NY Times Article
December 16, 2003
After 6 Quiet Decades as 'Friends' and Partners, Gus and Elmer Eloped
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
In the language of their generation, Gus and Elmer were friends.
They worked together, took cruises together and sang in the same
church choir. They lived together for nearly six decades but never
held hands in public.
Then, last month, Gustavo Archilla, 88, and Elmer Lokkins, 84,
crossed the Canadian border near Niagara Falls and were married.
"We eloped," Mr. Lokkins said in his Manhattan apartment one recent
afternoon, before breaking into song. "To Niagara in a sleeper,
there's no honeymoon that's cheaper."
Then he paused, and his tone shifted. "We waited a long, long time."
Mr. Archilla and Mr. Lokkins did not marry for political reasons,
financial reasons or legal reasons. Through their 58 years together,
they mostly stood by as others fought for rights like civil unions or
domestic partnerships.
Marriage meant more to them. It was something sacred, they said, an
institution they cherished even as it shunned them.
The couple capture what some in the gay rights movement say is an
essential but unappreciated point in the argument for same-sex
marriage: it offers something more basic and profound than survivor
rights or shared health care. For many gays and lesbians, the power
of marriage lies in the sanctity of its tradition, its social
legitimacy ? the very thing opponents of gay marriage are
mobilizing
at the highest levels to protect.
For Mr. Archilla and Mr. Lokkins, the need for an official blessing
was so basic that until they married, they could not make their
relationship public. It was only on the evening of Nov. 12, after
they wed, that they embraced in front of others for the first time.
"What we did was finally cap it all up ? make it seem complete,"
said
Mr. Archilla, the son of a Puerto Rican Presbyterian minister. "It
was about fulfilling this desire people have to dignify what you have
done all your life ? to qualify it by going through the ceremony
so
that it has the same seriousness, the same objective that anybody
getting married would be entitled to."
For years, each man attended the weddings, funerals and baptisms of
his partner's family, but felt he lacked an official link.
"I wanted to marry into his family," Mr. Lokkins said. "I wanted to
be an Archilla also."
The lives of Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla have traced an arc in gay
history: they came of age at a time when gays and lesbians could be
jailed and the medical establishment deemed their sexual orientation
a mental illness, treatable by electric shock.
They now live in a transformed country, where the word "queer" pops
up on daily television listings and gay characters are a staple of
Hollywood. They have seen changes they never imagined possible, from
the Supreme Court's striking down of sodomy laws this year to the
ruling by the highest court of Massachusetts in November to legalize
same-sex marriage. Canada had legalized it several months earlier.
"It's been a period of wonderment," Mr. Archilla said.
Although Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla have remained largely at the
margins of gay activism, they have been leaders in other realms: Mr.
Lokkins was the registrar of the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York, and Mr. Archilla was his assistant. Mr.
Archilla was the chairman of the board of their co-op in Morningside
Gardens. As eldest siblings, they consider themselves the heads of
their respective families: their annual Christmas letter has 415
recipients.
Being gay, they say, is not a significant part of their identity.
They acknowledge it in a quiet way: they donate money to gay rights
organizations, but they socialize mostly in heterosexual circles.
They are, in part, a product of their time ? a time when people
hid
their sexual orientation as a means of survival.
"It was like a secret society," said Terry Kaelber, executive
director of SAGE, a gay rights organization for the elderly in
Manhattan.
It was dusk on Sept. 16, 1945, when Mr. Lokkins first spotted Mr.
Archilla walking through Columbus Circle. Mr. Archilla was on his way
home from voice lessons at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Lokkins had just been
honorably discharged from the Army and was visiting from Chicago.
"I had never seen anything so handsome," Mr. Lokkins said.
They chatted and then agreed to meet the next evening to hear a live
performance of the radio show "Town Hall Tonight." After the show,
they walked the streets and finally retreated quietly to the hotel
room where Mr. Lokkins was staying. There, he boyishly unpacked a bag
filled with keepsakes from his wartime military duty.
"What appealed to me was the childlike manner of him," Mr. Archilla
said.
Within days, Mr. Archilla took Mr. Lokkins home to meet the family.
Mr. Archilla's parents had died, and he was in charge of his eight
younger siblings. He introduced Mr. Lokkins as a friend.
Neither man ever considered discussing his sexual orientation with
family. Mr. Lokkins was engaged at the time to a woman in Chicago;
Mr. Archilla had been briefly engaged to a woman in New York.
"Living a lie was the hardest part," Mr. Lokkins said.
Mr. Lokkins returned to Chicago, broke off the engagement and,
several months later, moved into a vacant bedroom in the Archilla
family's Washington Heights apartment.
No one suspected anything at first. But soon, Mr. Archilla's siblings
began to wonder.
"We noticed that he didn't date too much like all my other brothers,"
said one of Mr. Archilla's three sisters, Idalia Chimelis, 83.
The two men kept their relationship a secret. But as Mr. Archilla's
siblings moved out, one by one, and Mr. Lokkins remained, the
unspoken truth began to emerge. He and Mr. Archilla stayed there
until 1957, when they bought a sunny top-floor apartment in a
Morningside Gardens high rise.
With time, they became "Uncle Gus and Uncle Elmer" to members of
their families. They rarely missed a family gathering. They doted
lovingly on their nieces and nephews. But they never doted, publicly,
on each other.
"They were never demonstrative," said Mr. Lokkins's sister, Helen
Thrun, 81. Their discretion was essential to maintaining good
relations with the family, she said.
Still, acceptance was sometimes hard won. For 40 years, Mr. Archilla
and Mr. Lokkins remained estranged from one of Mr. Archilla's
brothers. This year, when the man fell ill with Alzheimer's, Mr.
Archilla called him and they reconciled.
Mr. Lokkins spent half of his childhood in an orphanage in Normal,
Ill. He has a hard time talking about the brother who never accepted
him, or about a love letter from Mr. Archilla that wound up in the
hands of an aunt.
"I just wiped those things away," he said. "It was terrible. I don't
remember."
Only once did Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla take an active part in the
gay rights struggle: in 1993, they held a banner for SAGE during a
march in Washington.
"It made me appreciate the big job that other people have done for
us," Mr. Archilla said. "It made me feel some shame that I had not
done more." But he and Mr. Lokkins told only a few friends about the
march.
Their wedding, 10 years later, was a very different kind of act, they
said.
"The emotion was different ? it was spiritual," Mr. Archilla said.
The idea occurred to them when they heard about Canada's legalization
of same-sex marriage. In November, they had planned a trip upstate to
Depew, N.Y., to visit some ailing relatives. The night before they
left, Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla began talking about following
through with the marriage.
"I couldn't sleep," Mr. Lokkins said.
At 6 a.m., they called Mr. Archilla's nephew, a lawyer who lives in
West Seneca, N.Y. He tracked down some phone numbers in Canada and,
two days later, the couple were driving with two witnesses ? Mr.
Archilla's sister-in-law, Buelah Archilla, and her brother ?
across
the border.
They got their marriage license at the Niagara Falls City Hall and
were married in a 20-minute ceremony at the home of Dr. John R. A.
Mayer, the chaplain of a Unitarian church in St. Catherine's, Ontario.
They were the oldest couple ever married by Dr. Mayer, who performed
only six or eight marriages a year until the new laws were passed.
Since July he has performed 50 ceremonies ? 40 for same-sex
couples.
After the ceremony, Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla and their two
witnesses stopped at Denny's for a Grand Slam breakfast.
"They were flying high," said Daniel R. Archilla, 40, the lawyer who
helped arrange the wedding and saw them at their evening celebration
in Depew.
Some of their older relatives were still getting used to the notion
of same-sex marriage but seemed ready to put the couple's happiness
first.
"I'm a Christian," said Buelah Archilla, 75, who was the host for the
party. "It wouldn't work for me, of course. Whatever works for them
is good."
As newlyweds, Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla say they feel a novel
freedom.
"I feel a sense of relief," Mr. Archilla said. "The maximum is
getting married."
After 58 Years Together, Gus and Elmer Eloped
by Gretchen956 6 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Gretchen956
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Sentinel
What a most wonderful story. Thanks for posting it here. I am so very happy for both of them, finally able to publicly show their love and commitment to each other.
Just goes to show. It's never too late.
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Gretchen956
I used to think that gay men were only promiscuious, like I think a lot of people believe. But I'm finding out that like most stereotypes, that one only holds true for a few visible ones. I have met and heard about more and more who have been together for decades. I think they actually do better than a lot of the lesbians who are more inclined to monogamy. I just thought that this side of the story needed to be told.
Gretchen
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Odrade
One of my boss' colleagues (and friend) has been in a devoted domestic partnership for many years. They have chosen not to marry AFAIK, until/unless it is legal here. Even so, they have combined assets, and have jointly adopted three lovely children. They are clearly a family to all who know them. Just thought I'd add one more to this list.
Odrade
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marriedtodamob
Thanks for sharing Gretchen, that was really lovely...(sniff sniff...=)
mobbie
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Mysterious
Aww. It's more people like that taking the stand that the world needs to finally shatter the stereotypes that have led to the prejudices we see all too often.
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Eyebrow2
that is a great story..good for them!