Bank examiner-turned-author Gayla Turner says she had long thought she was the only queer person in her family – until she accidentally discovered hidden wedding photos of her grandmother, Ruby.
The year? 1915. There was Ruby, next to her new husband.
But after closer inspection Turner realized that the person standing next to her grandmother, dressed as a gentleman, wasn’t a man. It was a woman.
This discovery was what led Turner to research more extensively about her grandmother, about the other woman in the photos, and about her own past. The whole search was to lead into Gayla Turner’s book, “Don’t You Dare: Uncovering Lost Love,” a story that weaves together a current-day journey of discovery and a love story that took place between two women in the early 1900s – a story that would forever change Turner’s life.
“I think the immediate effect it had on me was that reaffirming and feeling that I wasn’t alone any longer in a family, being the only queer person in the family,” Turner said when she spoke to Pasadena Now. “I wasn’t alone anymore.”
The wedding photos were dated June 8, 1915. What followed after Turner’s discovery of the photos was a seven-year journey, leading her back to old newspaper articles archived online, going through old college records and photos, and visiting some of the places where her grandmother had been.
Her having worked in the corporate banking industry, and being a bank examiner, were helpful in assembling the facts and piecing together the story of her grandmother and the woman who was with her in several of those old photos. The woman’s name, Turner found, was Ella.
“I wanted to verify that I had the right Ella. So what I did was I went to Ella’s college directory,” Turner recalled. “Even back then they had class photos. So it had her photo of when she went to college and where she went to college. And I confirmed that the Ella that was in the newspaper and that was in the college photo was the same woman that was with my grandmother in the wedding photo.”
Being a member of the LGBTQ community, Turner felt it was important to share this piece of history with others, at a time when there isn’t so much representation being made of their community in the media or anywhere else.
“The story is really written to entertain and to educate. I wanted, first of all, our LGBTQ community to see our history,” she continued. “The other thing is to educate our LGBTQ allies or people that just want to have a better understanding of what it might have been like 100 years ago to be a gay or lesbian or trans or anything else. I’m not a professional historian, but I am passionate about telling our story.”
During her research, Turner also found out about a secret lesbian social club in the early 1900s formed by a local businesswoman in a little Wisconsin farm town. She writes about how women from as far away as Chicago travel to the town, Amherst, to attend the women’s exclusive parties. The local townspeople assumed the parties were for single young ladies to talk about how to find a husband; little did they know that finding a man was not the subject of the young ladies’ conversations.
More importantly, writing “Don’t You Dare” gave Turner a sense of satisfaction that she is not only able to share some history about the LGBTQ community in the 1900s, but also to contribute to increasing awareness in the society about the plight of current LGBTQ community members.
“It’s the representation that’s so important for us. We’ve come a long way in a hundred years, but we still have an awful long way to go as far as feeling equality,” Turner said. “Living in Southern California, I have the pleasure of not living in a place where I have to be fearful for my life. But unfortunately there’s still a lot of places in the world and in the United States that are dangerous to be LGBTQ, just for the attacks that’s happening in different parts of the country. So I think it’s being recognized, getting our story out there, and understanding that our story and our history do deserve to be told.”
As a debut author, Turner has honed her writing skills with private instructors, editors, and critique groups of established writers in the Los Angeles area.
Turner is a member of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Romance Writers of America, and the Historical Novel Society.
To learn more about the author, the book, “Don’t You Dare,” and the story behind it, visit Gayla Turner’s website, www.gaylaturner.com.
The book is available for purchase at www.amazon.com/Dont-You-Dare-Uncovering-Lost/dp/1098392590.
