[This Senior Spirit column appears in the current May/June 2019 issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.]
This year marks the 49th anniversary for the Boston Pride Parade and the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. With such a focus on the rich history and legacy of the LGBTQ community, it is fitting that the person selected to be this year’s grand marshal is Dale Mitchell, who has dedicated his career to the lives and visibility of LGBT older adults, like the ones who fought for our rights decades ago.
Mitchell is the executive director of Ethos, a local elder service provider in Jamaica Plain. When he took on that role he realized he was in a position that enabled him to make significant changes in the elder care network, specifically making the entire network more welcoming and inclusive for LGBT older adults. He realized that he was risking not only his career but his reputation. Thankfully that never concerned Mitchell, and in the last 25 years he has brought about a monumental systems change around the care for LGBT elders that has never been seen before.
Over the years many have wondered what inspired Mitchell to dedicate his life to the advocacy for LGBT elders. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he was present for the Stonewall Rebellion, but his inspiration may also be connected to own family legacy. His own grandfather was arrested and ruined for sodomy, a dark family secret that his mother never shared with him until a few years before her death. The memory of his grandfather was practically erased from his family’s history.
In 1993 Mitchell took over the helm of Southwest Boston Senior Services. He quickly began work to rebrand his agency with a better name, Ethos, and a mission-driven tagline: “Care, Compassion and Community,” which has underscored all their work.
Mitchell quickly realized that not only his agency, but the entire elder service network was not equipped to service LGBT older adults. Stories were surfacing of home care aides taking out Bibles and asking LGBT elders to repent. This population, marginalized and aging alone, was in desperate need of culturally competent care, and the current system was doing nothing to address this.
In 2001 Mitchell and his colleague, David Aronstein, decided to address this by launching an LGBT Aging Summit, which drew over 100 professionals from the elder service network, as well as community members and allies. It was through this summit that The LGBT Aging Project was developed.
One of the first tasks of The LGBT Aging Project, under Mitchell’s leadership, was to develop a training to sensitize elder care providers to the unique needs of LGBT older adults. Once developed, the training was piloted on his own staff and a host of LGBT-friendly programs and services soon followed.
In a matter of years LGBT older adults, who had once been invisible and marginalized were now folded into a vibrant and growing movement. Seeing the success of the training and outreach in his own catchment area, Mitchell began to lobby the state for funding for this training to be available to the entire elder service network and the LGBT Aging Project was off and running.
In his 25 years as executive director, Mitchell made milestone accomplishments that first established Ethos as a truly welcoming agency, and his accomplishments also had an impact on the entire state of Massachusetts earning the designation of being the best state to age in for LGBT older adults. So many of his accomplishments were groundbreaking for the state and were firsts in in the nation, setting the bar higher and higher for other states to reach.
Some of these accomplishments include the creation of the first federally funded LGBT-friendly congregate meal program, Café Emmanuel, founded in 2004. Now these LGBT-friendly community meals, currently 23 across the state, have become a signature mark for Massachusetts. In 2014 Mitchell successfully lobbied the legislature for a statewide Commission on LGBT Aging, the first of its kind in the country. Other major accomplishments followed, including the inclusion of four questions relating to sexual orientation and gender identity in the state’s elder service intake questionnaire, a change that brought more visibility and critical resources to LGBT older adults. In 2018 Mitchell received a $100,000 grant to launch Age Well Equality, which is a unique collaboration of providers and consumers to promote the development of a regional LGBT-friendly aging services network.
Also in 2018, after a 10-year effort, Mitchell helped usher an LGBT training bill into law. This bill requires all elder service providers licensed by the state to receive a mandatory training on LGBT aging, finally opening the doors to culturally competent and inclusive services for all.
As with the reign of so many charismatic and influential leaders, at some point they all need to slow down. This fall Mitchell broke the news that many had been bracing for. He will retire this September. Like many in the field of LGBT aging in Massachusetts, Mitchell also worries who will pick up this torch and keep it moving forward after he retires because these are uncertain times. But Mitchell hopes that he built up enough infrastructure that it would be too difficult to stop this momentum.
At this point Mitchell has no specific plans for retirement. He looks forward to managing his own life instead of managing a whole organization and a mission. When asked how he feels about transitioning from a position of control over home care to one day needing to be a recipient of that care, he pauses. “Well, regardless of who you are it is a bit scary to have a total stranger enter your home and be the one thing that stands between aging in your home and being sent to a nursing home. But I am particularly thankful for one of my achievements. When that homecare worker comes into my house I will ask them if they had the LGBT training and if they say no…I’ll sue that agency!” And he begins to laugh.
For now, Mitchell is looking forward to being the grand marshal, and he has been practicing a variety of waves for the parade.
When asked what he thinks his grandfather would say about all the work he has done for LGBT elders in Massachusetts, a huge smile comes across Mitchell’s face.
“Beautiful. I think he would say it’s beautiful.”
Bob Linscott is assistant director of the LGBT Aging Project at The Fenway Institute
