Still, his work was inspired and ultimately shaped by a quintessentially Kansas event: President Dwight D. “In my soul, questions burned: Did God make me gay and love me, or was I going to hell for a sin?” He considered killing himself. Sundays at the Methodist church were no comfort.
Later, when his parents discovered him twirling in his aunt’s old prom dress, his father spanked him. Gilbert Baker, age 4, celebrating Christmas at his grandparents' house. After the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015, more than 26 million people on Facebook changed their profile photos to include the flag.” It has been hung from apartment balconies as a sign of solidarity. “It has been waved by gay rights supporters in China fighting for equality. “The rainbow flag has become a universal symbol for inclusion, peace and love,” the New York Times noted in his obituary. By the time of his death, at age 65 on March 31, 2017, his personality and his work were too big even for San Francisco. Kansas has a rough time staking much of a claim to Gilbert Baker. “I’m really sorry people treated him that way.”
“I’m just so proud of what he did and the movement he was part of,” Sayler says.
#50 year old gay flag free
He was a free spirit, loving life.” A lot of people didn’t know where he went after high school, but he seemed destined for greatness. “We were just innocent and didn’t understand what a gay person was. “When I heard that it broke my heart,” she says. Salyer says she read an interview where Baker talked about being bullied as a kid. They point across the room to Sandy Salyer, who remembers Baker doing cartwheels. “At our lunch table, the guys, the jocks, would come by with their trays and they would slap him in the back of the head,” Burke says. He was publicity chair for the Thespians a member of student council, Key Club, Forensics, the Ways and Means Committee, band, orchestra, honors orchestra and pep band staff feature editor of the Viking Shield and in the cast of "Dear Ruth."Īt some point there was talk of inviting Baker back for one of the reunions, but that brought up other memories. KCUR 89.3 Gilbert Baker (center) in the Parsons High School yearbook of 1969. “I posted some stuff over the years because I fiddled around in art, and he’d comment.” “I shot a request to him and he accepted,” Edgington says. In the decades since they graduated, people began to realize what Baker had done after leaving Kansas. “The next day,” Edgington continues, “I got yellow roses delivered to my house: ‘Thank you for a great time.’ He was just a nice guy.”
#50 year old gay flag movie
And I don’t know why he said – that’s just Gilbert – he said, ‘Let’s go to the drive-in.’ So we went to the drive-in movie and it was a quote, date, but I kind of knew it wasn’t really a date.”Įveryone agrees: “Just a friend - just a friend.” I don’t know what I’d done, I was 16 or 17, who knows. “I’d evidently broken up with a boyfriend. One time, he asked Patty Eakins Edgington on a date. “People would make fun of him because he was different, but he set the stage way before it was ever a norm.” So Gilbert was just different,” says Debbie Sailsbury Burke. “This may not be etiquette, but in ’69, we didn’t know what gay was. KCUR 89.3 Patty Eakins Edgington (left) and Roxie Herndon Namey, members of the Parsons High School class of 1969, show off yearbooks with photos of rainbow flag designer Gilbert Baker at their 50th reunion in October 2019.
“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.