Tom Norton: full-time volunteer
‘
‘Getting the bills passed is going to take fighting the battle
in mainstream politics. But because we live in such a
fast-food, I-want-it-now society, people are less willing
to put up with the bullshit in politics.”
B Y
A N N D E E
H O C H M A N
hen AIDS came along and showed the
gay community about fragile life and
arbitrary death, Tom Norton already knew. He
knew 11 years ago, when he walked away —
dazed, but on his feet — from a helicopter crash
that killed one man and left a woman passenger
with every major bone in her body broken.
m
In Vietnam, too, where he’d flown a medical
evacuation plane, death moved in quick and
dirty. No time for dying. You were there — and
then you were gone.
So Tom Norton decided each second
mattered. It sounds like a cliché, but Norton
doesn’t just preach the idea, he lives it. He rises
at 5 am because sleeping in makes him feel
guilty. He jumps in wholeheartedly where other
people dabble. Right now he's volunteering for
Oregonians for Fairness. Full time. Others
donate what money they can scrape together;
Norton took out a bank loan so he could give the
OFF campaign several thousand dollars.
It’s not just a sense o f the future's uncertainty
that drives him. The past nudges him, too —
and a patient, playful awareness of how long
real change requires. He lives in the house
where he was conceived, where his grandmother
lived — a beautiful home with dark wood mold
ings and a lawn crammed with flowers. Once he
rode a tricycle on this porch. He knows how
things shift, slowly, through generations.
Norton wears an easy smile on an open,
almost childlike face. His dogs, Pal and Buddy,
scuffle in his lap until he quiets them with a
‘ ‘Settle down, boys’ ’ Life is good, and the
glorious seconds tick along too fast. Ask him
how he is, and he says, ‘ ‘Super.’ ’
Tom Norton means it.
“ I grew up in a real politically active family,
so 1 came from a background of activism and
involvement and caring about more than just
myself. Back in 1977,1 was a helicopter pilot,
and I had an accident up in Alaska. I had a
stroke as a result of the accident, and it
paralyzed my left side, so I’m not able to fly
anymore. I loved my job. You know. I'd jump
out of bed in the morning, eager to go to work,
and they’d have to tell me to go home at night
and not to come in on the weekends. I even felt
guilty about getting paid. I couldn’t understand
why they would pay people to do what they had
dreamed of doing their whole life.
“ I was conceived in this house and lived here
for two years, then my father was transferred to
a small town near Salem, where I went to grade
school. Then he was transferred to Corvallis,
where I went to high school. And then, after
high school, I joined the Army to learn to fly.
Three years in the Army, a year and a half in
V ietnam, and I got out of the Army and went to
college in Eugene at the University of Oregon. I
was a premed student. I got into medical
school, but a month before I was supposed to
start, I decided that my real love was flying. I
wanted to fly.
“ Portland was my home. I was just a
seasonal pilot. I’d go up [to Alaska) and work
from April to September and earn a year’s
wages in that amount of time. I had the stroke in
Ketchikan, Alaska, where the accident was.
And then they airmailed me down to Seattle,
where I was in the hospital for about a month.
Then I got shipped down here to the Rehabilita
tion Institute of Oregon, which is part of Good
Samaritan Hospital, where I learned to walk
again and put on a T-shirt and deal with being
disabled. Then I came home from there.
“ So there I was, with a lot of free time on my
hands. I was receiving workers’ compensation,
so I had adequate income. I didn't have to work.
That left me a lot of time for volunteerism,
which I was prone to do anyway. That was sort
of back in the heyday of gay politics, the Anita
Bryant days. The Portland Town Council was a
very active organization.
“ It seems like I was a full-time volunteer
down at Portland Town Council. Back in those
days, we had a minimum one night a week that
was volunteer night. And sometimes it seemed
like every night we had a volunteer night. We
had a lot of mailings; we tod a newsletter. There
was lots going on. We wereNvorking hard on the
passage of a gay rights bill.
“ There was a lot happening locally. Neil
Goldschmidt was the mayor. It was the stage
when Portland was just really coming alive; it
was the birth of sexual freedom and gay free
dom in Portland because it was a safe place to
live and a fun place to live. It was also the birth
of an active and optn lesbian community here.
It’s my feeling that there are actually more
lesbians in Portland than there are gay men. You
just don’t see them as much; they tend to be
more underground than the gay men. Unfor
tunately, it’s still a male-dominated society. It’s
a sad fact of life that will have to change over
time. Social change comes ever so slow. It takes
generations, I think.
“ I was primarily active in Portland Town
Council. I was doing other community things.
Barbara G. Isaacs, Ph.D.
Psychologist Resident
W. E. OSTER
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too. I delivered Meals on Wheels to the elderly
for seven years, and I waschairof the Southeast
Portland Senior Citizens’ Advisory Council. I
visited nursing homes.. . . Gay involvement —
well, that was before the days of the Portland
Gay Men’s Chorus. About that time, the Town
Council Foundation was bom, which is now
Phoenix Rising. Things happened so fast. It was
like the gay movement was bom and all of a
sudden it ended— I guess, when Reagan was
elected.
“ Even in my short lifetime I see things being
really cyclical. It’s nature, you know; every
thing swings up and down, and back and forth.
Time goes so fast. I usually keep so busy and
active that it’s very disappointing, because
weeks turn into days, and months turn into
weeks, and years turn into months. It just scares
me — where the time goes.
“ I’m a full-time volunteer now at Oregonians
for Fairness, the 4 No on 8 ’ campaign. I get up at
five o ’clock, between five and six, and go down
to the gym. Then I come home, have a light
breakfast and go down to the OFF office and
spend the day there. The campaign is a real
watershed issue, and I feel very strongly about
it. I think it’s a winnable campaign.
“ I’m more active now than I was (when I
was a pilot) — in a different way. It was a
lifestyle that I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed
being a helicopter pilot because it was a child
hood dream; it gave me a real sense of identity.
And I was very lucky to survive the accident.
My helicopter hit the ground straight in at over
100 miles an hour, and I walked away from it.
The guy sitting right next to me was killed
instantly, and the woman sitting next to him —
closer to me than you are now — had every
major bone in her body broken. She survived,
and I walked away from it. I’m just lucky to be
here and be alive at all.
“ For the last 11 years, it always seemed like
something in my life was missing. And I didn’t
know what. Something wasn’t working quite
right. So for the last two years. I’ve really put a
lot of time and work and effort into personal
growth and getting my life in order.
“ Out of all that work I realized that when the
helicopter crashed, I came out alive, but actu
ally, I sort of stopped living. For the last 11
years, I’ve been trying to live the life of that
person who was alive before the moment of
impact. So here I am, a 38-year-old man trying
to be a 27-year-old helicopter pilot who can’t
fly. No wonder my life doesn’t work.
“ So now that I’ve discovered that all of a
sudden it’s like I had this great clearing in my
life. I’m free. I can go beyond that and start a
new life, almost. Actually, I’m a far better
person now than I was before, anyway. I had a
lot of growing up to do. So now I have a chance
to really go far beyond that. I've even put in two
applications for work — for Northwest Airlines
and Delta Airlines. If I do go back to work, it
will cut into a lot of the volunteering time.
“ [With the OFF campaign] there’s a certain
sense of organization, a substructure that was
already here, so it wasn’t really hard to try to
throw this campaign together There was a real
willingness to organize and fight this thing
head-on. One thing I have noticed: a lot of
people have a certain sense of frustration, a lot
of people are tired and fed up with mainstream
politics. I can appreciate that. I feel a certain
sense of frustration, too.
“ Getting the bills passed is going to take fight
ing the battle in mainstream politics. But be
cause we live in such a fast-food, I-want-it-now
society, people are less willing to put up with
the bullshit in politics. They want it now, and I
don’t blame them. I want more than we’ve
received. But even if a gay rights bill is passed,
that’s not going to stop people from being
bigoted. Those kinds of changes take much
longer.
“ As I’ve grown older and become more
settled, more established, however you want to
say it, I’m more aware of a real silent under
ground, a large group of gay men and lesbians
who don’t seem to be active, who just sort of
take life as it is and don’t really care much about
social change. They’re afraid to rock the boat. It
would be very easy for me to fall into that
category, too. I have a nice home, a nice
income. So there’s no call for me to be active
and do what I do. I just do it because I have a
real strong sense that I don’t want young people
to grow up with the same kind of fears that I
had. And I guess the way to do that is to work
toward social change.
“ I just noticed that one thing I haven't talked
about at all is AIDS. I know that, in some ways,
it has brought the community together. It’s
changed the lifestyle and habits of gay men,
primarily. It certainly made us look at the reality
of death. After I crashed in the helicopter, and I
was sort of in a daze around the wreckage, and
the rescue chief showed up, I looked at him and
said, ‘I didn’t think it would be me.’ You know.
Accidents always happen to somebody else;
they never happen to you. So we just have to be
ready in our lives.
“ I got that attitude primarily when I was a
medical evacuation helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
I was only 19 years old, and I was in Vietnam
being a medevac pilot. I saw a lot of death, and
so I really learned how fragile life is, how
valuable every moment is.
“ I've always been a happy person. My
mother said I was laughing when I was bom,
that when they put me on her stomach, I looked
up at her, giggling and laughing. And I’ve been
that way my whole life.”
•
Working Toward a Just Society
EMILY SIMON
SIMON, KRAMER G FITHIAN-QARRETT
Attorneys
Felony ond Misdemeanor Defense
AIDS Issues
Consumer Problems
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Transform ational Books
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M u s ic
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O ctober 1988