SPEAKER_00 0:00

With Stonewall, that was when it got galvanized. But again, Rockford, well, we have to put ourselves back in history a little bit, which is everything was by newspaper and telephone call. You know, you didn't have the internet, you didn't have the 25. And so when the stone when Stonewall happened in 1969, Rockford didn't report on it. Chicago Tribune did, but Rockford did not. And so we didn't see it until in 1978-79 when the Register Star said, ten years ago, this happened.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Oh, that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And you don't even see large mentions of it until you get into the Rock River News, which, hey, Rockford had its own queer newspaper in the 90s, running from 1990 to 1996.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

And that they reported on the 25th anniversary of Stonewall.

Lara Griffin 0:52

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Lara Griffin, your podcast host for today. History is often told through the stories that survive. But what about the stories that were hidden or overlooked? Today's guest, Andrew Mertzenick, set out to uncover those stories in his book Forest City Yesterqueer. Andrew shines a light on the lives, relationships, struggles, and the triumphs of Rockford's LGBTQ community, revealing a history that has always been here, even when it wasn't always visible. In this conversation, we explore why local queer history matters, what Andrew uncovered whilst researching the book and the responsibility that comes with telling stories that were once forced into the margins. We also talk about memory, belonging, and what it means to preserve a community's history for future generations. Please welcome Andrew Mertzenich. Hi Andrew, how are you? I'm doing well. And so my first intro to you is I I love going into the local history room. It's the prettiest room in the library on Maine. And so I just kept seeing you in and out of the year.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I was bothering in Bernbrook and all the all of them, yes.

Lara Griffin 2:13

And I was like, oh, I love his bow tie.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Hey, there we go.

Lara Griffin 2:18

And his vest. This is awesome. And come to find out, you're a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Indeed, yep. I do estate planning and real estate help with LGBTQ plus families, all that fun stuff.

Lara Griffin 2:27

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And that's so awesome. And so what got you started? Like, how how did this your book we're talking about today is Forest City, Yesterqueer. How did this book come to happen? And I know local history was part of it. And what's the story you're trying to tell?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Aaron Ross Powell Sure. So to the book, the genesis of the book actually kind of started with my work with the Rockford Area Pride Committee. So that is the committee that I founded, and we put on Rockford's first, and I put always put italics on it, official Pride Parade, because there's stories of what pride looked like before that in the book. And we had an issue where it was the question of whether or not police were going to be allowed to march in the parade. And what happened was there was a lot of discussion, and I realized I didn't know the history, especially the local history, of what it meant to be queer and have to deal with the police. And so that was a small research project that I did, and I'm like, wow, there's a lot of history here that is yet to be found. And so what happened was is I went over to local history and I asked Amber. I was just like, hey Amber, where do we find this stuff? And she said, Well, there's this source and this source and this source. So I say this on every time I do an interview. Kudos to the library. It is amazing. Love your librarians, give them lots of praise. And so that led to me doing research, going down rabbit trails. And finally, I was down at NIU where I graduated from law school and I was in the library there. Fun story of how I know the librarian there, but we were just chatting. And he said, Oh yes, LGBTQ history. You can get it in Chicago, but you can't get it anywhere else. And I was like, that is so true. The rural counties, you just do not find it.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

So I set out to find out what happened here in Rockford, what happened around. Because I had lived some history, but I knew it wasn't the only thing around.

Lara Griffin 4:15

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. So what was surprising like so we th when we think about the LGTP LGBTQ plus history.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

As long as it's not said maliciously, queer is a fine descriptor because it means different.

Lara Griffin 4:31

Aaron Ross Powell Yes. So when we think about queer history, we think like New York and San Francisco. So tell us more about what it l does look like out here in rural or Rockford or just Midwest.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Trevor Burrus Sure. So Rockford in particular is special because it's one of those cities where it started out, it depends on who you ask, is either a really big, small town or a really small, big city. Just depends on which side perspective you're on at the moment. And Rockford has traditionally been more conservative, more closeted. And so what was really cool was if you look at the history from about 1930s all the way through the 1980s, which is roughly the time I call it pre pre-Sonewall Rockford, because Rockford did not hear about Stonewall, which were the riots in New York in 1969. Rockford didn't hear about those until the 1970s, 1980s.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

And so Rockford was a very closeted city. There is very little information to find. Most of what I found was a few notable national uh historic events that happened to happen in the area. But once you reach that 1960s, 1970s, there is a little bit more history. So with that closeted sense of Rockford, it never had its own pride parade. It never had a really cohesive movement to fight for queer rights until about the 1990s.

SPEAKER_05 5:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

After the 1980s and 90s, then it morphed into we are actually going to fight for what queer rights are. And there were organizations that got founded, they were inspired. These groups went on to form some of the first transgender affirming groups in not even just the area, but even the country until you reach 2024, which is where my book ends. It ends in 2025, but 2024 is that last thing where we have Rockford's first official pride parade.

Lara Griffin 6:20

Yeah. And that's so awesome that you got that going.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Aaron Ross Powell Indeed, I I'm very lucky. It's taken many years of therapy for me to be able to say I am proud of what I did, and I'm also very happy that I didn't have to do it alone because I had a really, really good committee, a really good group of people, and they're all listed in the book. Um and I dedicate this to them because we couldn't have done it without them.

Lara Griffin 6:41

Yeah, and it's awesome like we had our third annual. I know.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

And we get to say annual now. It's not just oh the second time. It's no, it's the third annual. It's a tradition now.

Lara Griffin 6:52

Yes. And I was reading through your book and just even how you it was it Legrasse?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Legrasse, lesbian and gay resources and social services. Rockford is not known for good names. Yeah, that is, but that is my absolute favorite story out of all this because it really just pinpoints the juxtaposition of what Rockford means of being a really big small town or a really small big city. Um that story is really cool because Legrasse formed as a response to the AIDS crisis and such. And what they wanted to do was to really push the envelope of queer visibility in the area. So in 1992, and my favorite factoid when people say, What's a great piece of trivia? Here's the one that will win the competition. 1992 was the first year that queer people marched openly in a parade in Rockford.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

And it wasn't a pride parade, it was the Fourth of July parade. And so we all have our local heroes and local celebrities. Joe Marino is one of them. He was chair of the Fourth of July Civic Committee for 50 years. And this group said, We want to march in the parade. And they filled out the paperwork, they got their banner, and the committee said, Oh, yes, you can march, but you can't say the word gay.

unknown 8:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

They had a problem with that. Yeah. And so they said, You can march, but you can't have that on your banner. So in protest, what they did is they took black tape and they censored their banner.

SPEAKER_05 8:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

And then they marched anyway. And just to see, it's like Rockford is we did it anyway. Yeah. That is just so inspiring because it's like, here we are, a group of people who are often put off to the side and yet we're gonna march anyway. And the mixture between people on the streets at that parade who were cheering the crowd, you know, seeing these people, versus booing them as they walked by, juxtaposed with the queer response, which was people who were just happened to be at the gay bar, the office, one of the establishments here, turning their backs on that group because they couldn't stand the idea of having queer people marching openly. Being queer was a personal thing, and we were in the closet at the time. It was just to see that. And then again, just juxtaposed with the late 2010s into the 2020s, when it's like, why don't we have a pride parade? Everybody should have a pride parade. It's just that change in less than 30 years is absolutely amazing.

Lara Griffin 9:10

Yeah, that's so interesting.

unknown 9:13

Wow.

Lara Griffin 9:13

Okay. And so and even one of the things that I remember you noting in there is that the pride the parades were more actually protests in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Correct. The best way to describe Stonewall, the first Pride Parade was a riot. They didn't, you know, wave banners, they threw bricks.

Lara Griffin 9:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

You have heroes like Marsha P. Johnson, transgender icon, drag queen, the whole nine yards actively telling the police with force, you are done harassing us.

SPEAKER_05 9:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

And the thing about Stonewall that is not well characterized in the history is the fact that it was not the first time that queer people had risen up. It was just so it was just at the right time when queer people were able to latch onto it and say, We're done. We were we had gotten used to being harassed. Right. Rockford had its own harassment of the police uh in the 1970s. I found in the Rockford Labor News, which was a new a newspaper that only recently stopped publication, like within the last decade, where the police said, Yeah, we'd prefer not to have queer people in the city. It would make our job a lot easier. When it's like, well, go catch the murderers, go catch the and with Stonewall, that was when it got galvanized. But again, Rockford, well, we have to put ourselves back in history a little bit, which is everything was by newspaper and telephone call. You know, you didn't have the internet, you didn't have the 25. And so when the stone when Stonewall happened in 1969, Rockford didn't report on it. Chicago Tribune did, but Rockford did not. And so we didn't see it until in 1978-79 when the Register Star said, ten years ago, this happened.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Oh, that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

And you don't even see large mentions of it until you get into the Rock River News, which, hey, Rockford had its own queer newspaper in the 90s running from 1990 to 1996.

SPEAKER_05 10:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

And that they reported on the 25th anniversary of Stonewall. So all of this coming together in just like where where does Rockford fit within this natur national conversation is just really cool to hear and ri to discover again.

Lara Griffin 11:14

So what I really liked about your book too is that the footnotes are longer than some of the pages.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yes. I went to law school, and law school, there is a quote that they teach you on the first day of your legal research class. It doesn't matter what you believe, what matters is what you can prove. And I also was very frustrated with where do I find this information, even if it's just having that little breadcrumb to latch onto and continue the research. And it was also for me because I couldn't keep all of this straight in my head.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Straight pun intended. But what it was is the footnotes are meant to allow people, it's like you don't have to take my word for it. And even more, if you want to continue the research, here's a jumping-off point. That was the main point of having all of these footnotes. There's also a few hidden ones, Easter eggs will say.

Lara Griffin 12:12

Sweet. Yeah, and to me, I'm like, yes, a lawyer, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

I want I do like to say that, yes, the very first part of the book where I'm talking about statutes and all the history, it gets a little dry, but it's necessary context for what it means to be at the time gay or queer, you know, throughout history. But I do like to say after you get past that part, it starts to read more like a history novel. Um my goal as I was finally putting the formatting together was you can open to any page in this book and you'll find a story that you could read in a few minutes. And then you have a story that you can share.

Lara Griffin 12:49

Yeah, one of the people that I was reading about was Kate O'Connor.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Local icon, yes.

Lara Griffin 12:56

Please tell us about her.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Okay, so Kate O'Connor, born in the late 1800s, died uh right around the episode of World War II. She was a knockout kind of person, okay? So she shunned gender norms. It was scandalous. She wore a suit.

Lara Griffin 13:11

I know, I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

She wore a suit, and there's a wonderful photo, yes. And I do have to give credit to Midway Village Museum because they have a wonderful historic display of her that they put out from time to time. But the reason she's included is not the fact that she was, you know, in any way queer in the sense of, oh, she had relationships. We don't know. It was very private. But the fact that she took gendered stereotypes and gender norms and threw them out the window. She became the equivalent of a what's called a common law lawyer. She didn't have a law degree, she didn't have a license, but she did probate stuff. She did real estate transactions. She went to Chicago and started a real estate business, brought it back, was a lender. And my personal favorite thing of her, and I'm going to see if I can find it, because she has these absolute Can can I swear? I'm not going to say no, but she has this really, really cool quote here. Let me find it. So when she was reflecting on her career later in life, she said, I have seven brief rules that she says every woman should follow. And they are this drop your excess baggage, put on your shock absorbers, forget the lipstick, get a broker's license, take a through street, take a man's chance, and step on the gas. That is like I I call her my spirit animal.

Lara Griffin 14:26

That's awesome. And every like uh women's month, we always flash her picture on our TV screens. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

As you should. She was the one that she fought for. It her opinions were very diverse, and one of them was, of course, women's suffrage. She was the first woman to serve as foreman of a jury in Winnebago County. And she was able to convince the local elections to re to reject and a revised constitution to the state of Illinois. She was amazing. So well done. And the the book it's really sad because the book, you know, her chapter ends with the only thing that stopped her was a heart attack.

unknown 15:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

But she's buried in the city. And you're just like, oh.

Lara Griffin 15:08

Yeah. And um the World Baseball Cup is coming up.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

I know. And the Peaches were not immune from the queer virus, I tell you that.

Lara Griffin 15:21

So um would you like to share some things? Um Mabel Maybelle Blair.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Maybelle Blair is probably one of the most visible that is still around from that Rockford Peaches era. I mean, we're losing them rather quickly. Um but yeah, she has been advocating for Rockford, even though she never played for the Peaches. Um, but she came out both literally and figuratively as a result of trying to get the International Women's Baseball Center put together in Rockford and her own experience being queer in a very closeted profession. That was the whole thing. In the book, I talk about what was the All-American Girls Baseball League and how that was started in Chicago by Wrigley, you know, during the war and all that. And what she did was bring both bring both the history to Rockford with the International Women's Baseball Center, but on top of that, she r had a lifetime of closet and she said, I'm gonna burst forth out of this in a beautiful moment. And so she just let it out one day and it was celebrated. There's a new biography on her, which the library has a copy, and that's where I you'll see footnotes to it.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

And it's absolutely just a wonderfully inspiring story. But she also played games against one of our local ion one of our local icons, Jean Cioni.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

And Jean used to teach at Guildford High School, was just a peach. Nobody knew. She never talked about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Um, and then when they moved up to, I think Spokane, I think Spokane is where they ended up, she had her lifetime partner and they just took care of each other in their golden years.

SPEAKER_05 16:46

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

So queer people have always existed within the confines. It's just we finally have the ability to come out, as they say.

Lara Griffin 16:53

So what do you what part of yourself do the readers meet in this book? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Oh uh sadly a very intimate part. Um chapter eight is actually a memoir. And the reason I decided to do it as a memoir rather than third person is because I lived that history. Um many people who I've talked to, but if they don't know, the reason we have Rockford Area Pride Committee and ultimately the Rockford Area Pride Parade was because I was at the Talcott Library protests in 2023. Talcott Library wanted to host a drag queen question and answer session. It wasn't a story time like a lot of people try to change it. It didn't even involve young kids at all. But it was the teen advisory group wanted to invite a drag queen to ask questions. What does it mean to be a drag queen? What are makeup tips? How do I get into this? And Crystal Ball, who subsequently became a very good friend, was willing to answer questions. The Rockford Family Initiative said, Oh, we can't have that, even though they are the Rockford Family Initiative, not the Rockton Family Initiative. So they staged a protest and they started picketing the library. It all came to head at a library board meeting, which that I heard that there were going to be protests, and I said, you know what? I'm done. I have, I've done my time sitting around doing nothing. So Rockton Pride was a group that formed basically overnight between Kelly Kulak and Jessica Green. They came together, formed Rockton Pride, and staged a counter protest. And I remember being there, seeing the counter-protesters and the protesters just it was peaceful, but there was tension there. Oh, yeah. And to see some of the subversive things like trying to keep the people who wanted the drag QA event out by blocking the door to the point where the police had to actually open up a side door to let our side in. So all of that. And I just happened to have my camera that day, and I was taking pictures left and right, and I have pictures in the book, but there's even more that are at Midway Village because I donated that collection there. And eventually what happened was is I said, I can't believe that this would happen in my hometown. And so I said, I want to march in next year's Pride Parade. And I did some research, which is just Googling at the time. And I'm like, wait a minute, we've never had a pride parade. And so that's what led to the inspiration, and that's where we kick off from the third person narrative of here's what happened in Rockton II, here's how Rockford area pride happened. It also made the footnotes easy because all it had to say was from the mind of the author. Okay. So it made the research a lot easier. And it tells, again, the story of how we got there from the day after the Talcott Library protests all the way through to the morning after the first Pride Parade.

unknown 19:37

Wow.

Lara Griffin 19:39

And and part of the I'm like, and there was there's only been three.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

There's only been three. And and I should say, again, I've always put in parenthesis or italics, official, because here's something that didn't make it to the book because I didn't know how to explain it very well, and there's no evidence of it. Again, it doesn't matter what I believe, it matters what I can prove.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

But people would tell me that what the queer community would do is on Pride Month, when the Office Nightclub would put on the festival, right before it, they would drive down State Street in their cars, waving as their own pride parade. Again, we've always done things just a little bit differently here. And I couldn't find anybody who would verify that. And I'd only seen like the tail end of it myself. So I didn't feel comfortable putting it into the book. But that's one way we've done it. So Rockford has had pride parades, but we never shut down the streets, we never made it a big spectacle, and we never turned it into something that was really more than this is our protest. This is not just our protest anymore. I can tell you that through my work, I've had so many people not only feel more comfortable in themselves, I've had transgender teenagers tell me that the pride parade is the reason they're alive. And I don't take credit for that, but what again, I just that is the important work that we do.

Lara Griffin 20:50

Yeah. And so what does being seen mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Oh, wow, we're asking the deep questions. Well, there's the physically seen, which means that people know that I am up and about and able to take nourishment. But the ability to see ourselves in history. History has history is written by authors, and authors always have their own bias. I freely say I have my own bias in this book. It is to uplift the queer community. But it's the first book of its kind for a reason, because nobody thought it was important. But people know it's important, and I think it's very important to understand where we come from, especially since Rockford, if you're from Rockford and you live in Rockford, you are of Rockford. We are proud of our history. And to have it finally seen where this is the history that the f these are the footsteps that I am walking in, that is always really cool.

Lara Griffin 21:44

And you grew up here in Rockford?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah, I actually it's just by coincidence. I grew up about two blocks away from where uh Kate O'Connor's buried.

unknown 21:52

Oh, okay.

Lara Griffin 21:53

Um so does that like with the your journey through this book, how has Has it affected the way you see home as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:04

It's very interesting because I grew up in the lit, you know, I was born in 93, so my first memories were just after seven 9-11. And so that 2000s era, you know, everybody was wearing silver everything and Backstreet Boys were all the rage. To going to high school in the depths of the Great Recession to seeing Obergafell in 2015, right before I went to law school, to not fully understand what it meant legally, but to know what it meant symbolically. Growing up here has always been my I always tell people, I am of Rockford, I love Rockford. And with the perspective that I've had, which is that I see the constant refrain of history in Rockford that I hope is not going to be repeated in the very near future, which is in 1992, you know, they had this great inspiration. They started this event. Legrasse only lasted for about three years. And then the Rock River News, which was the queer newspaper, which by the way is at the library now because I'm gonna I get to boost myself a little bit. I went all the way down to NIU, where the only copy known to be in existence, I went down there and I took hours to scan every single page to bring them up here. So they're at Midway Village and they're here in the library. But it shut down in 1996 due to burnout because people just didn't see the queer community coming together. And then we had a lovely organization called Diversity that lasted for about 20 years. That's the longest we've had so far, but then the recession killed them. Like they by 2008 they were doing great. 2013 they said we we have to shut down, we can't keep this going. And then to see the Liam Foundation start to establish itself and Rockford Area Pride Committee and Four City Rainbow Chorus and Rockden Pride, all these organizations just pushing, pushing, pushing for the betterment of our human existence. I just hope that we learn from history about how not to have it repeat, which is a group of dedicated individuals come together, they're excited, they're motivated, and then everybody relies on them alone to accomplish the goal.

Lara Griffin 24:08

Thank you. That's amazing. So what what story I mean, we've hit a couple people. Is there another story that you would like to highlight?

SPEAKER_00 24:20

There's one more, and that is because if you want to know about Rockford on A a national stage, B, with the Civil War, which is personally my favorite era of history to contemplate, we'll say. And then the third one is that if you want someone who, again, is a very interesting and unique character, is Albert Kashir.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Albert Cashier was a soldier in the Civil War, transgender, lived as a man before the war, enlisted in the war as a man, and even continued on as a man. The only reason we know that they were transgender is because later on they were involved in one of the first car accidents in the county. They worked for the person who owned who owned it, and there was a something that we're not entirely sure what happened, but they were injured and they were examined, and they're like, Oh, you don't have the equipment to be considered a man.

Lara Griffin 25:09

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Indeed. And so Albert was a Civil War veteran. And the reason that's important is because as soon as the uh Board of Pensions found out at the at the U.S. government, they tried to take it away. They thought Albert was an imposter, some long-lost war bride, basically. And what happened was is he was at the soldiers and sailors home in Illinois, and his comrades in arms came to visit him, and they said, Yeah, that's the little soldier from the 95th, that's little Al, that's Albert Cashier, I recognize him. He is who he says he is, and he got to keep his pension. And that's the difference between the animosity that people have towards even just transgender children, young kids trying to make their way in the most awkward times, to when you fought for your country and your comrades in arms say, I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

You you are the hero you say you are. And to have that some of that history revisited, but sadly rewritten. That's the story I would love for everybody to hear because Albert is both an inspiration and to quote my friend Steph, a little liar.

Lara Griffin 26:19

Wow. Like I love that there are these stories. Like there are plenty of stories in in your book. Are you also was Are there more stories that you wish you could have included, but I was able to include most of them.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I actually it's uh maybe it is a small ego trip. The memoir is the longest part, and I tried to trim it down because I'm like, well, I shouldn't just talk about myself. Um but like I wish I could do more of a biography on a few of the people I interviewed, because that was another part of this, was I actually sat down with queer elders.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And I interviewed them. In fact, a podcast, you know, I I could probably turn it into a podcast if I wanted to. Um, but all of these people were telling me about the experience of growing up in the 60s and 70s and 80s during the AIDS crisis and even before Stonewall. And all of these people, they were very generous with their time. Many brought pictures, some of them are in the book, and it just brings to life our history. So, but I didn't get to include all of their stories.

Lara Griffin 27:20

Okay. So maybe there's a podcast in the future, maybe there's another book in the future.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Well, I I I say I have written my book. I would love for someone else to write Forest City Yes Your Queer 2.

Lara Griffin 27:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

And if they wish to continue the research, most of those interviews, and I say most because some are locked up because of privacy as requested by the interviewee, they're at Midway Village. Okay. You can go and you can listen to the conversation that I had with these people.

Lara Griffin 27:47

That's so great. So here's a a couple fun questions. So a song that feels like the soundtrack to this.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Oh God. A song. I I have to divide it into a couple phases. Okay. And the reason I say that is because it is history, so it covers about 160 years.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

So if you go back to the 1800s, early 1900s, it has to be Maple Leaf Rag by Joplin. And the reason for that is because ragtime is just you're seeing the history in black and white, yeah, you know, in the black and white film. If you go into the mid-century, I would say Surf in USA from the Beach Boys, because everybody wants to party through it, but it we ignore the storms that are coming. And then in the modern one, the soundtrack I definitely put is Ava Max's Kings and Queens. And the reason I put that one is because at the Rockton Pride kickoff party, which again was just after the Talcott protests and right when Rockton Pride was reaching its stride, they released a video of the after party. It's on YouTube, and that was the song that the uh videographer chose to underscore. And I said, and one of the lines in there, in chess, one a king can move one space at a time, but queens are free to move wherever they like.

Lara Griffin 29:08

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Credit Day of America.

Lara Griffin 29:12

And what's something you're still curious about?

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Oh, I don't know everything yet. Um oh, there's so many threads to pull on. I I wish I were able to fit more or find more in the 1940s. Because right about 1930, I was able to find one story about a murder in 1930 through to uh 1950. There's really a dearth of information. And it might be that I missed it, but again, that's just that's where I wish there there was more.

Lara Griffin 29:47

So finish the sentence. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

And then I wrote this book because history deserves to be preserved, and I had too much time on my hands. We'll cut out that last part, right?

Lara Griffin 30:11

And so when someone closes Forest City, yesterqueer, what's the feeling you hope lingers after the final page?

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Well, I can answer that very directly because on the last story page, before you get to the acknowledgments and the author page, it has three words that are very, very important, and it's not the end.

Lara Griffin 30:33

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

History is still being written, and we have a chance to do it. And one of the things that I never I didn't set out to make history by doing what I did. It just happened. I didn't set out to become famous to by writing a book. You know, I'm not saying I'm famous, but apparently I am a quote local celebrity. That is what someone else called me. I do not call myself that. You know, they say, be the good you want to see in the world, you know, make the difference you want to see. And that's really the inspiration of it is that, you know, I'm not giving up on fighting for queer rights, and I am more importantly, not going to give up on celebrating the local community that we're here. I hope some person who may be listening to this takes that and says, I want to make a difference. And I say, give me a call. Let's do it together.

Lara Griffin 31:27

Oh, that's awesome. I love that you just were pulling on threads and then it became so big. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

250 pages later, it's like, oh, this is not just a journal article. I have written a book. Yes.

Lara Griffin 31:41

Yes. And so where where can our audience find your book?

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Aaron Powell So what's really funny is um you when it gets back out of print because we sold out. I couldn't believe it. Um we sold out, but the it'll be back at Mays Books uh about midway to late June. You can try calling Midway Village, they have it in their gift shop, or if you're willing to wait a little bit, because I've been told that there's a holds all around, but almost all the local libraries have at least one to two copies in circulation.

SPEAKER_05 32:09

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

And actually Rockford Public Library was the first place I delivered the book. So again, just that round trip of I walk into local history with a question, I walked in two years later with a book.

Lara Griffin 32:19

Yeah. I'm so glad to have read your book. I'm so glad to have met you.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

The feeling is very much reciprocal.

Lara Griffin 32:27

So I want to thank you, Andrew, for being with us today and just putting the time and the effort into this history of Rockford that's been hidden and bringing light to it.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.