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“I have traveled extensively. It started out when I was in the Air Force. I was the “grandfather,” or whatever you'd call it, of the drone program. I mean, I played golf with presidents, with Jerry Ford and whatnot, and I certainly have met the older Bush and younger Bush and Reagan a couple of times. I've been in the White House. I've been up and down the Pentagon, all levels. And I've also worked extensively with the CIA. Eleven years ago was my surgery, to this date almost, and I started hormones over twelve years ago. And I really have been in the cross-dressing business or the transgender business since I was probably four or five years old. I mean, I've got that history. But I didn't know some of that history until I tracked back later in life, when I saw this more obviously in front of me. I said, "Oh, my God, this is what I was doing when I was four and five years old." And of course, it all fits into a channel. But in that day – I'm talking about being born in 1930 – that was the Great Depression. There were no words for any of this. Except that I think my mother knew, because when I asked her to teach me to knit, she did, and she'd teach me some other things that I asked if I could do, like cross-stitch and whatnot. So all the basic clues were there all along.“ - Bobbi, 83, Detroit, MI, 2014 Representations of older transgender people are nearly absent from our culture and those that do exist are often one-dimensional. For over five years (2013–2018), photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating “To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults.” See “To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults” on display in the Ruth Kadish Gallery located in the post-security connector between Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 and online at: http://bit.ly/3TGq6Zo
This image was posted on March 29, 2023.