Hay, Harry (07 April 1912–24 October 2002), gay rights pioneer, was born Henry Hay, Jr., in Worthing, Sussex, England, to wealthy American parents, Henry Hay, Sr., and Margaret Neall. His father worked as a manager for mining companies, forcing the family to relocate frequently. The Hays moved to Chuquicamata, Chile, in 1914, then settled in Los Angeles, California, in 1919. Harry (as he was known) attended Los Angeles public schools and spent summers working on relatives’ ranches in California and Nevada. At age fourteen, Harry experienced his first sexual encounter with another man and realized he was gay (he had seen the word “homosexual” in a book several years earlier). Harry Hay attended Stanford University from 1930 to 1932, where he participated in the campus’s clandestine gay social scene and even told many classmates he was gay—an audacious declaration at a time when gay people usually did not publicly reveal their sexual identities....
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Hay, Harry (07 April 1912–24 October 2002)
Craig M. Loftin
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Russo, Vito Anthony (11 July 1946–7 Nov. 1990), film historian and gay/AIDS activist
Michael Schiavi
Russo, Vito Anthony (11 July 1946–7 Nov. 1990), film historian and gay/AIDS activist, was born in New York City, the older son of Manhattan natives Angelo (“Charles”) Russo and Angelina (“Annie”) Salerno Russo. Charles’s parents hailed from Caserta, Italy, while Annie’s parents also came to America from Italy, from Messina, Sicily. Charles worked primarily in Manhattan in construction. The Russos were Roman Catholic, although teenager Vito grew very skeptical of Catholicism as he embraced his homosexuality....
