"We Were Always There..."

What I Like About This: Here we have an incredible act of love and bravery, I date this photograph from right around the start of WWII, (the loose and low neckerchiefs are the clue to the date, once the war started, they'd have been more tightly rolled and the knot would have been at the "V" of the jumper). It's a brave act because you see the love in their faces, and this is a studio portrait, so their secret was obvious to the photographer as well. During this time and up through the early 1960s, being discovered in a homosexual relationship with anyone, but especially another servicemember, was typically punished by court-martial resulting in not only a dishonorable discharge, but military or federal prison time of up to 10 years at hard labor. 

In his Butler University honors thesis, Vic Overdorf cites the warden of America’s most notorious penitentiary, James Johnston who wrote of one of his prisoners in the late 1930s, “Subject is a military prisoner now serving sentence of 10 years for sodomy... He is a moron and may not have wit enough to go straight but his confinement at Alcatraz will do a lot to restrain him.” Warden Johnston also wrote that his prisoner “is a man of low intelligence, lacking in ethical and moral sense... he has been in conflict with the law because of his abnormal sexual traits…” 

The two chaps in this photo would have been well acquainted with the risk they were taking to record their love in this way. In the wrong hands, this photo could have ruined and ended not only their military careers, but their freedom and their lives. But this photo was clearly to them a commemoration of their love and love was always worth the risk. We will never know what became of their lives and their love for each other, but that this photo was treasured and has survived the decades proves to us that yes, "we were always there."