Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [91]
Many of those who could not get through sent letters that challenged Ellen Shepherd’s assertion that there were “very few gay kids out there.” In fact, the IYG hot-line response to “20/20,” reflected in tens of thousands of calls and hundreds of agonized letters, provided a spontaneous poll of lost gay youngsters reaching out from hamlets and towns across the nation.
A boy from Alabama wrote: “I really need your help. If you refuse me all I have left is suicide…. When my friends found out, they all disowned me. Some even come together to beat me up. I am so alone, even my own father will have nothing to do with me.….”
A fourteen-year-old boy from Pennsylvania: “I would like to congratulate you on being the only person I have ever talked to about my problems without being made fun of. It meant the whole world to me….”
A seventeen-year-old boy from Missouri: “My dad was saying stuff like, ‘Look how you’re dressed like a fag, little faggot boy.’ I got so upset, that night was the first time I tried to kill myself….”
An eighteen-year-old girl from Wyoming: “You are the only ones I can turn to. I am…in a small town which only has rejection to offer me. My family and friends all reject me…. I already feel tired. Tired of dealing with everything alone….”
A boy from Mississippi: “I just watched the “20/20” story…. I am thankful there is such a thing as IYG. Because of you, I did not commit suicide…. As I sat on my bed and looked at the bottle of sleeping pills, I felt so alone. I decided to get some help. I called the Boys Town Hotline and they gave me IYG…. I talked for almost three hours. In that time I learned it was okay to be me….
“In the segment on “20/20” one lady said that she didn’t think there are a lot of gay teens…. How can anyone be so blind?…”
Mary heard about the phenomenal response from “20/20” producer Sloan, who added that hundreds of letters about the program had poured into ABC’s offices as well. She was elated that so many youngsters had been reached. There was no way to tell how many lives had been saved or how much isolation had ended in those few minutes. At the same time, the enormity of the problem was never clearer. It frustrated and saddened Mary that for every youngster who called or wrote there might be hundreds or thousands of others who hadn’t been reached.
A month later Mary had a chance to interact directly with such kids. She traveled to Austin, Texas, where a group of lesbian and gay youngsters had elected to name their drop-in center in honor of Bobby. As she entered, she saw a framed portrait of her son over the doorway and a matted version of the Examiner story. A legend in large letters read: “The Bobby Griffith Memorial Drop-in Center.” Mary felt a lump in her throat.
Inside, Lisa Rogers, the director of the teenage help agency OutYouth/Austin, introduced her to a roomful of about fifty young people. They applauded wildly and immediately surrounded her, vying to speak with her, ask questions, and thank her. They all seemed to know the story of Bobby. Living with a variety of problems ranging from parental rejection to drugs and AIDS, they saw in Mary a parental figure they could trust, one whose compassion had been forged by tragedy. She afforded a glimpse of what can be if those who reject and belittle come to accept. She was a champion, fighting to win them an equal share of society’s benevolence.
It was a powerful two days. Mary spent time at the center, drove around the city with the young people, grabbed smokes with them just outside the street entrance of the center, and took some of them to dinner. She came home energized and hopeful.
Mary plunged immediately into preparing testimony before the California Board of Education, which was considering a controversial proposal that would for the first time add the topic of sexual