We spoke to Dennis (he/him) in Rochester, NY on April 30, 2026. Dennis served as a SPC/E-4 in the Rochester Army National Guard from 1964 to 1970. At the time, President Johnson rarely activated the Guard units, so Dennis strategically joined the National Guard as a way to avoid the Vietnam War draft. 

Dennis knew that he was queer as a child, but he wasn’t yet out when he enlisted. He worried that he would be teased and bullied in the military, because he had experienced peers calling him a “sissy” and his father trying to put him on a baseball team when he was young. He entered the service trying to “be as butch as I could possibly be.” In the National Guard, Dennis noticed that others were “different” and had certain “tendencies,” but queerness was not openly discussed. “You didn’t dare say anything,” he recalled, noting that it was an accomplishment in and of itself to pass and avoid harassment. Dennis briefly married a woman (who, coincidentally, ended up coming out herself) because that was the expectation at the time. “In my generation, you didn’t come out,” he said. “You got married.” 

After being discharged, Dennis divorced and came out. At first he lived in Rochester and worked at Xerox, and then he moved to San Francisco for 47 years. He immersed himself in the vibrant queer community where he found mentors, took part in the gay liberation movement, mourned friends and lovers who passed away from AIDS, and developed a firm sense of self. 

Today, Dennis lives as a proudly out gay man in Rochester, NY. He’s active in the local community as much as he remains engaged with the community in California. Although he doesn’t consider himself a veteran because he was never deployed and never received military benefits, he tells us that he’s “glad that I had the experience because it helped me grow up.” His service in the National Guard got him out into the world, and it was ultimately a springboard to the rest of his life. That life is vibrant, rich, and defined by his confident stance that “I don’t deal with homophobia at all anymore.”