Gay and lesbian voices from Iowa, or related to our state, almost always (until recently) been edited out or obscured. This is a modest attempt during National LGBT History Month to identify some of those men and women with Iowa links who have spoken through literature, media, the arts and other ways --- and nade a difference.
CATT, CARRIE (LANE) CHAPMAN. Towering leader in the woman suffrage movement. Iowa has not hesitated to honor Carrie Chapman Catt. Her name appears on many rolls of honor and lists of outstanding citizens. The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at her alma mater, Iowa State University, as well as Carrie Chapman Catt Hall on the ISU campus honor her. The National Nineteenth Amendment Society maintains her childhood home near Charles City as an historic site. But any suggestion that she might have been a lesbian has for the most part been edited out of her story, as also has been the case with her mentor, Susan B. Anthony --- when told by heterosexuals. LGBT people universally and gladly claim both.
Catt was born Carrie Lane on Jan. 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin, but moved with her family to a farm near Charles City during 1866. A graduate of Charles City High School, she enrolled at the Iowa State Agricultural College (now ISU) during 1877 and graduated three years at the top of her class --- and the only woman in it. She then returned to north Iowa, taught school and in 1883 was named Mason City superintendent of schools, the first woman to hold that post. On Feb. 12, 1885, she married Leo Chapman, editor of The Mason City Republican, but he died a year later in San Francisco, where he had gone seeking new work. In California to deal with the aftermath of his death, she remained there for two years, supporting herself by selling advertising and writing on a free-lance basis.
In 1887, Carrie returned to Iowa to begin her crusade for woman suffrage through both the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association and, in June of 1890, married George W. Catt, a wealthy Iowa State classmate with whom she had become reacquainted in Calfornia. He encouraged her activism and supported it financially as they established a pattern of independent, although intertwined, lives.
In 1900, Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but resigned in 1904 when George Catt became critically ill. His death in 1905 was followed in quick succession by those of her mentor, Susan B. Anthony, her younger brother and her mother. She continued her work as president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, of which she was a founder, but did not resume control of NAWSA until 1915. She then led it to success, represented by a fully ratified 19th Amendment on Aug. 26, 1920. She founded the League of Women Voters during 1919-20 as the successor to NAWSA. Remaining active in the women's movement, she also became an activist for peace during the 1920s and 1930s.
Catt died March 9, 1947, in New Rochelle, New York, and was buried with her longtime companion, Mary Garrett Hay (Aug. 20, 1857-Aug. 29, 1928) in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. The inscription on their joint tombstone reads, "Here lie two, united in friendship for thirty-eight years through constant service to a great cause." The two women had lived together from 1905 until Hay's death.
HALSTON: Iconic fashion designer and party animal. "The '70s belonged to Halston," according the the inscription on his Fashion Walk of Fame seal in Manhattan, but this consummate practitioner of haute couture was born Roy Halston Frowick in Des Moines on April 23, 1932. His background was Norwegian-American (actually, I knew his Aunt Vera). The family moved to Evanston, Indiana, where he graduated from high school in 1950. After a semester at Indian University, he moved to Chicago and enrolled in a night course at the Art Institute of Chicago, working as a window dresser during the day. He had developed an interest in sewing from his mother and began to design and create hats, opening his first shop in Chicago during 1957. Also in Chicago, he started using only his middle name as a signature. Later that year, he moved to New York. He leaped into the public and fashion eye after designing the pillbox hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to her husband's 1961 inaugural. His rise thereafter was meteoric.
Designer to the stars --- Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor --- Newsweek designated him "the premier fashion designer of all America." He generally is credited with being the first American designer taken seriously in international circles. In addition to dressing the international jet set, he partied with them, too --- on a grand scale, often with his boyfriend, Colombia-born Victor Hugo (not that Victor Hugo) --- window dresser and Andy Warhol associate --- in tow. His parties were legendary, as were his perfectionism and his drug habits. He was the first to syndicate his name --- now a common practice, but at the time a disaster. His elite haute couture clintele frowned. Drugs combined with perfectionism and an inability to delegate eventually led to his dismissal by the conglomorate that syndicated his name and designs, and to the loss of the right to design under his own name. Money was never a problem, however.
After retiring to California, Halston was diagnosed with AIDS during 1988 and succumbed to Kaposi's sarcoma on March 26, 1990, after an 18-month struggle at the age of 57. His ashes were scattered.
McCOY, MATT. First openly gay member of the Iowa Legislature. Currently state senator for District 31 (south and southwest Des Moines), Democrat Matt McCoy has served in the Iowa Senate since 1997 and, previously, in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1993 to 1997. A native of Des Moines, he was born March 29, 1966; is a 1984 graduate of Dowling High School and received his B.A. degree from Briar Cliff College during 1988. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout during 1981. Owner of Resource Development Consultants, he also has served on the Polk County Conservation Board for five years and on the boards of the Central Iowa YMCA, Iowa Council of International Understanding and Youth Emergency Services & Shelter.
During his early years in the Senate, McCoy came out to his wife, family and friends. He was outed publicly on the Iowa Senate floor during April of 2004 by Republican Ken Veenstra, of Orange City, then leading an ultimately successful GOP drive to dereail the appointment of gay Des Moines attorney Jonathan Wilson to the Iowa State Board of Education. McCoy has been the target of other examples of Christian love in the years since, receiving death threats for example after the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Dave Leach, contending for McCoy's Senate seat during 2010, referred to his opponent as "Iowa's chief sodomite."
McCoy has continued to be an outspoken Senate voice, however, for progressive and LGBT causes, serving as a willing lightning rod to ground and disperse hatefulness directed towardt the state's gay community. Raised Roman Catholic, McCoy now attends Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. The father of a son, he lives in Des Moines with his partner, Dan Garrett.
MILLER, MERLE: Journalist, author, biographer. Iowa boy Merle Miller --- journalist, editor, novelist, biographer --- was a writer of astonishing talent, but a relatively brief article of his, written in anger, helped change the world for his lesbian, gay, bisexual and trangender brothers and sisters.
Miller was born May 17, 1919, at Montour, but grew up in Marshalltown. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Iowa to study jouralism and served as city editor of The Daily Iowan --- but did not graduate. He refused to take mandatory swimming and ROTC courses that, in the 1930s, were prerequisites. He was that kind of a guy.
In the years before World War II, Miller served as Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Record. After enlisting when the war began, he served as a war correspondent in both the European and Pacific theaters and editied the Army weekly, "Yank." In post-war years he worked as an editor for Harper's and Time magazines, wrote both fiction and non-fiction as well as screenplays and managed to get himself blacklisted during the McCarthy era, then a disaster for a writer, now a badge of honor.
In the aftermath of the 1969 Stonewall riots, gay people moved to the forefront of those subcategories of humans that heterosexuals loved to hate. Miller eventually told colleagues that he was "sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends." The result was a landmark article in the New York Times Magazine of Jan. 17, 1971, entitled "What It Means to be a Homosexual." The article received more response in the form of letters to the editor than any other article the Times ever had published and, in part because of that, was expanded and published as a book later in 1971. It was groundbreaking, angry and uapologetic and, like Stonewall, paved the way for much that followed.
Miller went on to win acclaim as a biographer, published the best-selling (and controversial) "Plain Speaking," a biography of Harry S. Truman, during 1974, and then "Lyndon," a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson and "Ike the Soldier," a partial biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He died at age 67 on June 10, 1986, at the hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, of peritonitis after an appendicitis operation. Survived by his partner of 22 years, writer David W. Elliott, his ashes were interred near the home they shared at Brewster, New York.
SABIN, STEVEN P., Lutheran pastor. The Rev. Steve Sabin gained nation-wide attention during 1998 when his bishop, Philip L. Haugen of the Southeast Iowa Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, became preoccupied with the question of whether or not the Ames pastor was engaging in "gential sexual activity." At that time, ELCA pastors could be gay but could not utilize their genitalia. That policy has since changed and partnered gay clergy may serve those congregations that wish to call them. The attention was such that even Fred Phelps and his merry band from Topeka made a trip to Ames to picket Lord of Life Lutheran Church.
Sabin, who earned his bachelor of science degree at the University of Iowa, went on to earn his master of divinity at the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago. He was ordained during June of 1985 and installed during July of that year as pastor of Lord of Life Lutheran ini Ames. Married to a woman and with two daughters when he assumed the pastorate, a divorce occurred during his early years there. After 10 years of service, Sabin entered a live-in relationship with his male partner of five years, making no attempt to obscure the relationship.
That relationship came to Bishop Haugen's attention during late 1997 and during January of 1998, he asked Sabin to resign. Sabin declined. Haugen then scheduled a church trial during which Sabin was found guilty of being a "practicing homosexual" and, after an unsuccessful appeal, was removed from the ELCA clergy roll. His congregation declined to fire him, however, and he continued to serve Lord of Life until 2000. During that year, he was called to serve as senior pastor of Christ Church Lutheran in San Francisco, which made a point of defying ELCA regulations.
During 2009, the ELCA changed its rules to allow gay clergy in committed relationships to serve. As a result, Sabin was formally received into the ELCA again during 2010. He continues to serve Christ Church Lutheran and lives in San Francisco with his partner, Travis.
RANDY SHILTS: Pioneering gay journalist and acclaimed author. Birth in Iowa doth not necessarily an Iowan make, but it's enough to stake a claim on. Born August 8, 1951, in Davenport, Randy Shilts grew up in Aurora, Illinois. He majored in journalism at the University of Oregon and came out there at age 20, going so far as to run for student office using the slogan, "Come out for Shilts." Although an honors graduate, he found it difficult to find employment because of his sexual orientation and worked as a freelance reporter until hired as a national correspondent by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1981. He became the first openly gay reporter with a gay beat in the mainstream press. Shilts' date of hire corresponded with the first clinical observance of AIDS and his reporting on the emerging pandemic for The Chronicle was widely acclaimed.
CATT, CARRIE (LANE) CHAPMAN. Towering leader in the woman suffrage movement. Iowa has not hesitated to honor Carrie Chapman Catt. Her name appears on many rolls of honor and lists of outstanding citizens. The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at her alma mater, Iowa State University, as well as Carrie Chapman Catt Hall on the ISU campus honor her. The National Nineteenth Amendment Society maintains her childhood home near Charles City as an historic site. But any suggestion that she might have been a lesbian has for the most part been edited out of her story, as also has been the case with her mentor, Susan B. Anthony --- when told by heterosexuals. LGBT people universally and gladly claim both.
Catt was born Carrie Lane on Jan. 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin, but moved with her family to a farm near Charles City during 1866. A graduate of Charles City High School, she enrolled at the Iowa State Agricultural College (now ISU) during 1877 and graduated three years at the top of her class --- and the only woman in it. She then returned to north Iowa, taught school and in 1883 was named Mason City superintendent of schools, the first woman to hold that post. On Feb. 12, 1885, she married Leo Chapman, editor of The Mason City Republican, but he died a year later in San Francisco, where he had gone seeking new work. In California to deal with the aftermath of his death, she remained there for two years, supporting herself by selling advertising and writing on a free-lance basis.
In 1887, Carrie returned to Iowa to begin her crusade for woman suffrage through both the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association and, in June of 1890, married George W. Catt, a wealthy Iowa State classmate with whom she had become reacquainted in Calfornia. He encouraged her activism and supported it financially as they established a pattern of independent, although intertwined, lives.
In 1900, Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but resigned in 1904 when George Catt became critically ill. His death in 1905 was followed in quick succession by those of her mentor, Susan B. Anthony, her younger brother and her mother. She continued her work as president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, of which she was a founder, but did not resume control of NAWSA until 1915. She then led it to success, represented by a fully ratified 19th Amendment on Aug. 26, 1920. She founded the League of Women Voters during 1919-20 as the successor to NAWSA. Remaining active in the women's movement, she also became an activist for peace during the 1920s and 1930s.
Catt died March 9, 1947, in New Rochelle, New York, and was buried with her longtime companion, Mary Garrett Hay (Aug. 20, 1857-Aug. 29, 1928) in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. The inscription on their joint tombstone reads, "Here lie two, united in friendship for thirty-eight years through constant service to a great cause." The two women had lived together from 1905 until Hay's death.
HALSTON: Iconic fashion designer and party animal. "The '70s belonged to Halston," according the the inscription on his Fashion Walk of Fame seal in Manhattan, but this consummate practitioner of haute couture was born Roy Halston Frowick in Des Moines on April 23, 1932. His background was Norwegian-American (actually, I knew his Aunt Vera). The family moved to Evanston, Indiana, where he graduated from high school in 1950. After a semester at Indian University, he moved to Chicago and enrolled in a night course at the Art Institute of Chicago, working as a window dresser during the day. He had developed an interest in sewing from his mother and began to design and create hats, opening his first shop in Chicago during 1957. Also in Chicago, he started using only his middle name as a signature. Later that year, he moved to New York. He leaped into the public and fashion eye after designing the pillbox hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to her husband's 1961 inaugural. His rise thereafter was meteoric.
Designer to the stars --- Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor --- Newsweek designated him "the premier fashion designer of all America." He generally is credited with being the first American designer taken seriously in international circles. In addition to dressing the international jet set, he partied with them, too --- on a grand scale, often with his boyfriend, Colombia-born Victor Hugo (not that Victor Hugo) --- window dresser and Andy Warhol associate --- in tow. His parties were legendary, as were his perfectionism and his drug habits. He was the first to syndicate his name --- now a common practice, but at the time a disaster. His elite haute couture clintele frowned. Drugs combined with perfectionism and an inability to delegate eventually led to his dismissal by the conglomorate that syndicated his name and designs, and to the loss of the right to design under his own name. Money was never a problem, however.
After retiring to California, Halston was diagnosed with AIDS during 1988 and succumbed to Kaposi's sarcoma on March 26, 1990, after an 18-month struggle at the age of 57. His ashes were scattered.
Matt McCoy (back) with his son, Jack, and partner, Dan Garrett.
McCOY, MATT. First openly gay member of the Iowa Legislature. Currently state senator for District 31 (south and southwest Des Moines), Democrat Matt McCoy has served in the Iowa Senate since 1997 and, previously, in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1993 to 1997. A native of Des Moines, he was born March 29, 1966; is a 1984 graduate of Dowling High School and received his B.A. degree from Briar Cliff College during 1988. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout during 1981. Owner of Resource Development Consultants, he also has served on the Polk County Conservation Board for five years and on the boards of the Central Iowa YMCA, Iowa Council of International Understanding and Youth Emergency Services & Shelter.
During his early years in the Senate, McCoy came out to his wife, family and friends. He was outed publicly on the Iowa Senate floor during April of 2004 by Republican Ken Veenstra, of Orange City, then leading an ultimately successful GOP drive to dereail the appointment of gay Des Moines attorney Jonathan Wilson to the Iowa State Board of Education. McCoy has been the target of other examples of Christian love in the years since, receiving death threats for example after the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Dave Leach, contending for McCoy's Senate seat during 2010, referred to his opponent as "Iowa's chief sodomite."
McCoy has continued to be an outspoken Senate voice, however, for progressive and LGBT causes, serving as a willing lightning rod to ground and disperse hatefulness directed towardt the state's gay community. Raised Roman Catholic, McCoy now attends Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. The father of a son, he lives in Des Moines with his partner, Dan Garrett.
MILLER, MERLE: Journalist, author, biographer. Iowa boy Merle Miller --- journalist, editor, novelist, biographer --- was a writer of astonishing talent, but a relatively brief article of his, written in anger, helped change the world for his lesbian, gay, bisexual and trangender brothers and sisters.
Miller was born May 17, 1919, at Montour, but grew up in Marshalltown. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Iowa to study jouralism and served as city editor of The Daily Iowan --- but did not graduate. He refused to take mandatory swimming and ROTC courses that, in the 1930s, were prerequisites. He was that kind of a guy.
In the years before World War II, Miller served as Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Record. After enlisting when the war began, he served as a war correspondent in both the European and Pacific theaters and editied the Army weekly, "Yank." In post-war years he worked as an editor for Harper's and Time magazines, wrote both fiction and non-fiction as well as screenplays and managed to get himself blacklisted during the McCarthy era, then a disaster for a writer, now a badge of honor.
In the aftermath of the 1969 Stonewall riots, gay people moved to the forefront of those subcategories of humans that heterosexuals loved to hate. Miller eventually told colleagues that he was "sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends." The result was a landmark article in the New York Times Magazine of Jan. 17, 1971, entitled "What It Means to be a Homosexual." The article received more response in the form of letters to the editor than any other article the Times ever had published and, in part because of that, was expanded and published as a book later in 1971. It was groundbreaking, angry and uapologetic and, like Stonewall, paved the way for much that followed.
Miller went on to win acclaim as a biographer, published the best-selling (and controversial) "Plain Speaking," a biography of Harry S. Truman, during 1974, and then "Lyndon," a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson and "Ike the Soldier," a partial biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He died at age 67 on June 10, 1986, at the hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, of peritonitis after an appendicitis operation. Survived by his partner of 22 years, writer David W. Elliott, his ashes were interred near the home they shared at Brewster, New York.
SABIN, STEVEN P., Lutheran pastor. The Rev. Steve Sabin gained nation-wide attention during 1998 when his bishop, Philip L. Haugen of the Southeast Iowa Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, became preoccupied with the question of whether or not the Ames pastor was engaging in "gential sexual activity." At that time, ELCA pastors could be gay but could not utilize their genitalia. That policy has since changed and partnered gay clergy may serve those congregations that wish to call them. The attention was such that even Fred Phelps and his merry band from Topeka made a trip to Ames to picket Lord of Life Lutheran Church.
Sabin, who earned his bachelor of science degree at the University of Iowa, went on to earn his master of divinity at the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago. He was ordained during June of 1985 and installed during July of that year as pastor of Lord of Life Lutheran ini Ames. Married to a woman and with two daughters when he assumed the pastorate, a divorce occurred during his early years there. After 10 years of service, Sabin entered a live-in relationship with his male partner of five years, making no attempt to obscure the relationship.
That relationship came to Bishop Haugen's attention during late 1997 and during January of 1998, he asked Sabin to resign. Sabin declined. Haugen then scheduled a church trial during which Sabin was found guilty of being a "practicing homosexual" and, after an unsuccessful appeal, was removed from the ELCA clergy roll. His congregation declined to fire him, however, and he continued to serve Lord of Life until 2000. During that year, he was called to serve as senior pastor of Christ Church Lutheran in San Francisco, which made a point of defying ELCA regulations.
During 2009, the ELCA changed its rules to allow gay clergy in committed relationships to serve. As a result, Sabin was formally received into the ELCA again during 2010. He continues to serve Christ Church Lutheran and lives in San Francisco with his partner, Travis.
RANDY SHILTS: Pioneering gay journalist and acclaimed author. Birth in Iowa doth not necessarily an Iowan make, but it's enough to stake a claim on. Born August 8, 1951, in Davenport, Randy Shilts grew up in Aurora, Illinois. He majored in journalism at the University of Oregon and came out there at age 20, going so far as to run for student office using the slogan, "Come out for Shilts." Although an honors graduate, he found it difficult to find employment because of his sexual orientation and worked as a freelance reporter until hired as a national correspondent by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1981. He became the first openly gay reporter with a gay beat in the mainstream press. Shilts' date of hire corresponded with the first clinical observance of AIDS and his reporting on the emerging pandemic for The Chronicle was widely acclaimed.
His first book, "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk," a biography of the iconic gay San Francisco political activist assassinated in 1978, was published in 1982. He went on to write the best-selling "And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic" in 1987. This was the first major book about AIDS and later was adapted into an Emmy Award-winning film. His final book was "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military: Vietnam to the Persian Gulf," published in 1993.
Diagnosed as HIV positive in 1987, Shilts died at age 42 on Feb. 17, 1994, at his acreage near Guerneville, Califonria, survived by his partner, Barry Barbieri, mother and five brothers. He is buried in Redwood Memorial Gardens, Guerneville.
WILLIAMS, TENNESSEE (Thomas Lanier Williams III), the major 20th Century American playwright: Tom Williams spent less than a year in Iowa, just long enough to cap a somewhat confusing academic career with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Iowa, but if the legends are to be believed, it was here in the Hawkeye state that he was informally rechristened "Tennessee."
Williams was born March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, but moved with his family to St. Louis at the age of 8 after his father received a promotion. Before arriving in Iowa City at age 26 on Oct. 1, 1937, he had attended the University of Missouri at Columbia (1929-1931) and Washington University, St. Louis (1936-37). According to legend, Williams' new friends in Iowa recognized, because of his accent, that he was a native of the South --- but were vague on exactly which state. So they started calling him "Tennessee" because it was the first southern state that came to mind, and it stuck. "It's better than being called 'Mississippi,' " he later joked. In later writings, Williams also noted that it was in Iowa that he first became reconciled to the fact that he was gay.
After earning his degree during 1938, Williams went on to write, among many other works, "The Glass Menagerie," Tony-award-winning "The Rose Tattoo," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Night of the Iguana" and Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Streetcar Named Desire." In 1980, he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
Williams' personal life deteriorated after the 1963 death from lung cancern of his great love, Frank Merlo, and he was plagued with depression and chronic drug abuse for the remainder of his life. He died at age 71 on Feb. 25, 1983, in a New York hotel after choking to death on the cap of a bottle of eye drops. He was buried with other family members in Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis.
WILLIAMS, TENNESSEE (Thomas Lanier Williams III), the major 20th Century American playwright: Tom Williams spent less than a year in Iowa, just long enough to cap a somewhat confusing academic career with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Iowa, but if the legends are to be believed, it was here in the Hawkeye state that he was informally rechristened "Tennessee."
Williams was born March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, but moved with his family to St. Louis at the age of 8 after his father received a promotion. Before arriving in Iowa City at age 26 on Oct. 1, 1937, he had attended the University of Missouri at Columbia (1929-1931) and Washington University, St. Louis (1936-37). According to legend, Williams' new friends in Iowa recognized, because of his accent, that he was a native of the South --- but were vague on exactly which state. So they started calling him "Tennessee" because it was the first southern state that came to mind, and it stuck. "It's better than being called 'Mississippi,' " he later joked. In later writings, Williams also noted that it was in Iowa that he first became reconciled to the fact that he was gay.
After earning his degree during 1938, Williams went on to write, among many other works, "The Glass Menagerie," Tony-award-winning "The Rose Tattoo," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Night of the Iguana" and Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Streetcar Named Desire." In 1980, he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
Williams' personal life deteriorated after the 1963 death from lung cancern of his great love, Frank Merlo, and he was plagued with depression and chronic drug abuse for the remainder of his life. He died at age 71 on Feb. 25, 1983, in a New York hotel after choking to death on the cap of a bottle of eye drops. He was buried with other family members in Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis.
WOOD, GRANT: Regionalist painter, arguably Iowa's most famous native son. Grant Wood once said, presumably while clad in the bib-overall uniform he adopted as butch symbolism during later years, that his only good ideas had come while milking cows. That was a lie --- he left the farm before his 10th birthday --- but then so was much of his public persona. Even his art, which has superficial clarity and regionalist majesty, is ambiguous. Until quite recently, his sexual orientation has been edited out of accounts of his life and analysis of his art (see R. Tripp Evans' 2010 Grant Woods: A Life for the exception), piling ambiguity on top of ambiguity.
Born Feb. 13, 1891, near Anamosa, Wood moved into Cedar Rapids with his mother and sister, Nan, after the death of their husband and father in 1901. He graduated from high school there, then studied art in Minneapolis and Chicago, taught school and worked as a silversmith during the 1920s. During that decade, he also made multiple trips to Europe, dabbling in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, both of which he later rejected. By 1930, when his masterpiece American Gothic was painted in his Cedar Rapids studio against the backdrop of that little house in Eldon, he was firmly in the Midwest Regionalist school, blending affection for the local with parody and the realism of the European Northern Renaissance.
At home in in Cedar Rapids until 1935, everyone who knew him there seems also to have known that he was gay, as did the larger art world, but such things could not be spoken of then, certainly not by the artist himself. He helped form the Stone City Art Colony during the Great Depression. He had joined the University of Iowa Art faculty in 1931 as Iowa director of the Public Works of Art Project and remained with the university until death, surviving an attempt by fellow arts faculty members to engineer his dismissial by using his homosexuality against him. His own camouflage include those bib overalls, a down-home style (although his affection for down-home people was genuine) and a disastrous and very short-lived marriage to a much older woman.
Wood developed pancreatic cancer complicated by liver problems related to hard drinking and died in Iowa City on Feb. 12, 1942, a day short of his 51st birthday. He is buried in Anamosa's Riverside Cemetery. The conversation has turned recently to whether or not Wood's artistry would have flowered into genius had he not gone into hiding, in plain sight, in order to live out a life in his native land.
Born Feb. 13, 1891, near Anamosa, Wood moved into Cedar Rapids with his mother and sister, Nan, after the death of their husband and father in 1901. He graduated from high school there, then studied art in Minneapolis and Chicago, taught school and worked as a silversmith during the 1920s. During that decade, he also made multiple trips to Europe, dabbling in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, both of which he later rejected. By 1930, when his masterpiece American Gothic was painted in his Cedar Rapids studio against the backdrop of that little house in Eldon, he was firmly in the Midwest Regionalist school, blending affection for the local with parody and the realism of the European Northern Renaissance.
At home in in Cedar Rapids until 1935, everyone who knew him there seems also to have known that he was gay, as did the larger art world, but such things could not be spoken of then, certainly not by the artist himself. He helped form the Stone City Art Colony during the Great Depression. He had joined the University of Iowa Art faculty in 1931 as Iowa director of the Public Works of Art Project and remained with the university until death, surviving an attempt by fellow arts faculty members to engineer his dismissial by using his homosexuality against him. His own camouflage include those bib overalls, a down-home style (although his affection for down-home people was genuine) and a disastrous and very short-lived marriage to a much older woman.
Wood developed pancreatic cancer complicated by liver problems related to hard drinking and died in Iowa City on Feb. 12, 1942, a day short of his 51st birthday. He is buried in Anamosa's Riverside Cemetery. The conversation has turned recently to whether or not Wood's artistry would have flowered into genius had he not gone into hiding, in plain sight, in order to live out a life in his native land.
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