Marie Mariano Age 79

Marie: "The first thing I remember about anything was getting a doll for Christmas. I think I must have been about four. But I remember piling the boxes up behind the fence to trade my doll to the next-door neighbor for a gun and holster. And then my Daddy took me down and bought me overalls and a little shirt and gun and holster. And then I went from there. I was my father’s girl."

Marie Mariano was born in Idaho in 1921. Her grandparents were political refugees who came to the U.S. from Italy. She found herself defending her ethnic background at an early age, recalling, "I don’t think there was a boy in the first, second, or third grade who I didn’t give a good bloody nose to because they called me a ‘wop’ or a ‘dago.’" Marie’s father proudly served under General Pershing in World War I. Later, when Marie was 11, he passed away, leaving five children. It was the Depression, and in those days there were no veterans' benefits. Marie talked her way into a paper route, even though they were supposed to be for boys. And the children went out on farms to trade their labor for food.

"At harvest vacation, if you did not own a farm, you had to farm out to some farmer," Marie said. "We would sit on the steps of our house and the farmer would pick us up between 3:30 and 4 [in the morning]. And we picked potatoes and onions and carrots and cabbage. Most of the kids would pick for money. We did not; we picked for the supply. So, for every 300 pounds of whatever we picked, we got 100 pounds for ourselves. And, in two weeks’ time, we had apples and carrots and cabbage and onions. And so, really, the only thing we needed to spend money for was shoes and sugar or flour."

Marie’s family lived 12 miles from an Indian reservation, and she learned to speak Shoshone and Blackfeet. One of her first playmates was Lucille Pocatello, Chief Pocatello’s daughter. They would swim and hunt and climb and fish, and became very close friends.

"I’d sit on the porch when my mother was so ill," Marie said, "and people would come by and ask me, was I going to be a nurse like my mother, and I’d say, ‘Hell no! That’s the last thing I want to be!’ I really did not want to be a nurse. No way, no how. I wanted to go work on the railroad."

Marie did briefly work at the railroad. She put on a pair of overalls, blue shirt, packed a lunch bag, and went to work at the roundhouse in Pocatello–and loved it. "I loved to come home with my greasy hands and use my Lava soap." But Marie’s mother died, and she knew nursing would be the quickest way for her to get money to support her brothers and sisters. During her nurse’s training, she did a six-week stint in Alaska, going by dogsled from village to village to deliver Eskimo babies.

Marie’s first real crush began when she was a junior in high school, on Ann. Ann was straight and unmarried her entire life, and they kept up their friendship for over 40 years, until Ann’s death in 1977.

Marie: "Ann was my first. Ann to me was the lady. I put her coat on for her, I walked on her left, I opened the door for her, I treated her to all these things. I think when I see the show Fried Green Tomatoes, my relationship with Ann reminds me of this girl and her relationship with her friend. It really brings back the memories. I think Ann could’ve told me, ‘Jump in the lake,’ and I would’ve jumped.... When I went in the Army, if she was anyplace close, I would visit her.... Ann a lot of times would say to me, ‘Marie, I’ll meet you at the courthouse. I want you to...’ She’d tell me what to wear and I’d wear it. She’s the only one who could get away with that."

Around 1940, when she was 19, Marie went to San Francisco with Ann. While Ann attended to some family business, Marie went to have a drink in a bar.

Marie: "I wore a good-lookin’ Western shirt, I had cowboy boots, I had a good-looking pair of Western pants on and my wide Western belt. And I thought, ‘Boy, I’m a good-lookin’ Westerner.’ ...So I’m sitting in this bar , and along comes this–I guess what they call today–a diesel dyke. Anyway, she sat down and talked to me. And I’m a friendly person, I talk to everybody. And she asked where I was and what I did, and a whole bunch of questions, which I answered.

"So, she said, ‘Why sit here? I’ve got an apartment just a couple of three blocks down. You might as well come and relax and rest there.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’m tired of the bar. I’ll go.’

"So we get up there, and she says, ‘Make yourself comfortable.’ Well, I’m comfortable, in my boots and things. I’m not used to being any more comfortable than that. So, I’m sitting there at the table, and then she puts her arm around me. And, I’m not a person that touched a person. Anyway, the next thing you know, she picks me up! And she’s a big gal. And at that time I didn’t weigh any more than about 120 pounds.

"She grabs my shirt and she says a whole bunch of things to me. And she said, ‘Don’t give me that old crap! Don’t sit here and tell me you don’t know what I’m about.’ And I said, ‘I just thought you were a friend who invited me up here.’ She said, ‘Oh, that’s a bunch of...’ Man, she really hit me hard. It’s a wonder she didn’t knock me out. But I got away from her, and really run, back to the apartment. And I was black and blue all over. In fact, it took me three whole days to really move.... When Ann come in, she said, ‘My Lord, what happened to you?’ I said, ‘Well, my cowboy boots got caught on a step, and I fell down the whole damn steps.’"

Pearl Harbor intervened, and in 1944 Marie joined the Army as a second lieutenant. She would go to the rifle range with the men, and could assemble an M-1 rifle blindfolded. She played softball with the WACS when off-duty. One time, when she was home on leave, she visited a man she knew who had a wonderful vacation cabin. Dr. Dean was sort of a father figure to her.

Marie: "We became real good friends. Dr. Dean says to me, ‘I know you want to go skiing. But I’ve got a favor to ask you.... You know Ernest Hemingway?’ Hemingway at that time had built this place in Ketchum, Idaho, which was only about a mile and a half from where Dr. Dean’s cabin was.

"I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve read his books.’

"He said, ‘Well, he’s up there and he wants to go after a bighorn sheep.’

"I said, ‘He’s going to kill a bighorn?’

"He said, ‘Yeah, he wants it for a trophy.’ I didn’t say anything. And he said, ‘The man who was to be his guide didn’t show up. Will you take him on up into the Sawtooth and be his guide?’

"I said, ‘Golly.’

"He said, ‘You aren’t scared of him, are you?’

"I said, ‘Oh, hell no. I’m not scared of him. It’s just the idea of shooting a bighorn.’ ...Well, Dr. Dean had done a lot of things for me, so I thought, ‘Well, I guess that little favor I’ll do,’ though I had no use for people who killed things for trophies.

"So, anyway, I went up and I put on my boots, and my special gear for mountain climbing. And I put on my pack. And here comes this guy. And he said, ‘You want to see my guns?’ I think I wasted 45 minutes looking at the stocks of his rifles, which were hand-carved. I don’t think, even to this day, have I seen such beautiful hand-carved stocks for guns. So he asked me what to take, and he had every gun there. I said, ‘Well, take a thirty-aught-six.’

"And he said, ‘Aren’t you going to take a gun?’

"I said, ‘You’re going to shoot the bighorn, not me.’

"So, I’m glad he’s dead and God rest his soul, but I took him the opposite direction where any bighorn would be. I don’t believe he ever did get a bighorn."

After World War II was over, Marie came back from Japan and was assigned to work at the Army prison ward and the psychiatry ward at Fort Hood, where she often stood up for humane treatment for the men in prison.

Marie’s first "friend" was Kathy, a native Texan, and they lived together off the post at Fort Hood. Although the words weren’t spoken, it was at Fort Hood that Marie knew she was a lesbian. She said to herself, "Yeah. This is where I belong. It was a group of these girls that were very fond of each other. But you couldn’t express it. You’re in the Army. You don’t breathe it.... I don’t think we were cowards. I just don’t think we had any choice back then." But, even though she and Kathy lived together, they didn’t have a sexual relationship. "I knew, but didn’t know what to do," she recalls.

Marie was transferred to El Paso and hung out with a Native American woman, Flattary.

Marie: "Flattary and I had a good time, as friends. She and I bowled on the bowling team, and chased around together. Then, Flattary disappeared for about three days. I said, ‘Flattary, my God, have you been in the hospital sick? What’s happened to you?’ She said, ‘I have been through three days of torture. Someone has said I am homosexual. I have been grilled worse than anybody ever could’ve been grilled in the FBI. They kept me under lights. They questioned me. They threatened me. I’ll never live through what they’ve done to me.’ And, I’ll never understand why they took her and they didn’t take me. I’ll never know. But you know, she got orders, and I never did hear from her again."

Marie left the Army to finish her nursing education, and moved to Houston. In her spare time she souped up her sports cars, and even won some money racing them. One day she went down to the nearby magazine rack for her Road & Track. It wasn’t there, and she chewed out the woman responsible. "I told her, ‘I go to school, and I work, and I’ve been here three times, and all I want is a Road & Track, why isn’t it here?’ She says, ‘Uh, I-I-I-I’ll be back on Wednesday, and I’ll see that you get it.’ I said, ‘I’ll appreciate it.’ Two days later, I come back to my apartment. And under my door must’ve been every damn sports car magazine that existed."

That was the beginning of her relationship with Sarah. They moved in together, at Sarah’s insistence, even before they became lovers. Sarah died in October of 1987. "If she’d lived until April, we’d have been together 30 years," Marie said. "We had a very good life together, a very good life together. She was a very hard worker, and she put up with a lot of crap from me, believe it. She really did."

During Sarah’s long illness, Marie sometimes got only four hours’ sleep between working and caretaking. After Sarah’s death, Marie lived "like a monk," only doing things with straight friends, for years. She finally volunteered to help at a hospice, and met a number of gay men with AIDS who made her laugh again. Marie was 73, had never said the word "lesbian," never been in a gay bar or bookstore, when she ran into a lesbian couple there. "I was trying to go home and I don’t know, something turned me around. I walked in and sat down with the two women. And I told them about Sarah and me."

The two women told her about Lesbians Over Age Fifty (LOAF), which opened up a new world of lesbian friends, books, movies, and music for Marie. She calls it simply "a salvation."

Marie: "I love LOAF.... The people that I worked with at the hospital supported me with Sarah. But it’s a different kind of support. I went to LOAF to talk to people who would understand and know what I had been through. People who I could sit down and talk to, about Sarah and our life together, the crazy things we did, the crazy things we didn’t do, the problems we had, the problems we didn’t have. And, it was just ... to have somebody you could talk to. I was so happy."

Marie was honored a few years ago for founding the neuro nurse unit at Methodist Hospital, where she worked for 36 years.

Marie: "My conclusion is–and I’ve thought of this many times–when I sat on the steps and people would ask me was I going to be a nurse like my mother, and I’d say, ‘Hell no, that’s the last thing I’m going to be!’ It was the last thing I was!" She laughs.