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• 1 2024-03-01T13:12:42+00:00 Interview with Ted Rosenberger '88 24 Interview with a gay identified alumnus who attended Lafayette from 1984-1988. plain 2024-06-24T23:03:41+00:00

  “I just remember this counselor really liking me and whenever we’d come up to the, you know, “You think I’m gay?”, she would say “Oh no, no, no! You’re just not gay.” And this was my counselor. So she didn’t really even provide an environment that would let me entertain the possibility that maybe that was the underlying truth.”

  Mary Armstrong: It is February 22nd, 2019. This is Mary Armstrong and I’m here with Ted Rosenberger in his lovely home and I’m thanking him for doing an interview with the Queer Archives Project at Lafayette College. Ted, we always start with some formalities. If you would, state your name and confirm that your participation is voluntary and you’ve given your consent. We’d just like to start out with that if we could.
  
  Ted Rosenberger: Hi. I’m Ted Rosenberger, class of ’88, and I’m happy to participate.
  
  MA: Great. You let me take a photo of you earlier and it’s ok with you if we connect this to the interview online and in the archives?
  
  TR: Absolutely.
  
  MA: Great, thank you. And thank you for that. There is a bit of a preamble, if you’ll bear with me. We like to remind everyone that you can decline [01:00] any question that you don’t wish to address. What we really hope you’ll do is elaborate on questions or make additional comments as you wish. We also like to say that basically the interview is not a frozen moment in time, if you think later of something you’d really like to share and write down and send to us, or anything like that. It’s not like this is the moment and that’s the end. But I think the most important thing to say is that for every interview it’s your story. We don’t have any specific questions we want answered, so we don’t even think of them – I think of the questions more like prompts to jog your memory, because college wasn’t just yesterday, to help you think about different aspects of life at Lafayette while you were there in the ’80s. Do you prefer “He” pronouns? [02:00]
  
  TR: Absolutely.
  
  MA: OK. You’re an alum, class of ’88. So, what was your major or majors? You have this in the questionnaire, but just to say so.
  
  TR: Sure. I was a computer science major. To my recollection, I was only the second graduating class for computer science. It was a brand-new program. And frankly, that was one of the things that attracted me to the school.
  
  MA: That it had just come along?
  
  TR: Yes.
  
  MA: Right in that era. How do you identify as a member of the LGBTQ community?
  
  TR: I identify as gay.
  
  MA: This will be an interesting answer for you because I know a little bit of the answer, but how do you professionally describe yourself? I know you’ve had many different (laughter) forms of employment, work/life vocation -- just a short description. We’ll add your bio that you’ve provided.
  
  TR: (laughs) Well I would say that at my core I’m a serial entrepreneur and a [03:00] technologist.
  
  MA: That’s a great description. And you’ve had many, many different ins and outs with technology and you fly now.
  
  TR: Yes, it’s something that after I graduated from Lafayette, and then Penn with a master’s degree, I was in the corporate world for a short time and then I decided to start my own company. Not long after I started my company, one of my clients was taking flying lessons, and I definitely have workaholic tendencies so early on I definitely needed something -- I was working 18-hour days in front of a computer at the time. I needed something that was interesting enough to get me out of the office and flying was something that, I don’t know, I just [04:00] said that was something that I’d really like to learn to do. Flying is like the ultimate multi-disciplinary activity. It involves an understanding of mechanical things, weather, and mature decision making. It’s cool machines and computers, and I don’t know, it was just like all these different disciplines that I felt I had the ability to master. So I enrolled in a local community college. Lehigh Community College had a ground school class and then after the first class I walked up to the professor who was teaching the academic part of learning to fly. And I said, “Well how do I actually learn how to fly an airplane?” And he’s like, “Well why don’t you come up to Slatington airport this weekend and you can have your first lesson.” So I went to Slatington airport [05:00] that first weekend, and started doing the flying and within a year I had my pilot’s license. The next year I bought my first plane, and gosh, almost 30 years later I think I’ve owned close to ten planes and two helicopters now. (laughs) Flying has been and remains one of my core passions and continuing interests.
  
  MA: Yeah, wow. You plunged in and it really was the right thing for you. You just –-
  
  TR: It’s always been the thing that got me out of the office and --
  
  MA: That’s marvelous. That’s fantastic. Anything else to add about who you are?
  
  TR: Who I am? (laughs) Well, no, you know, I grew up on a farm. I was surrounded by good, wholesome people and I like to think that that rubbed off [06:00] on me. So I think of myself as a kind, thoughtful person and someone who loves life and seeks to maximize every day.
  
  MA: That’s fantastic. That’s beautiful, that’s wonderful, thank you. We’ll start in with some very general questions, thinking back about your time at Lafayette, and this is very broad, but it’s sort of meant to be. The general situation on campus -- and you can imagine that different interviewees have very different answers to this, for people who identified as members of the LGBT community -- sort of like just, what it felt like -- Was it safe? Was it visible? Were people out, were they not out? Just the big description of, you know, if you’re there and it’s 1988.
  
  TR: Well, first of all, I would consider myself a “late bloomer” [07:00] across the board. My sexuality wasn’t really in the top five things that dominated my thoughts most of the time during Lafayette. I didn’t really date too much at Lafayette. I was heavily involved in my fraternity, which was Phi Kappa Psi. I ended up being an officer several years in the fraternity. Now I certainly, quietly noticed that I was attracted to some of my friends, and struggled with that during the Lafayette years. But I would have never labeled myself as gay or even really focused on it that much. And I did my darndest [08:00] to actually date some women. In retrospect it was probably more to impress my friends and feel like “one of the guys”, then something that was genuinely -- driven by genuine feelings.
  
  MA: Like a social thing more than --
  
  TR: Yeah, yeah. It was sort of the fraternity culture. You know, “who were you with last night?” (laughter) kind of culture, unfortunately.
  
  MA: Unfortunately, but nonetheless. Was there gay life on campus? Was the word spoken –-
  
  TR: No.
  
  MA: It was just an invisible –-
  
  TR: I mean from my perspective, as a guy in a fraternity, certainly there were –- I never felt –- I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was an outwardly homophobic environment, but it just wasn’t discussed. And people used [09:00] –- fraternity brothers would use demeaning slang terms, calling each other “fags” and this and that all the time. I honestly –- I was razor-focused on academics and having fun. There might have been one or two people who might have given off some gay vibes –- there might have been a little bit of gossip that I heard that this male or this female might be gay, but it just wasn’t –- It was so closeted and just not discussed and so uncool to even go there that it just wasn’t something I thought about. [10:00] And what I mentioned when I sent an email to you before –- I was struggling a good part of the time at Lafayette with just feeling attracted to various close friends of mine. It was a tough –- I never really acted on it, never once. But it was enough of a struggle that I enrolled myself in the counseling center at Lafayette just to kind of explore these issues. I mean, I could go into that a little bit now –-
  
  MA: If you’d like to, sure. Please do.
  
  TR: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the counselor I had was a female and I honestly do not remember her name. And I remember really liking her, and without sounding -- coming off wrong, [11:00] I felt like she really adored me. (laughs) I felt like she really, really liked me.
  
  MA: I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that. (laughter)
  
  TR: I don’t know, maybe I was charming, but --
  
  MA: I think so.
  
  TR: -- I think she was intrigued by me. But then I would touch upon the issues of like, I’m just feeling attracted to my friends. And it wasn’t even like -- you know, I was a late-bloomer sexually so it wasn’t even worded as a sexual attraction. It was just like a -- I don’t know. I just wanted --
  
  MA: Something felt different.
  
  TR: -- to be with them.
  
  MA: And you were in a culture that would have magnified being with women, so maybe the comparison, you could feel it if you weren’t as interested. I mean, frat life is, as you said, very --
  
  TR: Yeah, it’s an intimate -- And there were lots of homoerotic [12:00] hazing/borderline hazing oriented things. You know, nothing that, looking back, was life-threatening or dangerous. A lot of laughs and things. But some of those things might have meant slightly more to me -- made a slightly larger impression than on somebody who wasn’t ultimately gay. But, with this counselor I just -- And again, most of my years at Lafayette are a big blur at this point. I don’t know if I have amnesia or if that’s normal, but I just have little snippets in my mind and not a clear continuum. I just remember this counselor really liking me and whenever we’d come up to the, you know, “You think I’m gay?”. She would say “Oh no, no, no! You’re just not gay”. And this was my counselor. So she didn’t really [13:00] even provide an environment that would let me entertain the possibility that maybe that was the underlying truth. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that when things are very complex, there’s usually a simple truth that is -- a simple truth that’s being denied that is the cause of all that complexity. Fast forward a few years -- I got all the way through grad school not being gay, and it was not until I started living on my own, independently that I had a few lonely nights and ended up wandering into a gay bar. It was like lightening. As soon as I walked into a gay bar -- I was probably about 22 or 23, it wasn’t a matter of 48 hours that it was like, “Oh, [14:00] this is what my issue has been all along. I guess I’m gay.” But at Lafayette it was just denial -- It was just denial, but it wasn’t a great burden on me, but it wasn’t resolved. I think using the word “resent” is too strong. But I regret -- If I had come to terms with it a little earlier, I don’t know. I love my life now. I’ve had a terrific -- My life has unfolded in a terrific way. But, it would have been interesting how things would have unfolded differently had I been comfortable being gay while I was at Lafayette. I went to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school and, [15:00] I don’t know, that could have been a lot of fun and very, very, very different for me if I had come to terms with it earlier.
  
  MA: Trying, today, to conceptualize a mental health professional to a young person and saying, “No, you’re not gay” is sort of confusing. (laughter)
  
  TR: Well, one of the things that most people who meet me -- I don’t have stereotypical gay attributes. I’m --
  
  MA: Cisgender, masculine --
  
  TR: Yeah, people just don’t pick up on it. Except maybe the type of man I’m attracted to might notice my eyes, (laughter) but that might be the only giveaway. Generally, I fit in well in a heterosexual world. One of the modes I’ve [16:00] been in throughout my life has been -- you know, my business served a heterosexual world and 98% of my friends are heterosexuals. And our mode all of our lives is to provide an environment of comfort. So, the fact that Ted is gay is just some extra information, but there’s nothing uncomfortable for anybody. There’s nothing even that different about Ted. So I think I’ve used my life to -- rather than be an activist or march in parades or anything like that, my life has been just about inviting people over to dinner, and having them realize that, “Oh boy, Ted’s gay and there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing uncomfortable. [17:00] It’s just a fact about him.” So I feel we’ve done some good in that area. We belong to both country clubs in the Lehigh Valley, both Saucon Valley Country Club and Lehigh Country club, both of which were traditionally -- Both at some point didn’t allow any Jews, (laughs) you know, really, really conservative clubs. Kevin, my partner, and I, we’ve been pioneers at both of those clubs. In both cases, we are the only openly gay men at both clubs now. It was a little bit of a struggle for some people when we first applied, but we are generally highly respected members of both of those clubs now. So I think we’ve done a lot of good --
  
  MA: It’s path-breaking in its own way, absolutely. Thinking about your [18:00] experience at Lafayette, it sounds like one of silence more than anything else. It didn’t come up much. It wasn’t something --
  
  TR: It didn’t come up at all.
  
  MA: -- and then when you tried to bring it up, somebody said, “No, not really.”
  
  TR: “No, you couldn’t possibly be gay...” (laughter)
  
  MA: “Don’t worry about that”. (laughs)
  
  TR: “No, it’s not that!” It was an extreme aversion. I would love to read her notes on me, because maybe I heard what I wanted to hear from her. But, my recollection is (laughs) she was in denial as much as I was. (laugher)
  
  MA: It’s funny because one of the things that we use as a prompt is if there were services if people that were wondering, because we are talking about college age individuals and wondering is often the case more than identifying in some way. I mean, that’s not unusual for an 18 year old or a 20 year old to be thinking about [19:00] their identity as opposed to having an identity and so --
  
  TR: Well for me it was just about attraction to my friends. So I went to the counseling center -- It was powerful enough that I went to the counseling center and I wouldn’t have known of any other resource that would have been available to me. There were no banners. There was nothing in the student center. There were no rainbow flags. I didn’t even know what the rainbow flag was. It’s interesting the name of this project is the --
  
  MA: The Queer Archives.
  
  TR: -- Queer studies, and honestly I’ve never liked the word “queer.” When I was growing up the word “queer” was in the same boat as “fag” or other slang demeaning terms. And being honest with you, I don’t like it to this day. [20:00] I think it’s one of those words that -- before this I actually looked up, because I wanted to see the word “queer” actually means in the dictionary, and it said “of questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady; strange; odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular.” And, I don’t know, I grew up with those negative definitions and in the community I grew up in, even my mother, who ended up being a great supporter of mine after I did come out as gay in my twenties -- and my father -- but there was a guy serving ice cream at the Dairy Queen and they would call him the “Dairy Fairy,” and then she would say, “Oh yes, he’s queer.” So, to me “queer” has never been a term [21:00] that’s been comfortable. Now I did read in the same thing it said that queer has become accepted amongst younger LGBT and in academics as a single word that is an alternative to refer to anybody that is LGBT without specifically needing to use a specific label, but just being honest, I don’t like the term. And I don’t use it.
  
  MA: I think you would have a lot of company in that regard, because a lot of people perceive and they deeply feel it as a negative, that it’s pejorative. Life is hard enough, right? You’re not going to add a pejorative and call yourself that. It’s interesting the definition you looked up is quite a perceptive one, because among younger LGBT people that is the word they use. It is very generational, and the other one [22:00] is academics because it is a form of academic thought, right? Queer theory and all this, and so it is very singular. But yeah, point well taken. And in fact, when you see our digital humanities site, when that goes public, you’ll see that we have a short essay on how we decided to use this. So throughout it we tend to use LGBTQ+ trying to use that to -- because the groups are separate too. Trans people have different identities from lesbians. I mean, it’s not all really that easy to just sort of lump together. But I like the debate, and I think we should keep thinking about it because it really matters what people feel comfortable with.
  
  TR: Well, sort of back to the theme that I pointed out earlier that the good that I’ve been able to do in my adult life as a gay person is [23:00] -- I’m a bit of a politician in that I try to help people that otherwise might not know a gay person or be comfortable with it. I try to do everything I can to make them comfortable. I see when people use the word “queer” or “cisgen” or anything with the word “trans” in it, you can almost just see with a certain conservative folk that those are just places they’re just not quite ready to go. So I’m just very, very careful. I’m actually on the board of the Lehigh Northampton Airport Authority. I’m one of the board of governors right now. I had noticed that in all the airport contracts and in all the bylaws and everything in the non discrimination clauses that sexual orientation and gender identity are missing. [24:00] So I quietly brought this up two years ago to -- It’s turned into a two-year debate whether the airport authority should add these terms as protected classes. Without going into it too deeply, but the two camps are, “Hey it’s just the right thing to do, it’s with the times.” Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton all have added this. Both counties, Lehigh and Northampton, the county executives have made proclamations that we will not -- Governor Wolf has declared it. The FAA has a very strong statement on its website saying, “We do not discriminate” --
  
  MA: That’s good to know.
  
  TR: -- and includes that. But, the other camp argues, “Well the federal government, the full federal [25:00] does not count sexual orientation, for example, as a protected class, and neither does the state officially.” It’s just been Governor Wolf that made this executive order. Then there’s the argument, “Well we’re a board and we should not be doing anything that creates theoretical financial risk or exposure, and maybe our insurance rates will go up because we could be subject to lawsuits for additional categories of discrimination lawsuits and everything.” So, literally we just had a huge debate about this yesterday and I really don’t know where it’s going. But, nonetheless, in conversations like that I’m very, very careful because there’s the whole gamut [26:00] of political and religious views represented on that board, and I’m very careful to be very neutral in the terminology that I use so as to make the issue as comfortable as it possibly can be to speak openly about.
  
  MA: The advocacy work that you do requires a certain form of --
  
  TR: Sensitivity.
  
  MA: -- Yeah. (laughter) That’s the word. Well, that’s politics, right? And sort of working with different constituencies to try to get somewhere positive.
  
  TR: Exactly.
  
  MA: It’s a fascinating story. We’re a very similar age, so I’m thinking about the silences of the mid-’80s around these issues and how the Lafayette you described was very much of that. Of not saying anything, not talking about anything. So I wonder if this is a helpful question or not. The answer just might be no, [27:00] but did it feel -- since you really didn’t “identify” -- did it feel like there were allies or supportive people around these issues or was it just so not discussed that it was just sort of a vacuum around these issues?
  
  TR: I would say there was a vacuum around the issues. I went to the one place that I thought might be a safe place to talk about my inner most struggles and feelings at the time and -- I mean, I got a lot out of the counseling --
  
  MA: More generally.
  
  TR: -- More generally, but not -- I would say no, I wasn’t aware of any issues, and I wasn’t ready to label myself. I was just focused on everything else.
  
  MA: Everything else you were doing and you were doing a lot. Other aspects, just [28:00] as a person thinking about these issues -- gender, religion, socioeconomic class -- Do you feel like wondering about yourself and attractions to friends, were there other aspects of your identity that intersected with that?
  
  TR: I have to give that some thought.
  
  MA: OK. That’s fine. That’s fine. So not a big social scene, but you did mention Greek life, and that’s --
  
  TR: Oh, yeah. That was very important to me.
  
  MA: -- seems like that was one of the central organizers of your experience.
  
  TR: It was.
  
  MA: You were in a fraternity the whole time. You were an officer in your fraternity.
  
  TR: It was. Back then, rush was in your freshman year and other than living in a freshman dorm I was a Phi Kappa Psi, and I moved directly into the house and spent all three subsequent years in the house. [29:00] It was fun, first of all. I developed some strong friendships. I can think of three or four of my fraternity brothers who are still my best friends to this day, from that era. They were all fraternity brothers.
  
  MA: Those real relationships.
  
  TR: We went through things. We had a lot of laughs, drank a lot of beer, and had a lot of fun. Somehow my leadership qualities were evident, or came out, so I ended up vice president of the fraternity in my junior year. Then my senior year I was the president of the fraternity, and my struggles [30:00] as president were things like telling people not to grow marijuana in their rooms. (laughter) There was a --
  
  MA: Your presidential duties included --
  
  TR: -- tradition at the time where the pledges would go out and bring a Christmas tree to the house and invariably they’d end up cutting down a Christmas tree from somebody’s yard and then the police would show up. These were the struggles of leadership (laughter) at the time.
  
  MA: Well, if the police show up it counts as a struggle.
  
  TR: Exactly. (laughter) I don’t think I really was dating any -- I dated some women in senior year. Again, more to impress my friends. I had started a computer consulting business early on. I always had great summer jobs with large corporations. [31:00] I was always working on --
  
  MA: You were busy.
  
  TR: -- software projects beyond the academics. I loved the computer science program with a passion at Lafayette. I’d literally get a homework assignment and it would be the first thing I’d do even if it was due for two weeks --
  
  MA: Well, your calling. You loved it.
  
  TR: -- I just was into it. I was into it.
  
  MA: That’s what we want is to just to find -- you know, (laughter) that feeling of I can’t wait to read this or I can’t wait to do this or try this or see this or get my hands on it. That’s really marvelous.
  
  TR: So by junior year I was actually running a business out of -- a consulting business out of my fraternity for a couple of local companies that I got connected with through some summer internships that I did. I was just busy --
  
  MA: You were busy.
  
  TR: -- and keeping myself entertained and stimulated that way. My sexuality was just repressed, and --
  
  MA: There was no place for it, really.
  
  TR: -- there was no place for it. [32:00] I think maybe if you interviewed some of my fraternity brothers they may in retrospect have said, “Yeah, Ted was a little...” I could see that. They might have picked up on it.
  
  MA: That’s interesting. So I have to ask just out of sheer curiosity. The hazing that wasn’t dangerous but that was just sort of that homoerotic hazing... (laughter) You’ve piqued my curiosity, it’s fair to say --
  
  TR: There’s plenty of things that pledges end up in their underwear. (laughter)
  
  MA: (laughs) I didn’t know that!
  
  TR: Or everybody ends up washing eggs off your face in the shower together.
  
  MA: All right. (laughs) See you say that like everybody knows that pledges end up in their underwear, (laughter) but I did not know that.
  
  TR: Well, in the ’80s they did. (laughter)
  
  MA: They did in the ’80s, OK. That’s a -- [33:00] (laughter) I follow that. Absolutely. So, Greek life, wonderful. Athletics? Were you involved in athletics at all or...?
  
  TR: You know, it’s funny. That’s another thing that’s kind of a blur. I’ve always been a skier. I believe I was involved in the ski club a little bit at the time. But, no I really wasn’t sports focused. I used all my spare time to be working on computer related endeavors, both inside and outside Lafayette.
  
  MA: Yeah, that was your thing. So, no clubs or any -- I mean you had friends who were --
  
  TR: No, I think I filled my life at Lafayette with Greek life, computers, and I was a strong student so I worked hard on the academics. It kind of filled up my life so I didn’t really do any competitive [34:00] sports at the time other than just fraternity-oriented things.
  
  MA: You were plenty busy if you were concentrating on academics, doing something on the side, and also leadership role in your fraternity. That’s a very full life, packed.
  
  TR: It was.
  
  MA: So, academics. Classroom climate? I’m guessing in this culture of silence that you’re describing the LGBTQ issues did not come up? They didn’t --
  
  TR: No. No, maybe in a philosophy class. But it’s too vague to remember specifics. No, it just wasn’t --
  
  MA: No course content or anything at that time?
  
  TR: -- Not that I recall. I took plenty of humanities courses with Carolynn Van Dyke, you know, “Computers in Society” and things like that. But I just don’t [35:00] recall anything --
  
  MA: Yeah, that didn’t come up.
  
  TR: Nothing. Nothing.
  
  MA: Well, that’s not too surprising given the -- I mean, it’s of a piece with what you’ve described. What did you take with Lynn?
  
  TR: Well, at the time the computer science program was very new and small and modest. As I recall there were only three professors who taught computer science. There was Dr. Schwar [James P.], who was the head of the department at the time. And then Carolynn Van Dyke, I believe she was a dual professor. She taught some -- you know, she was English and computer science. She taught sort of the softer courses. I know she taught Computers in Society and she did some Intro to Programming courses and things like that.
  
  MA: So she was teaching in CS as well as --
  
  TR: Yeah.
  
  MA: That was her time. Because I know she overlapped, and being a multi-talent she was in multiple places.
  
  TR: And I just got her style of teaching and her kindness and her warmth. [36:00] I think she recognized pretty early on that I was talented in that area, and passionate in that area and I think she picked up on that and really took me under her wing.
  
  MA: Yeah, we’re good at that, us faculty. (laughter) That sparkle in your eye when you were even talking about how much you enjoyed things made me think, “Oh, you were somebody’s joy as a student,” because you want a student who’s just so excited about what they’re doing, because we are! Sometimes folks can recall public moments, sometimes not. An example is folks who were on campus in the early ’90s remember when the AIDS quilt came, for example. Anything like that? Speakers?
  
  TR: (laughs) I honestly -- I remember nothing. I remember a few political speakers, but [37:00] as I recall the bigger fears were that Reagan was going to get us into a nuclear war or something. I remember some activist speakers coming and scaring the daylights out of us that world was about to end due to nuclear war.
  
  MA: Right. I remember that too. (laughter)
  
  TR: But I can’t say anything about LGBT. It was just a fringe thing. As I said, there might have been a few people that were the gossip of some students. He or she is queer or... (laughs)
  
  MA: Yeah. Not in the good inclusive way. Absolutely.
  
  TR: No. No, just sort of in a whispering, “Oh, I think he might be.” But that’s about it. So I did my best to hide anything about myself like that.
  
  MA: One does really see a picture as you talk of the climate. I wouldn’t have expected there to be public events given [38:00] the realities that you’ve described day-to-day.
  
  TR: But, I would rate my overall Lafayette experience to be quite positive. That aspect of me was just -- there was nothing to cultivate self-awareness in that area. There were no outlets, there were no avenues.
  
  MA: It had to wait until you were in a place where you could --
  
  TR: You know I just did remember one thing. I remember my brother, who’s just a great guy -- I have an older brother. I think he picked me up in my junior or senior year from Lafayette and we just went out for a drive with he and his girlfriend. And he had mentioned that he had gone to a -- there used to be a gay bar in Bethlehem called Jeff’s City Line Pub. [39:00] We drove by it, and he’s like, “Oh yes, my girlfriend and I went in that and gay people are so cool. And it was like so much fun. We were dancing and it was fun.” You know, my brother’s straight and married and there’s no issue there. I remember making a mental note of that place and I think maybe at Lafayette once or twice my thoughts wandered that I would sneak out and go there, but I never did. But then fast forward a few years -- I remember earlier in the interview that on a lonely night when I was finally living on my own I wandered into a gay bar. Well, that was the place I went. My brother had just --
  
  MA: Given it his stamp of approval, as it were.
  
  TR: Yeah, yeah. He wasn’t leading me in that direction. He just genuinely found gay people interesting (laughter) [40:00] and fun to be around.
  
  MA: That’s great, for many reasons. That’s a great story. Anything else that you want to share or mention?
  
  TR: No. I think it is terrific what seems to be happening at Lafayette and many colleges and universities around the country. I believe in the publication that just -- was it, “It’s OK to be gay”? Was that one of your things?
  
  MA: Yeah, the “Gay fine by me”, and all the different initiatives, yes.
  
  TR: So, that would have positively impacted my life if all that was just there in the ’80s when I was there. I may have come to terms with who I was several years earlier, [41:00] and maybe avoided stress and struggle for several years. I wouldn’t change my life for anything now, but it would have been interesting to see if I had that part of me resolved earlier in a supportive, loving, accepted, positive way. That would be pretty transformational for a guy like me.
  
  MA: So much of what you say makes me think how well we serve students when we just give them a place where it’s actively OK for them to be themselves. To provide those spaces that the college hasn’t always provided in the past.
  
  TR: Yes, yes. Kevin, my partner, and I are raising a son [42:00] now, Henry, who is nine years old and it’s just, you know -- as parents, we all try to just not repeat the mistakes that our parents made and everything. So, Henry’s just growing up in a such an incredibly supportive environment and he is adamantly proud of his two dads. And his friends -- his entire universe is nothing but positive and supportive. So, he’s going to be a very special young man as he grows up.
  
  MA: Talking to you I find that easy to believe. Ted Rosenberger, thank you for a wonderful interview.
  
  TR: My pleasure. Thank you.
  
  END OF AUDIO FILE