[This Senior Spirit column appears in the September/October 2019 issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.]
As recently as a few years ago the MetroWest area was considered a “gay desert.” There were no programs, social opportunities, services or resources for LGBTQ older adults.
In the past three years a group of elder service providers in the area received a multi-year grant to fund LGBTQ Aging Programs specifically in MetroWest.
One of those first to identify this lack in coverage for LGBTQ older adults was Stephen Corso, director of strategic initiatives at Baypath, an elder service agency in Marlborough. Corso knew very little about the LGBTQ community but began collecting others to join him.
Douglass Flynn, a well-known sports writer who covered the beat for the Bruins and Patriots, stepped up. Like Corso, Flynn was completely unfamiliar with the LGBTQ community, but he always had a passion for helping people in need and a particular soft spot for older adults. His father, Ed Flynn, had served as executive director for South Shore Elder Services in Braintree for 20 years.
In 2017 Corso and his team at Baypath applied for a grant from the MetroWest Health Foundation. Their proposal was accepted and they began creating the infrastructure to welcome and support the social, emotional and home care needs of all MetroWest LGBTQ older adults.
To manage the program and act as the agency’s liaison, they hired Julie Nowak. An out and proud lesbian, she came on board with the mission to put MetroWest on the LGBTQ map. She and the team realized they needed to provide training to all the area’s elder service providers in their area, who she found knew about little about sexual orientation and gender identity.
She also established a regular LGBTQ Coffee and Celebration group that met at Baypath. She wanted people to know Baypath could be their home base—essential if these older adults were to come to them when they began needing home care services or other aging support. In the first year of the grant those gatherings were small, only bringing in 8–10 people, but people came regularly to share cupcakes and meet others.
Then the team connected with Kim Dexter, the Title 9 Diversity and Inclusion Director at Framingham State University. Prior to that meeting Flynn and Nowak realized that in order to create a welcoming and inclusive environment they needed to reach out to the younger LGBTQ community and bring them on board. Dexter connected them with FSU’s LGBTQ student organization—a perfect fit because the LGBTQ students felt a lack of connection to their cultural identity, especially to LGBTQ history.
In the fall of 2017, the two groups launched the first Pride Across the Generations Banquet. It was an instant success. The connection between older and younger LGBTQ generations was “instant and electric as if they had been kept apart for too long,” attendees told Dexter.
The following year Flynn became community programs manager at Baypath, taking over the initiative when Corso retired. That year, under the guidance of Nowak, Flynn and their colleagues at Framingham State, the banquet drew over 80 attendees. It is now the signature event of Baypath’s LGBTQ Initiative.
This year the banquet, to be held on National Coming Out Day (Friday, October 11), will be even bigger to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
As the Pride Banquets began to build up their base of LGBTQ older adults, Flynn and Nowak realized their “cupcake gatherings” were not going to be sufficient for the needs of this growing population. Based on successful collaboration with the college students, Nowak and Flynn began exploring additional intergenerational options. That was right about the time when Kathy Faddoul approached them. The Health Nurse at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School., Faddoul had attended the Pride Banquet and was eager to find a way to have her school collaborate in this initiative.
Now two new players have entered the scene: Margo Wilson and Erin Silveira. Both women work at the Assabet Valley high school. Wilson, known as “Chef Wilson” at school, ran a culinary arts program at the high school that has its own restaurant, The Epicurean Room, managed and staffed by the students. Silveira is Assabet’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) advisor. When all these great minds came together a whole new vision was created.
On October 15, there will be a new LGBTQ Community Meal Program. This one will be unlike all the other 23 sites across the state because The Pathway’s Café, as it will be called, will be managed by the Assabet high school students. The students will prepare and serve the meal and the students from the GSA will join their LGBTQ older adults for the meal.
Once upon a time there was an old belief that stated all LGBTQ people will age alone living a lonely and isolated life. That myth no longer has a place in MetroWest. The collaboration and commitment of Corso, Flynn, Nowak and all their colleagues embodies Margaret Mead’s famous quotation: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
To learn more about this year’s Pride Across the Generations Banquet on Oct 11, The Pathways Café at Assabet or any of Baypath’s LGBTQ initiatives contact Julie Nowak at jnowak@baypath.org or call Baypath’s confidential LGBTQ Initiative Help Line at 508-573-7288.
Bob Linscott is assistant director of the LGBT Aging Project at The Fenway Institute.
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