Notable 2013 Deaths: Jeanne Manford
Monday, December 23, 2013 at 12:36PM I like end-of-the-year lists. “10 best books of 2013.” “Looking back at a tumultuous year.”
My favorites are the death lists. “75 notable people who died this year.” Probably because of my morbid fascination with both death and celebrity.
Lists of the famous dead help me to recall and reflect on the past year. I give thanks for lives well lived. And I take stock of my own life and my eventual obituary – what will be my notable achievements?
From the list of 2013 deaths, I am reminded of the famous folks, like Nelson Mandela, Peter O’Toole, Margaret Thatcher. But what sticks with me are the lesser celebrities that I learn about.
Jeanne ManfordLike Jeanne Manford. A New York mom, teacher, and dentist’s wife, Manford made history in 1972 when she founded PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She died this past January at age 92.
“I have a homosexual son and I love him,” she wrote to the New York Post in 1972.
She was 52, living in Queens, teaching fifth grade math at a public school, 3 grown children. One, her son Morty, was beaten up one night in 1972 outside a big political meeting. He was a student at Columbia and a gay rights advocate, and he was handing out leaflets protesting how the press was (not) covering gay rights issues. Police covering the meeting and the protestors stood by and watched him being beaten up by union organizers.
Jeanne and her husband Jules got a phone call from the hospital. Jeanne wrote the letter to the paper. Her son told her, “Everyone’s talking about your letter.”
Two months later she marched with her son in the first Gay Pride Parade in Greenwich Village, holding a homemade sign that read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support of Our Children.” Homosexuality was still considered a mental illness and sodomy was a crime. California State Senator Mark Leno later said of Manford, “For her to step into the street to declare support for her mentally ill, outlaw son, that was no small act….But it was what a mother’s love does.”
Manford later recalled that marchers in that parade hugged and kissed her, asked her to talk with their parents. She and Jules started welcoming Morty’s gay friends and colleagues to their home in Flushing, Queens, and Jules even gave them some free dental work. A couple months later they got the idea of forming a group to, as they said, bridge the heterosexual and gay community, a place for parents of gays and lesbians to get information and support. Their first meeting was in a Methodist church in Greenwich Village. For decades Manford talked with radio, TV, press about parents of gays. 40 years later there are now 350 PFLAG chapters around the country. (I first heard about PFLAG when I was called to serve a church which sponsored a PFLAG group.)
Morty Manford went on to become an assistant attorney general for the State of New York. He died of AIDS related complications in 1992.
Jeanne Manford with a picture of her son MortyPresident Obama awarded Jeanne Manford the Presidential Citizen’s Medal posthumously this year, and it was accepted by her daughter. Obama said of Mumford, “These folks participate, they get involved, they have a point of view. They don’t just wait for somebody else to do something, they go out there and do it, and they join and they become part of groups and they mobilize and they organize….Jeanne Muford had a simple message; No matter who her son was, no matter who he loved, she loved him, and wouldn’t put up with this kind of nonsense.”
I will probably never make it onto a list of notable celebrities, alive or dead, but I can aspire to live a life something like Jeanne Manford’s.
Happy New Year.
Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter
Reader Comments (1)
Dear Deborah,
How great to hear this story of Jeanne Manford, and to celebrate all our United Church of Christ congregations that host PFLAG groups today! - Anne