Brandon K. Brezeale, Citadel Class of 2007, was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1985 and grew up in Moncks Corner. In this interview, Brezeale, who attended the Citadel with a full scholarship as a baseball player, discusses his experiences as a young man, questioning and exploring his sexual orientation in the context of the ambiguous homophobic-homoerotic culture of a military college. In his junior year, outside of school, he met two other gay men associated with the Citadel that supported him and introduced him to a larger gay-friendly community. He came out to his family during his senior year but waited after graduation to come out to his Citadel friends. He states his old classmates accept him and his boyfriend, but he is skeptical about The Citadel's readiness to openly embrace the gay cadets. He is grateful for the large Citadel alumni community and the doors it opened for him after graduating with an engineering degree. At the time of the interview, Brezeale was living in Washington, D.C. with his partner and working in an engineering firm while preparing to get married in the coming spring.
