83 YEAR OLD LESBIAN GOES PUBLIC

Loraine Barr placed the typed, four-page essay in an envelope, sealed it, and then, for three days, wondered if she had the nerve to send it.

"Am I really ready for this?" she thought.

Barr's essay was about a 44-year love affair she had kept from her parents, her relatives – even her dearest, closest friends.

"For heaven's sake," Barr said, recounting that day in May when she finally decided to mail off her essay. "I'm 88 years old. What difference does it make to anybody? It doesn't make a difference to anybody now."

Barr's essay appears in the current (Sept. 3) edition of Newsweek.

All week, the calls have been coming in – several dozen messages of overwhelming support from friends, relatives and strangers who looked up Barr's listed telephone number.

She didn't write the essay for her friends or relatives.

She didn't write it for strangers.

She didn't even write it for her lifelong partner, who died nine years ago.

She wrote it for herself.

FORBIDDEN LOVE

To the outside world, they were roommates – keeping separate bedrooms for appearances.

To each other, Barr and Mary Frances Piercey were the loves of each other's lives.

They felt incredibly grateful to have found each other, and incredibly lucky to have spent more than four decades together.

Barr and Piercey also felt that theirs was "the love that dare not speak its name."

Both grew up at a time when people didn't talk openly about their sexual orientation. "Coming out" as a lesbian just didn't happen back then, Barr said.

So she and Piercey never talked about their relationship – and no one asked.

"It was not an issue," Barr said. "It wasan issue, but it was buried deeply."

Some people knew the nature of their relationship – but nothing ever was verbally acknowledged.


"I dated men a lot; I wanted to be popular," Barr said. "But it was never fun."

Barr's mother hoped she would marry and have children.

Sometimes, she would show friends a picture of Loraine holding a male doll and say, "That's my grandson."