San Antonio in the ’70s: Being There
To the Editor:
Thanks for the article about San Antonio in the 1970s [July-August 2024 issue]. Lucas Belury recounted the story of bar owner Hap Veltman’s legal actions to stop the Military Police from entering his bar in search of military personnel, demanding to see people’s ID’s.
This was during the Vietnam War era, and soldiers were everywhere. There were something like ten or twelve military bases around the city. Hap’s bar was the popular, trendy San Antonio Country, which we called The Country. His 1973 success in opposing the MP’s helped not just his own bar but of all the bars in the city. There were even more gay and lesbian bars than there were bases! San Antonio had a thriving gay nightlife. It even dubbed itself “the Drag Capital of the World.”
Veltman’s influence went well beyond his ownership of a gay bar. He and his father, a real estate developer, were key to the modernization of San Antonio. Hap owned a couple of downtown restaurants. He flipped the front entrances from street level to downstairs river level (which had been the back door to the garbage cans), thus improving and commercializing
the River Walk—which today gives the city its character. A bronze plaque proclaims: “‘Hap’ turned an underutilized river into the vibrant district that it is today.”
In 1980, The Country was forced to close in a homophobic legal challenge brought by the energy company next-door, whose new building needed a parking lot. What seemed like a defeat proved a major upgrade. The money from the sale of The Country bought the historic building on Bonham Street, named for one of the heroes of the Alamo, which became the Bonham Exchange—with its naughty pun on “bottom”—next-door to, but facing in the opposite direction of, the Alamo. The Bonham was much larger and more visible, with theater and ballroom space for community meetings and events, a de facto community center.
Belury quotes from the 2019 documentary Hap Veltman’s San Antonio Country by filmmaker Noi Mahoney (available on YouTube). The comment about San Antonio being “hush-hush and low key … because you have a Hispanic community, a Catholic community, and a heavily military presence,” was said by my partner Kip Dollar. That is certainly how it felt back then.
The account of The Country doesn’t mention Michael Stevens. Stevens had been a very popular antiwar political science professor at U.T. San Antonio in the ‘70s. When he split with his wife and came out gay, he was denied tenure. In a progressive-style retaliation, he organized the San Antonio Gay Alliance (SAGA) and started a community newspaper called The Calendar.
I moved back to my hometown from San Francisco in 1981 to be a gay therapist. I quickly became Michael’s protégé and Secretary of SAGA. Hap Veltman was on the board of SAGA. He was very publicly gay and expected respect and influence for who he was. And he was very helpful and generous with the community. During the Gay Alliance period in the ‘80s, an out-front community formed with such staples as a business association, a chorus, the AIDS Foundation, Gay Pride Day picnics and marches, and the annual “Gay Fiesta.”
SAGA tried hard to be racially and sexually inclusive. I want to note that the Latina women’s and lesbians’ community developed in parallel under the leadership of Graciela Sanchez of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. We were all trying to address the very issues that Kip cited: we strove to achieve visibility and thereby overcome those conservative forces. That Lucas Belury reports that he grew up feeling accepted as mixed-race, Hispanic, and queer suggests that we were successful.
Toby Johnson, Austin, TX
To the Editor:
As a native San Antonian who came of age in the late 1970s, I enjoyed Lucas Belury’s article on the San Antonio Country nightclub. Although formally opened in 1973, the bar was named after an earlier gay bar located several miles outside of the city, literally in “the country.” The remote setting of this predecessor bar allowed it to operate with less scrutiny by civilian and military police.
Legend has it that in this former bar, same-sex couples danced together openly, but a lookout kept watch at the door. If police arrived to raid the bar, the lookout would blow a whistle and each dancer would quickly find an opposite-sex partner to dance with until the police left. When Hap Veltman opened “The Country” in the middle of San Antonio, he took the name of that former hidden establishment and proudly asserted the right of LGBT+ people to gather openly in the middle of our city.
I met my now-husband when he was stationed at U.S. Army Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio in the 1980s. He quips that the U.S. Army’s “off limits” list in those days was more useful in finding gay bars than Bob Damron’s Address Book! One wonders who in the U.S. Army was charged with doing the required “research” to find all the local gay bars for this listing.
Although there is more progress to be made, we’ve come a long way since the difficult days described in the article. Still a “military city” and now the seventh largest city in the U.S., San Antonio welcomes active-duty personnel at its LGBT+ establishments. Thankfully, raids by the military police are a relic of the past.
Jim Germann, San Antonio, TX
Allen Barnett Is Worth Knowing About
To the Editor:
Walter Holland’s recollection of Allen Barnett [in the July–August 2024 issue]is greatly appreciated. I think The Body and Its Dangers is one of the great works of AIDS literature, and have been frustrated that Barnett seems to have been forgotten by gay letters. Holland’s personal recollections provide biographical information not available elsewhere. Twenty years ago, I repeatedly hit a blank wall when conducting research for an encyclopedia article on Barnett, only to receive a letter from the late Michael Denneny offering some of his memories of Barnett—but only after the article had appeared, so this material arrived too late for me to use.
Raymond-Jean Frontain, Conway, AR
Charles Silverstein’s Achievement
To the Editor:
Thank you for the obituary for my dear friend Charles Silverstein, PhD [March-April 2024 issue]. For the record, he was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist as stated in the obituary.
Furthermore, Charles was still in training and had not yet received his doctorate when he made his case for removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The fact that a fledgling psychologist helped bring about changes in the DSM is, to my way of thinking, an even more impressive accomplishment than it would have been had he been a psychiatrist.
Jack Drescher, MD, NYC
An Opening Night in Hartford
To The Editor:
Regarding an article titled “The Making of Longtime Companion” that appeared in the May-June 2024 issue: when Longtime Companion was released in May 1989 and premiered in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, it also premiered in Hartford, Connecticut. Mark Lamos, director of the Hartford Stage Company and an actor in the film, had contacted me about having “an event” in Hartford. I was the founding member of the AIDS Ministry Program of Connecticut and the Connecticut AIDS Residence Coalition.
That night, we held a fundraiser. The message was: enjoy the film at the local Hartford cineplex and then come back to the Hartford Stage Company for an after-party reception. Mark Lamos and Stephen Caffrey spoke about making the movie and about our efforts. We raised thousands of dollars to help provide housing for people living with hiv/aids, many of whom had lost their housing because of discrimination. Over the years, wherever I’ve been working, I have proudly hung the signed poster in my church office.
The Rev. Thaddeus Bennett, Conway, MA
Corrections
In the May-June 2024 issue, a piece titled “The Making of Longtime Companion” refers to a play by Terrence McNally as Our Sons. The correct title is Mothers and Sons.
Also in the May-June issue, a review of Conversations with Terrence McNally changed the preposition in his play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune.
