Project creates a record of lives long left untold 

“We were everywhere, we just didn’t have the luxury to know that.”

For Bill Gierchak, that sentence captures an experience shared by many LGBTQ service members.

Gierchak served in the U.S. Army from 2002 to 2010, including as a frontline medic assigned to a combat infantry unit during the Iraq War. He entered the military under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prohibited openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people from serving.

“You lived two lives,” Gierchak says.

Today, his story appears alongside others in the Queer Veterans Project, a Western New York oral history and photography initiative created by historian Jovana Babović and photographer Mel Porter. The project pairs contemporary portraits with oral histories from LGBTQ veterans about the paths that led them into military service, the lives they built there, and the people they became afterward. 

The project’s first public installation opened at Rainbow Cammo in Rochester on June 5.

For Babović, the project grew out of a realization: queer veterans are often missing from both military history and queer history.

“If they are asked about being a veteran, they are not asked about being queer in the military,” she says. “In veterans spaces, queerness is not considered part of being a soldier or a service person.”

At the same time, she says, some LGBTQ spaces can be hesitant to engage with military experiences, assuming they will be painful or politically fraught.

“We ought to allow them not to live in this tiny Venn diagram,” she says.

Porter, who comes from a military family, says the project began with a question they had carried for years.

“I’ve always wondered why someone would choose to go into the military knowing their identity is not supported,” Porter says.

Porter had once considered enlisting. By the time they were eligible to enlist, they were already out as a lesbian and believed military service was not a viable path. 

Years later, conversations with queer veterans revealed stories that challenged many of Porter’s assumptions.

“We realized there were probably a lot of stories that needed to be told,” Porter says.

The project has already completed interviews with more than a dozen veterans spanning multiple generations of service.

One participant served in the 1950s. According to Porter, the man enlisted for love.

“He had a boyfriend who was going into the military and he was going too,” Porter says. “A romantic queer notion over half a century ago.”

The stories differ widely, but certain themes recur.

Many participants enlisted while young and searching for direction. Some joined to leave difficult circumstances. Others followed family tradition, sought structure, or saw service as a path toward something larger. 

For Jaime Arena, who served in the Navy from 1999 to 2003, military service became a turning point.

“I was just an arrogant jerk person,” she says. “It taught me how to be part of a team and that I was worth something.”

Arena entered the Navy at age 23. She eventually became the first female attack team leader aboard her ship and credits military service with teaching her discipline, humility and responsibility.

“It just made me a better person,” she says.

Like Gierchak, Arena served during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. Yet her experience differed significantly.

“Everybody knew and nobody said anything,” she recalls of her ship. “We were all family.”

Arena remains careful to note that others had very different experiences.

“I feel very blessed,” she says.

For many participants, Babović says, military service and identity formation unfolded simultaneously.

“They enlisted when they were young and missed out on that critical coming-of-age period,” she says. “They did not get to do their early 20s in queer community.”

Yet many later sought out those communities after leaving the service.

“Those two things went hand in hand,” Babović says of military service and queer identity. “The same story.”

For Gierchak, the process of telling his story publicly required revisiting experiences he spent years trying to understand.

Raised in a multigenerational military family, he says service felt less like a choice than an expectation. During his years in uniform, he concealed his sexuality, including while serving in Iraq. 

Looking back, Gierchak describes himself as living two separate lives.

“The trauma of realizing what the military takes away from you as a person and having to exist in the closet trying to access that part of myself and bring it into who I am nowadays is more difficult than dealing with the massive amounts of trauma I experienced during the war,” he says.

He speaks of “the before Bill and the after Bill.”

The first, Gierchak says, was a young man full of optimism. 

“If there is one thing the war takes from you, it is your optimism,” he notes.

Years after leaving the military, Gierchak struggled with addiction and with finding his place both as a veteran and as a gay man.

Today, he lives in Rochester with his husband.

“He wanted to meet the person he knew I could be,” Gierchak says.

Asked what he wishes his younger self had known, Gierchak’s answer is simple: “I wish he knew he would find his community.”

Others described the interviews in similar terms. 

“A lot of people have told us the conversation was healing in a way and made them feel authentic,” Babović says.

Many participants have never been asked these questions before.

“They want their stories to be heard, but no one has asked them to tell them,” Porter says.

The project’s approach reflects Babović’s background as a historian.

“We are all historical agents,” she says.

Too often, she argues, histories of LGBTQ military service begin and end with exclusion. 

“We miss that queer joy,” she says.

Many participants describe lessons they still carry with them today. 

“If we don’t tell stories like this, we are liable to dismiss serving in the military as the experience of queer folks being put down by the state,” Babović says. “And that existed, but we miss the moments that they push back.”

At Rainbow Cammo, the exhibit has already produced unexpected results.

Participants began talking with one another, and visitors started expressing interest in being interviewed. 

“I noticed that people were communicating and connecting with one another,” Babović says.

Porter says the project has grown into something they did not fully anticipate.

“It’s becoming a community,” they say. “We are creating a community in Western New York.”

Porter hopes the project eventually grows into a book and expands beyond the region. Babović envisions additional exhibits and a larger archive of stories. 

“What we are doing ultimately is creating a place for community and a place where people can find one another,” she says.

“The power of oral history is giving people that agency to tell their own stories,” Babović says.

For Gierchak, the importance of that work can be distilled into a single sentence.

“We deserve the right to know we exist,” he says.

Arena hopes others take away a similar message.

“They are not alone,” she says. “We are out there and we are here for you.”

Austin Albanese is a Rochester-based writer and historian whose work focuses on local histories, civic memory, and interfaith life. 

The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].