Sharon Raphael and Mina Kay Meyer

Sharon Raphael was born in 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio. She was a sociology professor, a cofounder of the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Gerontologists and an active member of Old Lesbians for Change.

Sharon was involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and was part of the March on Washington in 1963. In 1970 at age 29, Sharon moved to California and joined the Gay Liberation Movement. She attended consciousness-raising groups at the Gay Women’s Service Center, a pioneering social service organization in Echo Park, attended rallies, and spoke at public events and universities as an out-lesbian. Simultaneously, Sharon taught sociology at California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Though she could have lost her job for being an out-Lesbian, instead Sharon was promoted and became a tenured sociology professor, specializing in gerontology and LGBTQ aging. She taught at CSUDH for 40 years.

Mina Kay Meyer was born in 1940 in Sewickley, PA and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She was a lesbian feminist activist and pioneer in the Gay Rights Movement.Mina Kay Meyer was born in 1940 in Sewickley, PA and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She was a lesbian feminist activist and pioneer in the Gay Rights Movement.

Mina moved to Los Angeles in 1973 where she became involved in gay rights organizing. Mina worked with the Gay Women’s Service Center from 1971-1972. Soon after, she served on the Board of the Gay Community Services Center and started the first women's clinic that provided pap smears and artificial insemination for lesbians in Los Angeles, a first and much needed service. Mina worked at the famous and now closed Feminist Bookstore Sisterhood Bookstore for 16 years in the 1980s,1990s and early 2000s.

Sharon and Mina first met as children in Cleveland and reconnected in 1971 in Hermosa Beach, California. They were partnered for thirty-seven years before legally marrying in 2008. Together, Mina and Sharon worked on many activist lesbian projects including founding the first LGBT synagogue in Los Angeles, CA, Beth Chayim Chadashim. They also assumed leadership of the Gay Women’s Service Center in 1972 and were part of the core organizing group of what became the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Mina and Sharon became AIDS activists in 1987 and, with Michael Weinstein and others, formed the AIDS Hospice Committee (now the AIDS HealthCare Foundation), organized protests, and formed a commission to highlight the needs of people with AIDS. Sharon and Mina also helped set up an AIDS hospice, the Chris Brownlie Hospice, a pioneering hospice on the Barlow Respiratory Hospital campus.

Mina and Sharon published many articles on lesbian and gay aging. Mina received a Master's in Sociology at CSUDH and wrote the first social science thesis on lesbian aging, “The Older Lesbian” (Raphael and Robinson, 1979). One of their articles, “Lesbians and Gay Men in Later Life,” appeared in the Fall 1981 issues of Generations journal.

Along with Lisa Hamburger, Richard Southern, and Don Catalano, Sharon and Mina formed the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Gerontology (NALGG) at an American Society on Aging (ASA) conference, which later became ASA’s LGBT Aging Issues Network (LAIN).

Mina also served as Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). Together Mina and Sharon created a local OLOC chapter and Lez Chat in Long Beach, a brunch group for lesbians who identified as older. According to Sharon, OLOC helped her “counter negative stereotypes associated with [her] personal journey as an old woman and as an old lesbian.”

Mina died on July 29, 2016.

At age 76, Sharon fell in love with Jenny Wren. Sharon attributes her ability to form a new meaningful connection at age 76 to “the confidence [she] had gained from [her] positive and supportive spouse, coping skills acquired from [her] life in the movement, and [her] knowledge as a gerontologist that being old can be a reawakening rather than a winding down.”

Sources: “Mina Kay Meyer 1940-2016,” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2016, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/mina-meyer-obituary?id=8087336

Sharon Raphael, “How the Lesbian Feminist Movement: Transformed My Life” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 41, no. 4, Gender and Age: A Focus on Women (Winter 2017–2018): 137-139, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26556335

Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC)

“After the publication of the book Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism by Barbara MacDonald and Cynthia Rich, a group of lesbians were inspired and empowered to start the First West Coast Conference and Celebration for Old Lesbians in Southern California. The event was held at the California State University, Dominguez Hills Campus in Carson, California in April 1987.

Out of the group that attended this conference as well as its follow-up in 1989, a group of sixteen lesbians went on to form an organization. At the first organizational meeting, a name was chosen, a statement of purpose drafted, tasks assigned, a coordinator designated and future meetings scheduled. The Old Lesbian Organizing Committee (later renamed Old Lesbians Organizing for Change) had begun.

Participation was strictly limited to lesbians 60 years of age and older. However, OLOC has always welcomed the support of younger lesbians while maintaining the need for separate space.

OLOC quickly established a newsletter with a national reach and began enrolling members. Early efforts were concentrated on educational materials on ageism, using familiar and effective consciousness raising techniques. These materials were pooled and published in The Facilitator's Handbook: Confronting Ageism: Consciousness Raising for Lesbians 60 and Over.

OLOC was a strong and highly visible part of the National Lesbian Conference in Atlanta 1991 as well as the March on Washington in 1993.

By 1992, OLOC sought and gained non-profit status, incorporating in the state of Texas. It achieved tax exempt status in 1994.

In 1996, OLOC held its first National Gathering, held on the campus of University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. In 1999, it held its second gathering in San Francisco, CA. The third was in 2002, again in Minnesota. The conferences are now held every other year.

OLOC continues to produce a quarterly newsletter called the OLOC Reporter , coordinate biennial gatherings, participate in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project and produce a line of age-positive, women-friendly greeting cards.”

Source: Stacy Wood and Sabrina Ponce, “Finding Aid for the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change records 1986- 1992 LSC.2203,” UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, September 5, 2017, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8z89fjx/