LGBTQ+ Washtenaw Oral History Project - Maggie Hostetler

Thu, 08/01/2024 - 10:00am

When: July 11, 2024

photo of older white woman with glasses and short gray hair Maggie Hostetler was born in 1944 in Bay City, Michigan, where she grew up with four siblings. As a young adult, she worked for her parents’ newspaper, the Fremont Times-Indicator. She moved to Ann Arbor in the late 1960s to complete her undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan, and she went on to become a social worker and a technical writer. She recalls that being an activist for LGBTQ+ rights in the 1970s was primarily about coming out to friends and family and creating community. She was a founding member of A Woman's Bookstore and a contributor to The Leaping Lesbian magazine. She and her partner Lorri Sipes have been together for 43 years, and married for 10 years. They enjoy many shared activities including gardening, golfing, and hosting dinner parties.

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Transcript

[00:00:11] HEIDI MORSE: Hello to future listeners. Today is July 11, 2024. My name is Heidi Morse, and I'm an archivist at the Ann Arbor District Library, and I am delighted to be speaking with Maggie Hostetler today as part of the LGBTQ+ Washtenaw Oral History series. We're going to get started with a few brief questions just to get familiar with who you are and then dive into topics like your childhood, your career, coming out, and queer spaces and organizations that you remember during your time living in Washtenaw County. Maggie, could you please start by saying and spelling your name for us?
[00:00:50] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Maggie Hostetler, M-A-G-G-I-E H-O-S-T-E-T-L-E-R.
[00:01:00] HEIDI MORSE: What year were you born, if you don't mind sharing?
[00:01:03] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: 1944.
[00:01:07] HEIDI MORSE: Where did you spend your childhood?
[00:01:10] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: In Bay City, Michigan.
[00:01:17] HEIDI MORSE: Again, these are just a few demographic questions. How would you describe your racial or ethnic background?
[00:01:25] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I guess you'd say I'm European, White, whatever you want to call it. Mostly German, British, Scottish, that kind of thing. Northern European.
[00:01:42] HEIDI MORSE: How would you describe your sexual orientation or gender identity?
[00:01:48] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I'm a lesbian, sexual identity, and woman, gender identity.
[00:01:56] HEIDI MORSE: Do you have preferred pronouns like she/her, they/them?
[00:02:01] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: She, her is fine.
[00:02:03] HEIDI MORSE: Great. Just a few more. What's your religion, if any?
[00:02:10] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I am involved with Buddhism and have been for 20 years, at least.
[00:02:22] HEIDI MORSE: What's your marital status?
[00:02:24] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I'm married. I've been married for 10 years to Lorri, who I've been with for 43 years.
[00:02:35] HEIDI MORSE: Great. We'll hear more about that later. Do you have children?
[00:02:41] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: No, no biological children. We did have and help to raise a foster child for a short while.
[00:02:53] HEIDI MORSE: Do you have any siblings?
[00:02:56] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes, I have four siblings.
[00:03:01] HEIDI MORSE: In terms of education, what's the highest level of education you've completed?
[00:03:06] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I have a master's degree in social work.
[00:03:10] HEIDI MORSE: What was your main occupation or career path?
[00:03:15] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, I hopped around quite a bit before that became the norm. I was a teacher for a number of years, and I was a social worker and then I was a freelance journalist and I worked at a tech company, America Online, for a number of years and worked for the City of Ann Arbor in the Natural Area Preservation Department. Skipping around.
[00:03:50] HEIDI MORSE: Yeah, that's great. Are you retired now?
[00:03:56] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes, I am.
[00:04:00] HEIDI MORSE: Well, thank you so much for sharing those details. It helps listeners understand who you are, where you're coming from--a snapshot. Let's slow down a bit and let's talk about your childhood and growing up. What was your family like when you were a child?
[00:04:19] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, I think it was a typical happy childhood. My father worked as a newspaper reporter. My mother was a housewife. We lived in the house in Bay City on a street full of other kids. Our parents supported us in getting education and music lessons and going to camp and learning to swim and all those things. It was a happy childhood. Both of my sets of grandparents lived on farms in southern Michigan, and we were close with our grandparents and aunts and uncles. I was very fortunate to have such a good childhood, and nothing traumatic ever happened--other than that, being gay, I didn't know that I was, and had a certain awkwardness about myself in many of those childhood years, not knowing exactly where I fit in. I was a tomboy and didn't really embrace the usual feminine roles. Just felt odd and out of it, which I understand a lot of people feel that way in their childhood and teen years.
[00:05:49] HEIDI MORSE: Yeah, absolutely. Did you have role models that you looked up to, especially during that time maybe you felt a bit awkward or not sure where you fit in?
[00:06:09] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I always thought of my mother as a role model. She was a very strong person. Very loving and caring. Also, she had a little hard edge to her too. But that was all part of the package and I did look to her as a role model, and I can't think of any others. I had some favorite teachers, but that was like having a crush more than a mentor.
[00:06:45] HEIDI MORSE: What were your parents' names, before I forget to ask?
[00:06:51] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Robert Hostetler and Phyllis Hostetler.
[00:06:58] HEIDI MORSE: That's great that you could look up to your mother as a role model like that, and teachers. Moving on to school, what was your school experience like and what activities did you participate in, either through school or outside of school?
[00:07:17] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I was a good student. I was one of those kids who's the good kid who does her homework and I enjoyed learning so I always had good grades all through school. That was good. I was in the band, played flute. I was in the Girl Scouts all the way through high school, which I really liked because that gave me an out for my tomboy side, going camping and things like that. I learned to be a swim teacher during that time, took all of those lessons. Trying to think if there's anything else. Can't think of anything off hand. Those are the main things.
[00:08:05] HEIDI MORSE: When you were growing up, were you aware either of discrimination against people who identified as gay or lesbian or trans or were you even aware of that as an identity?
[00:08:26] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yeah, I think I was. We had this thing in our high school where they would say, "If you wear green on Thursday, that means you're queer." That was like bviously some acknowledgement of that and that it was disgraceful, a bad thing. But it was kind of in the background, not a dominant thing, but I certainly knew that it was not good to be a homosexual.
[00:08:58] HEIDI MORSE: I hadn't heard that saying before. Do you know where it comes from or why green?
[00:09:07] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I have no idea. Maybe it was just in our high school, I don't know.
[00:09:20] HEIDI MORSE: Now, I don't know whether this is fast forwarding too far ahead, and if so you can tell me, but I'd like to ask you a bit about your experience of coming out or first realizing that you might be a lesbian. When in your life did that happen? Was it early on or later?
[00:09:37] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Oh, it was later. It was when I was in my late 20s, 30s. But I had all these crushes though when I was younger, like one of my friends in Girl Scouts, I had great affection for her. I even said to my sister once, "If Marilyn was a boy, I would marry her." I was having those kinds of feelings and other friends, one of the girls who sat next to me in band, for instance, felt very close and warm towards her. But I never acted on any of that, as well as crushes on teachers. When I was in college, I would say, I struggled through all those years to try to be like other people and to have dates with boys, and it just never worked. Nothing clicked for me. I felt there was something wrong with me that all of this was happening. I never had any steady boyfriends. My closest friends in college were girls, and some of them, I had crushes on also. But I never was recognizing that as being a lesbian or anything sexual about it, it was friendship, it seemed like.
[00:11:11] HEIDI MORSE: Then looking back, in retrospect, do you recognize some of those feelings more?
[00:11:17] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes. I realize now, wow. That was what was going on. When I came out was after college, and I was in my 20s, I was miserable because why wasn't I having a relationship? That's what everyone was having, a relationship, engagement and marriage, going on with their lives. Then that wasn't happening for me, and I was depressed and anxious and so I did go to therapy, and it was a therapy called transactional analysis. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. It was a fad in those days. I'm okay. You're okay. May have heard that phrase. Anyway, I went to that therapy, and that opened up my feelings a lot. That's when I began to realize that there was something more to these feelings than just friendship. In fact, I had a big crush on my therapist, who was a woman, and I told her that. She said, "Well, I think you're okay now, so you don't need to come back." She was a little freaked out about that, I think. But anyway, that's when I began to realize, whoa, there's something more to this and realizing I might be gay. About that time, I was living in Fremont, Michigan, where my parents owned a small newspaper. My mother wanted to introduce me to a woman in the AAUW there who was a teacher, so she did, and I got to know Judy. We very close friends. Then she said, "I'm going to go to the International Women's Conference in Mexico City with a group of my friends from Kalamazoo." I said, "Well, I'd like to go along too." I was getting interested in feminism. She put me off, "No, you don't want to go." Finally, I pressed enough, so off I went and when I arrived, I realized I was in a whole group of lesbians, including Judy. That really was a little shocking for me, but I fit right in with that group and I began to realize, whoa, maybe this is the group I need to be in. Then when I came back from that, Judy and I, our relationship deepened and then I really fell in love with Judy. That was my first relationship and first understanding of that. It was like life going from black and white to color, all of a sudden. I understood what all those love songs are about, what romance is about. I felt, oddly enough, normal for the first time and being able to feel that way. That was really nice. But she was in another relationship and didn't want to break that off, so we had a short relationship, but then that was over. About that time, I was heading to graduate school here at U-M to get my sophomore degree. Then I came down here and immediately sought out the lesbian community.
[00:15:06] HEIDI MORSE: Wow. What a great description of that experience. I think a lot of people could really identify with how you describe that, including myself. Thank you. Before we get to you coming to Ann Arbor, can you tell me where did you go to college?
[00:15:27] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I went to Central Michigan for two years. Then I came for the last two years to transfer to U-M. I got my undergraduate degree here.
[00:15:42] HEIDI MORSE: Got it. Then around what time was that that you arrived at Ann Arbor?
[00:15:46] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: For the undergraduate degree?
[00:15:49] HEIDI MORSE: Yeah.
[00:15:54] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: It was In the late '60s. I think I may have graduated in '68, something like that, '67, '68.
[00:16:14] HEIDI MORSE: Tell me about coming to Ann Arbor. You said you immediately sought out the lesbian scene. How did you go about that, and what was it like?
[00:16:23] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Now, I came down to get housing in the summer before I was going to start. I somehow came across a little pamphlet that said Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. It was the first one and I could tell by reading it that it was about lesbians. I don't know if they even mentioned that in the flyer, but that was like, okay, that's what I'm going to do. That was my first thing. It was that very summer, so I went home and then went to the music festival. I was in Mount Pleasant that year, the first year. I arrived there all by myself, didn't know any other lesbians except Judy, so I was very petrified. I just walked in and walked through and spent an hour there and then got out but it was a very good experience. I did happen to run into Judy while I was there, so that was a little shocking. That was my first event. Even though I was a little afraid of the whole thing, I was very fascinated and thought it was really wonderful. Then when I came here, where I sought out lesbian contacts was at the Woman's Bookstore. Do you know about that at all?
[00:18:02] HEIDI MORSE: I'd love to learn more. I only know a few details, so tell me all about it.
[00:18:09] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, it was located in a space above where Afternoon Delight restaurant is, on Liberty. It was a collective of women, mostly lesbians wanting this bookstore to bring books about lesbian experience and women's politics, and so on to Ann Arbor. The most fascinating thing about it for me was that it was all run by consensus. I had come from a world where it was command and control, where somebody above you tells you what to do and you do it. Your parents, your teachers, whatever. This was a whole new way of looking at things, very liberating and, whoa, this is great. We'd all get to discuss what we wanted to do and come to a mutual decision. I loved that about it. I also loved that this was a space where I could actually meet women, and it was a social thing, in other words, to make friends and perhaps look for a relationship. Out of that group, what would I say, I just expanded my friendship group from there to all of the women who attended the bookstore. I remember once we wanted to have a party or a dance for new women in town, so we set out a flyer calling all the new people to come to a party, and we did and got to know people that way. We just formed friendship groups and worked at the bookstore. That was where I made most of my contacts, right there.
[00:20:18] HEIDI MORSE: Can you tell me--how did this collective or consensus-based decision-making work? Did you have regular meetings? Did it have to be everyone agreed on something before moving forward?
[00:20:36] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes. There were meetings, and yes, everyone had to agree. Some of those meetings were very long. The ones I remember particularly where they were going to do a set of bylaws for the Womanspace, is what it's called. This went on for weeks and weeks of meeting once a week to discuss, and everybody's got their strong opinions, and I don't know if we ever came to a consensus. I think what a lot of us learned during that time was, well, maybe consensus is not the best way to run an organization but it was really invigorating and interesting to give it a try and to learn how to speak in meetings and give your opinion and try to work for a consensus. One thing we did agree on was that we would like the bookstore to be a woman's space for women only. Actually, I have a picture here. We put up a sign on the door that said... I'm going to have to read the exact wording of it because I still have that sign.
[00:22:00] HEIDI MORSE: Really? Wow.
[00:22:03] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Because I thought it was so interesting. Here it is. I don't know if you can see that. Probably, it doesn't show up.
[00:22:14] HEIDI MORSE: Probably not. But if you wanted to read it out, that would be great. Go ahead.
[00:22:21] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: "A woman's bookstore is a woman's space. Men are requested to respect our desire for an all-woman's space." We put that on the door hoping that men would respect that and not come in. I noticed that over the place where men are requested, that was pasted on because it had said males first. Then they changed it to men because boy children were okay. Anyway, this sign caused quite an upheaval in the community. Men wrote letters to the Ann Arbor News complaining about discrimination and there was division within the women's community about whether that sign should be there or not. We actually called a big community meeting to be held at this central spot and everybody showed up and there was fiery speeches and I don't remember how it all turned out, but I do remember that gathering as a very big moment in the community, political moment.
[00:23:43] HEIDI MORSE: Do you know an approximate year around when that happened?
[00:23:49] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Oh boy.
[00:23:49] HEIDI MORSE: Ballpark is fine.
[00:23:51] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Early '70s.
[00:23:57] HEIDI MORSE: Wow. You were really right in the thick of it there with those meetings and you even have the sign?
[00:24:05] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes. I rescued it when the bookstore closed down. It closed down because Borders started having its own gay and lesbian section, so all those books migrated to mainstream bookstores, and there was really no need for a women's bookstore anymore. But during those years in Ann Arbor, when I'm getting my social work degree, and then staying here to work and I've been here ever since, actually. We were activists in the gay and lesbian movement, but it was a very different kind of activism than today, I would say, in that what we were trying to do was come out and create community because in those days, being out was a radical thing. I know it's hard to believe in this day and age that that could be so, but we decided, I think, as a community that if people knew us, they would no longer be demonizing us and stereotyping us. Just being out was what we needed to do. A lot of people came out to their families, maybe some on their jobs and their friends. We were coming out. The other thing we'd do was create a community, create a world where we could feel at ease and safe. We did that by many different kinds of groups that we formed. There was a lesbian poetry group, there was a group that created--it was called Homegrown, and put on concerts by local women. There was all of our softball teams. We were all on softball teams, and we would all hang out together there.
[00:26:24] HEIDI MORSE: Do you remember any of those team names?
[00:26:26] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Pardon me.
[00:26:28] HEIDI MORSE: Do you remember any of those team names?
[00:26:30] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, the biggest one was called The Sisters. There would be The Sisters playing out on the field, and then there would be the fans in the stands. We would all go to the games and we would do the wave and have a great time and then go all out to eat afterwards. The Sisters was one. What was the one I was on? There were all kinds of them. I can't even remember, The Flames, I think, maybe sponsored by local businesses and stuff. Also, I was in a lesbian mothers' group because I was with a woman at that time who had two children from a previous marriage and so I was in a group with some other women who had children from previous marriages. We were support for each other and how to handle that. We were creating community and coming out, I guess were the two big things we were doing during those years.
[00:27:47] HEIDI MORSE: You described this lesbian mothers' group you were part of. What were the challenges or issues that folks were talking through at that time?
[00:27:59] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, I think one was schools. How do you present yourself to the school? And I would say the Ann Arbor schools very quickly adapted to this in a very positive way. They accepted lesbian families very early on, and that was very good, but that was still an issue to worry about. And how your kids are treated in school. How to deal with ex-spouses who had dual custody with the kids. And just the usual things of parenting kids. I'd say those were the things.
[00:28:52] HEIDI MORSE: As someone who was part of a lot of these different groups and organizations, did you feel like you came into contact with people of different backgrounds, whether that be race or class or folks coming from different situations?
[00:29:08] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes, indeed. Both class and race. That's what I found amazing too, that there was a solidarity among all of us regardless of race and class. I think you would have to ask African American women, did they feel that way too? Did they feel that solidarity? I'm not sure. But I certainly felt it with them and with women who were not of, like I would say I'm in the professional class but there were women who were electricians who were blue collar workers, that kind of thing, and we were all one community, one group. Yes, we did have a solidarity.
[00:30:05] HEIDI MORSE: Now, we haven't talked a lot about your career. You gave an overview of some different roles that you held. Do you want to focus in on one or more of those and tell me a little bit more about it what you valued about the work? Were you out at work and how did you navigate that?
[00:30:31] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, I was a social worker and I worked at the state hospital and at the forensic center for many years. Five years. It was a burnout thing, and I don't know. It was very rough working in those places. I also worked once as an adult protective services worker and I felt positive about helping women in those situations, usually women. My social work career I was very happy to be helping people where I could, but it was a little bit of a burnout. I did move away from that after a while, and I had worked for my father's newspaper as a writer and editor and so I became a freelance writer in the Ann Arbor area, writing some things for the Ann Arbor News, the Ann Arbor Observer, technical writing, and then I became a technical writer at U-M in the Mechanical Engineering Department. I'm always proud of my writing skills and editing skills, and we did win some awards for our writing in the Mechanical Engineering Department. I guess that's it. To me, my career, I've never found a place where I really landed and felt comfortable. It's not a big strong part of my life. I'm not a career-oriented person, I guess you would say.
[00:32:36] HEIDI MORSE: I'm curious, what was the name of the newspaper that your parents ran? You've mentioned it a couple of times.
[00:32:43] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: It's called the Fremont Times-Indicator. It was a weekly. I really loved working on that because you really got to know the community and interview lots of people, write stories, take photographs, lay out the whole paper. I did the whole thing from beginning to end, and that was really fun. But that's when I was coming out and I realized Fremont, Michigan is not a place to come out. It's a heavily conservative, highly churched area. Not very open to the gay experience, I would say.
[00:33:37] HEIDI MORSE: As someone who has written for newspapers and things like that, were you interested in the feminist or lesbian feminist publications coming out in the '70s and following? Do you remember any in particular?
[00:33:58] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, we had our own here in town. Myself and some friends started during that time of the movement putting out--I don't know how often it came out, several times a year--a publication called The Leaping Lesbian. Have you ever heard of that?
[00:34:20] HEIDI MORSE: I have.
[00:34:24] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: We certainly--we did that publication, we not only heard about it. And then later when we were all settling down into more domestic lives with our families and careers, we also put out a publication called The Church Bulletin, a way of keeping up with each other's lives just bimonthly or several times a year, stories and updates and so on. And by other publications, you mean national publications?
[00:34:59] HEIDI MORSE: Oh no, if you want to tell me more about those ones, that would be great. Leaping Lesbian, what were your goals in putting that out?
[00:35:11] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Again, I think it was just to build community and solidarity among one another to interview interesting people in our own community and those are the things I remember. I have copies of those. I should go back and look at them and see what we did write about. How easy publishing is today: type, type, type, print. In those days, you write the story, you type the story, you type it with mimeograph paper, and you put it through the machine. It was a big process, and so we had that work to do.
[00:35:54] HEIDI MORSE: Did you have that mimeograph at the bookstore?
[00:35:59] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: No. I remember using it at some office in the university. I'm not sure exactly what that was. I should find out about that.
[00:36:13] HEIDI MORSE: I'm always fascinated to learn more about 1970s feminist publishing, just really interesting.
[00:36:20] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, I have several of this and maybe I can bring a in and you can look them over.
[00:36:26] HEIDI MORSE: Yeah, that would be great.
[00:36:30] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I would say that I wanted to talk too about my relationships.
[00:36:38] HEIDI MORSE: Great.
[00:36:39] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I was in a relationship with a woman with the two children and we broke up after a number of years, but I remained in touch with those children, and although one has passed away, the other is a good friend of mine to this day, and that's a really important relationship for me. Then I started my relationship with Lorri, and we've been together 43 years, as I said, and that's been a very strong and important relationship. When we took in a foster child, 13-year-old boy, and helped to raise him for over a period of five years, and he was in a very dysfunctional family with and has--what you call them?--dysfunctions of his own, like ADD and autism, and I think we did help him. He learned how to read. He learned many things living with us, and I was very happy with that and today we're still close to him. He's married now and has a child and we spend time with him once or twice a year.
[00:38:22] HEIDI MORSE: Do you want to tell me more about how you and Lorri met?
[00:38:31] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Oh, okay. We were introduced on a blind date. We had mutual friends. For me, they were people in the mothers' group, and for her, they were people on her softball team. When each of us had just broken up with someone, and they said, well, we think you two might get together. So they arranged a blind date, and there were eight of us, I think. We went to a Tigers baseball game. We all went in one car. Can you believe that? We were practically sitting on top of each other. [LAUGHTER]
[00:39:10] HEIDI MORSE: Pay less for parking, I guess.
[00:39:13] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: [LAUGHTER] Cars were bigger in those days. Anyway, it was fun. We watched the game together sitting next to each other and all of our friends were looking down at us to see how it was going. That was the start, and went on from there.
[00:39:38] HEIDI MORSE: It turned out they were right.
[00:39:40] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yeah, they were.
[00:39:47] HEIDI MORSE: Now, you said you've been together for 43 years and then were married for--was it 10? How did you make that decision?
[00:39:57] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: To get married?
[00:39:58] HEIDI MORSE: Yeah.
[00:40:00] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, when you're very strongly bonded with somebody and love them very much, the thought that when they are sick and in the hospital, you might not be able to visit them, that's a very heart wrenching thing, and that when they die, you might not be able to be there, and you might not be able to claim their body and have a service for yourself and your friends. Those were the biggest reasons that we wanted very much to get married so that that our relationship could be protected in that way.
[00:40:53] HEIDI MORSE: Is there anything else about your life together you'd like to share? What are some of your activities you do? What's a typical day or weekend at home?
[00:41:06] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, I guess one thing to note is that many of the friends that we had from the '60s and '70s, we still have those friends today. We still have groups that we're part of, like we're in a video group we meet and watch videos together and have a potluck. We're in a golfing group with some of those friends. Book groups. Again, most of these women are lesbians because they were the people we made friends with in those days, and they are our strongest bonds. We spend a lot of time with our friends like that having dinners, doing our sporting events. One of our friends who was from those days, the one who actually made the sign that I read, she moved away, and we kept in touch with her. Then last year she was living in New York, feeling isolated, and we said,"Well, why don't you come to Ann Arbor?" She did. She finally sold her house there and moved here. She lived with us for a couple of months until she could find a house. Now she lives two blocks from us, and we're close friends with her. We all have dogs, so we go to the dog park together.
[00:42:52] HEIDI MORSE: What kind of dog do you have?
[00:42:54] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: A medium poodle.
[00:42:59] HEIDI MORSE: Cute. That's sounds really great. Some really strong friend groups and a lot of shared activities.
[00:43:12] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: We lived at a house in northwest Ann Arbor, on Newport Road, for a long time. It's like on an acre and it overlooked the river. We had bought this house when it was ramshackle, unlivable in. Lorri is an architect, and she knows a lot about building trades and things. We re-did that house, and we brought a lot of our friends in and they would be there one day all putting the roof on and putting up the drywall. It was like a community activity. It was really neat, enjoyable. We lived there for a very long time, 27 years. During that time we had this big yard, and we had a lot of community parties. We'd have a Halloween party every year, and all these friends, we've had all of the years would come plus anyone else they invited. There'd be a huge fun party for Halloween, and the same for Memorial Day party. We'd have big barbecues out and volleyball net and cotton candy machine and stuff for everybody in the community. Then we also had a Christmas caroling party. This was some of the ways that we kept community going and had a lot of friends and fun. But we got too old for all that. It was a lot of work. We stopped doing those parties and we decided we needed to also downsize our property about 10 years ago. We moved downtown to a condo down here right across the parking lot from the [LAUGHTER] library. Lorri didn't really like living downtown. Too crowded, too many people too, and no outdoor space. She really likes gardening. Eventually, we sold that about five years ago and got a little house on the west side, little brook ranch, and we spend a lot of time on the gardening. That's one of our big activities also.
[00:45:46] HEIDI MORSE: Was Lorri part of an architecture firm?
[00:45:53] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: No. She and her partner started a company called Architects Four here in Ann Arbor. That went on for many years. They were in the building that's right next to Downtown Home and Garden. There's a little building down there that I think it's a restaurant now. That was the building they had their firm in. It was successful. It was historic preservation. They helped to preserve buildings, including the State Capitol and the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island were some of their projects.
[00:46:34] HEIDI MORSE: Wow.
[00:46:36] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Lots of them here in Ann Arbor, too. But at one point, there was a time when architecture firms were all wanting to join together and get bigger, acquisitions, that's what they call it. Architects Four agreed to be acquired by a firm in Detroit called Smith Group. Lorri went and worked there in Detroit for a while, but she didn't like the big corporation, so she retired early. That's where we're at.
[00:47:15] HEIDI MORSE: Tell me about your parents, and you said you had several siblings--were they part of your life with Lorri or other partners before that, or how did you navigate that?
[00:47:34] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I was out to them by the time I got together with Lorri, and they're very accepting of Lorri, all of my siblings and my parents were. I find that during that time when people were coming out, like, 90% of people's parents were perfectly fine with it within a short period of time. There might be some shock and stuff at first, but parents put the love of their children ahead of a lot of other things most of the time. There are a few highly religious families that did not do that, but my family was like that too, and they were very kind to us and accepting of us and still are. I'm close to my siblings today.
[00:48:29] HEIDI MORSE: That's great.
[00:48:32] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Before gay marriage was approved--I don't know, one of our anniversaries--they had a shower for us and gave us gifts to acknowledge our relationship. I think my siblings feel as close to Lorri almost as they do to me. She's a part of the family.
[00:48:58] HEIDI MORSE: Wonderful. That was a surprise shower that they decided to do for you?
[00:49:05] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Yes.
[00:49:07] HEIDI MORSE: That's really cool.
[00:49:09] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: It was.
[00:49:18] HEIDI MORSE: I'm trying to think what else I'd like to ask. I think you've covered a lot about some of the questions I had about living in Washtenaw County and what it's been like for you to live here. It seems in part you stayed because of the community that you found here, would that be accurate to say?
[00:49:42] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: It's not only the gay community that's a great solidarity. In Ann Arbor, the progressive community of all the people here has been very welcoming and very supportive. I'm very glad to be living in Ann Arbor. Many of my friends today, I have a new group of friends that are not lesbians and just knowing from work and from other things, and they're all just very accepting. I just feel Ann Arbor is a wonderful community.
[00:50:26] HEIDI MORSE: After the Woman's Bookstore closed, did you have a favorite hangout or somewhere that you spent a lot of time? I know you mentioned different organizations, but is there a restaurant or other meeting space that you frequented?
[00:50:52] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: There wasn't really, we just went to each other's homes. The Aut Bar came along after a while, and that was a really nice place. But when you get older, and you're working, and you're centered on your family, you're not interested in the bar scene or dancing and all that stuff that you used to be. And you don't need to go there to meet people because you already have your friendship groups. But I enjoyed going to the Aut Bar. But it wasn't necessarily all gay, there was a lot of people came to the Aut Bar. But by and large, it was in our own homes where we centered.
[00:51:50] HEIDI MORSE: This is a bit more personal, but whether in Ann Arbor or elsewhere, is there a time in your life that you personally experienced discrimination due to your sexual preferences?
[00:52:07] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I think the only time was when Michigan passed an amendment that gays could not get married or something like that. When was that? That was very disheartening and sad and just feeling like people despise you for no good reason, I guess. I don't know. That felt very hard. That was the biggest one. I wasn't necessarily out at work until I began to realize it was safe to be out at work. Then I was, and then I never felt discriminated against.
[00:52:57] HEIDI MORSE: I think we'll move on to final reflections, unless there's any particular topic that you'd like to add more about that you were hoping to cover.
[00:53:14] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: Well, there's one I do remember now is during that time when we were beginning to have families and settle down. That's when women in our community began to have babies with artificial insemination. It was very new at that time. I remember the first time I heard about it. Somebody said to me, "So-and-so is pregnant." I'm like, "What? But she's a lesbian, and how can she be pregnant?" I was like, whoa. That was the first one. When she had her baby, I think that many women have a natural desire to have children. Many women, in our community began to go and get AI, and especially from one doctor in the Detroit area, he was the one who would do it for them. A whole group of babies were born, maybe 30-35 years ago, who women had gone to this one Dr. Taylor. We all grew up, saw those kids all grow up and go on with their lives and get married and whatever they were going to do. Then 35 years later, they discovered that many of them are siblings from the father. That was a very, very interesting discovery for that group of people. They grew up with other people's families, they find out they're related to. They're forming their own friendship group around that. That's a real interesting thing. I don't want to name any names. If those people want to step forward and talk about it, they can. But it was an interesting development at that time.
[00:55:41] HEIDI MORSE: Wow. What a discovery to learn that later in life.
[00:55:47] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: They were pretty much delighted to hear about it, I must say. They were not unhappy about it.
[00:56:01] HEIDI MORSE: It is interesting the way that you've talked about health care for lesbian women and just the concerns that come up around fertility, pregnancy, illness, and end of life. I think that it's important for folks to hear about those things. Thank you. When thinking back over your entire life, what are you most proud of?
[00:56:41] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I'm most proud of successful relationships with my spouse, Lorri, and all of my friends in the community and my family and the children I've had some contact with. That's what's happiest for me. That's what's made me happiest in life are those relationships. I don't think relationships are always easy. There's bumps and so on, and it's nice to be able to get through those and keep the relationship strong. Maybe I should mention one other thing in my life was that when I was in my 40s, everything seemed to be going right. I had a good relationship, a good job, I owned a house, I was financially secure. But I was still depressed and anxious. That's when I took up meditation. I have a meditation career for the last 34 years. That's been very helpful. I think that's what's helped me to be successful in relationships is being able to work with my own mind and emotions through meditation.
[00:58:26] HEIDI MORSE: That's great. What advice would you give to young LGBTQ people today?
[00:58:45] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: I don't know if I have any advice, particularly. I guess not to make the mistake that I made at one time of demonizing people. In our day, it was men: men were all the enemy, and they were all bad. And I bought into that to a certain extent, and I don't believe that anymore, and I don't think that's a good way to go. We want to be strongly in support of our community, but not demonize other communities and other people. That would be the only thing I would say is don't make that mistake that I did.
[00:59:35] HEIDI MORSE: That's powerful. I think I asked this after you had just also given advice about relationships and centering yourself, too. I appreciate all of that, and I think it's really important. That's all my questions. Is there anything else that you'd like to add or reflect on before we end?
[01:00:04] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: No, I think that's it.
[01:00:09] HEIDI MORSE: Thank you so much.
[01:00:11] MAGGIE HOSTETLER: It was fun to go back and remake my timeline and think about my previous life. That was nice. Thank you.