Original subtitles

604 Iberville:

Located at the intersection of Chartres and Iberville Streets,

a couple blocks away from the famed Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.

With records dating back to the mid-1800's,

this three-story building has had a rich history.

It once housed a cotton mill

and has been the home to countless cocktail lounges.

Typically, a bar could be found on the first floor,

while the third floor consisted of rental rooms

that were more than likely used as flop houses for sailors and other visitors.

But in 1970, the second floor was vacant

and an unlikely fellow by the name of Phil Esteve

would make a decision that would inadvertently impact the history of New Orleans.

Phil, after high school,

decided to go into the seminary,

and that didn't work out for him.

After that he went into the Navy,

and of course, that didn't work out for him,

so he come back home to New Orleans.

He asked a friend,

"well, I'm torn between opening a gay bar or opening a gift shop",

and his friend said,

"well, if I only had a dollar,

I would buy a beer before I would buy a knick-knack".

The Up Stairs Lounge opened on Halloween of 1970.

It's a very much a party atmosphere. They just had fun.

The Up Stairs Lounge was kind of out of the way by French Quarter standards.

It's out on the very edge of the Quarter.

It's not near the brightly lit, tourist friendly part of Bourbon Street.

It wasn't necessarily a rough part of the Quarter,

but, at that time,

Hustler's Row was right around the corner.

But, I never regarded it as being dangerous or anything.

The Up Stairs Lounge -

You could go up a flight of stairs that turned to the left,

and there was like a big, metal fire door there.

Initially, it was full...

Well, it still is, full of drainage pipes from the water

that was run up into the building long after the building was constructed.

Phil and Buddy draped all that with colorful fabric

so that the entrance would be inviting.

The Up Stairs bar was divided into three sections,

with like a big, archway.

In the physical bar -

the bar stools, were in the first section,

and the second section had tables and chairs

and a little dance floor,

and in the third section, it was like a completely different world.

It was a small theater, with a stage and little chairs set up.

The walls were covered with red flocked wallpaper

and the carpet was a reddish-orange color

and the bar counter was a similar color.

So it was very bright.

There were also some beefcake posters that were very famous in the 1970s:

You know, Burt Reynolds lying on his bearskin rug

and Mark Spitz and that itty bitty swimsuit with seven gold medals.

The first time I went there and opened the door, I closed it.

I was scared. [laughs]

I couldn't go in it.

Every time, when you open the door,

everybody looks like that at ya...

and then you close the door...

So I got up enough courage and I went in

and you know, had a beer and that,

everything was fine.

I felt really safe, and I would go often,

especially Sunday to Beer Busts.

It was the most fun part of all.

It was more like a social club you might say, than a bar.

It wasn't so much of a cruising or

pickup or hustler bar or anything like that.

I'm not gonna sit here and say that nothing...

ever happened along those lines on occasion,

but mostly, it was just a gathering place of friends.

I used to take my little, black, shaggy haired dog up there.

His name was Jocko.

He'd sit up on a bar stool

and have a little bowl of milk and vodka.

[Laughter]

and wander around.

But we just said he was a "bar hound".

[Laughter]

I met my first lover, Reginald Adams, at the Up Stairs.

He was the first black man that I ever knew,

because people were very segregated back then.

And there were only a few bars

that didn't care -

that would let blacks and whites in.

The Up Stairs was one of them.

I was sitting at the bar and he offered to buy me a drink.

The bartender came over,

it was Buddy Rasmussen, he was also the bar manager,

he asked me,

you know,

if you want to meet this guy, he wants to send you a drink.

I said "sure".

It was love at first sight.

And the more I got to know him, the more I loved him.

It was much more difficult to be interracial in the South

in the 1970s.

Because we actually had that discussion.

We sat down when we decided to move in together,

because he said, "well, you know you're gonna lose some of your friends".

But we decided we wanted to be together,

so we were gonna be together.

And it didn't really matter who accepted us or who didn't.

I figured if they were friends of mine and they were true friends,

they would accept him and he said the same thing.

We felt at home at the Up Stairs Lounge.

Phil Esteve, the owner and Buddy Rasmussen,

his head bartender and general manager -

They went out of their way to create events that would bring people in.

There was always something fun going on there.

There was a stage where

dramatic performances would take place.

They were written as melodramas,

but most of the casting was cross-gender.

Men were playing the women's roles.

Sometimes women would play men's roles.

And instead of being called "melodramas",

they were nicknamed "Nellydramas".

And that was in a room where instead of regular theater seating,

people would sit around these these big spools that were used to hold cable.

Buddy would put bowls of popcorn on the table

and when the villain appeared on stage,

people would "boo" and throw popcorn at the villain.

I was usually cast as "Little Nellie".

[Laughter] Hmm... hated that.

I wanted to be the villain at one time

and Bettye said, "you are not villain character". [Laughter]

You know, I said "okay, so I'm 'Little Nellie' character?"

[Laughter]

You know so,

yeah, I was always "Little Nell".

One time, I played the part as a stand-in for the lead character in one of them.

I played the part of the "Infamous Memphis Queen",

which was really fun.

That was a real fun role, you know?

But we had a good time.

There was a baby grand piano.

A young man named David Stuart Gary would play there regularly.

He was nicknamed "Piano Dave".

And when he was playing, there would be sing-alongs.

At the end of the beer bust,

everybody would hold hands and get in a circle

and sing, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall".

It was just a song that everybody was singing by the "Brotherhood of Man".

You know, and they played the piano,

and we'd be singing to it and just kind of holding arms together,

and we'd kind of sway.

It was, I guess, it was kind of spiritual in a way.

In a sense that we were united together

in a brother/sisterhood bond.

[Song: "United We Stand"]

The third room would soon serve yet another purpose.

The Metropolitan Community Church was founded by the Reverend Troy Perry

in Los Angeles, California in 1968.

The MCC would be a Christian Church

serving the often neglected religious, spiritual and social needs

of the gay community.

His vision spread quickly.

In the early 1970s,

congregations were forming around the country,

including in New Orleans.

The Elysian Fields parish of MCC New Orleans held its first meeting in April of 1971

under the guidance of Reverend David Solomon,

co-coordinator of the New Orleans chapter

of the Gay Liberation Front.

After struggling to find a consistent location to worship,

Reverend Solomon announced that the Lord

directed him to a theater in the back of the bar in the French Quarter,

and the owners had made it available on Sunday evenings, free of charge.

The first worship service was held in the third room at the Up Stairs Lounge on May 19, 1971.

Services continued under the leadership of Deacon Bill Larson

with the help of Associate Pastor Mitch Mitchell.

Bill was older than me.

I remember that. [Laughter]

I remember too, that Bill was a Lay Methodist Minister

when he came in to MCC

and in those days,

honey, if you told me you had a called to minister,

I laid hands on you right there.

There was no committee like there is today in the Metropolitan Community Church.

I wanted so bad to have people who had a burden like I did to help out.

He was just a very concerning person.

He was very devoted.

He was devoted to the church.

He was devoted to the members of the church.

He was a very loving person.

Mitch and his partner were like two kids,

they way I remember them. [Laughter]

They could be very...

what word do I want to use?

They were so funny sometimes,

but bordering on not knowing when not to be kids,

if that that makes any sense.

Mitch was

just

very much in love with Horace,

and Horace vice-versa.

Mitch thought this is an act!

"I can't believe he loves me like he does."

Well, he really did!

He loved him!

Mitch wanted to be involved with the MCC.

He became an Associate Pastor.

To me, MCC,

Metropolitan Community Church, was my surrogate family.

I didn't feel comfortable with my own family

because I was gay.

I didn't feel comfortable in my jobs.

So the social circle was MCC.

Now, being there at the Up Stairs Lounge in the third room,

some people thought it would be good to

bring more congregants.

It was bigger and spacious and

the social hour that followed afterward

and then the Beer Bust that followed after that

was conducive to meeting other people

and feeling, you know, very safe in that environment.

But the outlook from the gay community outside the bar

who didn't go there was,

"a gay church in a gay bar?"

It didn't lend credibility to the word "church".

So a congregation,

other people in the group,

wanted the congregation to move to another building

to have the church service.

Bill Larson and

Reverend Bill Richardson of St. George's Episcopal Church,

especially Reverend Bill Richardson,

thought it would be more appropriate

to lend the use of the chapel to MCC.

It was a wonderful thing to be gifted with that use.

It helped with the congregation

putting no money toward the rent

to save money for a rent to own or lease to own building.

The congregation quickly accrued enough money in its treasury to lease a place of their own.

Located in the Garden District,

the double Creole Cottage housed the sanctuary on one side

and Deacon Bill Larson's rectory on the other.

And while worship services were no longer held at the Up Stairs,

many congregates continued the tradition of attending the Sunday Beer Busts after church.

This proved no different on Sunday, June 24, 1973.

It was the usual Beer Bust.

Everybody's laughin' and cuttin' up and talkin'.

You know, and dancin' and stuff like that.

And then they had a piano player in there.

There was a buzzer at the bottom of the stairs.

Cab drivers or delivery drivers would buzz

when they needed to alert people upstairs that they were there.

The buzzer kept going off.

Whether it was somebody down on the street trying to warn them

or if it was a short in the wire,

No one really knows what happened,

but the buzzer kept going off.

Buddy Rasmussen turned to Luther Boggs who was sitting closest to the door and said

"Luther, would you go see who in the hell is ringing that buzzer!"

So Luther opened the door.

The fire burst into the bar!

All of a sudden, you heard people screamin'.

From laughter to screamin'.

I could see the glow of the flames

and all of a sudden,

the flames,

that curtain that was hanging at the top,

it just kind of like shot straight across that,

and oddly enough,

it was the indoor-outdoor carpeting and

the fire actually lifted that carpeting up.

It was like floating up with the,

I think the flames were just going under it.

Flames were just swirling all around me in the air,

and the fire just ripped across the Up Stairs Lounge.

It was pandemonium instantly,

when the fire came into the bar.

It was the end of a Beer Bust and many had had lots to drink

and then the windows were right there.

They thought that would be a quick exit,

so they just ran to the windows.

They had a big window here,

and I think, it was three windows. Wasn't it three?

Okay, one there, one there, one there.

And you saw people run that way and I went to the middle one and

miraculously got through the bars,

and then hit the ground.

People, you know,

blocked my fall, and I woke up in a hospital.

Jean Gosnell was sitting near the front of the bar near Luther Boggs,

when Luther went to open the door and the fire came in, and

obviously everyone near the fire escape wanted to get out the fire escape quickly.

It was taking too long to open it,

so Luther ended up pushing Jean through the glass -

Broke a couple of her teeth.

She spit them out. They went out onto the fire escape.

Luther said, "I'm burning Jean! Help me! Help me!"

And she just tried to beat out some of the flames.

She ended up being severely burned as well.

Luther jumped down into the street,

Jean ran up the fire escape to the third floor

where she waited 'til the fire department rescued her.

Someone ran into the bathroom, which was right by the fire escape

and warned his friend to come out of the bar and

that guy came out of the bathroom, saw the fire right there,

jumped through the fire escape into the street.

He looked up to see his friend.

His friend never made it out.

Two bodies were found in the bathroom.

Another body was found right in front of the fire escape.

So that fire escape was cut off within seconds.

Buddy Rasmussen had been in the Fire Division in the Air Force

and as soon as he saw the fire,

he went down the length of the bar,

telling everyone, "Follow me, follow me, follow me, follow me".

He ended up leading about 25 people out through the second room to the fire door in the third room.

[Ricky Everett] Buddy is the one who grabbed me and took us out that door.

He saved my life.

I had a friend visiting me from Atlanta

and when we were going out,

he was coming out behind me,

and I turned to look back behind me,

and he wasn't there.

He had somehow gotten in front of me

and I didn't realize it.

And so I turned back,

and at the same time, Mitch Mitchell was going back in the door,

going looking for his lover, Horace.

Horace Broussard.

So Mitch and I went back in at the same time

and he just like disappeared off into the flames.

I would die for my partner.

And when they told me about how Mitch got out,

I know how he felt.

I would have probably done the same thing -

tried to get back in and get my partner out of that inferno.

[Sobbing]

And he rushed back into the building.

And the FBI found their bones together,

laying on top of each other.

[choking back tears]

The only thing that saved me out of it was,

It was,

it was a miracle.

God did a miracle there.

It was like a blanket covered me from the head to toe

and it wasn't like an imaginary thing.

I could feel it physically on my body.

And at the same time,

I knew it was God

and so I turned

and I couldn't see the door, where it was,

that I came into,

because of all the flames.

But I knew the direction, so I just went on out.

I got out on the rooftop and

there wasn't anybody there, except one man,

and he told me very gently,

to step down through the window there -

that it was an apartment and just follow the stairs down to the street.

And I walked at Bourbon Street to Iberville and took a left

and as I took a left,

I could see all the commotion

going up and down the street.

There were fire engines still coming and

there was a crowd assembling on the corner.

As I got up to the crowd on the corner,

there was a policeman there saying, "you can't go any further than that".

I said, "I've got to get back in there."

I said "my lover is waiting for me. He's upstairs in the bar."

He said, "that's the place that's on fire"!

It was,

a shock and

in my mind, it was like,

"What's going on? What's going on?"

I was questioning myself.

Was I really seeing what I was seeing?

Because it was hard for me to believe that.

I wasn't gone that long.

We were gonna take Adam and Buddy to dinner

and then Reggie said, "how much cash do you have on you?"

and I said well, I don't have much cash

but I can run home and get the checkbook.

And he said, "I'll go get it."

I said, "no, you just ordered a fresh drink. I'm done.

I'll get a drink when I get back."

So I ran out the door to go get the checkbook.

It couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes

and here the place was on fire.

A friend of mine came running up to me

and told me that a lot of people got out over the...

They went.. there was a theater in the back.

They went through the theater in the back and over the roof

and they got out over on the

Chartres Street side.

So I thought, well maybe Reggie was over there.

So I tried to walk around to Canal Street

and come around that way,

but they had most of Chartres blocked off with fire engines, because the bar being on the corner,

they had fire engines on both streets that met on the corner there.

I just kept looking through the crowd hoping to see Reggie and Adam.

On the street, after the fire, was like,

just chaos!

Crowds of people looking and watching.

There were medical people there treating wound victims,

people crying,

and you know, it was a bad scene.

There was one fella, his name was Luther.

They had brought him out on a stretcher

and I photographed him and he was in such pain.

He was just screaming.

He was lying on his back on the stretcher.

His arms were up, his clothes were burnt off of him,

all of his hair was burnt,

and the smell of a burning building,

the smell of burning flesh,

just...

uh..

It was an awful smell.

Bill Larson tried to escape by crawling out of a window,

but was ultimately trapped

by the window framing and by the bars that were there

to prevent people from falling out of the windows.

I saw the Reverend's body

hanging halfway out the window,

burned.

I was just so totally horrified!

I looked at the other window,

and I couldn't tell what that was.

It was the person's rear

trying to back through the window,

and he had brown boots with a brass buckle on the boot

and he was like in a fetus position

trying to get out of the window and couldn't get through.

And that was the window that was next to the one where the Reverend was

and it also had a stack of bodies of people

that were trying to get out

and apparently, they just pressed up against the wall and the window

and just, you know, they couldn't get out.

They just burned there.

When Buddy Rasmussen led people out the back way down into the street,

he came around to the front of the bar where people were still struggling to get out the windows.

He looked up, and he saw his lover, Adam, still sitting on the stool.

He had not moved off his stool.

He was sitting there waving his arms amidst the flames,

screaming.

And the last that Buddy saw of Adam

was when a fire hose stream of water

knocked Adam off his stool.

I started volunteering for the Red Cross on this Fire Watch Program

going to fire scenes.

We immediately swung into action.

They had fellow Red Cross workers there,

because the canteen truck was there,

and we started tending to the injured

and getting them off to hospitals.

We had first-aid training.

Of course, back then, first-aid training wasn't to the level of first responders,

paramedic training of today.

But, you know, we did what we can and that's another thing:

With all of these things, is that you just switch into action.

There's 29 fatalities at the Up Stairs Lounge,

up there on the second floor

and a good many of them were all piled against that front,

you know, wall.

And the firemen were having a lot of trouble getting those apart,

putting them in body bags.

They would put them in a snorkel fire truck

that was right by the fire escape on Iberville Street

and they would bring them down.

So we would assist in taking the body bags off of there,

and putting them into the coroner's unit.

So we weren't exactly involved in recovering the remains,

but we were in a way, because we were the part downstairs and all.

We were on a street part.

I was dispatched from the scene to Charity Hospital

and I just walked in and stood in the emergency room,

kind of up against the wall, right inside the doors that swung in.

Lots of noise.

Lots of moaning

and you know,

men howling in pain.

The nurses and the interns and residents and doctors

really were working together,

hustling,

yelling at each other,

yelling to each other, you know.

But they were racing against the clock

to try to save as many as they could.

Drawing blood, applying gauze and

medication and you know,

cutting people's clothing off to get to the wounds.

And you know, they were triaging, doing their jobs.

Again, very professional. Very caring.

Doing what doctors and nurses were trained to do.

I ran up and down the hallway in Charity Hospital

and asked

Rusty Quinton and several other people,

they're all deceased now,

if they had seen Reggie.

And none of them recalled seeing him.

And they were also firemen and people there

and one of the firemen explained to me

that people sitting at the piano

didn't make it out.

At that time, he said there was no way of

telling me if they were gonna be able to identify him

because most of them were burned beyond recognition

that we're sitting in that area.

News of the New Orleans fire quickly reached Reverend Troy Perry in Los Angeles.

He learned that countless members of the Metropolitan Community Church

were seriously injured or killed,

including two clergy.

On the surface,

this grim scene looked all too familiar to Reverend Perry

and the Metropolitan Community Church.

In January of the same year,

an arsonist torched the MCC Mother Church in Los Angeles,

nearing total destruction.

Three months later,

the MCC meeting place in Nashville, Tennessee was set on fire.

And while no one was injured during these attacks,

no one was arrested either.

The New Orleans fire was the third in six months

and it would be the deadliest single event

to affect the Metropolitan Community Church.

Troy immediately assembled a diverse and experienced team

to travel to New Orleans

to assist with recovery

and help mobilize the community.

The first to join Perry were MCC Reverends John Gill from Atlanta

and Paul Breton from Washington, D.C..

Morty Manford, president of the Gay Activist Alliance in New York and

Morris Kight, the Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center,

soon joined the delegation.

Both men had a great deal of experience dealing with the press,

city officials and law enforcement.

When I arrived in New Orleans,

Reverend John Gill picked me up at the airport

and once we arrived at Bill's house,

it was devastation.

Devastation.

Everybody crying.

All of us

trying to come to terms.

We preachers trying to reassure everybody,

no, God does not hate us.

This is not God who did this,

any more than God killed Jews in the Holocaust.

This is mass murder.

This is not God angry at us.

Some human being did this,

not God.

It was very rough.

And we had announced when we arrived,

that we were gonna hold a press conference

at five o'clock in the afternoon on top of the Marriott.

And of course, we walked over and looked down and there was ...

The next street over was where the bar was at -

the Up Stairs Lounge.

And we looked at the burned out front of it.

But here we are, and the first thing that happened was

we pick up the newspapers and

my God, I went, I mean, through the roof!

It quoted Major Morris of the police department:

We may have a long time to find out who these people were.

This is a bar frequented by,

now what I remember was,

"thieves, burglars and queers".

So when he said it,

I just hit the ceiling!

I mean,

I went nuts!

And of course, the press shows up

because this is the first time

New Orleans has ever had homosexuals

who were willing to talk in front of TV cameras in broad daylight,

and I mean, we had talked before and they could tell it!

So I said, "You know, this has got to stop!"

I said, "this is not thieves, burglars and queers".

"This is somebody's mother, father, daughter, son."

I said, "these are human beings who have burned to death"!

I said, "we've heard the jokes.

We know what people are saying.

'What are you gonna bury them in?

Fruit jars?'"

I mean,

comments that were made!

The reaction to it

certainly spoke to the homophobia,

not necessarily of the city,

but society in general, as far as I'm concerned.

I remember one photographer, older man,

referred to it as "The Fruit Fry"

And others talked about, you know,

"roasting the fags" and that kind of stuff.

All the kind of bigoted epithets.

It wasn't constant, but I heard it.

Everybody was trying to find out who had made it out,

who had perished.

What do we do if we got word that our friends had perished?

How do you contact the family?

It was just so much uncertainty, as what to do.

And again,

having to go to work the next day and

pretend as if it didn't bother you,

or you hadn't heard about it,

because,

we couldn't come out at work.

So you had to pretend:

"Oh, there was a fire?"

"Oh, did somebody die?"

While inside,

there was a lump in your throat

that was enough to choke you.

But that was just part of the play-acting

that we all learned to do back in those days.

Apparently, after the fire,

both Mayor Landrieu and Governor Edwin Edwards

thought that it was

unnecessary or politically risky

to acknowledge the suffering and the deaths

of gay men.

And so they didn't want to do it.

Both were called repeatedly

and asked to issue statements

and neither would.

Within eight months prior to the Up Stairs fire,

there were two very serious tragedies in New Orleans,

both of them fire related.

The Rault Center fire killed six people.

And when that happened, the Mayor, Moon Landrieu,

Governor Edwin Edwards

and Archbishop Philip Hannan,

made many public statements to the press

about how this was a huge tragedy

and a day of mourning was declared for the city.

The death toll from the Howard Johnson's incident

was 10.

And again, Mayor Moon Landrieu,

Governor Edwin Edwards,

Archbishop Hannan,

all made statements to the news -

to newsprint sources, to television journalists, to radio journalists.

Archbishop Hannan went to the hospital

to comfort survivors and their families.

He also preached the funeral mass for two of the dead.

Then a few months later, the Up Stairs Lounge fire happened

and the ultimate death toll was 32.

So it was double that of the Howard Johnson's incident

and the Rault Center incident, combined.

All three men:

the Governor, the Mayor, the Archbishop -

were completely silent.

There was no day of mourning.

There were no public statements.

They seemed to have actively avoided the press.

It was as though those lives didn't count.

I lost my grandmother and two uncles in the fire.

It was devastating to my family -

losing three members of our family at one time.

How can any family recover easily?

The non-acknowledgment

was a slap in the face of every family member,

not just my family.

Mitch and his partner had their kids that weekend -

two sons.

And I was worried that they had taken them to the bar,

because sometimes in New Orleans you could get away with that,

I mean, as long as there was an adult with the kid.

So we're all trying to figure out,

"where are the kids"?

They took us the movies, and said that they were going to go get

some drinks, I think, or something,

and go to a meeting.

Me and my brother

went to see 'The World's Greatest Athlete'.

I'll never forget that as long as I live.

They kept on running it over and over and over,

hoping somebody would show up and pick us up,

but nobody did.

I knew something was wrong.

I felt something was wrong.

'Cuz Daddy ain't never left us like that before.

You know, he's always come back and got us, you know.

And they kept on playing and playing and playing

and they never showed back up.

I didn't know for a whole week that my Dad had died.

But a government official or you know,

police chief or mayor or

anybody...

Nobody ever

said "sorry for your loss" or

"sorry this happened to y'all" or what.

You know, nothing!

And it does make me angry!

It really does!

Because all them lives was snuffed out

like a candle!

Just [pfft]!

That was it

and

nobody cared about them.

So the largest challenge was trying to deal

with the living.

I knew that the people here needed some help

and

the help can range anywhere from just

having a good shoulder to cry on,

to a good hug,

to

people trying to work with them

and go through their pain and their sorrow

as they went through it.

That's very much

something that's needed by human beings

is the ability to cry -

the ability to feel empathy from other people.

Sometimes just knowing somebody, somewhere cares,

makes all the difference in the world!

I started meeting people and

ministering with people,

touching people, holding people, going to the funeral homes,

going to the hospitals -

The hospital visitations were the ones that were the hardest to do.

One of the things that I -

I've always believed is important,

is when I go see someone in the hospital,

is the importance of touch,

just holding a person's hand,

being very important for that person's healing.

I was not able to

anoint them for healing

or to give them communion

because of the fear of infection.

Jean Gosnell,

Jim Hambrick and Luther Boggs

were the three people that I remember the most,

that I visited in the hospital regularly.

Luther's spirits were very high.

Luther was determined that he was going to get out of the hospital

and he was going to go back to work

and he was not going to let a little thing like getting burnt keep him down.

His words, not mine.

But Luther was just an absolutely wonderful person,

always asking about others,

never once, do I remember him complaining about his own pain or injury,

even though he was badly injured

and he became one of the deceased.

But I had to go to the hospital

every day for a while

because I had like third-degree burns on my face and

this arm, here, here and all down here.

And they had to peel the skin off me.

They kind of scraped it and then peel it.

I was like, "Oh, God".

And it made you so weak

and you were so tired.

You know, like I said,

when I got home, I just slept.

Slept, slept, slept.

I had a hard time eating.

I lost tons of weight.

I lost about,

maybe 40 pounds.

I mean all I wanted to do was just be alone.

I don't think I ever felt loneliness in my life

until that point.

For days, I kept expecting him to come through the door.

I called my mother

and she came over and she stayed with me.

She said, "you would get up and fix breakfast,

and lay his clothes out of work and everything,

like he was going to get up and go to work."

She said, "you were kind of in a daze".

It's, it's an emptiness.

You feel totally helpless.

It's just like a deep, black hole

and you just keep waiting for answers

and none come.

This is the first time we've had members murdered!

This is the first for us!

We started looking around.

What are we going to do?!

And then, God bless Father Richardson!

He said, "we're gonna open the church up for prayer

and just a small service.

I know you're gonna do something later,

but just something."

And we got there and we had about

maybe 35 people there.

People couldn't quit crying.

It was more like we went in and cried together,

held each other,

waddled through a little,

a very short, little service.

It was heartbreaking.

At the conclusion of the memorial service,

Reverend Perry declared a National Day of Mourning

to be observed around the country.

He also announced the creation of

the National New Orleans Memorial Fund.

We set up a memorial fund for the people who were affected by the fire

and the memorial fund was to raise money

to generically

try to alleviate their needs, if we possibly could.

Sometimes it was to help bury the person.

Sometimes it was

to help a person get resettled

after coming out of the hospital.

Other times, it was to help with other expenses that the person may have had.

So what we wanted to do with the Memorial Fund, was to make money available

basically upon request.

Somebody would call us and say

this is what the situation is

and then we would write out a check

and send it to that person right away

and it would be,

would be a "no questions asked".

What we didn't realize at that time,

was that our organizing abilities

at the time of the fire,

and the start of the National New Orleans Memorial Fund,

was the foundation stone, the cornerstone if you will,

for what would happen ten years later with the AIDS epidemic

of establishing our organizations at that time,

for dealing with that epidemic.

The next morning, The Times-Picayune

published an article about the memorial service,

and it identified St. George's Episcopal Church.

"Well, I just finished reading, when the phone rang."

There were multiple attempts to find a church

where there could be a large-scale memorial service for all the dead.

I kept pushing.

I called Baptist churches that laughed and hung up on me.

I started calling everybody

I thought where someone told me

there might be somebody

"liberal" enough to let us hold our service there,

but were willing to take the heat.

And I was used to having to take the heat,

and I knew what heterosexuals -

they were persecuted worse than we were

when they were friends of ours.

So I said, "what do we do?"

I called the Archbishop's office

and they wanted to know if anybody who had died was Catholic

and I said "well, I think...."

[Office response:] "They would have to call - the families would.

We don't give our church,

let anybody use our churches

for something like that."

They were very nasty on the phone.

I couldn't get over it.

They contacted a Lutheran Church

who said well, "we won't let you use our church,

but you might try this,

this,

this church over here.

It's in a black neighborhood.

It has a black minister,

and they're very tolerant of aliens there."

They used the word "aliens"!

As though gays and lesbians come from outer space or something!

I wanted to use a church property,

but we kept looking and saying,

"if we CAN'T, what do we do?"

Finally we said, "ok,

we will hold the service right here,

in front of the of the Up Stairs Lounge."

I found out that there was a Vieux Carre Commission

and they had the power to shut down a street if they needed to.

And so I went to the Vieux Carre Commission

and they said, "Yes."

They would shut down the streets

so we could hold the service in the street,

if I couldn't find a place.

Many people were hurt by the fact

that churches were not paying attention to those who were injured.

Churches were not paying attention to those who had died.

And that was very painful.

Religion,

love it or hate it,

religion plays a very important part in lives of people

and they grow up with it

and they have certain expectations

and even if there's a point at which...

religion says to you, "you don't belong here anymore",

you want to feel that at the time of death,

that at least religion will respond at that point of time,

simply out of empathy,

out of some type of compassion.

And I think the churches at the time of the fire,

the response of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese,

was most definitely, beyond any question of doubt,

Anti-Christian.

It was contrary to what

I believe the Gospel calls us to do.

Now admittedly,

the Catholic Church has historically regarded homosexuality as a sin

or an aberration.

But even the earliest news reports

were dealing with the possibility that the fire had been intentionally set.

Certainly, a church leader could have gone on record as saying

that murdering multiple people

was wrong.

Certainly, a church leader could have gone on record as saying

that he wished the police,

that he prayed the police

would have every success in apprehending the culprit.

Certainly, a church leader could have said,

even though I disagree with the way these people live their lives,

they should not have been the victims of an arsonist.

Because Jesus was the man who sat down

with prostitutes and tax collectors and all kinds of undesirables,

and he found room in his heart for those people and

Archbishop Hannan could have and should have done the same.

Not all churches were hostile and devoid of compassion.

With the blessing of Bishop Finis Crutchfield,

Reverend Edward Kennedy opened the doors to

St. Mark's Methodist Church for the memorial service.

Yeah, I think Bishop Crutchfield thought it was important

for St. Mark's to host the memorial service -

was one, because he knew his own,

you know, personal struggles and

wished the church,

at least in this moment,

you know, would do the right thing.

But I also think that it was an opportunity

for the Bishop to use his influence

in a way that

spoke to the,

at least in part,

this church's commitment

to justice.

We started passing out leaflets.

All in the Vieux Carre.

I had thousands printed,

inviting people to the memorial service.

I was shocked at the businesses who put them up.

I mean businesses I wouldn't have expected.

I was shocked at the ones who wouldn't put them up.

And then I got a message - Morris and I.

We went over to meet with the "business owners" of gay bars.

One of them made the mistake right off the bat,

of calling me a "carpetbagger"!

Well, I'm a Southerner!

To call somebody a "carpetbagger"

was a put-down of the worst sort!

That meant something bad -

people who came to take advantage of a situation.

That's the way I took it!

He's accusing me of coming in here somehow to take advantage of this!

I had paid my own way there.

The others paid their way there.

None of us had money.

I mean, we were not rich people

and I like to remind people of that!

We didn't have to go,

but we did!

And so, for somebody to do that

and to say that in such a way

to make it sound like we were opportunists there,

was very, very upsetting.

I thought it was grandstanding,

self-serving

and I thought it was gonna hurt us.

Hurt us and the city.

None of us saw the Up Stairs fire as,

uh,

as, as a problem

with the police versus gays

or the straights versus gays

or the city versus gays.

I mean, we didn't see it as a political thing.

The whole idea of

activism was

not even considered!

I went up and told him,

"I hate to take the wind out of your sails,

I just don't think the fire was that big of deal in New Orleans."

It was a horrible thing,

it was a tragedy,

blah, blah, blah...

but, I mean, it was not personal!

I said, "It. Is. A. Big. Deal!

Over 20 people are dead!

That's a big deal!"

And I said, "it happened in one of OUR bars!

THAT's a big deal!

Members of my church are dead in that property!

THAT's a big deal!!"

Maybe we should have been,

you know, more compassionate.

Maybe we should have been...

there should have been more solidarity.

There simply wasn't.

The day of the funeral,

we gathered together,

and I had no idea whether there would be people there or not

and people started coming in.

I was never...

Again, people who don't understand those time periods -

how rough it was -

I was never more proud

to see all these GLBT people coming in for that service.

We filled the balcony. We filled the church.

It meant everything that the Bishop of the Methodist Church had the guts to come to this service.

I saw people there react,

knowing, the gay folks who were there,

the Methodists, that their Bishop was there!

And he wasn't there to shut anything down!

He was there to be be respectful

and to be a part of the congregation.

He said, "I want to come today to let you know",

he says that,

"many of those people who were burned to death in that fire were my friends".

And, the way he said it,

Let me know, again,

he knew gay people.

I mean, this is whatever he may have been at that time.

I didn't know anything.

That he, you know, he knew, at least.

And he said,

"No, no..I also want to let you know that,

in the Methodist Church in Louisiana,"

he says that,

"I wanted you to know that everybody here's not a redneck..."

[Laughter]

and he says, "number two, this pastor's not acting on his own".

Reverend Kennedy absolutely had the support of his Bishop.

We opened the service

with Reverend Paul Breton, if I remember right,

who opened with prayer,

John Gill led the music and read a scripture,

then I preached:

"Our friends will always have respect because

they will forever be in our hearts!

The memory of our loved ones is so visible,

that I can almost feel their presence!

If they could speak,

they would tell us,

'Hold our heads high'"!

When I finish preaching and

Reverend John Gill got up and led the song,

the pastor of the church passed me a note up,

and he said, "Reverend Perry, to give you a heads-up,

there is a camera crew who is set up

across the street from the church

and they're going to film you all as you come out.

Now, there's a side door.

There's a way to get out of this building:

You will go out in an alley.

And you tell the people, the ones who are frightened,

that they can go out that way."

So I got up and I said, "I'm so sorry."

I said, "I feel like I've lied to you all".

I said, "I cannot control what happens outside of this building,

but I can control in here.

I told you there would be no cameras".

I said, "well, they've set up their cameras all across the street.

They're waiting for everybody to leave.

The pastor of the church told me this is the way you can leave the building, without being seen.

So you who need to do it,

this is how you get out of the building and go into the alley".

And with that, a woman up in the balcony started screaming,

"NO!"

"No!"

"No!"

"We came in the front door,

we're gonna leave by the front door!"

It's an old Southern thing, but it was the truth.

But I'll tell you,

I watched literally, people pick themselves up -

People slumped over all at once stood tall,

like, "if I'm gonna be on television, by God,

[voice cracking with emotion]

I'm not gonna go out hiding my face."

Nobody...

nobody left by the side door.

The news coverage was picked up by the AP wire services

and it went nationwide.

Bill Larson was identified as being a homosexual pastor

of a homosexual church.

His mother was so horrified and shamed by the news coverage,

that she refused to claim his body

and take it home for burial.

Ultimately, she released it to the Metropolitan Community Church.

There was not much left of his body

so what was left of his body was cremated

and the ashes were in an urn

which they took back to their church.

And for many years, that urn was housed in the altar

that they used in the New Orleans chapter of the MCC,

So that every time they had a service,

people were literally saying prayers over his body.

His remains now are in a vault

donated by a member of the MCC,

in the St. Roch Cemetery

in New Orleans.

He shares the space with other people.

His name is not on the tablet on the outside.

[solemn music]

There were three victims of the fire whose bodies were never identified.

There was a fourth victim,

identified as Ferris LeBlanc,

but his body was never claimed.

According to local laws,

unclaimed bodies must be buried under the category of "indigents".

And since Ferris LeBlanc was never claimed,

and three other people were never identified,

therefore couldn't be claimed,

all four were buried in the New Orleans Pauper Cemetery.

The MCC offered to pay for dignified burials for the men,

but seeing that the church had no legal ties to the victims,

the city refused to release the bodies.

[somber music]

Churches,

People,

Governments -

Nobody gives a damn.

Bodies burned so bad,

that there was nothing left but the bones,

and they were seared to the floor.

What little flesh there was left on some of the bodies,

the FBI come in...

It was so bad,

they had to take the fingertips off the bodies.

[crying]

So bad, they had to take the jaws out of all the skulls.

How do you like that?

The last remaining thing you have that people can identify you by -

your teeth?

32 people.

But they were just queers, you know.

[sobbing]

I had never seen the worst in my life

of human nature.

It wasn't that New Orleans was any worse than anywhere else.

It could have been in any city,

and it probably would have been that way,

in that time period.

I want to tell you something!

I want you to remember that those 30 people

In New Orleans were human beings before they were anything else!

We don't know what happened yet.

The police now are saying they don't find any evidence that it was arson,

but I've heard that story before!

I know good and well, that if there had been 50 or

even 30 individuals who were prominent in the community in New Orleans,

outside of our community,

they would be turning that town upside down,

trying to find out what happened!

Investigators began concentrating on the possibility of arson.

The investigation revealed that the fire started on or near

the 2nd and 3rd step of the stairwell

leading up to the main entrance of the lounge.

While examining the stairwell,

Major Henry Morris recovered an empty can of lighter fluid

at the base of the stairs.

The wooden stairs had been covered in highly flammable carpet.

It was installed before flammability standards were established in 1971.

"The majority of fires are preventable."

Drapery and highly combustible wood paneling used to decorate the stairwell

provided even more fuel for the fire,

causing flames to race up the stairs toward the landing.

By the time Luther Boggs opened the door,

the stairwell was fully engulfed in flames.

Once the blaze exploded into the lounge,

the fire spread rapidly, at a very high temperature.

This was evident by the extensive char left on the walls throughout the building.

Accelerated by the combustible carpet and wooden panels,

the fire's intensity was also fueled by the bar's distinctive decor,

including the red rayon flocked wallpaper,

posters and drapery.

The fire blocked the only obvious way in and out of the bar.

While there was a second exit located in the third room,

the one leading to the roof,

the exit was not obvious to patrons.

The path to the door was obstructed by the stage and scenery.

It would seem that only the bar manager knew of the door's existence.

People searched for another way out.

Many of the windows on the second floor were sealed over with wood paneling.

Panic-stricken patrons ran to the remaining windows,

ripped opened the wooden shutters

and kicked out the glass,

only to find their escape blocked by horizontal metal bars.

Since the windows spanned nearly floor-to-ceiling,

metal rods had been installed across each window

as a safety precaution by previous tenants.

They were installed to prevent people from falling through openings

when the windows were raised.

Ironically, a feature that was designed to keep people safe,

wound up killing them.

23 bodies were found next to the windows,

stacked on top of each other.

With a total of 13 engine companies and four ladder companies,

the fire was brought under control

within 15 minutes of the initial alarm.

And despite their rescue efforts,

the arsonist had ultimately caused

the deadliest fire in New Orleans History.

But the identity of the arsonist remained a mystery.

While there were several false confessions,

the newspaper focused on one suspect

who allegedly committed the crime.

Investigators soon learned

that the suspect was in California at the time of the fire,

therefore, he was eliminated as a suspect.

An anonymous letter was even sent to New Orleans Fire Chief William McCrossen,

apologizing for the fire.

But the investigation soon focused on an alleged hustler,

who was identified by patrons as

causing trouble in the bar earlier in the evening:

26 year-old, Rodger Dale Nunez.

According to reports,

Rodger was irritating people in the bar.

Michael Scarborough, an Up Stairs Lounge regular,

grew weary of his obnoxious behavior.

A confrontation soon followed.

When Nunez approached his table and began harassing Scarborough,

Michael jumped up from his chair,

punched Nunez in the face,

knocking him to the floor.

According to Scarborough's statement to investigators,

Rodger then looked up from the floor and said,

"I'm going to burn you all out".

After witnessing the altercation,

Buddy Rasmussen instructed his bartender to kick Rodger out of the bar.

There are a couple of things that might

have led Rodger Nunez to start the fire.

One was, he was thrown out of the bar and was angry.

The other, is that he seems to have suffered from,

what we would now call, "internalized homophobia".

In 1973, it was termed "sexual orientation disorder".

Someone who just

was uncomfortable with or

horrified by the fact that he was gay.

So imagine for a moment, it's 1973.

You come from a small town, deep in rural Louisiana.

Your whole life you've been told by the church,

by people at school,

by medical professionals

who still then regarded homosexuality as a mental disorder -

Imagine you've been told that you're sick.

That you're diseased.

That you're morally unfit.

And then you're in New Orleans

and you're circulating in a more or less,

openly gay environment

and possibly, for the first time in your life,

feeling really comfortable

or getting to the point where you think you could maybe feel comfortable,

being accepted by the "queers" and the "freaks",

and then they throw you out.

It's really easy to imagine

him trying to strike back at people.

A few months after the fire,

Rodger married a woman named Elaine.

Even his marriage to her indicates internalized homophobia.

First of all, it still happens today:

that a lot of gay men try to cure themselves

by entering into a heterosexual marriage.

She was questioned by fire marshal investigators,

at which point, she told them that their marriage had never been consummated,

and that he admitted to her after they had gotten married,

that he was homosexual.

Rodger had a grand mal seizure

during the first interrogation by the fire investigators,

so he was brought to the hospital.

That was a few days after the fire.

The fire investigators did not interrogate him again until September 18th -

almost two months after the fire.

When the arson investigation team for the Fire Marshal's interviewed Rodger Nunez,

they gave him a stress test.

When he answered questions related to the fire

and denied responsibility,

the Dektor PSE showed signs of stress,

which suggested he was lying when he said he knew nothing about the fire.

But it turns out, he also had a brain tumor.

So I don't know if the grand mal seizure was a direct result of the brain tumor or not.

I don't know if he had a brain tumor at the time, and that affected his judgment,

and that's why he made such a poor judgment.

He ended up committing suicide in November of 1974,

and of course, there's no reason to know if that was because he felt guilt over the fire.

He could have been distraught over the brain tumor.

I think that Rodger Nunez is the probable arsonist

and my reason for believing that

mostly has to do with

the people who came forward after his death

and said that when he was drunk,

he would confess,

and then when he was sober, he would retract.

There's an old saying, it goes back to the ancient Romans:

"In Vino Veritas" -

"In Wine There Is Truth".

There's something about alcohol

that lowers inhibitions

and makes people

want to unburden themselves.

But, I do not believe

that the person who did this,

when they set this fire,

had ANY

idea,

notwithstanding what they may have said before,

that it would do what it did!

I just can't believe it.

The fire was started by a can of Ronsonol lighter fluid.

It was apparently purchased at a Walgreens drugstore

a block away from the Up Stairs Lounge.

At the time,

Ronsonol was sold in three sizes:

a four and a half ounce can,

a seven ounce can

and a twelve ounce can.

The clerk at the tobacco counter reported this young man,

who she described,

physically it was a match,

and she described him looking very nervous and distraught.

And he was looking for the four and a half ounce can

and there weren't any on the shelves,

and she said they were out of stock.

So she sold this young man a seven ounce can of lighter fluid instead.

If you were intending to start a fire and hurt people,

you wouldn't be looking for the smallest size can of lighter fluid.

And when Miss Fury

told the writer Johnny Townsend,

that Rodger had confessed to her

that he had set the fire,

she said that he was weeping

and said over and over,

that he didn't mean to do it.

He just wanted to scare people.

And that's consistent with a man looking for the smallest size can of lighter fluid.

What he didn't know,

was that the carpet

was basically a firebomb waiting to happen,

under the right circumstances.

And that the lighter fluid, in a stairwell

that acted as a chimney flue,

would create exactly the set of circumstances needed

to cause the damage that he did.

Now there's no way he could have known that.

So I think Rodger Nunez is responsible for the fire,

but I also think the fire was just a childish prank gone hideously wrong.

I can forgive him for

what he did, because,

you know, like Jesus said,

"they know not what they do".

And I don't think he really knew what the consequences would be.

He never really knew

how many people he would hurt

or how many lives he would touch.

It's difficult.

But again, the man was sick.

He has to have been sick!

But absolutely somewhere,

you have to have forgiveness,

and we will never know who did it, but if he did,

of course he's forgiven.

It'll never help bring back the dead

and he's dead too.

If he's the one who did it,

he was the 33rd person to die as a result of that fire,

and we have to remember that.

The memorial service did not end my grieving process.

Something happened to me, personally, you know.

Losing a family.

A walking nervous breakdown.

Things happened to people

after the fire -

the people that survived

and the friends of people -

the friends who were friends of the survivors and of the dead,

They had to deal with it in their own way.

I drank a lot.

That helped me get through it.

I think I drank rum every day, for like two years.

I would get up and get ready and go to work or on my lunch hour

I'd go have a couple of rum and Cokes and then go back to work and then I'd go home and have a couple more

rum and Cokes, and watch TV until I fell asleep.

And I had several people who had approached me during that time to go on dates and stuff,

and I wouldn't do it because I felt like

if I got close to somebody,

I would have to go through that again.

He might die and I'd have to go through it again.

I'd try to sleep at night.

I'd wake up with nightmares.

I'd see those people burning again, you know.

We were damaged emotionally.

Like I say, I feel like I've been...

been robbed and cheated,

because I missed all his life.

I used to be kind of angry with God,

just not long afterward, thinking,

"Why did you save ...

Why am I..

Why do I have to go through...?"

I mean, I went through emotions like the rest of us did,

just heavy emotions.

And I'd tell God,

I said, "Thank you. You saved my life."

"Thank you for not letting me burn up."

And I'd say, "but next time,

just let me die".

The fire affected Phil tremendously.

Emotionally, because he lost a lot of friends,

but it also affected him financially

for the next 10 or 11 years.

He fought legal battles constantly.

It basically bankrupted him.

Many of the people who were survivors or their families of the people who died,

tried to sue Phil Esteve

and they tried to sue the city,

but the the verdict was finally,

it wasn't the city's fault that the bar burned,

and it wasn't Phil Esteve's fault that the bar burned,

it was the arsonist's fault that the bar burned.

The status of the case, I suppose

based on the New Orleans Police Department's case files,

is it's closed.

They basically closed it on August 30th of 1973

and there's no indication that they've ever continued it since then.

The question that sticks in my mind is

why the police stopped their investigation when they did.

And the police, by the way, never questioned the man they had identified as the suspect.

The fire marshal investigation team did,

but the police never did.

I think the police could have made more of an effort to find out who did it,

whether it was Rodger or someone else.

There could have at least had been an arrest that made an attempt.

I think the gay community

would have

been able to overcome this tragedy better,

if they had felt there was a good faith effort

at capturing the person who was responsible,

and I don't think that happened.

The arson investigation unit of the State Fire Marshal

continued pursuing the case until 1980,

at which point, the man, who I believe then was State Fire Marshall Frank Locascio Jr.,

basically closed it for the team,

recognizing that

the suspect was dead -

had been dead for six years by that point.

That no one was going to come forward with any information

to further solidify the case

and even if they did,

how do you try a dead suspect?

So, it was officially closed.

The Up Stairs Lounge fire forced New Orleans to acknowledge,

yes, we do have a gay community here.

It's something everybody knew,

but something nobody ever talked about.

Two months after the fire or three months,

in September of 1973,

The arch-conservative, Times-Picayune,

ran a week-long series of articles

that focused on the gay community

and the very first one had a headline that read,

"Gay Community Surfaces In Fire Tragedy",

or something to that effect.

There were in-depth articles about "what does it mean to be gay?"

And "what does it mean to be gay in New Orleans"?

And I don't think that would have happened

had it not been for the Up Stairs Lounge fire.

The fire definitely changed my

personal view point,

my perspective on gay people,

because,

I don't know that I ever really knew anyone up close

who was gay.

The first thing it taught me is that

these are human beings and they're suffering.

They bleed like I do. They hurt like I do.

And..

sometimes you need to have your eyes opened

to have your heart opened as well,

and it brought home their humanity to me

in a way that, you know,

I don't know when that would have happened otherwise.

Whether or not the Up Stairs Lounge launched

the gay rights movement in New Orleans,

is a matter of fierce debate

among New Orleans gay activists,

and I spoke to people on both sides of that question.

Some people say yes, it absolutely did.

It raised consciousness. It got people organized.

Language to that effect, is in the memorial plaque

that's in the sidewalk outside of the bar.

The plaque indicates that the fire was responsible for

getting an LGBT rights movement going in New Orleans.

A number of other people argue

that it wasn't the Up Stairs fire at all.

That

concentrated sustained activism

didn't get started in New Orleans for another four years,

until 1977.

And what happened in 1977,

was Anita Bryant had been booked

to perform in the New Orleans Summer Pops Symphony concert.

The city's gay and lesbian population

turned out in the thousands to protest her performance.

Some people say that that, is really the start

of sustained, organized gay activism in New Orleans.

For decades, on the anniversary of the fire,

efforts have been made

to honor the dead and promote healing.

Some anniversaries have been more visible than others.

A permanent historical marker was enshrined in the sidewalk

outside the former entrance of the Up Stairs Lounge

during the 30th Anniversary in 2003.

City officials in 1973,

didn't want to acknowledge it had taken place.

In 2013, on the 40th Anniversary of the fire,

Mayor Mitch Landrieu, son of Mayor Moon Landrieu,

who had been mayor in 1973,

proclaimed a day for the Up Stairs victims.

I believe that the memorial provided

a large measure of healing for the community.

For the ones who hated to talk about it

because of the hurt and loss that they suffered.

Some of them were able to attend the memorial.

It was an odd mixture of both tragedy and triumph.

We were there to commemorate.

We were there to remember

and there to honor.

[Reading of the victims' names]

And it was a very solemn occasion,

but at the same time,

there was also great joy in just reveling in the progress

we have made as a community,

and yet with a tinge of regret

that these 32 people weren't there to see it.

[Jazz Procession Music]

I felt that the victims were finally getting some recognition

that hadn't yet been fully forthcoming.

If I was up there, I'd say, "wow it's about time".

[Laughter]

Uh,

truly.

About time.

In 2013, when Gregory Aymond,

the sitting Archbishop,

finally released a statement about the fire at the Up Stairs Lounge,

I had kind of mixed feelings.

On one hand,

he was acknowledging that the church should have made a statement

at the time,

to acknowledge the sufferings and the victims and their families.

On the other hand,

his statement was very heavily qualified.

He said, "if" we did not release a statement at the time.

Well, there's no "if" about it.

So when people apologize, but the word "if" occurs,

it's kind of a non-apology.

I would have been more impressed if

any members of the Chancery of the Archdiocese

from that time period,

would have come up and said,

"we were wrong".

That would have impressed me.

But not a vacant, "we were wrong",

Not a, you know,

an empty mea culpa.

And I believe the Archbishop,

for me, the Archbishop made just a very,

a very empty motion.

It was a sad, very sad day for a lot of people

when the Roman Catholic Archdiocese

failed to respond.

And another good thing I think the Archbishop could have said is,

"We will not do this in the future.

We will not prejudge people

simply because they

were in a place we did not necessarily frequent ourselves."

Simply say, "we will not do this again".

Had he said that,

that might have impressed me.

These people lost their lives

and their friends

and their lovers

and there are families who lost people they loved.

They took a lot of love out of the world.

I don't think that's ever good to take love out of the world.

He left a void in a lot of people's lives.

I live with what happened to my Dad every day!

I believe my Dad was stuck in two worlds:

He wanted this world with us

and he wanted that world too,

and I think he got caught between.

Because, I mean,

he always told Horace he would come back down to him,

when he went back to Alabama.

I believe my Dad loved Horace, I really do.

They were both good people -

Caring,

very caring,

very loving people,

and then had their love took away.

Reggie gave me the name "Regina".

When I first did the drag show,

I was trying to think of a name to use on stage.

His name was Reginald Eugene Adams.

He knew Latin. He said it meant "queen".

He said I got the perfect name for you. It's "Regina".

He said you'll be Regina, because you're a queen.

You'll always be my queen.

So when he died, I said,

"'You'll always be with me",

and I legally changed my name to "Regina Adams"

because of him,

because he's the one true love of my life.

I still pray and I still remember him in my prayers

and I still talk to him and

I still tell him I love him,

and I will see you someday.

I'll be with you.

I just think that

there would have been a lot more

success stories like those,

as far as long-term relationships.

People think, oh, it was a sleazy, seedy bar in the French Quarter

and people were just having sex with everybody,

but I think,

if given the opportunity,

we'd have seen more love come out of that

and I think that's part of the tragedy here,

is that those relationships never had a chance.

These were real people who had lives,

and it just doesn't seem right to not remember them.

If I could say something to him right now,

I would say, "Dad,

I hope I turned out as good as you.

I...I hope I turned out...

that you're not ashamed of me.

And that I still miss you.

And I still love you.

And I hope my family

has turned out, you know,

to make you proud.

Because you make me proud.

[choking back tears]

You make me proud."

It's just important for people to know what hatred and anger can do.

You know, it can kill people.

Lots of people.

You know, it could cause a lot of harm.

You know, people suffering because their loved ones were killed,

because of anger and hatred.

And so, it's got to be told.

It's got to be, like,

up in people's faces, so to speak,

to where they have to recognize it

and realize "hey, as a society, we have to change,

and guard ourselves,

so that we don't allow this to happen."

So,

it is one of those things that happened,

that, um,

I hope will NEVER be repeated again.

I hope nobody EVER has to live through what we did

and what we saw, when we went to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Never again, will I,

you know,

face that kind of stuff -

I hope not!

I pray not.

But if it does happen,

[voice cracking]

Don't give up the struggle and the fight,

as I tell people.

Go and bury our dead,

hold a service,

and get ready to still make a difference in this world!

[mournful cello music]

[Song: "Upstairs Inferno", by Rachel Panay]