Oral History with Howard Feiertag, November 2, 2014 (Ms2015-007)

Partial Transcript: Claire Gogan: This is Claire Gogan and I am interviewing, please state your name

Howard Feiertag: Howard Feiertag

GOGAN: On October 24, 2014 on the campus of Virginia Tech

FEIERTAG: October 24?

GOGAN: Oh, I’m sorry, it’s [laughs] I didn’t change that [on the script]. It is November 3, 2014 on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Keywords: Feiertag Gogan November

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: I’d like to begin by asking about where you were raised and what you remember about the area.

FEIERTAG: Okay. I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. I’m a first generation American, my folks are from the Old Country. From Europe. And there were ten children in the family and I’m the youngest. And I stayed in Brooklyn, through my early years, through high school, and upon graduating from high school, I departed… If you’d like more about the community I lived in and what it was all about?

Keywords: New York; family; raised

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: And they got a family, ten children, I’m the youngest. Alright? And I was raised in an area in Brooklyn that was common to people coming from Europe, and from all countries. It was a very very highly mixed and very integrated environment because of the different languages and races involved, and we had every color you could think of as far as a race is concerned, and almost every language you could think of, everybody spoke—multilingual.

Partial Transcript: My sister and brothers looked after me. I was raised by them, really. And my father was kind of distant. My father was unemployed for a very long time, though I don’t remember everything. He was a cigar maker when he came over from Russia.

Keywords: brother; father; sister

Partial Transcript: Feiertag: Out of the ten children, there were only four of us that graduated high school. Myself and my three other brothers that were born just before me. All the others, when we got out of grade school, they went to work. Somebody had to support the family. Money had to come in, so they all had to work. And of the four, I was the one to have been able to go to college.

Partial Transcript: Worked around the house. My job, everybody had a job in my house. I had to polish the furniture. We were very very plain. All the neighborhood, everybody we had, we were spotless. Mama was so careful about laundry, laundry, laundry, everything. But we had furniture polish, I used to polish the furniture. That was my job and I was very good at it.

Keywords: furniture; job; polish

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: And then, what did people do for work when you were growing up, generally speaking, in your neighborhood?

FEIERTAG: One of my brothers worked in a fruit stand. Produce. Fruit market.

FEIERTAG: Stocking up—you go to Kroger now and you watch people in the fruit department, produce—stacking up things. In Brooklyn, the shopping center, the streets in Brooklyn, where you had—you didn't have a supermarket—they didn't have a Kroger.

Partial Transcript: I went in the army right away, this was 1945, the war wasn't over yet. I got out of school, I was 17, and you couldn't really get in before you were 18, and I was 17, but the army took me anyway, and they sent me to army specialized training. ASTP, Army Specialized Training Program. They sent me down to Clemson. Here I am in Brooklyn, and going to Clemson.

Keywords: army

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: Okay. And then when you were growing up, did you know anybody who was gay, lesbian, or bisexual?

FEIERTAG: No.

GOGAN: No, you didn't.

FEIERTAG: Well, I shouldn't say that. No, no that wasn't true. Because my first experience, homosexual experience, was at probably ten or eleven. No, I'm sorry, I'll go back a little earlier than that. I'll tell you—yeah, you should have gotten around to that, how come I missed that? That's what this is all about.

Keywords: boy; experience; feeling

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: My next experience was a couple years—then of course it went away and I never looked at anybody else that I liked. I never saw anybody I liked, I don’t know. But I guess I was about twelve, maybe. I’m trying to think. I was playing around with a couple other kids and I was on the top floor, and then there was a little alcove and you walk up steps to go on the roof. Lots of times, we went on the roof, you had pigeons up there, we’d play on the roof, you know. But, there was one guy, and I remember his name. His name was Bumpy. I don’t know why, Bumpy. He was a little bit older and he was also a kid, maybe a few years, maybe he was fifteen or fourteen, I don’t know. And that’s where I got my first exposure in homosexuality with another person.

Keywords: Bumpy; experience

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: And one more time it happened on a train going to New York, on a subway. With an older man. I was sitting down, and he started fooling around. And I was getting a little nervous. There were people around, and it wasn’t the right thing, you know. I didn’t mind him doing it, but, you know, I was a little nervous about the people. [Laughter]

Keywords: fooling; subway

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: As a kid we went to Coney Island. We used to go to a place called Hahn’s Baths in Coney Island. The whole family went there, and we would have a family locker. We played handball a lot, all my brothers went there, sisters. We hung out there a lot during the summer time, go to take the train, the subway to Coney Island and go to Hahn’s Bath. So, Hahn’s Bath had a—this was my first experience in the steam room.

Keywords: baths; summer

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: So, time to go to high school now, out of junior high, and so now I got this little restaurant where I was—luncheonette, selling papers and selling cigarettes, and chocolate egg creams. You ever hear about a chocolate egg cream?

Keywords: flatbush; luncheonette

Partial Transcript: Feiertag: Very active with the girls, went to a lot of parties, did a lot of dancing. I didn’t have one special girlfriend. I had a lot of girlfriends. And all my family used to tease me a lot about my girlfriends, and say “oh boy, you’re gonna get married early, I can see it already” because I was always out dancing, partying, and we always went out with the girls, the guys, and the girls. We went places and did things. We always had some place to go. Someone’s house.

Keywords: dancing; girlfriend

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG:But there was no—there was one friend, there was one guy in high school, who I suspected of being gay, even at that time, never heard the term. Never had any discussion with anyone about homosexuality, it never came up, there was nothing in the papers, you didn’t even know that it was going on. I wouldn’t even—but it never bothered me, I was never—what’s interesting about it, I see kids nowadays, or adults now, they had a troubled childhood because of it, and I never did. I never had a problem [laughter].

Keywords: out; work

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: after graduation, I went into the military. I went to Clemson. And nothing happened down there. I was there for about a year, until I was old enough to be officially a soldier, you know?

GOGAN: Mmm hmm

FEIERTAG: I was in specialized training, which is good, like college, maybe. There were courses and military stuff. I wore a uniform.

Keywords: military

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: I used to hang around, when I’d come home on furlough, in the neighborhood, and walk up and down the blocks just to see if I could find anything or anybody [Laughter]

GOGAN: [Laughter] Was this in your neighborhood?

FEIERTAG: My old neighborhood, yeah

Keywords: fool; friend; movie

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: But you grew up in a religious family, too, though, right?

FEIERTAG: Well, yeah, but it’s a different religion. You’ve got—the Jewish religion is so different than Christians, and different religions within Christians. We don’t preach the Bible, and you will be damned and you’re going to go to hell if you do this or do that, and no you can’t do this, you can’t do that. There’s nothing in the religion except, in our religion, anyway, Jewish, and I’m not religious to the point of reading the Bible and knowing what’s going on.

Keywords: bible; jewish

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: So now, my boss, the civilian guy, Andy. What are you going to do? You’re getting ready to go out. I said, “I don’t know.” “You’re going to go away, you got to go to college.” I said, “I never thought about going to college.” He said, “what do you mean, you got to go to college! Everybody goes to college.” I said, “well, you know, nobody in my family went to college, we can’t afford it, you know, you got to pay for it.” “No! The GI Bill!”

Keywords: GI Bill; college; police administration

Partial Transcript: Feiertag: Graduation was coming and one of my professors said, “What are you going to do?” I said I don’t know, all these guys were going to Detroit working for Dearborn and one went into secret, all the other guys got their degrees and went to work for Secret Service, or went into officer Naval Intelligence, and some went to Ford Motor Company, and I said, I don’t know what I was going to do. He says, well I got a job for you. He says, the state prison of Southern Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi is looking for a counselor.

Keywords: graduation; prison

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: [Laughter] So did you have like a coming out experience at some point?

FEIERTAG: Now that’s a good question. [Plastic crinkling sound] Actually, that’s one of my arguments, not my argument, this is one of the issues that I bring up with the other guys and ladies in our program

Keywords: coming out

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: When I was in college, one of my friends. Straight friends. Wanted to come to New York, come home with me to Brooklyn, and he stayed with me at the house

Keywords: college; friend; mother

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: now I’m in the army, I’ve got my lieutenant, I’m working on it, and I go to the commanding officer and I said, “where do I go?” You know, the colonel or the battalion commander—he said, “you got to put your company together.” I say [?] so he showed me, “this is the barracks here, this is the motor pool, there is the kitchen, this is where supplies are,” nobody there, no people. He says “no, you’ve got to find them, got to put it all together, we’re forming this. It’s your baby, you got to put it all together.” He says, “we’ll go to personnel, they have a sheet already of what you’re supposed to have.” It was a very very specialized unit in the prisoner of war. I had to have interpreters, I had to have interrogators, had to have photographers and fingerprint experts, then security people. So, they know all that, and they’re doing those M.O.S.s for those people, too. And they came from all over the country, little by little, started coming in, over a period of time, being transferred from wherever they were. Really an interesting concept

Keywords: army

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: I am going to jump now to after I get discharged.

GOGAN: that’s fine

FEIERTAG: that was a whole two year thing, at that time.
And now I’m in Atlanta and working for an insurance investigation firm, another company that got me because somebody told me about it and they hired me like that [snaps fingers]. Anyway, so I’m out one night, going into a gay bar and who do I run into… David Vaughn [laughter] I said hoohoo and he looked at me and [laughter] says, ‘Lt., I whahhh…” anyways. So, come to find out, he was surprised, I was surprised, that was it. Nothing went on now because he was doing something else with somebody, and nothing went on, that was just curious how you know you don’t know Bingo. I have another surprise for you [laughter] I’m thinking this was in Charlotte, or this was Atlanta, a few years later, I ran into a another… well, I’ll tell it to you now I forgot just when it was but

Keywords: company; david

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: Well the story is this. I went to a party one night and it was in Charlotte, when I finally moved to Charlotte after a few years and went to the party, it was a gay party there was a drag show going on somewhere’s in town, and everybody was dressed up so I went to the party, and I’m in this room talking and I hear this guy in another room talking [growls] rough voice you know, and I go “oh my god… my colonel.” Colonel with ribbons from here to here [motions with hand on chest], full Colonel [Bert?] colonel that I knew that was in the military, of his post. He was all over the wars and all this and real real rough tough guy and he’s off in this other room, camping like a queen, like everybody else. And he recognized me, yeah yeah, and he was like “What the hell are you...” [laughter] So that was a big surprise. A colonel, a big shot colonel, a big husky guy and he’s acting like a queen like everybody else, you know [laughter]. Amazing how you run into people you don’t know anything about.

Keywords: party

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: So I moved in with David and then he got me, through his father or somebody, with this company about insurance investigations, you’d be good at it, blah, blah, blah… I said okay. They went on and called, and bingo [snaps fingers] they hired me like that. I got the job just like that in Atlanta. Then I moved into my own apartment.

Keywords: Atlanta

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: So now here comes the story. I know you’re waiting for it. So, one of the fund drives we had was to raise money washing cars. All over the place. So this place on South Tryon street, washing cars, and then after we’re all through, I was in shorts and wet and dirty, I think I’ll just go have a beer. So I go into the Berringer hotel, one of the nice hotels in town, and I went into the bar to get a beer, and I didn’t want to sit up front where everybody could see me, people wouldn’t come in, because it was a nice bar, so I went and got a seat in the back, you know, where no one could see what I look like. You know? Because I looked crummy. And I had my beer there. And this was a straight bar, wasn’t a gay bar, straight bar. So I’m drinking a beer there and I see this guy sitting at the bar.

Keywords: bar; guy

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: in 1962, I think it was. At that time, I was president of the Jaycees and a notice came out in the paper that—Charlotte was a very small town, you have to understand. Charlotte was like Blacksburg. There were like two hotels.

GOGAN: Okay

FEIERTAG: A couple motels, motor courts. So, I was going to be leaving, I’m moving to New York, I’m resigning from the Jaycees. The Jaycees were a big organization, you know. And at that time, I was also doing work with the chamber of commerce, where the chamber decided they wanted to have a convention bureau like some of the big cities. Most of the convention bureaus around the country were started by chambers of commerce, [the bureaus had?] offices there.

Keywords: charlotte; convention

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: I got a call from Orlando. Chamber of Commerce in Orlando. They’re looking to hire a convention bureau manager. They want to set up a convention bureau. I never heard of Orlando. Nobody ever heard of Orlando… So, I told my boss, I said “they want me to come,” and he says, “Oh, go! It’s a free trip. They’re going to pay for your way, ah, you’ll have a good time.” So,I said oh yeah. But, I said, “You know, I’m happy here. I like everybody, and I know everybody, I know the hotel people,” blah blah blah. He said “eh, go ahead, get a trip.”

Subjects: convention; orlando

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: So, we used to hang out at the gay bars.

GOGAN: Okay.

FEIERTAG: Small town, but they had gay bars. And it was fun, a lot of fun… so, there used to be a lot of kids hanging out in front of the gay bars, and when the gay bars closed, they were hustling, wanted to get the gay guys, take them home, they’d pay them… So, some of them commented they were afraid, they saw police cars cruising around the gay bars. And that made them very nervous about—cars were around, said are they checking up on us?

Keywords: bars; dancing; liquor

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: Can we jump ahead for just a couple minutes and talk a little bit about Virginia Tech and what brought you here?

FEIERTAG: Yeah. It’s interesting. So this was another job I had, of course, this was in 1988, I was doing a program at the Homestead. I used to go out and do it all over the country, I was doing sales workshops for people all the time, you know, it was for ideas. And I’m doing it at the homestead, and Mike Olsen, who was chairman of the hospitality HTM department at the time knew me. I was on his advisory board. That’s another story, why. We’re not doing a book, so… I called him up, Mike I’m on the program, I noticed you’re on the program. I’ve got to fly into Roanoke. You want to pick me up at the airport? We’ll ride in together to the hotel. “Oh yeah!” Okay, fine. So over that weekend, he talked me into going to work here, to teach. I told him I’m not a teacher, but he said, “ah, you come, you do another workshop, you can do the job.” At that time, I was senior vice president of operations for 60 hotels, management company in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Keywords: job; teacher

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: Thad got very ill, he had a heart bypass 14 years prior. Uh, earlier days when we lived in Roanoke. We lived in Roanoke at the time. I was working for a company called American Motor Inns Hotel Management Company… I’m trying to think when, anyway. Whatever it was, he couldn’t, we had to sell the farm because his legs wouldn’t move. He finally had to walk on a cane, he had very very bad legs, with the blood flow, whatever it was, it was a heart, bad heart condition that he—he used to smoke a lot.

Keywords: ill; smoking

Partial Transcript: FEIERTAG: So, there’s a lot of stuff in between, but I got with Thad, that was a solid relationship, there was nothing else really going on. Except our own home life and friends and travel, we did a lot of cruises, went on a lot, saved a lot of money, we had a lot of money and saved it. Did lots of things with it. The farms were good experiences, we had three farms, they were good experiences. Did what, made money on the farms and cattle. We had a good life together. Went out—oh, the family, the family. We’ve got to bring the family in.

Keywords: family; thad

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: So who have been some—this is going to be our, like, third to last question. Who have some of your allies been at Virginia Tech?

GOGAN: Who has really been there for you at Virginia Tech, or kind of a friend to you or a friend to the gay community?

FEIERTAG: Oh, I have a lot of friends. But, then you say for me, I don’t go for counseling, I just have good friends. And we know it. And we cut up a little bit and make jokes. All the people who work at the Inn here know me, and they know I’m gay. For a long time, since I’ve been at [Brown?], and they tell each other, you know. I don’t have to walk around and say, you know I’m gay! They know. All the faculty know. Most of the people in the college of business know. Some of the restaurants you go to—[laughter] something cute I’ve got to tell you about. Red Lobster. You been there?

Keywords: allies; community; friend

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: But do you feel, for the most part, that people accept you at Virginia Tech? Like—

FEIERTAG: Oh yeah, oh yeah. They respect me, and they accept me. I do good work for Virginia Tech, so why not? Never had an occasion to feel that someone would ignore me or say anything behind my back that was negative, you know?

Keywords: acceptance; respect

Partial Transcript: GOGAN: I guess, um, before we close the interview, is there anything else you want to say?

FEIERTAG: Oh, probably a lot.