Bérubé, Allan 1946-2007 (Allan Ronald Bérubé, Allan Berube)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born December 3, 1946, in Springfield, MA; died of complications from stomach ulcers, December 11, 2007, in Liberty, NY. Historian, educator, innkeeper, and author. Bérubé described himself as a self-educated community historian; his community was made up of gays and lesbians, who were largely scattered and hidden until he and other activists brought them together. Bérubé was a college dropout who became an anti-Vietnam war protester in the late 1960s. He settled in the San Francisco area, where he lived in a gay commune. In the late 1970s he became a founding member of the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, and from there he launched a number of traveling lecture and slide shows on gay and lesbian topics. During this time, he acquired a large collection of letters—that had been discovered in a garbage container—which were written to one another by a small group of gay soldiers who had served in World War II. Bérubé was fascinated by the stories these letters revealed, and the study of gays in the military became his life's work. He was surprised to learn how many gay soldiers there had been and how well their presence had been tolerated, at least in the early years of the war. He became convinced that the war years, the draft, and aggressive recruitment quotas actually gave silent birth to what became a public and activist movement a generation later. It was the war that had plucked people out of the anonymous (and often solitary) nooks and crannies of small-town America and brought them together where they could find one another, socialize, and form friendships that would last a lifetime. Bérubé turned their story into a slide show, then a book, then (with director Arthur Dong) an award-winning television special. The book and television documentary led to lectures at prestigious universities such as the University of California and, in 1996, a "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Bérubé, who at the time was operating a bed-and-breakfast establishment and collectibles business in the Catskills, intended to use the grant money for further research on the contributions of unsung gay and lesbian contributors to the American success story. At the time of his death, however, his primary contribution was the book Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (1990) and the companion documentary.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, December 19, 2007, sec. 2, p. 12.

Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2007, p. B11.

New York Times, December 16, 2007, p. S12.

Washington Post, December 17, 2007, p. B7.