• Conrad Miller ’49 (6/29/2016) – When Conrad joined us in July, 2010, he wished that “I had known about this organization before I became superannuated!” and when challenged for the secret handshake to prove that he graduated from USNA, “I’m a 1949 grad. How the hell can I remember my laundry number?” Conrad kept in close touch, letting us know how the others at his living facility were a bit “closed minded.”  Read more about Conrad at https://www.usna.com/custom/GiveRSS.ashx?type=single&newsID=3365
• Glen Davis ’76 (9/7/2016) – Glen joined USNA Out in 2008. Prior to his last move to San Diego, he was quite proud that had a table with his name on it at the famous Twin Peaks Bar in San Francisco, AKA “The Glass Coffin.” Glen was a varsity swimmer at USNA, and he shared his story participating in the Faces of USNA Out at https://usnaout.org/memoriam/glen-davis.  Read more about Glen at https://www.usna.com/custom/GiveRSS.ashx?type=single&newsID=3481
• Charles Wood ’42 (12/28/2016) – A life-long supporter of LGBT rights, Charlie was one of our first allies to join us. A resident of Spokane, Washington, upon retirement from the Navy, Charlie began a second career as an Episcopal priest. In the 1980s, Charlie and his wife, Ann, joined the Spokane Chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and helped found Integrity, an LGBTQ advocacy group of the Episcopal Church. In 1992, Charles was the first clergy member to testify in front of Congress in support of allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military.  Read more about Charlie at https://www.usna.com/custom/GiveRSS.ashx?type=single&newsID=3775.
• David Lopez ’87 (6/7/2017) – David was a plank-owner member of USNA Out. He worked in the real estate business in Southern Florida.  Read more at David at https://www.usna.com/custom/GiveRSS.ashx?type=single&newsID=4260

All of these lost have been entered into the USNA Out memoriam.

Note: Suicide remains the number one cause of death amongst our members who have graduated less than 40 years ago.

At 50, Todd Park did not look like a man whose bone marrow teemed with 50% cancerous cells. He had no symptoms. Settled into a new job in his hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah after a naval career and other post-military employment gave him a lifetime of moving, a simple blood test taken for a discount on health insurance led to an unexpected diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia. An avid writer, Todd blogged the raw physical, mental, and emotional experience of his treatment for this deadly disease. That blog became this posthumous memoir, Popcorn from the Void, fulfilling the commitment he made to write a book about his experience to help others struggling with leukemia.

Back cover Text: Popcorn from the Void is the raw and intense memoir of Todd Park’s 10-month leukemia treatment- from diagnosis to untimely death. Through wit and wisdom, he helps us to understand the arduous journey of a bone marrow transplant, what daily life is really like for blood cancer patients and their families, and is an example of how to live and die well: with courage, with dignity, and with unfailing hope in the face of incredible odds and powerful medicine.
“The struggle I fight truly is in my mind, so not only am I being weakened physically, I duke it out in ways that just can’t be seen with the eyes. I think that’s why people who survive a crisis of some sort tend to be different or transformed on the other end of their ordeal. Their minds got a major long-term workout, and you just know it when you meet one of these people. They have a presence about them that belies the personal hell they walked through. You know someone has been educated the same way. This is just the post-graduate level of the school of hard knocks. Cancer is definitely the PhD level, and I think it’s fair to say you’re reading my dissertation.”

Popcorn from the Void: Observations, Manic Kvetching, and the Raw Truth of Leukemia
By Todd Park
288 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1521532324
eBook $2.99/ Paperback $9.99 available in eBook and paperback format at Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/152153232X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499695426&sr=8-2&keywords=popcorn+from+the+void

Todd is remembered in the USNA Out Memoriam

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!

Lots of news to share with our members in this June Pride newsletter, the first newsletter which is assembled from the news and events that are posted on our recently upgraded website.  We know this newsletter is waaaay too long — We’ve got a full year backlog of news to share. Going forward with the communications tools built into our site, our all-volunteer newsletter team can now send more frequent, timely updates, and if you members keep your communications preferences up to date, you should also be able to receive geographically targeted communications

Events

New board member Brook Stevens ’12 has taken the lead in the 2018 Army Navy joint tailgate with the Knights Out in Philadelphia in December.  We should also have a few opportunities to gather USNA Out members around the West in the coming months around these Naval Academy events:

• Navy/University of Hawaii Football in Honolulu (Game is 1 September)
• Navy/USAFA game in Colorado Springs (Game is 6 October)
• Navy/Notre Dame Football in San Diego (Game is 27 October)
• Army-Navy Joint Tailgate with Knights Out (8 December)

Events don’t need to revolve around a Navy Football game.  Perhaps a significant LGBT movie at your local film festival, or a dining out activity.  If you are willing to form a team to sponsor a USNA Out event, please contact the board to let us know.

Leadership changes

There have been several changes within the USNA Out Board of Directors.

Erik Schmidt ’04 resigned as a director and as Chairman of the USNA Out Board effective 20 June 2018.  As Erik shared with those attending our 2018 Dinner in Annapolis at Ogle Hall and has shared with the midshipmen in Navy Spectrum events, USNA Out had a significant role in Erik’s life as a young 2nd Lt in the Marine Corps.  It was through the role models of alumni who preceded him and through the personal connections Erik made through USNA Out that empowered him to remain serving our country past his initial commitment.

Tom Peterson ’91 has resigned as a director and passed on the duties of Treasurer to Jeff Morrison ’04.  Tom joined USNA Out as he was completing his command tour on the USS PORTER (DDG 78).  After retiring from the Navy, Tom got a JD degree and most recently is working as a public defender in New York City.

And as mentioned above, Brook Stevens ’12 has joined the board as of 16 June, and he promises to work hard to coordinate events to facilitate our membership engagement.  Joe Soto ’83 has taken on the duties of the USNA Out Secretary.

Shared Interest Groups at USNA

We have some history here….  almost 15 years ago, in August 2003, a group of 31 LGBT Naval Academy alumni joined together by Jeff Petrie ’89 formed a new group in an effort to re-establish our relationship with the Naval Academy and the school’s alumni association as openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender alumni. We chose the name “USNA Out.”  On November 11, 2003, using the RV chapter as a model for a nationwide chapter of alumni that share a common interest, the USNA Out alumni applied for recognition as an official chapter of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association.  Our request was denied, as we were deemed a shared interest group, not a geographically based chapter.

Roll the calendar ahead 14 and a half years….  At the spring 2018 meeting in Annapolis, the USNA Alumni Association Board of Trustees formalized a new  Shared Interest Group (SIG) program.  The two pilots SIGs (USNA Women and Round to Honor) were both formalized as official SIGs.  A third SIG, USNA Minority Association was also confirmed.

After 15 years, USNA Out now is welcome to join the Alumni Association as a Shared Interest Group, just a the LGBT alumni associations of almost every major university in the USA.

There are a few requirements we need to meet for consideration, but we are 99% of the way there.  We will need to assemble a listing of Alumni interesting in forming the SIG.  The list may also contain a percentage of faculty, staff, parents and spouses.  We must observe USNA trademark regulations, and our primary purpose cannot be fundraising.  We previously have collected the names and classes of alumni who are interesting in forming the USNA Out SIG, but we failed to gather all information needed for the application (specifically, USNA Alumni Association membership status – life-member, annual member, non-member).  Keep on the lookout for further news as we go forward.

Are You Ready to Serve?

The reality in organizations such as ours is those who desire to get more involved will get more involved.  Did USNA Out have meaning to you as a midshipman or a junior officer?  You can probably make more of a difference than you think your can if you want to be more involved.  The first step is reach out to the Board and let us know you are eager to do more.  We will add you to our list of Board Associates so you can stay in touch with

If you have feedback for the USNA Out leadership you can always contact us at board@usnaout.org.

GO Navy!

Steve Hall ’75
USNA Out Executive Director
steve.hall@usnaout.org

16 June kicked off the LGBT Film Festival season, the opening night film at Frameline (where our film Out of Annapolis screened in 2010) was TransMilitary, which premiered at SXSW in Austin.  The film will be coming to Washington DC and New York City on Sunday June 17th and Tuesday June 19th, respectively.

The film follows the lives of four transgender personnel, three in the Army, including a West Point grad, and one in the Air Force.  You’ll experience the courage, hard work and dedication by many individuals who were crucially influential to get the policy (currently being challenged) changed to allow for transgender service.

This film will be added to our filmography list of films of interest to the LGBT military community.

Other Films of Military Interest or Just Fun

Films for All

Alone in the Game – Although not about the military, some of the “expert” tasing heads were the same individuals involved with the repeal of DADT.  Professional sport has some strong similarities with military service.  This film follows gay, lesbian and transgender professional athletes and exposes their challenges as being LGBT.

At USNA, the only men’s sport for which we know that there have been “out varsity athletes” is mens gymnastics.  Other varsity athletes have waited until the end of their varsity careers before coming out. (If you know of exceptions to this, please let us know).

Alone in the game premiers on Thursday, June 28 on  AT&T Audience.

Men’s Films

Features

The Man in the Orange Suit – slight military connection – charming film from the UK, was broadcast on PBS on Sunday, 17 June, can be streamed.  See https://www.pbs.org/video/preview-yrmzwu/

Shorts:  None.

Women’s Films

Features: None

Shorts:  None.

Your feedback is important to us.  We did extensive testing on our upgraded site to ensure our visot experience was a good one.  But there is nothing better than 406 real visitors to help uncover some of the unexpected issues that you might uncover.

It should be obvious that we’ve made a major upgrade to our website.

We are now using WordPress for our content management system.  Have an interest websites?  Please contact us and let us know your skill sets.

WordPress is the CMS du jour for websites, it is open source and supported by a thriving community.  It is non-proprietary and is here to stay in the foreseeable future.  Yes, the WordPress user-interface is very intuitive and multi-platform friendly…  “Easier than Facebook” to post a news story to share with other USNA Outers.

The best feature of this new site are the communications tools available to our all-volunteer leaders.  As long as you keep your communications preferences up-to-date, we can keep you updated with news about USNA Out and our members.

What won’t WordPress do for us?…  

…not keep your membership data up-to-date.   You will still need to log in to update your account so that the information shared on our roster is current.

….write posts!  Stories that we share with our members just don’t write themselves, and sharing great information has been our challenge all along to maintain our website fresh and vibrant.  In our typical “call for newsletter articles” we typically get zero to two responses.

Absolute best feature: total integration of communications to our members.  The site will actually build the newsletters literally in SECONDS, then send out to everyone or targeted (SF Bay Area, for example) lists to which people themselves subscribe.

Why WordPress?  This graph says it all:

Note the break…   WordPress is now 12x more common CMS than Drupal, 60 times Wix.

What are the  Benefits?

#1 Benefit – database management.  With over 400 members, maintaining our membership database has been by far the biggest time-suck to keep things current.  NO MORE MANUALLY MAINTAINED GOOGLE GROUPS.  The WordPress site will allow our members to self-select which communications they wish to receive.

There is still the issue of individual members keeping their contact data up-to-date.  In our last blast to members who had not yet RSVP’d to the May Dinner in Annapolis, we got 37 bounce-backs.

#2 Benefit – automated newsletters, targeted newsletters.  This is huge.  Communications to our membership utilizing the newsletter feature of the site become a breeze.

This was our third year to hold the event in Historic Ogle Hall, the home of our Alumni Association.

We enjoyed great food and company.  So great that we do a really lousy job in capturing the moments on cameras.  As has been the tradition for nine years, individual alumni presented the soon to be ensigns with a set of insignia that they would be able to use within a few weeks, provided they passed their final exams.  This year, we were able to welcome two men and six women as soon to be future alumni.

A big thanks to this alumni who made contributions above the costs of their tickets or made significant contributions in absence that allowed us to hold this event at no cost to the 36 midshipmen attending.

Uniformly, everyone felt that “we need to do this more often!”