Mark Gray (pronouns: He/His), white chocolatier and AIDS activist, in this third of three interviews (with transcripts of earlier ones available in the repository), discusses the changes in his life as he moved from West Virginia to Charleston, SC, where, in a "turning point," he worked on the "front line" of AIDS activism. Having grown up in Virginia, attending gay bars in Roanoke in an era when there were still raids, he became a renown chocolatier at the Greenbrier Hotel. He trained from 1977-1979 and then worked there for five years. He led a "charmed life" at this prestigious hotel where US Presidents came and the Iranian hostages were housed after their 1981 release. His friends included a gay speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and the White House Executive Chef Walter Scheib. He speaks of the parties he threw, the relationships he had, and the start of the AIDS crisis. Moving to Charleston in 1984, Gray eventually established Cacao, a chocolate shop on King Street. He lived a completely out life in Charleston where he found people open, friendly and non-judgmental, recalls eccentric friends like Witsell Neyle and Mary Alston Ruff, mentions how African Americans attended the women's bar D?j? Vu, and contrasts the small town atmosphere and the beginning of the food and restaurant scene to later changes. Being an openly gay merchant started rumors and brought many to his shop including two gay youths seeking positive role models ? Joel Derfner, who later wrote books on LGBTQ topics and "Baby" Thomas Myers whose father founded We Are Family, an organization for LGBTQ youth. Distressed by the death of so many "boys" from AIDS, Gray helped found Helping Hands, a grass roots organization of volunteers who banded together to help people with AIDS, a disease that provoked such fear that he had to paper his store windows to shield those attending a fund-raiser there. He traces the creation of Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services (PALSS), and his growing involvement, noting how he learned to become an advocate "and that I do have a voice." He became trained in HIV testing and counseling, became the head of the volunteer program of PALSS, later Lowcountry AIDS Services, creating the nutritional program and a food bank. As he closed his retail store and concentrated on baking, and his business partner started St. John's Caf?, a gay friendly restaurant on John's Island (later The Fat Hen), Gray realized his work with HIV and advocacy "had become everything I was." This took a toll on his life and his relationships, which therapy helped resolve. Speaking on the current state of affairs, he says he is happy that HIV has become a manageable disease but is alarmed that people are still becoming infected, and regrets the fact that many younger than he are ignorant of this and other parts of LGBTQ history. He finds the community much more fragmented, assimilated and divided by class than what he experienced, yet ends on a positive note of his personal philosophy to "celebrate life."
Selden K. Smith, a South Carolina native who taught history for nearly four decades at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina, talks about his role in the development of Holocaust education courses. He describes meeting local survivors and says of interviewer Lilly Stern Filler’s mother, “The most compelling person of all—it was all compelling—was Jadzia [Stern].” What started as an experimental course featuring presentations by survivors grew into a standard offering at Columbia College. Dr. Smith notes he was not involved in or even aware of the effort to create legislation that established the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust (SCCH) in 1989. However, he was appointed to SCCH in 1990. He credits Margaret Walden, who then worked for the South Carolina Department of Education, for much of the progress made with Holocaust education in the state. Among SCCH’s projects was a joint effort with South Carolina Educational Television to interview survivors and liberators, resulting in the publication of the teaching guide South Carolina Voices. The interviewee discusses the status of Holocaust education in South Carolina and suggests that the challenge is how to make it “relevant to one’s day and time.”
Lara DeVille LeRoy talks about her grandparents Rosa and Felix Dziewienski, who “survived the Holocaust by sheer luck.” From the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, where a soldier killed their infant son, they were sent to Plaszow concentration camp. Near the end of the war, they escaped to the forest where they were separated. Felix joined the resistance and Rosa was forced to work for a Russian colonel keeping house and caring for children. After the war Rosa and Felix were reunited in a German DP camp. With two of Felix’s brothers and their wives, they settled in Wurmannsquick, Germany. One brother and his wife, Herman and Maria, immigrated to Atlanta, Georgia, as soon as possible. Felix and Rosa and Felix’s remaining brother and his wife, Carl and Sasha, stayed and made a life. Lara’s father, Roman, was born in 1946. The antisemitism in the German schools was hard on Roman and his cousin, so they were sent to boarding schools in England and Australia, respectively. When Roman was about fifteen years old, he and his parents visited Herman and Maria in Atlanta. Roman announced he would not leave, so they enrolled him in Georgia Military Academy. His parents immigrated to Atlanta about a year later, followed by Carl and Sasha. Lara describes Rosa’s attitudes about food—it was a “cure-all”—plus “there was a lot of focus on the ability to use the bathroom.” In her habits Rosa was very neat and clean, but also a hoarder. “She, for sure, communicated that you had to be strong and put your best face and foot forward. And so, if an emotion could be satiated by a macaroon or salami stick, a larger emotion was not to be displayed in public.” Rosa also demonstrated a strong work ethic, believing you should always do your best. While this concept was conveyed to Lara, it was not imparted to Lara’s father. Lara notes that her grandparents weren’t “equipped to be parents” due to the trauma they endured and the lack of family support. Rosa, in particular, overindulged Roman, setting no boundaries. “I think that I would directly attribute my dad’s drug addiction and his insecurities and his need to self-medicate and his lack of discipline and his, sort of, largess to the Holocaust. I think the way he relates to people is, to some extent, largely influenced by the Holocaust.” Lara found herself driven to learn about the Holocaust; “it drove me professionally because I founded an organization that did Holocaust and diversity education.” She discusses her group visits to Poland, one with her father, one with local Holocaust survivors Pincus Kolender and Joe Engel, and one that she organized while working for Charleston Jewish Federation. “Mankind has not, as a whole, changed because these atrocities still continue. So that’s why I went.” [Note: Roman changed the family name from Dziewienski to DeVille when Lara was three years old.] This is one of a number of interviews conducted by Ph.D. candidate Lucas Wilson, for his dissertation, “The Structures of Postmemory: Portraits of Survivor-Family Homes in Second-Generation Holocaust Literature.” Wilson was awarded two Charleston Research Fellowships (May 2017, February 2019) by the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston.
