For Frying Out Loud (23 page)

The harassment and threats continued for years.

But the customers kept coming. All kinds of customers. In addition to the loyal regulars, gay and straight, who savored the Blue Moon for its sophisticated food and ambiance, high profile customers like Frank Perdue, Baltimore Oriole Jim Palmer, Congressman Barney Frank, and Govovernor. Tom Carper dined at the Moon.

“The crowds didn't care about social unrest. They kept us in business,” says Felton. “We just kept going.”

In 1988, a disco named The Strand, backed by a group of Rehoboth business owners, including Felton, opened in the center of Rehoboth Beach, turning a shuttered movie house into a hot nightspot. Two years later, Steve Elkins, who had worked at the White House for President Jimmy Carter, and then in computer sales, was asked by his friend Joyce Felton to
move to Rehoboth to manage the BYOB club. Elkins and his partner, Murray Archibald, an artist, traded their decade long weekend life in Rehoboth to move to the resort full time.

Under their watch, up to 700 bodies could be found dancing under disco glitter balls long into the night. The party was grand. But when the Strand continued to apply for a liquor license, the Rehoboth Homeowner's Association and other residents drew their line in the sand. “There was a petition passed around citing noise, traffic and parking concerns to bolster their pleas for denial,” Elkins recalls, “but they got people to sign it by asking ‘Do you want a gay club in your backyard?'

Other downtown businesses, afraid of losing their own rights came off the sidelines to support the Strand, but it was too late. The homeowners won. In 1995, the city voted to ban bars altogether, permitting only establishments that served food to hold liquor licenses. Today, the ordinance still states, “No person shall sell, give, dispense, provide or keep or cause to be sold, given, dispensed, provided or kept any alcoholic beverage on the premises of any dance hall establishment.”

Several weeks after the vote, state troopers raided the Strand in a drug bust, arresting six people. Sadly for all its fans, the Strand could not survive the lack of a liquor license as well as the growing anti-gay sentiment in town. The Strand danced on for a while, but filed for bankruptcy protection in 1993, and, according to Steve Elkins, closed the next year.

CAMP REHOBOTH IS BORN

More trouble brewed. With gays and lesbians being much more visible in town by the early 1990s, many longtime residents feared their town was being overtaken by these newcomers. Bumper stickers appeared saying “Keep Rehoboth a Family Town” – which the gay community interpreted as anti-gay – and there were some violent gay-bashing incidents and less serious but equally upsetting instances of name-calling and harrassment.

Ron Tipton, now retired to the area from Philadelphia remembers being on Poodle Beach when “young toughs would occasionally stop by and threaten us.”

It was then, in 1991, Murray Archibald, Steve Elkins and their friends in the business community thought about forming an organization to promote understanding between the gay the straight communities.

While more and more gays and lesbians headed for Rehoboth on summer weekends, drawn by the beautiful resort and the growing number of gay-friendly businesses, something needed to be done to bring the gay and straight communities together – and keep gay citizens safe.

According to Elkins, a frightening incident happened on the Boardwalk in 1992 when a man was attacked with a broken off champagne bottle and very seriously injured. A group of five teens – one old enough to be tried as an adult – was arrested and convicted, with the adult sentenced to five years in jail.

“Sadly,” says Elkins,” City officials did not want to make a statement about the incident. “They wanted to brush it under the rug.” However, Elkins says, Rehoboth Police Chief Creig Doyle insisted it become public and Elkins was interviewed by the newspapers and WHYY-TV. One City Commissioner, Roger Poole, contacted Elkins the next day and thanked him. “I knew we had to reach out and let people know this was not acceptable,” Poole remembers.

So, the organization CAMP Rehoboth was born, with CAMP being an acronym for Create A More Positive Rehoboth, along with a nod to the gay community's hallmark campiness. Since one of the interpretations of the Biblical word “Rehoboth” is “room for all,” the name CAMP Rehoboth was a natural.

This fledgling nonprofit organization of gay volunteers (along with some straight allies) hosted meetings with local government, conducted sensitivity training with the police department and met with homeowner associations to try to bring the diverse communities closer.

CAMP Rehoboth started with a four page newsletter, a small board of directors with Archibald as president, and a tiny office space in the courtyard at 39 Baltimore Avenue, just down the street from the Blue Moon.

Along with its mission of bringing the communities together, the gay community itself needed a hub. While there were a growing number of places to dine and dance, with an increasing number of welcoming B&Bs, restaurants and shops, there was no central focus – a place people could come for information about the community. And it wouldn't hurt to have a way of reaching out for understanding and cooperation between members of the gay and lesbian community and the local merchants, government, year-round and summer residents, and anyone else calling Rehoboth home.

“Our goal was to work with the entire community,” says Elkins, currently executive director of the organization. “After all, if we were isolated, with divisions in the community, we wouldn't really be a living representation of what the rainbow symbol, long associated with the gay community, means.”

MAKING PROGRESS

The organization, in addition to providing events and programs for the gay community, reached out to fight discrimination by promoting political awareness and developing relationships with the local media, police, government, community and clergy.

As time passed, CAMP Rehoboth, its volunteers and small staff became well-known in the community, assisting other non-profits, like the library with its book sales, the Independant Film Festival with volunteers or Beebe Hospital with its fundraising benefits. As local homeowners got to know these volunteers personally, the division between gay and straight residents started to narrow.

In May 2003, a sexual orientation anti-discrimination law was passed unanimously by the mayor and commissioners of Rehoboth Beach.

And since its formation in 1991, CAMP Rehoboth has seen incredible growth.

That four page newsletter has been known to go over 120 pages now, and instead of being available at a handful of sites, the magazine is delivered to Rehoboth area businesses, and many more in Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Gay life changed, as well. With more acceptance and visibility, people had more options for places to meet and spend time. As was the trend nationally, big dance clubs had trouble sustaining business other than on weekends. The Renegade, which closed its doors in 2003, gave way to smaller venues, mixing dining and dancing, and a gay community that was out and visible in the entire community.

On May 30, 2009, 19 years after its inception, CAMP Rehoboth held the grand opening for the new wing of its community center on Baltimore Avenue. The tiny starter space has grown into two adjacent in-town properties that house the CAMP Rehoboth office, a beautiful new room for events and meetings, a lending library and public computer access, as well as a home for businesses which rent space around the center courtyard.

The crowd at the grand opening included city commissioners, local business owners, politicians, bankers, and hundreds of CAMP Rehoboth supporters – gay and straight.

In another milestone, the signing of the bill that added the words “sexual orientation” to Delaware's nondiscrimination law took place July 2, 2009 at CAMP Rehoboth, with Governor Jack Markell and several legislators who had worked for passage of the bill in attendance.

Former Commissioner Roger Poole sees a big difference over the years. He and his wife Joyce are best friends with their gay neighbors and enjoy all the diversity the town offers. Roger was delighted to find his photo in a recent edition of
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
. “Today I think that almost all of the residents here are comfortable sharing our town with the gay community.”

Is life perfect, with discrimination entirely gone? Of course not. But it is infrequent and only whispered to like-minded individuals. “They are missing out on good friends,” says Poole.

Today, Rehoboth Beach and the surrounding areas are home to a large gay population, many businesses owned and operated by gays and lesbians and a throng of gay visitors seamlessly blending with the community at large.

Joyce Felton finds the difference in the last quarter century amazing. “I'm truly grateful to have had the opportunity to live in a time and place to help make change – even if it was challenging and traumatic at times. My life has been enriched for it.”

One example of how Rehoboth has evolved as a place with “room for all”: In 2008, as
USA Today
called the resort one of America's best gay beaches,
Reader's Digest
anointed it one of America's top retirement destinations.

Part-time resident Peter Rosenstein has been visiting Rehoboth for many years and sees a huge difference today, from the 1980s. “It's the freedom today to be yourself and not be afraid of what others will think, it's the openness of the gay community and the feeling that Rehoboth is now one big community and not two separate ones.”

As Steve Elkins is fond of saying, recalling that old bumper sticker, “Rehoboth is still a family town – for all kinds of families.”

January 2010

IT'S A SMALL RIDE AFTER ALL…

Disney on New Year's Eve. What was I thinking?????

For the first time in a decade, my mate and I ventured outside Reho for the holidays. Given our current economic diet we simply could not pass up an invitation to spend a week with good friends in sunny Florida.

Alas, we actually had to get there, which required cramming the car with two suitcases, two overnight bags, two sets of golf clubs, two Schnauzers, and two winter-weary humans. Is there an uglier, more boring route that I-95? Our favorite roadside attractions included pictures of bloody fetuses on anti-abortion signs and a huge billboard erected by some pissed off people warning “Waldo, FL Speed trap!” The Chamber of Commerce must be pleased. Sure enough, there was a black and white with sirens atop lying in wait. Thank you, billboard people.

Lots of us have navigation systems now and it was eerily obvious when we hit a traffic snarl. Dozens of cars, us included, peeled off like lemmings through suspect neighborhoods at the insistence of, as we call her, the bitch on the dashboard. We blindly followed the pack until we came out the other side of the back-up. But frankly, she could have led us to the Amityville Horror House for all we knew. Does anyone else think this blind obedience is a little spooky?

Ah, the gourmet food choices en route. My favorite is Sonny's Barbecue, which, if I recall, was the last place I ever entered with an intact gall bladder. Sometime in the mid 1990s, returning from the South, I ate an enormous lard-laden dinner at a Sonny's and several miles down the road my gall bladder became an improvised explosive device.

As I moaned in pain, Bonnie said “I have to get you to a hospital!”

“Not in South Carolina you don't!”

So we drove non-stop, nine hours back to civilization so I
could have surgery where we might be treated as a legitimate couple.

But this time, filled with plenty of gall, but gall-bladderless, we stopped at Sonny's, with nothing left to lose. Just dignity. It was unwise eating all those baked beans and getting right back into the car. Turnabout is fair play: the Schnauzers sat in the back fanning the air.

But after a mere 19 hours of mindless driving we reached our destination.

Good friends, good food, good god they took me fishing. There's a reason there's no book called
Shoes of the Jewish Fisherman
. There I was, standing in the sun, waving my fishing pole, feeling my skin prematurely aging, with nothing on the hook to show for it.

Of course, the three other fisherpersons snagged trout, flounder and holy mackerel at an alarming pace, making me look like a slacker. Suddenly I felt a big tug at my line and managed to stutter “FFFish!”

“And she's a communication professional,” said my spouse.

The captain grabbed my line, relieved me of a large silver trout and re-baited my hook. I've gotten lots of rebates in my time but this was my first rebait. “Fish!” I yelled, the process repeating itself. Within seconds of my line landing back in the water, I shouted “Fish!” again. In all, sixteen times.

When the sun set we pulled pants over our shorts, zipped up our jackets and shivered, speeding to shore with our haul. While the three amigos huddled in morbid fascination as the captain gutted the fish, I sat in the car with the butt warmer on. If I wanted to see that many entrails I could just as easily watch
Life in the ER
on Discovery.

We ate our trophy fish that night, then spent a day or two playing golf and looking at alligators. Simultaneously. It's impossible to concentrate on your tee shot when a nine-foot alligator with bulging eyeballs is staring you down from twenty feet away. My game suffered, but I still have all my body parts.

Golf, fishing, sun, fun behind us, we headed home – with
a last stop, on New Year's Eve in Disney World. I did love it, but two things are clear. First, Disney is the only place I can spend more money per minute than in a casino. Second, nowhere in my entire life, including Times Square, have I ever been crammed amid more teeming humanity, pushing and shoving toward a good time. But it was Disney, so as crowded as it was, there was no actual rioting. At one point even Mickey got testy.

In the Magic Kingdom we made the mistake of going on a spaceship ride in Tomorrowland which was made for our bodies from yesteryearland. We climbed into the minuscule airplane, wedging ourselves into the fuselage like a stepmother's clodhopper in a glass slipper.

“Good heavens, are we going to be able to get out of this thing?” I asked as it rocketed upward.

“Whamfth? said Bon, teeth lodged in my hoodie.

We had a spectacular view of the whole park from up there but spent most of the ride panicked we'd need Goofy and the fire brigade to get us out. We eventually dug our thighs free but not without synchronized screaming.

“Hey, maybe that oldie-but-goodie It's a Small World ride will be more hospitable.” I said. Frankly, we were surprised to find they'd spent significant money to make the boats smaller, lower and considerably harder to get into since our last visit. Alas, it was a small ride after all.

But counting down to 2010 in Epcot was the biggest hoot. We downed champagne in every “country” in the park, watched a million bucks of fireworks usher in the new year and then tried to leave.

Ha! In a champagne stupor, we swept along with the mass exodus to the parking lots. No problem; nobody was going anywhere. Amid a symphony of beeping as owners pressed their keys, hoping to find their cars, we just put the seats back in our vehicle and slept it off. Happily, the dogs were bunking with Pluto at Epcot kennel.

It is not true that when you wish upon a star, anything your
heart desires will come to you. My heart desired to be beamed up on January 1 and dropped back in Rehoboth, skipping the Waldo speed trap, Sonny's beans, Right-to-Life billboards, a thousand Cracker Barrels, and all of I-95.

M-I-C, see ya real soon, K-E-Y why? Because next time we fly in a wide-bodied jet.