Dear Editor,
Congratulations to Avery Provin, Jeannette Langston and everyone responsible for organizing Pride in Rutland!
I lived in Rutland for most of my adolescence, graduating from Rutland High School in 1966.
During all that time I could not recognize that I was gay, having recently survived some horrific bullying in the small New Hampshire town where I had previously lived. (I was so closeted — and obvious — that I was the almost last to know.)
I did not begin to acknowledge my sexuality until I was 20, a process that took me two more years to work out.
Finally, I left UVM in June 1969 and moved to Boston because I did not think I could come out in the Vermont of that era. Learning about the Stonewall riots several months later was the final kick I needed to declare that I was gay and proud, and to join Boston’s fledgling LGBTQ movement.
Pride, in Rutland — it’s time!
Sincerely,
John Kyper, Roxbury
