This weekend just after graduation that I spent with Dan & Dick at the townhouse on Pennsylvania in Denver, CO, was significant for me.
Several weeks earlier, I had made contact with Dan in his squadron. In some small way I had wanted to make contact with him, having heard enough of the rumorsm and express my support. I called his squadron and asked for a student of mine whom I knew I could trust. He got Dan for me, and I told Dan that I had heard about what he had been going through and wanted to express my support for him. It was then that I learned of his deal with the Academy. I told him how sorry I was that it had come to that.
After we hung up, he called his two cadet friends, to let him know that I had called.
That call completed a circle. His friend Bill Ryder, who was Jewish, had chatted up a woman Army officer who also taught in the English Department. She was one of the lesbians in the department and had been at the Jewish service where she met Bill Ryder. Now, we all knew one another.
When I met the other two cadet friends of Dan, Bill Ryder and George Gordy, they told me about Dan's partner, Dick Tuttle. When I finally met Dan & Dick together and spent the weekend at their town home, they were the first gay couple I had known in my life.
Dan had not bothered to attend the graduation ceremony but had packed up this possessions and moved in with Dick in Denver. Dick would help to get Dan a job after graduation, and the two of them would remain together for the remainder of Dick's life, another ten years.
They would have their difficulties over those ten years. Dan almost left Dick for another man in San Francisco. But when Dick became ill, Dan called off that relationship to be with Dick. Dick told me, and everyone else, that it was liver cancer. That's what many were saying when they became sick during the 1980's. But it was AIDS. Dan would eventually be diagnosed, too.
After Dick died, I met Dan at their townhouse a couple of weeks later with a classmate and squadron mate, Willie, who was still in the Air Force. Dan gave me a small ceramic owl that someone had given Dick so that I had someone to remember him by. Dick loved owls. He'd even had a white one stuffed that he'd found dead on a fence in the country.
I would meet up with Dan in Hawaii one Christmas vacation in the 1980's where he would vacation over the holiday week. I would also meet up with Dan's new partner in San Francisco after he'd packed up the townhouse and sold it.
When I first stayed with them that weekend, they took me to dinner and later breakfast at the Governor's Park restaurant, not far from their townhouse. We debated the 1980 election that next year, during another dinner at the restaurant, and Dick informed me that he was voting for Reagan. I quietly warned him that he may live to regret that vote. When he was sick and staying at home, I came to spend a couple of different Sunday afternoons with him so that Dan could attend Broncos games with friends. I reminded Dick of my earlier warning, and he explained that I was not the only friend who had said Reagan would not be that friendly toward gays and lesbians. Reagan had failed to mention AIDS during most of his term, and his administration was not spending enough funds to help with research or help the victims.
Dick said that he was going to write a letter and demand to know why Reagan had not mentioned the disease nor provided sufficient support. Dick said he would no longer donate any more money to the Reagan library if he did not get a satisfactory response. I don't know if he ever did.
I soon felt a huge hole in my life when Dick finally died and Dan sold the townhouse and moved to San Francisco. Dan would die of AIDS in 1995, outliving Dick by six years.
Dick had told me on a couple of occasions that they had an open relationship. He explained that he realized if he required Dan to maintain a monogamous relationship that Dan might leave him. Dan only met with other men when he was out of town or Dick was out of town.
Only once, when I was at a birthday party for Dan, was Dick openly involved with someone else in front of Dan and all of their friends. It was an Air Force enlisted man whom he had met and became infatuated with. That relationship was perhaps why Dan was prepared to leave Dick and move in with the new guy in San Francisco.
What none of us knew in the late 1970's and early 1980's was that AIDS was on the horizon. Having an open relationship was not the most advantageous situation for anyone who did not exercise caution.
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