Audio Interview, Thomas Warfield, September 18, 2012
TranscriptTranslation SpeakerSpeaker
EVELYN BAILEY: So I am here with Thomas Warfield.
It is September 18th, and we're sitting in the RIT stage.
THOMAS WARFIELD: In the theater.
Panara Theater.
EVELYN BAILEY: Theater.
And where I want to begin is, you are in Rochester native,
correct?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Yes.
I was born, grew up here.
EVELYN BAILEY: Thank you.
THOMAS WARFIELD: I went to school.
Well, I started at Harley School,
actually, in grade school.
But then, eventually I was in public school at East High
through 7th grade to 12th grade.
So it was a great time, actually.
I remember in fifth grade, maybe, was
when I saw the Village Voice.
I think it was the Village Voice.
There was something in there about homosexuality.
It was one of the first times, I think, that I ever really
encountered the word written.
I think I'd kind of known because by ninth grade
I had a boyfriend already, so.
EVELYN BAILEY: I think you would have known.
THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah, I did.
But it was kind of a, wow.
I remember getting a subscription kind of secretly.
This is the Village Voice.
It wasn't as though it was a gay publication, per se,
but it was the gayest thing that I knew.
So I got a publication and then I got a subscription.
And then somewhere in there, I saw something about The Native.
And I ended up getting a subscription to The Native.
I guess that must have been ninth grade or something
like that.
Anyway, Rochester was, in some ways,
I think there was a little bit more--
now I was a kid so that's my perspective.
But it did seem it was a little more tolerant and progressive
at that time.
This would have been the mid- 70's.
I started going out to the bars when I
was about sixteen or seventeen.
Back then they didn't really card.
EVELYN BAILEY: No?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, no.
Drinking age was eighteen.
Well, I didn't have a card.
I didn't have a driver's license, anyway.
So there was never there was never a card anybody.
My first bar was Friar's and I remember I went with friends
and we sat out in front of it many times
before ever actually going in.
And of course, it was also a time when being gay
was a little more underground.
Well, I guess I can always say lifestyle.
I don't want to use the word lifestyle.
But the culture, the community was a little more, at least
from our perspective as teenagers,
it was a lot more underground.
You had to kind of search out where to go and who to know
and all that stuff.
And I think it taught us.
It built a kind of pride because you had to go out and find it.
Where I think now, not that it doesn't
have a pride for young people, but it's almost given to them
already, in a sense.
In a sense, the identity around being
gay, Where we had to kind of mold it as we went along.
There weren't internet.
So the only way you could meet somebody, actually,
was to go to a bar, basically.
EVELYN BAILEY: So where was your family at this point?
Were they supportive of you?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Actually, they were.
Even though they were very religious people.
My mother is a minister and we went to church every Sunday.
But they had a really open heart.
Maybe the mind was catching up but I
think they had a very open heart and so that
allowed them to allow me to find myself.
I think in some ways, it's the greatest gift
my parents ever gave me was the freedom to just be whatever.
I dressed in all kinds of crazy, wild, things
and they never once said anything about it.
And I had all kinds of friends and they never
really said anything about it, complained.
Or tried to teach me, this is not the right kind of person
to hang out with And I hung out with a lot people
that they probably they should have.
But no.
It was a great gift.
EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
When you were coming out and finding Friar's, do you
recall if there were any organizations that
were in the community that you could reach out to?
THOMAS WARFIELD: The only place, I
did go to GAGV quite often for the library.
At that time it was upstairs at the Genesee Co-op building.
Or I don't if it was called that then.
And we were kind of standing at the bottom.
It was upstairs and it took me forever to first time
to walk up the stairs.
And so I finally walked up the stairs and somebody was
in there and I said, well, do you have
any books that I could read?
So that's how it started.
I don't remember if they had other programs going on
because none of my friends that I can recall--
We all had each other.
And so in a way we were the support group for each other.
And we all went to the same high school.
We were all friends.
We're all theater rats, basically.
And everybody I knew was pretty much gay
so it was a very strong support group.
EVELYN BAILEY: What was it like walking down the alley?
Do you recall?
With the Gay Alliance?
THOMAS WARFIELD: With the Gay Alliance?
The scary part was, who on the outside
was going to see me going in there?
What was going to happen to me?
In some ways, it was a little scary
even just being on Monroe Avenue.
From my upbringing, I guess.
I remember a couple of times I was stopped.
I was with friends on Monroe.
One time in particular, I was with a friend on Monroe
and we were coming from getting ice cream.
And the police stopped us and were asking us
if we were prostituting.
I mean, my jaw just kind of went, what?
But it happened more than once, actually.
EVELYN BAILEY: Do you identify that
as being caused by your being African-American?
THOMAS WARFIELD: I don't think that.
I have been stopped on those occasions
and I think that's a separate thing.
I think on this occasion, it was sexual orientation though.
The other person wasn't black so I
felt like that was really a thing based
on sexual orientation.
I remember in Jim's Bar, there were times
that the police would come in.
I think it mostly had to do with drugs going on there
but I can't remember.
Sometimes people said, you have to go out the other way,
or go out there or whatever.
And when I was later in my teen years,
I played piano at Tara's.
I was one of the piano players there.
And Buddy Wegmen who was the owner--
great guy.
He was just so good to me.
But he used to sit down and talk to me
about the history of that area and bars that used
to be there in the forties.
So I feel like I really had a good support system.
Like a good community slash family
in the gay community at that time and I
feel like I was really nurtured.
EVELYN BAILEY: What catapulted you into gay activism?
THOMAS WARFIELD: It was when I went to college.
I moved to New York.
And about 1983 it must been around '82 or '83.
I can't remember now.
It was kind of when they were naming AIDS.
They called it a cancer or something.
And I just remember reading.
I used to cut out the articles in New York Times.
And I was what they call at a club kid back then.
And I would stay at the club.
When I came, it was the end of Studio 54 and so I was out all
But I never drank.
And actually to this day I've never drank.
And I also never did any drugs or anything, or smoked.
And I think following in that line,
I didn't really have a lot of sex.
I wasn't very sexually active, which looking back now
probably saved my life.
But I had a lot of friends who were just dying right and left.
And I thought, oh my god I got it.
I can't just sit here watching this going on.
I've got to be part of it in some way.
So there was there was a group called the AIDS Resource.
And this was in New York City And I volunteered for them,
reading to people who were afflicted
with HIV, in their apartments and stuff
and washing their dishes and whatever.
And I really got to see the human side of it.
It wasn't just this massive thing in the New York Times.
It was actually people's lives.
And I realized sitting there talking to this person,
reading to them or whatever really changed something even
in that day for them.
Not for their whole life, but maybe just in that day.
And I thought that's really meaningful.
So I think that's kind of how it started.
And then when ACT UP started I was at the first meeting.
At what's-his-name's apartment.
EVELYN BAILEY: Martin Horaga?
THOMAS WARFIELD: No.
The guy that wrote Normal Heart.
Anyway, I can't think of his name.
He started to ACT UP.
Oh, I can't think of his name right now.
But anyway, this was in Manhattan.
And then I was at Purchase at college
and we started our own sort of ACT UP affiliate or whatever.
We used to do all kinds of crazy--
stopping traffic, laying on the ground in Times Square
and just all kinds of crazy stuff.
But it really got attention.
And I realized that getting that attention that made people
listen to you.
When I was in college I was president of the gay lesbian
student union.
It was this largest group on campus.
EVELYN BAILEY: What college?
THOMAS WARFIELD: It was SUNY Purchase.
And I took the students to that first March on Washington
as a group.
We all went.
And the impact that made on me was tremendous.
I guess that was 1987, maybe.
And I thought, OK now we can really do something.
Because it had the energy of all these people
who were all over the country doing stuff.
And so I think by the time I came back to Rochester
in the mid 90s I guess, I had already
been, for a decade or more, doing AIDS activism.
And those World AIDS Day concerts
I started in grad school in Salt Lake City.
And even in my piece artwork in other countries,
I always made sure that we involved
in the community building people living with HIV.
But you know, the World AIDS Day concerts really were about--
well they were about raising money, that's true.
But they were more about, I felt that on that day people
all over the world were united in some way.
And it was a time for us to recognize that we
are all united and connected.
I remember when I first started doing it in Rochester
I got a lot of flak, and I would say from who.
But I got a lot of flak from organizations
complaining that I was raising money
from some orphans in India.
And then we had people right here in our own city.
And my response was always, well,
those children in that country, wherever it was,
are no less our responsibility than the people here.
And actually, the people who do have a lot of people working
for them, but those children don't.
So that was always what kind of motivated
me to keep doing that for eleven years or whatever it was.
EVELYN BAILEY: Eleven years.
THOMAS WARFIELD: Eleven years.
It was a long time.
EVELYN BAILEY: A decade.
THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah.
And finally I realized, the purpose of it
needed to be changed.
It needed to have a different perspective.
What originally it was doing, I think, things
had changed with HIV and AIDS.
And I think we needed to sort of have a different--
so I also felt that young people needed to have
their own voice in this.
I started to feel a couple of years towards the end
that I was dictating.
Kind of, OK this is what we're going to do
and how we're going to do it, and this is what it's about.
And then gather people to help me.
Rather than kind of opening it up to, what should we do?
And so I kind of gave it off to younger people.
And they've kind of molded it into what they
feel is necessary right now.
EVELYN BAILEY: I would think that that was a shift
in your own...
THOMAS WARFIELD: It was.
With all the things I've been doing in this city,
I felt it was time to relinquish them.
To let them live on their own without my constant hand in it.
I think for me, it started to feel
like I wasn't really growing.
That I was doing all these things
that I'd been doing for years and years and years
and could do it in my sleep.
It was like rote, almost.
And that felt like the meaning was being lost.
For me, as well as for who I was involved or whatever.
So I just felt like it was really
necessary to let that go and move on to something else
or whatever.
I don't know what that is.
I'm just letting things go.
EVELYN BAILEY: For a while you were
involved with the HIV trials, or the community advisory board,
I think.
CAB, it was called at that time.
You know, I forgot about that.
They were one of the first sponsors of the World AIDS Day
concerts here.
I felt it was the concerts were not just about entertaining,
but they were all about educating.
And so I always wanted to have an element in there that was
about educating the audience.
I came up one year with a quiz for the audience.
I'd printed out this quiz that would
have every other answer blank.
And so in the audience, during intermission, you'd
have to go around and find out who
had the answer to the question that you had blank.
So they really created also a social kind
of bonding going on.
But it also got people to really use
those questionnaire as a kind of game
that was a learning process.
So yeah.
We always tried to come up with ways that were educational.
But while I was on CAB, I don't know
how I was always the person chosen,
but I always went on there to their conferences for,
oh I don't know, four or five years, probably.
Mostly in Washington DC they were, at the National Institute
of Health.
And I didn't know half the gibberish that they were--
I don't know that medical stuff.
So I would sit there with doctors and whoever,
nurses, whatever, and I would just listen thinking,
oh I'm taking these notes and I don't
know what I'm talking about.
But for some reason I would always
grab onto something that was necessary for me to take back.
Some little bit of information.
And often, it influenced what would happen in the World AIDS
Day concerts.
I remember one time, I stood up in one
of the general assemblies and asked a question.
It was mostly medical people.
But I wanted to know what was happening with China and HIV.
This was probably '90, or mid 90s I guess, or something.
And one of the doctors on the stage
said, oh you know I just came back from, it wasn't Beijing,
but somewhere in China.
And he said, oh this is what's going on.
It's really closed over there, blah, blah blah.
And so I met up with him and that's really
how we found the orphanage in China that year
that we raised money for.
And it happened a couple of times like that.
Where I would find out, where around the world needs
more help or whatever?
It was pretty interesting.
EVELYN BAILEY: A mini Bill Clinton.
THOMAS WARFIELD: (laughter) Without the other part.
Well, I've got the other part, just a different...
It was fascinating.
Those were really fascinating times.
And to be able to come back and, in my own little way,
explain what I experienced.
That was a great time.
They were a really marvelous group.
I had such wonderful working relationships
with them all those years.
And eventually they pretty much became the largest funders
of those concerts.
It was great.
It was just it was great.
EVELYN BAILEY: What, Thomas, instills in you
that sense of pride?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Excellent question.
I think part of it is knowing my history--
our history.
The LGBT community has served humanity
in so many vast, multiple ways.
I mean, I don't know how to say this, exactly.
You know, sometimes you'll think of your identity
as one kind of thing.
Like, in a prioritize them.
Sort of like, oh you know, I'm a male, I'm African-American.
I think in my experience, in my life,
I probably think of myself as a gay man more than anything.
And that is partly because of the way the community--
I felt like I was brought up sort of in that community.
Not that I wasn't brought up also
in the African-American community, or the arts
In the gay community, anywhere I went, anywhere I lived,
there was a sense of belonging.
Even though you there are issues within that community.
There's racism, there's sexism, there's even homophobia.
But I always felt like I didn't have to hide anything.
You know, as a black male, gay male
especially, in the black community,
you're playing a little game, sort of.
Where you're adjusting to the circumstances.
Of course, we do that in every circumstance.
And so there are ways that you sort of mask things.
I don't ever feel that in the gay community.
EVELYN BAILEY: That was another issue
that I wanted to raise with you.
But I'm going to stop this for just a minute.
Picking up from where we left off,
the black experience is very different in terms of culture,
in terms of history, in terms of longevity.
The African-American has been oppressed for far longer
than the homosexual.
I mean, one, we weren't out.
Very few people knew we were gay or we were anything but people.
And we could pass.
But you can't pass.
And so I don't want to get philosophical.
But archetypically, there are so many ingrained attitudes,
laws not written, that you have to deal with and get
beyond before you can even begin to express yourself in ways
that are outside of that box.
What gave you the courage?
What gave you the strength to do that?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, I think what
one of the things you're getting at,
growing up black in this country mostly,
is sort of walking a labyrinth in many ways.
But I was fortunate to be raised in a family that
had certain privilege.
Now, my parents weren't wealthy but they were middle class.
So there wasn't the poverty issue.
I didn't have to grow up with that.
I came from a family that was pretty famous
so there was a kind of privilege that comes with that.
Even though my parents weren't as famous,
let's say, as celebrities in a sense, like my uncle was.
But my father was very well known in this community.
My grandfather was very well known.
My mother was very well known.
My mother was a social activist.
During the 60s when the riots happened,
she was part of the organization FIGHT.
She was actually the secretary of FIGHT.
So I grew up kind of seeing that activism.
A very strong spiritual background.
I think a combination of all those things, and the thing
I said earlier about my parents being--
you know, one of the things they used to say to me,
you know how you always hear your parents say
you can grow up to be whatever you want to be?
But my parents said you can grow up
to be everything you want to be.
It was quite a different seed planted
in your mind about everything compared to you
can do something.
You can do everything.
That broadens your sense of yourself.
EVELYN BAILEY: That was true here in Rochester, New York.
THOMAS WARFIELD: Not everywhere.
EVELYN BAILEY: But transplanted to New York City,
no one knew you.
THOMAS WARFIELD: That's right.
EVELYN BAILEY: No one could care less whether Thomas Warfield
had a father who was--
THOMAS WARFIELD: But you know know what it was?
I knew myself, and that was from being brought up here.
And it wasn't just about, I don't think, the family.
It was just this community, like I said before.
At the time I grew up, there was an opera company here.
Opera Theater of Rochester.
I was in the opera since I was like eight or nine.
I grew up surrounded by all of these people.
Same thing in the ballet world.
There was a mercury ballet at the time I was at the school.
I grew up surrounded by these people
whose dreams were unfolding and whose imaginations were
displayed right in front of me.
We talk about the real impact that arts have on us
but we don't understand, I don't think,
that the broadening of our mind is
one of the most important aspects of who we are.
Because with a broadened, mind you
see beyond what you could have seen before.
And not only out here in the world,
but you see yourself broader than you did before.
And that kind of nurturing was, well, priceless.
EVELYN BAILEY: When you moved to New York--
THOMAS WARFIELD: --Petrified.
EVELYN BAILEY: But you said just a few minutes ago
you knew who you were.
THOMAS WARFIELD: By that time, I'd
had two boyfriends by the age of eighteen.
Three by the age of eighteen.
I had a kind of, celebrity isn't quite the right word,
but I had a popularity already.
When I was fifteen I had been to New York.
I'd been to New York quite often, actually,
in my teenage years because I studied
at School of American Ballet.
When I was fifteen I auditioned for a Broadway show called,
I think it was I Music, I something,
and got a role in it.
And when the producers found out that I had lied about my age,
they ripped up the contract right in front of me,
sent me home.
But when I came home, the newspaper the television,
everybody was thought, oh my god this is great.
And I had all these interviews and so
I had had a little sense of that celebrity already.
But I was still somewhat grounded, I think.
What I mean was I knew myself.
I knew what I was capable of.
I knew what talent I had.
I knew I was really smart.
So I had all those faculties really firm in my belief
system, which is somewhat, I think,
unusual at nineteen or eighteen years old.
But because I grew up the way I did, surrounded
by a lot of adults, really.
And a lot of adults and in the arts,
I didn't know at those times that they were gay, but so many
of them were.
But I didn't know that at the time.
But I think the nurturing that they
did toward me really prepared me to know myself.
Granted, there were lots of things
that I learned about myself and grew and all of that too.
But I think I had a very strong sense of me.
EVELYN BAILEY: Why did you go to New York?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Oh, I had to get away from Rochester.
I couldn't stand Rochester.
I hate to say that.
EVELYN BAILEY: Were you being chased?
THOMAS WARFIELD: No, no, no, no.
I felt my expression as a person needed a bigger stage.
And I guess no matter, really, where I am, I always feel that.
I just felt that Rochester had prepared
me to go to something else.
EVELYN BAILEY: And so when you look back,
what did the New York experience add to your life or give you?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, living in New York.
You know, everyone should live in New York once.
There's nothing like it because there's
no other place that is that condensed of information
and energy.
So what it gave me was a understanding that what's
possible is always possible.
There's nothing really impossible.
Because in New York, you see everything happening.
And you think, oh my god, what?
What is that? oh, what?
You're bombarded with new ideas constantly
and it's ever changing.
And I think I just ate that up.
I almost felt like that was the sustenance for me, even today.
I mean, that's kind of how I live, really.
So I think New York prepared me then
as I moved to live in other countries,
really, for this experience that anything can happen
and anything will.
And also New York prepared me of letting go of this idea
that things are luck.
That what it is, is that you prepare yourself
for what the moment is going to be.
And when the moment arrives, you're ready for it.
I think being a musician and dancer also
probably prepared me for that.
But you've got to really think quick on your feet in New York
or you get trampled over.
EVELYN BAILEY: You also became more active
in the gay community or in gay rights in New York.
THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, also, there was a broader--
I used to volunteer at the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
It was before it was called the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
I can't remember the name of it now.
It was something like Community Center or something like that.
And RuPaul, actually, was the receptionist.
He used to volunteer there before he was,
or just starting, maybe, to do drag.
And so it was also a time of great creative--
a lot of stuff was happening.
Gay Men's Crisis was created during that time.
All the things related to the HIV and AIDS crisis.
EVELYN BAILEY: ACT UP?
THOMAS WARFIELD: ACT UP was created.
So many things were just coming to.
When I was a student at the Martha Graham school,
Madonna was in my class.
This was before she became famous.
And she was very shy, actually.
And one day she said to us, oh I want you guys to come
hear my music at--
I forget which club it was.
Maybe it was Area.
One of the clubs.
And we all looked at her like, what are you talking about?
What music?
You do music?
We had no idea.
We There was a group of us that were all kind of club kids
and we would go out every night.
And she was not that kid.
She was not that.
She was somewhat reserved.
She was an excellent dancer, though.
One of the best in our class.
But anyway, we went out to see that.
That's the last we ever saw her because
after that she became whatever.
So anyway, a lot was bursting forth.
The time I came was the end of the disco era
kind of coming to an end, so something else is being born.
The punk scene and all that.
And dance, the same thing.
There was a whole new world opening up.
A new era of stuff.
So I think I just was on the cusp of that.
EVELYN BAILEY: In New York, what was the response
of the gay community to what was happening
to them in terms of AIDS?
THOMAS WARFIELD: I tear up even thinking back about that.
People were terrified.
But the fear pushed them to be militant, really, in some ways.
It just pushed everyone to do something.
But I just remember everyone was so--
I wonder if I can tell that story.
There was a guy that I had sex with.
And I remember he put on latex gloves and like a mask.
You know, a little mask over your mouth and nose.
And he made me put on gloves.
I mean, we could hardly touch.
I just remember that experience thinking,
oh my god this is where we are, you know?
The intimacy had become sterile.
And that was a want that's a wonderful metaphor,
really, I think, for what was happening.
That the intimacy in people's lives
as he was being pulled out.
And the sex too.
But also the intimacy which is somewhat connected sometimes.
And so that's hard.
You need to fight for that.
EVELYN BAILEY: Well, the fear would
have shut down most of the emotional response
and reaction.
And so, in a simple way of communicating,
if you're afraid of what this person is going to say,
you're not going to communicate from the heart.
You're not going to communicate with thought.
You're not going to communicate genuinely, authentically.
You cannot be yourself.
Likewise, you pick that up from someone else.
If they're afraid, your response to that is to hold back.
THOMAS WARFIELD: And I think, actually, the AIDS activism
was a fight to get back the intimacy.
I really think that deep down, because the thing
is, as human beings, intimacy is almost the most important thing
in our lives.
And to watch that being lost.
I think that really, the motivation
of fighting to get that, to have that, to get it back
was one of the biggest motivating factors, I think.
Psychologically, in the AIDS activism.
EVELYN BAILEY: Why did you return to Rochester?
THOMAS WARFIELD: That's a good question.
Well, I never ever thought I would, believe it or not.
I never contemplated ever returning to Rochester.
But my father got sick when I was in grad school.
And as the couple of years after that went on,
I was traveling around the world a lot that time.
And I thought, well, I really think
I should go home and help my mother with him.
And I was doing my PeaceArt projects
in different countries.
And really, I could live anywhere.
I could really be anywhere and fly from wherever.
I didn't really need to be in New York.
So I packed up and moved back.
And even though I did move back, for quite a few years, probably
five years, I was on the road most of the time.
So I really wasn't here but I think
it did give them a sense of, when I did come back,
I was home, though.
At first it was very difficult. I was in my mid-thirties,
And I thought, I've got all these things going on
and I'm kind of paring myself down,
something I never did up until that point.
If anything, I was building on.
Watching my father deteriorate into kind of--
he had strokes and heart aches and it went on and on for years
until he was kind of a vegetable almost, at the end.
As hard as it was to watch that, and I had kind of watched
that with friends dying, you know,
there is something beautiful in seeing the cycle of life
and being part of it.
I tried to explain that to my brother who
was living in LA at that time because he wasn't here,
and so he didn't get that.
Kind of what it was like day to day to change his diapers
and clean up after him and all that.
Feed him.
But it was hard and sad.
But there was a part of it that was just life affirming.
Because that's the cycle.
I mean, not everyone goes through that.
But I'm just saying that there is a beginning, middle,
and an end.
I understood that, watching this, or being part of that.
Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And when it's time, it's time.
And so, during the times is when you really
give it your all, because you don't know when the end is,
So I really learned a lot from that.
And then, of course there were so
many things I got involved in.
I helped to start the Art Walk Festival and all of that.
That was the same time that I helped
to start the New York Association of Teaching
Artists.
And then I got this job here at RIT.
And so in some ways it's been a blessing.
I do think it's time for the change.
I'm a changing kind of person.
I can't really do the same thing too long.
EVELYN BAILEY: So what is the next step?
THOMAS WARFIELD: I don't know.
I've never known the next step.
I only know when this step is finished.
I don't know the next step.
It's a little more complicated now
because I do feel somewhat tied to my mother,
and my mother is almost ninety-eight now.
And so I don't want to go away and kind of leave her
without me or my brother.
He wants to go back to LA too.
But life has a way of unveiling itself so I don't really
worry about that so much.
EVELYN BAILEY: So Thomas, when you look back
at your involvement with the gay community and AIDS
and PeaceArt and Art Walk, what are you most proud of?
THOMAS WARFIELD: I don't know that I have one thing that I'm
most proud of.
I think I'm grateful that I could express something
I'm just grateful that I get to express something in the world
and that it has some meaning beyond my own person.
So in a way, all the things I do are one thing.
They're clothed differently.
It's Art Walk, or PeaceArt, or LGBT issues or whatever.
Or poverty or whatever it is, but it's just
it's me expressing in the world.
And it's me trying to express the best of me that I can do.
And so each of those things teaches me that in some way.
I mean, it is that I am working in a way towards helping others
or serving others, but in a more underlying sense,
I'm really serving myself.
Because I'm really growing as a human being each time
I do one of these things or help somebody.
That I feel like is teaching me myself.
And so I maybe that's what I'm most proud of,
is that I continue to grow and that somehow my growing
often becomes an inspiration for somebody else's growth.
EVELYN BAILEY: You had mentioned more than a couple times,
things are meaningful to you.
There's meaning in your life.
There's, for lack of a better word, purpose to your life.
If you were talking to a young person,
why would you say those things are so important?
Why does it matter whether there's purpose?
Why does it matter to you that there
is meaning in what you do?
THOMAS WARFIELD: I think that purpose
is an enormous motivator in our lives.
So if you have something you want to do or accomplish,
to have a purpose behind it is a great motivator.
To have meaning helps to explain,
not only the world around you, but I go back to the self,
but explains you to you.
So if I didn't know, for example, that this was a chair.
And the word chair has some meaning for me.
It's a place where I said it's whatever.
So that explains how I can sit down in it
and what it does for me.
That's a very philosophical point.
But that's really true about everything.
Meaning is the explanation of why we're here.
And so we give everything meaning.
And so for a young person to find purpose and meaning means
they're moving forward.
Means you're on your way somewhere.
You're either going down a path or you're
creating a path for yourself.
I mean, those are the tools that move us around,
move us forward, I think.
I would say to a young person, also,
it isn't so much what you do, exactly, specifically.
It's how you do it and what you put into doing it.
It's the meaning and the purpose that's the issue.
That's the real meat of everything.
The actual thing you do is the dessert.
That's not the meat.
So it doesn't matter if you put your time and energy into this,
or this, or this, or that.
What it is it's not that important.
Even though it may seem to you that this is really what
I want to do with my life.
But life has a way of moving you from place
to place and circumstance to circumstance.
So what you hold onto, though, is the meaning and purpose
of it.
Not exactly what you're doing.
You want to do that with meaning and purpose.
But not get caught up, I think, in the thing you're doing,
but how you're doing it.
And who you are bringing yourself to it.
What kind of person are you that you see yourself in this?
How do you bring yourself to this?
How do you bring the best of you to make this
the best it can be?
So you really become the meaning and the purpose.
And you express that in all these things that you do.
EVELYN BAILEY: Tie that for me into art, music, dance.
THOMAS WARFIELD: The arts teach you purpose.
Discipline within purpose.
There are a certain set of structured steps
that you have to master in order to successfully execute
these steps.
But it is within those steps that you express yourself.
And that's the art part of it.
The craft is learning the steps.
It's the same in life, really.
You learn what you need to do to do something.
You know, if you're going to be a carpenter.
But then it's within that parameter
that you yourself shine.
And that's the real mystery of life.
And that's what happens with the arts.
The arts are a perfect place to do it
because there is both the artistry, which
is kind of your expressive side, and there
is the practical, practicing craft of it.
Learning the tools and all that.
And you put those two things together.
And music's the same way.
Anyone can play Chopin Polonaise.
Learning the notes.
You just do it every day, you'll get it.
It may take you a year or whatever,
but you'll get it if you do it every day.
But how you make those notes saying is a whole other world.
Same with art, same with theater.
All of that is the same.
You learn the craft.
And it's a great metaphor for living.
You learn what it is in life that life requires.
And within that, you become this magnificent expression of it.
In a way, yes, it is living outside the box in a sense.
But that may be not exactly the right metaphor.
Because we're all in a sense, in some kind of box.
It's what you do in the box that is
where the meaning and the purpose are.
EVELYN BAILEY: When all is said and done,
how do you want to be remembered by this community?
THOMAS WARFIELD: Oh.
You know, I love this community.
I've been given so much by this community.
By given so much, I don't mean material things.
I just mean...
EVELYN BAILEY: Experiences.
THOMAS WARFIELD: Experiences and...
EVELYN BAILEY: Connections.
And just the love of this community.
You know, I feel it all the time.
EVELYN BAILEY: So here we are at the cemetery
because Thomas Warfield--
THOMAS WARFIELD: --Well, of course my body
is being given to science so you won't see a cemetery,
but I get your meaning.
Plaque.
Maybe there'll be a plaque somewhere.
EVELYN BAILEY: Oh there will certainly be a plaque Thomas.
Many of them.
I can't imagine you will pass without.
THOMAS WARFIELD: You know, I just
think I've tried to be a person who embraced other people.
Embraced other ideas.
I mean that's what I do in many ways
and I embrace with all most of the time with a loving kind
passionate heart I think that's what
I'd like to be remembered for.
All the things I did, or the accomplishments,
or the successes, I think, are their own thing.
They're their own life and I contributed to that
but really I was about my own life.
Which all of us are, really.
Ultimately it's our life that we live
and how we enjoy it is up to us.
EVELYN BAILEY: And how we live it.
I mean, how we enjoy it depends on how we live it.
So I just felt early on that by serving the greater good was
the best way for me to live it.
EVELYN BAILEY: Two more questions.
Do you think your serving the greater
good has anything to do with the heritage of upstate New York?
When I was growing up in Rochester I knew the Sibleys.
Well, I knew Mrs. Harper Sibley.
She was the last one, I think.
The Eisenhardts, Strasburgs, McCurdys.
And I saw what they did with their wealth
and their lives was to make things better.
I even saw that with George Eastman,
although I wasn't around then.
But I saw that what he did and how it affected all of us.
I remember when I was a kid, I was also
in the Opera Under the Stars at Highland Ball growing up.
And the guy that started that, it was free.
You could take your family there to Highland Park,
have a picnic, watch a musical.
I think it was three times the summer that it happened.
It was all free.
And this is the way life was.
And I just thought, wow, this is the way it should be.
I grew up in those Oscar Hammerstein musicals or Rodgers
and Hammerstein musicals, where there
was a kind of happy ending.
And I saw that around me in Rochester.
So it kind of reinforced that.
You go out, you do the work, you help the other person,
and look what you could create at the end.
Carousel.
But In a way that's quite true.
Or it's been true for me.
I knew a lot about the Underground Railroad.
My mother taught us all those things.
Frederick Douglass.
We used to have to memorize his speeches.
And Susan B Anthony as well.
Rochester had a kind of activist feeling
and I was surrounded by it.
EVELYN BAILEY: What, in your own mind,
do you think is the next hurdle this community has
to jump or overcome?
THOMAS WARFIELD: I think one of the problems
or challenges in Rochester is, it's actually very segregated.
Extremely segregated in terms of economics.
Economically.
In terms of race.
I think the one beautiful thing in the LGBT community
is, I've watched an entire underground movement become
almost mainstream.
It's remarkable from when I grew up
to what it looks like the picture of the community now.
When I grew up, gay people lived over here, and you know.
They're all over the place.
They're running this and that.
They're people in politics.
The integration.
You know even just the clubs.
I still go to the clubs.
The clubs are just so different now.
There's such a blend of straight and gay.
And nobody cares about that.
But in other aspects of our community,
I don't think this integration has really been successful.
And I don't think we've been successful at looking
at it lately, within the last thirty years.
I think that's kind of why it's hard to get things accomplished
here sometimes on a large scale because are so many fractions.
And there's not a sense, I don't think, of a wholeness.
Which requires someone with a vision.
And I think poverty is part of that equation.
The separation is getting broader.
The gulf between the haves and have nots is getting so big.
It's going to be really hard to pull that together.
EVELYN BAILEY: Well, thank you.
THOMAS WARFIELD: You're welcome.
Hope I answered stuff you needed.
Thomas Warfield is interviewed by Evelyn Bailey. Warfield, a Rochester native, describes how he started frequenting bars when he was around 16-17 years old in the mid-1970s. He noted bars such as Friar's, Jim's, and Tara's. Warfield, a gay man of African-American descent, distinguishes the differences between racial and sexual discrimination. Warfield also discusses how eh went to the first ACT UP meeting and became involved in the World's AIDS Day concerts. Warfield was also a member of the Community Advisory Board and formed an orphanage in China. Warfield spent a great deal of his time in New York City, and he details the differences between the responses of the gay communities to AIDS in both New York City and Rochester. Warfield ends his interview by discussing the community support and spirit that he admired in Rochester.
Warfield, Thomas (Interviewee)
Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley
Bailey, Evelyn (Interviewer)
Length of Recording
sound recording-nonmusical
Subject: Topic
Gay youth
African American gays
HIV (Viruses)
AIDS (Disease)
Subject: Place
New York (State)--Rochester--Monroe Avenue
New York (State)--New York
New York (State)--Rochester
Subject: Person
Warfield, Thomas
Subject: Corporation
ACT UP (Organization)
Jim's (Rochester, N.Y.)
Tara's (Rochester, N.Y.)
Friar's (Rochester, N.Y.)
"Shoulders to Stand On" Oral History Project
Rochester, New York Voices of LGBT History Project
Location of Physical Item
University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections & Preservation
Audio Interview, Thomas Warfield, September 18, 2012, Rochester, New York Voices of LGBT History Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester https://digitalcollections.lib.rochester.edu/islandora/object/ur:11285
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ur:11285