Item

Oral history interview with Patty Wolff, by David McCormack and Carla Moller [Sound Recording]

• 2012-02-23 (Creation)

WAV (File); 01:48:42

Session 1. Patty Wolff relates stories and anecdotes about the life of Wolff's partner of many years, Maxine L'Ecuyer, and about the lives of lesbians during the first half of the 20th century. Wolff's partner, Maxine L'Ecuyer (b. 1923), was a French-Canadian, left by her parents to be raised in a Catholic orphanage in Kansas. After moving to California on her own at age 14, L'Ecuyer worked as a movie projectionist for the Marines during WWII, after which she joined a Catholic convent, believing her sexuality to be an abomination. Denied the right to take her final vows, L'Ecuyer attended graduate school at the University of Washington, and was briefly institutionalized (as a result of her sexuality being revealed and compromising her professional career as a professor). L'Ecuyer retired to Portland in her late 50s, at which time she at last found a means of realizing her same-sex attractions to other women. L'Ecuyer met Patty Wolff circa 1992, at a rally on Pioneer Square in opposition of Ballot Measure 9.

Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

• eng

Oral history interview with Patty Wolff, by David McCormack and Carla Moller, 2012 February 23, SR 11439, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

• Gays--United States--Social conditions
• Gay rights
• Lesbians
• L’Ecuyer, Maxine

• United States » Oregon

• McCormack, David (Contributor)
• Moller, Carla (Contributor)