
Peter: When you were growing up in Wyoming, did you have any contact with Native Americans?
Elver: No. I have a very [?] interest in Native Americans. I love their dances. When we had rodeos, I was always sitting in the front row to watch the dancers, but I did not know them personally.
Peter: When you think back about Wyoming as a child, does Wyoming mean anything to you?
Elver: Well, I feel a kinship with my home area. I am glad I came from a small town. But it was painful for me as a transgendered boy to be brought up in a small Wyoming town where boys are supposed to be boys and men men. And here I was a sissy. And our school building, our grade school, was located on a hill, and at the edge of this hill was this lone pine tree. Well, I didn’t fit into the sports and a lot of the games played by the other boys. I was a passive student as a child. I’d go to this lone tree, and I’d stand by, and I looked out on the tree-covered hills beyond. To this day, my specialty is painting lone tree, timberline trees especially, against a mountain background. So there is this carryover from childhood. And I have an affinity for these trees.
Peter: So that is a kind of western landscape that means something to you because of your life as a child. When you were in grade school and high school, you mentioned that one friend that you had who was a gay male, transgender male also. Did you have other friends. Did you find yourself doing more things with girls, like playing with girls?
Elver: I never dated, never dated. As a child, I was an only child. The neighborhood was always full of kids, but I never liked playing with them. But I missed not having siblings. There was one family, they had a teenage girl, and I adopted her in my fantasies as my older sister. And she had a little brother, six, and I adopted him as my younger brother in my fantasies.
Peter: Did your parents know about your sexuality, would you say?
Elver: I never told them directly. But both they and I each said enough that I know they knew. They knew I was different. But I never told them directly. I was afraid they would blame themselves.
Peter: But did you have a pretty good relationship with your parents?
Elver: Yes.
Peter: These days, do you still have gay friends?
Elver: Oh yes, I have close gay friends. And to think I wasted six of the best years of my life – twenty-four to thirty – fighting my nature. That was the biggest mistake of my life. I am active in the Human Rights Campaign. Each year I donate three paintings to their silent auction. Last night they had an appreciation up there for those who made that a success and that included the donors. So I went with one of my favorite gay friends who happens to be this fellow. These are the leaders of my state. And it was such a fine affair. They had hors d’oeuvres and drinks and just a nice social gathering and I thought to myself, ‘What a fool I was to have fought my nature for six years.”
Peter: Did you have any long-term partners?
Elver: No, I never did. I had my mutual love affairs with homosexual and bisexual men, but I never lived with a lover. And if I hadn’t fought my nature, I could have been finding a life partner. For example, when I was in the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia, some of us would go out to lunch together. And there was a gay fellow on the staff. Really a nice fellow, clean cut. He wanted me so much as a friend, and while I was friendly toward him, I kind of evaded him because I was fighting my nature. Well, one time he took us to a quaint little restaurant down on [?] street with a lantern on the front. And there were some straight girls in our group. When we went in, I noticed that the patrons were gay. I just sensed it. It was a gay restaurant. And they had good food and the walls were stacked with albums of classical music, and there was classical music playing. It was a good place. A gay place. Well later, one of the girls in the group said she learned that was a homosexual gathering place and the group should probably stop going there. And I wouldn’t go because I was fighting my nature. I should have gone with it. I should have been friends with Wally, this nice gay fellow. I should have gone to this restaurant and met gay people. But I was fighting my nature. And it was my dedication to the World Peace Movement that carried me through, but I still didn’t make up for the loss of personal life that I should have been enjoying and gaining personal experiences.
Peter: When you were in the march in New York in 1971, were you familiar with the Stonewall riot?
Elver: Well I wasn’t there, but I was in the second annual gay pride march from Greenwich Village to Central Park. That’s when the picture was taken.
Peter: Historians who study the gay rights movement say that around 1969, 1970, there was a real new phase in the homosexual rights movement, and it more militant. Did you notice when you were involved in activism in the 70s? Did you notice a difference between the gay rights movement then and the Mattachine in the 1950s?
Elver: I noticed an acceleration in the movement, which has continued to this day. I am just thoroughly elated with the progress made. I have forgotten, I don’t the number, how many gay organizations there are in the United States today? Somewhere I read five thousand or so. And that’s just so encouraging to me.
Peter: When I read the Denver Mattachine newsletters last summer, I remember reading occasional things in the discussion group about flamboyant gays, and maybe there was some discomfort with gays who were too flamboyant, who didn’t fit in?
Elver: I don’t remember that. But it must have been there, or it wouldn’t have been in the newsletter. But I have no memory of that.
Peter: I wonder if you recall anything about concerns among the Mattachine members, about who should belong and who shouldn’t, and if there were some people who were just too gay who caused concerns?
Elver: Well I think we were concerned [that] people be discrete. And I don’t think we had any members who were flamboyant. They were pretty much obvious to straight people. I don’t remember any really swishy men in our group. There were some women who showed some masculinity, but not extreme.
Peter: Was there any type of women’s political organization other than the Mattachine in Denver during these years.
Elver: No, there was not a local Daughters of Bilitis, no.
Peter: Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon came to your Annual Convention in 1959. Do you know if they tried to organize women separately?
Elver: No.
Peter: So you have lived on the West Coast, and you spent time on the East Coast, and you love Denver. I am wondering from your perspective, does the Mountain West seem different to you as far as gay community?
Elver: Well, I haven’t seen any difference in the gay community of Denver and that of San Francisco. It was always more above board in a sense. In Denver we weren’t quite as aboveboard.
Peter: Why do you think that was?
Elver: The climate of San Francisco is more accepting of gay people. And here, as I did my writing under the pen name Carl B. Harding, in the group people knew me by two names. Our chairman used a pen name too. And Ronald Howard Karcher wrote under his first two names because he had a state job. And I am trying to think who used pen names.
Peter: What was the penname of the--did you call him president?
Elver: Chairman. Let me think. What was his name. He’s deceased now. His real name was Lowell Groves, L-O-W-E-L-L G-R-O-V-E-S. I can’t think of it.
Peter: So if I look at those newsletters, I will see chairman and I will see his pen name, right?
Elver: I think you will, because I just can’t think of it. Now, Rolland Howard Karcher is still living in Denver.
Peter: Well I think that is just about it, really. Okay?
Elver: I appreciate all your writing.
Peter: Well I appreciate you giving me the time to talk with you. It was really nice to read all those newsletters in the Denver file there at the ONE Institute. And then when I heard you were around and involved in the organizations, I really wanted to be able to talk with you.
[end of interview]