"Howdy" Russell
“Howdy” Russell is a longtime activist from Hinesburg, Vermont and is one of the founders of Out in the Mountains.
But that was a huge community building thing. It was a, you know, other than that, the only place to kind of get together with other gay men was at the bar. And—and this was just, it became this real community of people who cared about each other and could just be with each other. And I remember there were lots of discussions there about, are you going to do it? Am I going to do it? And and I think there was a lot of motivating each other. You know, I actually remember—my younger brother is also gay, and I remember having a conversation with him and his and we were both like, are you going to do it? Am I going to? Yeah. And it. You know, there was just a lot of fear around it because it was a whole different time than it was, there were very real consequences that could happen to you as a result of this. In addition to the threats of violence, there was just—there was no job security. There was no, you know, people had families that they weren't out with. And I was lucky that I was out with all my immediate family. But, you know.
Specifically, remember, I think it was that year that I mean. I don't remember specific things. I just remember that it was going to meetings, doing whatever needed to be done. I spoke at the first rally. We, I remember we were having a hard time finding any men who were willing or able to speak. And so I felt like that's something that was important that I needed to do.
Leading up to it that there were some threats that were out there and where the parade route was going. The one threat I remember was the police had been told that there was going to be someone on top of the parking garage that was gonna do something. And, and the parade was gonna go right by the parking garage. And so there was apprehension. But, all I really remember from that was, I think I basically just introduced myself and I talked about the fact that for me and I think for a lot of people, this is a very scary thing to do and just talked about how I was feeling frightened. But, I was feeling a little more angry than I was frightened, and angry that I had to be frightened to stand up and say this and—and that's the main thing I remember saying. And just that, you know it was amazing, you know, we didn't know if 20 people would show up and 350 people or some thing like that came and were there. And it ended up coalescing in a way. I just I remember a lot of conversations with friends leading up to that. The one group I was very involved in was gay volleyball, which was happening. And it sounds silly, but that was a huge community building thing.