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June 30 — July 6, 1988  |  Vol. 6, No. 26 — 50 Cents

New England's Largest Gay and Lesbian Newspaper

Changing The Myth of the "Older" Gay Man

As sure as the currents of change are shifting the gay movement as a whole, they are also washing away old stereotypes — even those the gay community created-in their wake. Take the fallacy of the "older gay man" that many younger (and older) gay men still hold as fact. It is a picture of an "aging, pathetic old queen, perpetually lonely with nothing to do but hang out in bars and watch the youngsters play.”

"That's a misconception that will change if Woody Baldwin has his way. "They're not going to see us as the Rocking Chair Brigade," says Baldwin of younger gay men. Talking to Baldwin, an energetic, articulate man with a thatch of white hair and conviction in his voice, you think of anything but rocking chairs.

Welcome to the Prime Timers, an organization formed, according to group president ,Baldwin, "to address the needs and wants of the older segment of the gay male population.” Celebrating its first birthday on August 15, the needs and wants are as varied as they are plentiful.

For some there’s a need to socialize with people whose life experience more closely parallels their own. For others the ,a need may be sexual. For still others, it may be the need to deal with the problems of discrimination, finances, and health.  But as Baldwin points out, these are all needs which were not being met by the larger gay community.

As for the traditional mainstay of gay socializing, the bars, Baldwin says that's not an attractive option for many. "Older people tend to be uncomfortable in gay bars because of the accent on youth," he says, adding that younger gay men in bars, are not usually interested in older men; or vice-versa. The Prime Timers give older gay men "a place to go and feel wanted where no one cares how old they are.

Baldwin theorizes that, because they, don't fit into the gay emphasis on youth-oriented scenes, older gay men may simply drop out of sight, becoming an invisible segment of the gay population. The result of this invisibility can be Ioneliness and isolation.

As he became increasingly aware of these problems, Baldwin began doing something about it. He placed ads in Bay Windows, Gay Community News, and other gay-oriented publications around New England, asking men interested in a group like Prime Timers to contact him. The response was immediate." Some meetings were organized, and agendas based on the Suggestions and needs of fledgling members-were hammered out.

Today the Prime Timers are led by a seven member Board of Directors who also choose the group's officers. Membership now includes one hundred and twenty-one members, ranging in age from 40 to 80.  While most of the membership hails from the Boston area, some are from other areas around New England in addition to Kentucky, Illinois, and California.

“Our phenomenal growth suggests we are meeting a need," Baldwin asserts. "We offer all kinds of things."

To illustrate his point,  Baldwin ticks of a laundry-list of activities: dining out, atten-ding open houses at members homes, taking trips to museums in and around," Boston, as well as trips to Provincetown, New York, Orlando, and elsewhere.

Monthly meetings are buzz of activity.  During the June meeting. discussions centered around long-range planning in the wake of the group's phenomenal growth after which Bill Barmert of Lesbian Gay Speakers Bureaus spoke, which generated a discussion about coming out issues and the need to dismantle stereotypes.

Definitely not the Rocking Chair Brigade, and Baldwin is proud of it. "If there's enough interest [in an activity]. we do it. The group has really meant a lot to [the members], and [has] changed their outlook on life," he beams.

Echoing these sentiments, Bob, a member from Boston offers that "the social group changed my life. There are so many people, so many activities. These members are not old. They are really interested in things.  It's really a young group.”

As diverse as the reasons members give for joining the group, the lives they have led are even more diverse. Many have been closeted for much of their lives, and have only recently come out. Some have had heterosexual marriages which recently ended in divorce or the, death of their spouse.  Others have lost lovers and are involved to filing a need for companionship.

The men in the Prime Timers have also lived through some very different times, and have mixed feelings about what it means to be an older gay man in the 1988, and what contributions the group makes to that experience.

Jim, the historian for the group, maintains that being gay and over fifty is "really wonderful — better than ever."  He finds that it's partly better because times have changed, but also because being gay and over fifty is enjoyable "in and of itself."

Another man agrees, saying that an older gay man's life is "great — a lot because of the group," and partially because of the general change in society's attitudes about gays.

“It's a lot better today than thirty years ago,” interjects Prime Timer Roy Clark of Salem. "Today, you're always hearing “coming out” stories. “The only way to come out back then was to get caught,” he adds.

However not all members think today is better. At least one of the members, who wished to remain anonymous, feels that "gay life was better before. Gay men stuck together more; there was more closeness.”  He believes the increased visibility and acceptance of the gay community has taken away some of that.

Baldwin says he respects the desire of some group members to remain anonymous. "It [being gay] was such a stigma, we had to stay in the closet," he says.  “Some men were closeted for so many years, and you don't get over that overnight.”

And what of the group's agenda?  While the organization is primarily a social one, Baldwin hopes they will have subtle political effects on today's younger gay men.  “Younger people will see older people as active and interested, that we like to do things, that we care. We hope this will have an effect on the young.  Through increased visibility, the new generation can see that they can still have fun when they're over forty."

What of the future of the group?  Not content to rest on their successes, current plans include a trip to Provincetown for Halloween, and to Mardi Gras in February.  With a group that is growing so fast, and with so much going on, what effect does this have on the President?

“The enthusiasm is what keeps me going," Baldwin says with a smile.

Prime Timers Standing Up
by Jo LaFond

Thursday June 10, 2004

On June 12 the Prime Timers will be marching in Boston’s Pride parade for the 17th year. But the group’s president, Ed Ford, said it isn’t easy getting a group of mature gay and bisexual men to take to the streets.

"We’re talking about men who lived at a time when you could be jailed; you could lose your job [for being gay]," he explained. "We have a hard time getting members to march with us, because of ... being in the limelight. We were used to ... sort of hiding, going to dark bars. We don’t have to do that any more and certainly Prime Timers provides [better alternatives].

"For the second year in a row, we’ll have a rented trolley as part of the parade," Ford said. It’s an accommodation for members - some of whom are in their 90s - who might find the parade route a taxing trek. "So the trolley is for those who want to be in the parade, but really can’t do that well," he explained.

Ford has spent the last six years of his presidency trying to raise the profile of the elder GLBT community. As such, the Prime Timers inaugurated a new Pride tradition last year: the Pride Tea Dance. Held at the Brookline Holiday Inn, the dance turned out about 250 people; this year’s event on June 6 was equally as impressive.

Prime Timers began in Boston in 1987 when Woody Baldwin, a professor in his 50s, decided he’d had enough of the bars. The group’s first meeting attracted 42 men and Prime Timers now boasts 250 local members and thousands worldwide. It has also grown to include an educational component.

In addition to heading Prime Timers, Ford also advocates for gay elder issues as a board member of the Greater Boston LGBT Aging Project. "There is a luncheon program sponsored with federal money, an LGBT luncheon program that’s going to take place at Emmanuel Church [ on Thursdays] in June," Ford said. "It’ll be a weekly lunch program with a focus on LGBTs."

As the only openly gay man on the board of the Boston Partnership for Older Adults, a coalition of organizations, businesses, consumers and caregivers working to promote a system of quality services for elders, Ford makes sure that issues affecting elder gay people are brought to the table. In discussions with board members, he tells them, "Look, this is who I represent and there are the people. When you talk about these ideas, I want us included in whatever you come up with."

Ford has also been among a group of Prime Timers sharing their coming out stories at local senior centers with the aim of letting the mainstream elder community know that GLBT elders exist. "We’re another minority population that’s aging and that also needs access to the same services," he said.

In a sure sign that there’s still much work to be done, Ford says they’re often told, "There are no gays at this senior center." The Prime Timers response? "We think you just don’t know that yet and we’re here, hopefully, to flush them out a bit and make them feel safe to come out," said Ford.

Prime Timer’s 95-year-old elder statesman is an example of the importance of feeling safe: "Up until last August," Ford said, "he was in perfect health. He’s now had a stroke and ... unfortunately, he’s in a nursing home in Jamaica Plain. And what we saw happen to him is he went back into the closet. He didn’t want pictures, he didn’t want a phone, he wasn’t sure if he wanted visitors." It was difficult to see someone who had been so involved in the gay community retreat so deeply, said Ford. "He’s getting better, but we also use that example when we talk to the seniors at the senior centers."

It seems to work. "Every time we talk, someone comes out to us," Ford said. "Also, when we go in, people don’t want to deal [with the issue], but an hour later they come up and thank us for changing the way they thought. So it’s very positive to do that."

 

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Prime Timers Mark 20 Years

Wednesday Aug 8, 2007

Twenty years ago retired professor Woody Baldwin, then 67 years old and living in Reading, placed an ad in Gay Community News looking for other mature gay men interested in forming a social club and support group. He said he and his partner had visited a bar for older gay men during a trip to Oklahoma City, and he wanted to find a way to create a similar sense of community in Boston. Baldwin said he decided that if at least 12 people responded to the ad and showed up at the first meeting he would push forward with the group, but otherwise he would scrap the idea. The standing-room-only crowd that gathered at that first meeting exceeding all of his expectations.

“We had 42 people show up in a little place that accommodated about 20. People were sitting on the floor and standing and sitting on the stairs,” said Baldwin.

The men in the room took turns introducing themselves and talking about their desire to connect with the gay community. Baldwin said some of the men had been married to women and came out of the closet much later in life. Others had been in long-term relationships, and after their partners passed away they lost touch with the gay community. All of them wanted to meet other gay men and develop friendships in a venue other than the youth-obsessed bar scene.

“By the time it got around the room I realized I was on to something hot,” said Baldwin.

That’s a bit of an understatement. That first meeting launched Boston Prime Timers, which over the next two decades swelled to a 300-member organization of older gay and bisexual men in the Boston area. Within a year of founding Boston Prime Timers, Baldwin received a request from men in New York City eager to start a similar group who asked if they could use the Prime Timers name. He gave them the okay, and when he moved to Austin, Texas, in 1989 he started a chapter there as well. More chapters started popping up across the country and in such far-flung locations as Canada, Australia and Sweden.

“They just started springing up every place, and every time I got a letter about a new one starting I’d come over to my partner and say, ‘I just had a new baby,’” said Baldwin.

Boston Prime Timers celebrates its 20th anniversary and the birth of the international Prime Timers movement this month with a three-day extravaganza Aug. 16-18. On Aug. 16 the Prime Timers, whose award-winning floats have been one of the highlights of the Boston Pride parade for the past three years, will work their magic at Provincetown’s Carnival parade. The next day the organization will host an event at the Alley Bar, and on Aug. 18 Boston Prime Timers will honor Baldwin, who is flying up from Austin, with a gala dinner at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Ed Ford, president of Boston Prime Timers, said over the past 20 years Prime Timers has given hope to gay men who do not feel comfortable in more youth-oriented settings like the bars. Ford, who is 63, said he first got involved with the group when turned 48 and was wondering what sort of life existed for gay men over 50. He said one of the major problems within the elder community is isolation, and that is particularly true for the gay community.

“I guess the biggest reward is when you see these old guys smiling and laughing and having a great social time that you get it. They’re not sitting at home … What you see as an aging gay man is it isn’t the end of the world to be aging,” said Ford.

For Roy Brown, a 70-year-old Brookline resident and vice president and database manager for Prime Timers, the organization is what persuaded him to spend his retirement in the Boston area. About eight years ago Brown moved to Boston from New Haven, Conn., where he had lived for about 20 years and built up a circle of gay friends. He decided to retire in Boston, but after a few months in Boston he found he had no way to connect with the local gay community. He decided to move back to New Haven and was investigating places in the area to rent when a friend persuaded him to try Boston Prime Timers. He instantly bonded with the other men there and found his niche.

“Basically it’s what got me settled here in Boston,” said Brown.

Over the years the organization has provided venues for older gay men to meet, from its monthly meetings to dinner parties, theater trips and major events like the organization’s yearly holiday party. Ford said the meetings draw between 70 and 90 members each month, regardless of the weather, and there are currently 300 dues-paying members. And there’s clearly a demand for more programming. Last summer Boston Prime Timers chartered its first July 4 Boston Harbor cruise, and 230 people turned out for the event.

Over the past three years Ford said Boston Prime Timers has been reinvigorated by its participation in the Boston Pride Parade. Ford said members of the group always marched in the parade, but three years ago after the organization moved from the Boston Living Center into United South End Settlements (USES), they ratcheted up their presence in the parade to unprecedented levels. Ford said Craig Davini, partner of former USES president Ashley McCumber, offered to lend his design expertise to Boston Prime Timers, and he helped the organization design its first float, a miniature tropical island on the bed of a truck. Members of Boston Prime Timers rode through the streets of Boston decked out in floral print shirts and hats, and the float was a hit; it took home first prize that year.

In 2006 the organization worked with Davini again, this time to share a piece of gay history with the Pride attendees by creating a float based on the Napoleon Club, the famed Boston gay bar that opened as a speakeasy in the 1920s and that required men to wear a jacket and tie to enter.

“What that meant was you dressed up, so we had T-shirts that looked like tuxedos and gave it that sort of air,” said Ford. The float took a pounding in the downpour that plagued that year’s Pride, but the float was honored as a runner up.

This summer Ford said Prime Timers decided to go for a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, creating a Wizard of Oz-themed float. After the success of the past two years Ford said the members decided to turn their creative efforts up a notch.

“In addition to the costumes this year we decided there had to be makeup. The float had so much detail people asked, ‘Are you people a professional theater company?’” said Ford. Once again Boston Prime Timers took home the prize for best float.

For the members of Boston Prime Timers, the Pride parade is about more than just having a good time. Ford said many of the members spent a large portion of their life in the closet, marrying women, having children and only coming out much later in life. To be able to dress up and ride through the streets of Boston is a sign of how far they have come.

“The men who are on the float, the contrast between these guys living their life in secret for more than the first half of their life, now taking this step … being out there now with a half million people seeing them, and they’re comfortable, they’re excited about doing it. The parade has sort of breathed another kind of life into the club,” said Ford.

Brown said their participation in the parade also sends an important message to the rest of the LGBT community, particularly to younger gay men. He said for younger men focused on the bar scene and on the pressure to have the perfect body, the Prime Timers’ presence shows “there’s life that goes on that transcends all of that stuff, and the Prime Timers is an example of, this is what life can be like, that getting older isn’t this big demon that everyone is fighting. It’s something that can be fulfilling.”

Brown, who dressed as the Cowardly Lion in this year’s parade, described the experience as one of the highlights of his involvement with Prime Timers. After the parade he and the other Prime Timers wandered through the Pride festival at Boston City Hall Plaza, posing for photos with the crowd, and Brown found that he was able to bridge the generation gap with some of the youngest members of the extended LGBT community. Brown, who knows sign language, noticed a young girl on the plaza signing to two women who he assumed were her mothers. He signed to her from across the plaza, and he said her eyes lit up.

“I forget what I signed, but then she signed to her mother, ‘Look, mommy, that lion is deaf.’ And we started communicating, and I said I wasn’t deaf but I know sign language,” said Brown, who said that he posed for a photo with the girl and sent it to her mothers. “Immediately we sent it to the mother’s e-mail address and she got it immediately, and she wrote a note back saying how thrilled her daughter was.”

While most Prime Timers events are limited to members and men interested in joining the club, the organization is offering tickets to the Aug. 18 gala honoring Baldwin to the public. The event will include cocktails, dinner, dancing and a performance by cabaret artist John O’Neil. Baldwin said he is grateful for the acknowledgement from Boston Prime Timers, but back when he founded the organization in 1987 he had no idea it would spawn an international movement.

“It’s a dream come true, but at the time I started I never dreamed it would come to this, but it was something I’m very proud of, and I’m kind of humbled by all the attention that I’m getting through Prime Timers because I didn’t realize it would become a worldwide organization,” said Baldwin. “Not only have we served the needs of men needing companionship but I think we’ve shown the younger gays that there’s life after 40, 50, 60…. I think that’s an important contribution we’ve made.”

To purchase tickets to the Aug. 18 gala or for more information visit primetimersww.org/boston or call 617.447.2344.