Was My Grandfather Gay?

My father was adopted!

I didn't find out until grad school in Bloomington, when I became interested in family history, and began reading old newspapers to see if there was any mention of my grandparents.  And I saw this obituary:

Orpha Maye Jackson, wife of Frank I. Jackson, dies, leaving four children: Edna, 11, Nora, 10, George 7, and Frank, 5.

Those were the names of my father and his brothers and sisters, and the ages all added up!

My father didn't want to talk about it, so I called my Aunt Nora.

"Yes, we were adopted," she said.  "Your father never forgave the old man for giving us up. When he came around to visit, Frank would always hide in his room.  He wouldn't even go to the funeral.  But Frank Sr. was 59 years old, near retirement age, when his wife died, and he didn't think he could raise four kids alone.  So his friend Lloyd Dennis offered to help out, and ended up adopting us -- that's your Grandpa Dennis."

That would explain the book I found in Aunt Nora's attic -- Skeezix Goes to War, published when my Dad was a kid, with his name signed in ink: "Frank J[...] Dennis." He made a mistake, and started to write his old name.

I didn't think much about it for many years, but recently, I began to wonder -- Frank I. Jackson didn't marry until he was in his late 40s.  Why wait so long?  And why did his friend Lloyd offer to raise his children?

Was there a Depression-era gay romance going on between my biological grandfather and my Grandpa Dennis?


Thanks to the internet, I have some promising details:

William Henry Jackson, my great-grandfather, was a prosperous businessman in Lagrange County, Indiana. His son William became a prominent lawyer, and his four daughters married into some of the wealthiest families in the country, including the McCormicks, who owned half of Chicago. But Frank, the youngest, born in 1878, was a ne-er-do-well.

In 1895, at age 17, he is arrested for "loitering," code for any number of activities, but often for cruising, searching for same-sex partners.

In 1903, he is working in his brother-in-law Charles Hinkley's confectioner's shop on 219 S. Main Street, Muncie, Indiana (today it's a bar).

In 1908 we find him in Cleveland, working in a music hall. Music hall entertainers were often gay.

Sometime after 1910, when his father dies, Frank returns to LaGrange, probably to help take care of his elderly mother. His acting or musical ambitions are put on hold.

Around 1918, he meets the 20-year old Lloyd Dennis.

Lloyd lives in Fort Wayne, 45 miles from LaGrange.  How do they meet?  What business does Frank have in Fort Wayne?

Maybe it's the nearest big city with a cruising area.

In 1923, Lloyd marries Grace Bovine (my Grandma Dennis, who befriended gay men in art school.  Was this another one?).  They move to a farm near Garrett, a lot closer to LaGrange.  To be close to Frank?

Lloyd goes to work as an engineer on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a job that takes him to all of the big cities of the East Coast with 1920s gay subcultures.

In 1926, shortly after his mother dies, Frank marries her nurse, Orpha Maye Young.  He is 48, and she is 28, the same age as Lloyd. They have four children.

But he and Lloyd remain friends.   There is no record of what Grace thinks of the friendship.

In the mid-1930s, Lloyd contracts a venereal disease, and must go to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a cure.  Was he consorting with female prostitutes, or with rent boys?

Frank's wife dies in 1937, when he is 59 years old.  Lloyd and Grace offer to adopt his children.  They have none of their own.

Frank visits the children -- and Lloyd -- regularly until his death in 1955.  Lloyd dies two years later.

Were Lloyd and Frank gay?  Were they involved? There is no way to know for sure: no diaries, letters, photographs, or reminscences.  Everyone who knew Lloyd and Frank passed away long ago.

It remains a possibility, part of our hidden gay heritage.

The uncensored version of this photo is up on Tales of West Hollywood.

See also: My Grandma Dennis's Surprising Gay Connection