Category: Chapter 3: Fay and Raymond

Fay and Raymond

Raymond was a local boy, having been born in Harbor Springs just down the road from Charlevoix. Like Fay, he was the youngest son of a hard-working family. Both his parents were older when he was born and he was almost 20 years younger than his oldest brother. His father was a woods foreman, a rough but ambitious man and someone used to being in charge. One of Raymond’s brothers was a US Marine, another ended up in prison.

Out of this family, Raymond emerged as someone different. He loved music and dancing and by his early 20s identified as a musician. He made his living as a piano man and the clubs up in those northern Michigan woods needed musicians. Raymond fit the bill. During the 30s and into the 40s, Raymond was a local celebrity of sorts as a member of two well-known combo swing bands called the Singing Aces and the Gentlemen of Swing.

At first, Fay struggled with the push and pull of what he wanted and what he knew were his commitments to Thelma. After their brief separation in ‘34, he went home and tried to be the good husband and father that he was expected to be. But a bitterness and frustration had grown between them. Thelma resented Fay’s devil-may-care attitude when she also wanted a break from the burdens of responsibility. Fay was furious when he was reminded of his domestic shortcomings.

We never knew much about Raymond, but Thelma always blamed him for the trouble in her family. My mother interpreted that to mean that Fay had started to understand his gayness and that Raymond and he were lovers. It’s hard to tell if that was true, but this is where Fay’s story really begins for me. It’s a story that is tinged with my mother’s memories as she was always the storyteller, even when she didn't know it. She understood her father in deeply intimate ways, but she would turn out to be wrong about many things.

Me at 3

The attraction and repulsion for her father started early on and it lasted for the rest of her life.

Being Gay

The 1930s were a strangely permissive time for men who were not typically masculine. Take a look at the movie stars of the time – Fred Astaire, William Powell, Leslie Howard, Errol Flynn – not a manly man in the bunch. The macho guys like Clark Gable and Spenser Tracy were semi-tough men but with big hearts and real souls. They even danced from time to time.

Gayness in the Movies

In the annals of gay history, there are a multitude of stories that depict the 1920s and 1930s as a time when gay men and lesbians were visible and living openly with lovers of the same gender. Prohibition had changed the rules for having a good time and the illegal consumption of alcohol went hand in hand with the anything goes attitude.

In addition to gay bars and gay acts in those bars, costume or drag balls sprang up in Chicago, New York and Detroit where men dressed in drag and women dressed in suits danced together cheek to cheek. It was later referred to as the Pansy Craze era, which began sometime in the 20s and ended when the 18th Amendment was repealed in the mid-30s.

The movies and stage were filled with gay characters until the fatal brew of the repeal of Prohibition and the creation of Hollywood's Production Code moved all entertainment away from free expression.

Sexuality was also out of the closet by the 1920s and that meant relationships and behaviors that had been hidden started to emerge. If women could dance seductively with men in the movies, then exposing a crush on a friend wasn’t so shocking. If a love song crooned lyrics that expressed your yen for someone, then maybe that meant every expression of desire was okay. 

It was a time of Mae West and her robust sexuality on the screen and Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” playing on the radio and Noel Coward’s plays of manners were on the stage. And perhaps it is no coincidence that each of these artists was a player in the burgeoning urban gay scene.

But another strand that marked the time before WWII was not at all about sexual openness, but more about not defining sexuality by action. The notion that there is good fellowship between men, for example, allowed an easiness about being attracted to your friend or schoolmate. If attraction turned into physical intimacy, it seemed irrelevant and didn't seem sinister or odd. And if it happened repeatedly with others it didn't mean that someone was a homosexual, it just meant that they probably weren’t going to settle down. It wasn't like anyone was in the closet, because there wasn’t much of a closet.

Read a bit more about this era at Altas Obscura.


I'M SURE MY TAKE ON GAY AND LESBIAN LIFE IN THE 1920s AND 1930s IS COLORED NOT ONLY  BY MY SENSE THAT MY GRANDFATHER ALWAYS MANAGED TO BE TRUE TO HIMSELF (EVEN WHEN HE WAS NOT TELLING THE TRUTH), BUT BECAUSE I WANT IT TO BE SO. THIS MELODRAMATIC SILENT FILM IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE PROOF POINTS THAT GAY LIFE WAS EVIDENT, EVEN IF IT DOES END BADLY.

Fay and Mabel (again)

By 1936, Fay and Thelma separated for good. The late nights and the fast friends were too much for Thelma, but it was Fay who ended up leaving. The raging nighttime fights became worse and Fay often stormed out of the house.

No one knows where he ended up, but he always had a lot of friends where he could bunk. It seems he often ended up at Raymond and Jean’s. At some point, he just stopped coming home.

But Mabel and Fay shared a strict childrearing philosophy that was frequently punitive. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine my carefree, fun-loving Grandpa Fay as being anyone who believed in any kind of punishment, but a letter he wrote to my mother when she was 11 years old, the very year that he left the family and handed her over to her grandmother, bears out his thinking.

In this typewritten 2-page letter that was written the day after her birthday (which he missed), Fay outlines all of my mother’s sins that were enumerated:

  • – disobedience
  • – not working hard enough at school
  • – not practicing her music with enough diligence 

Each failing is detailed with examples of her insolence and laziness. He advises her to be “polite and mannerly as these things cannot be overdone.”

“You know it's you and Shirley that we want to grow up to be perfect ladies and you cannot do it unless you start now to be obedient, polite and appreciative. These things with your beauty will make you perfect.” ~ Fay to Barb

Appreciative? Not a chance. I believe my mother was making her attitude clear. When she recently reread the letter, she threw it down and said it was all a lie. He never bought her a bike and she never went to camp. She never forgave him for his collusion with Mabel.

“They were the worst two years of my life."