“You know, he would be the kind to wear a scarf or shawl, whatever you’d call it.” They remember a dark-haired boy with thick Buddy Holly glasses. “He loved to act, and help us do the plays.” He really did feel comfortable with us, and we felt comfortable with him.” “He was a personality unto himself,” says another. “He always was into the arts,” one of Baker’s classmates remembers. Gilbert Baker, born in Chanute, Kansas, on June 2, 1951, designed the rainbow flag, now flown all over the world to signify support for LGBTQ equality and pride. One of the women at the table has purple hair – not the subtle tint of elderly ladies’ salon rinses but the declarative violet in vogue among queer kids.Īll of these women have clear recollections of a classmate who got the hell out of Kansas as soon as he could and went on to change the world. John’s Episcopal Church, where yearbooks from 50 years ago are spread out at the front of the room and laughter from old stories grows louder amid the white cinder block walls and green-and-yellow linoleum-tiled floor.
The iced tea is flowing, and the women of Parsons High School’s class of 1969 are on a roll.Ī handful of them are circled up at a table in the increasingly crowded fellowship hall of St.
