OREGON'S IGBTQ NEWSMAGAZINE
gay&grey
MAY 6. 2011
“I’m working for all LGBT seniors.
assisted living facilities. Evelyn
Now and When
and I were in the closet for 36
Senior focus on Peggy Hackenbruck
We should not have to go into
years. We said we would never go
BY AARON SPENCER
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back there again.”
•
-M A R Y B E TH B R IN D LE Y
to create procedures for addressing discrimi­
nation complaints. After the lesson, a panel
o f LGBTQ_ seniors shares stories and an­
swers questions about their experiences.
“The panel is always the favorite part,”
says Anissa Rogers, a professor of social work
at the University of Portland who schedules
the training in her gender studies class.
Rogers is working on an analysis of the
trainings that she’ll present at a conference
for the Society for Social Work and Research
next year in Washington, D.C. She’ll present
at another conference in Portland for the
Association of Baccalaureate Social Work
Program Directors.
“W hat we’re going to go after is looking
at the effectiveness of changing attitudes to­
ward this population by using this training,”
Rogers says.
Not everyone is receptive to the trainings,
French notes. Once at a senior home, a
worker said she wouldn’t have come to the
training if she had known what it was about,
French says. Still, the worker stayed for the
lesson.
In Rogers’ classrooms, the trainings are
well received. A good portion of her students
decide to do research on older LGBTQ^
people. Some even decide to work with LG-
BTQ_seniors as a practicum course.
“I think the training certainly does raise
awareness and makes people sensitive to
these issues,” Rogers says. “It takes a lot of
the fear, the myth and stereotype out o f it.”
Twilight years
After 49 years of living together, Mary
Beth Brindley’s partner Evelyn Hall passed
away.
Hall had been a part of Brindley’s life
since they met in a bowling league in M em ­
phis, Tenn.
“I have a void that unless you’ve walked
the walk is kind of impossible to actually
feel,” Brindley says. “It’s an awakening. I’m
not going to say it’s an awful awakening, but
it’s a lonely awakening."
Even grieving can become more difficult
for sexual minorities, as partners are not al­
ways recognized by the law or by family.
Brindley did not receive spousal benefits
after Hall’s death, so she could not afford
their home and had to move. Suddenly, she
found herself facing situations she had tried
to help others through for the past 10 years.
But her work with Gay 6c Grey will help
her, she says.
“I’m working for all LGBT seniors,”
Brindley says. “We should not have to go
into assisted living facilities. Evelyn and I
were in the closet for 36 years. We said we
would never go back there again.”
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“I’ve basically lived in the gay
and lesbian community for 30, 40
years now, and I’m used to being
around my community, so it will be
different for me.”
-P E G G Y H A C K E N B R U C K
W hen Peggy Hackenbruck was in medical
school to become a psychiatrist, she was try­
ing to cure what she thought was her own
mental disorder— her attraction to women.
For four years, she went to therapy, where
her therapist would support her desire to be
“normal” and be attracted to men.
“Therapy back then was just psychoana­
lytic, Freudian therapy, so you’d just talk,”
Hackenbruck says.
Once, she recalls, she indicated to her thera­
pist that she liked his necktie. It was a narrow
tie, as was the style in the 1960s. Her therapist
told her that her interest in the tie was a mani­
festation of her interest in penises.
“And so when I left therapy, I made him a
very broad, wide necktie as a going-away
present,” she says.
Hackenbruck, now 68, has retired from
psychiatry. But in her lifetime she made a
career for herself counseling LGBTQ_ pa­
tients, helping them to come out o f the closet
and deal with depression and anxiety— all is­
sues that she faced.
She also became a gay rights activist, both
locally with some of the first gay organizations
in Portland and nationally with the Associa­
tion of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.
But as she ages, she worries that her fight­
ing spirit could dim as her body weakens. The
possibility of moving into a senior home is
one o f her concerns. She’s been a part o f the
Gay 6c Grey program, where she’s seen how
some LGBTQ_seniors, even activists, will go
back into the closet once they enter a home.
“I don’t want to be back in a situation
where I’m going to be around a lot of people
who may not accept my being gay,” Hacken­
bruck says. “I’ve basically lived in the gay and
lesbian community for 30, 40 years now, and
I’m used to being around my community, so
it will be different for me.”
W ith this and other concerns in mind,
Hackenbruck first contacted Gay 6c Grey, a
program by the nonprofit Friendly House, a
little more than two years ago. She ended up
becoming a facilitator for its LGBTQ_senior
support group.
“I was realizing that I and my friends were
facing aging issues and there wasn’t a lot hap­
pening in the community for educating us
about what it means to be an elderly lesbian
or gay man,” Hackenbruck explains. “It just
felt to me like we needed to be able to talk
together about the issues we were facing in
this time o f life, which are kind o f different
than what we have had to face before.”
Hackenbruck has faced a lot o f adversity,
but she has lived through it. She hid her ho­
mosexuality until her late thirties; she mar­
ried a man. She practiced a profession that
dictated her sexual orientation was a disorder.
Then, in 1973, homosexuality was removed
from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
o f Mental Disorders, or the DSM.
“W hen the diagnosis was first changed, I
was in the middle o f my psychiatric training,”
she says, “and I also was learning about femi­
nism at the same time, which was really im­
portant in broadening myself, my concepts
and my ideas. So both the psychiatric world
and my changing o f how I thought about
women were important to my coming out.”
Now, faced again with the possibility of
going back into the closet, Hackenbruck says
she’s lucky to have her support system: her
friends and her adult children.
She also wants to encourage younger
members of the gay community to support
seniors.
W hen she was younger, she says she and
her friends would talk about what life would
be like at the age she is now.
“We’d say, ‘W ere going to be in the old
dykes’ home,”’ she recalls. “We never wanted
to just be with old people. We wanted the old
dykes’ home to be an intergenerational com­
munity where we could help each other and
share companionship and concerns.
“We’re not irrelevant,” she adds. “We do
have some things to say and to offer.”
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