This interview has not been tagged for content advisory yet.
Dolly-Davis Dollberg, advocate, architect, and hiker, was born on August 28th, 1968, in Montclair, New Jersey. She remembers feeling alienated from her body as young as 3 or 4 but being shut down or bullied by students, parents, and teachers. Even in the face of their cruelty, Dolly thinks compassionately about her parents, saying that they “did the best they [could]” for her and her three siblings. Dolly worked on a farm as young as 13 years old to help pay bills, but she was heartbroken that she wasn’t allowed to participate ballet with her two sisters. Isolated and depressed, young Dolly turned to art and still uses the alienation of her childhood to fuel her advocacy for other trans kids.
Architecture felt like a logical way to use her art skills to create a literal safe place for herself. She tried to study it at a local college in Newark (NJIT), but living in her parents’ home was oppressive, so after a year, she transferred to Virginia Tech. Even though Dolly was still trying to live as her birth gender, leaving home was “like a rebirth.” She joined a fraternity, grew a goatee, and went to counseling, hoping to feel more in touch with her birth gender, but nothing worked. While her gender expression felt “off key,” Dolly found empowerment through her time outdoors hiking, biking and kayaking, where gender was not factor. To this day, the outdoors has been a place of safety and community for Dolly. She has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail approximately 2,500 miles and the Long Trail across Vermont.
After graduation, Dolly tried to date as her birth gender and met the woman she would eventually marry. When her then-wife became pregnant, Dolly tried to sublimate all her dysphoria into “man[ning] up” but she couldn’t repress her identity; the weight of dragging her “boy veneer” around was unbearable. When she came out, her wife was initially accepting, but the marriage deteriorated and they divorced. Dolly fought to stay present in the lives of her two daughters, and her eldest daughter followed her legacy to Virginia Tech, even writing papers on Dolly’s advocacy.
Dolly has worked as an architect since graduating from Tech and has been involved with various LGBTQ advocacy groups in Roanoke area and Virginia for just as long, including Ex Lapide, a queer alumni organization, where she currently serves on the board. In 2005, she co-founded a support group, Ladies and Gents of the Blue Ridge, that still serves the Roanoke community. and in 2014 co-founded Diversity Camp Inc.and is co-vice chair for Diversity Camp Inc., a camp for LGBTQ+ youth to learn and socialize in an accepting space.
Her advocacy eventually led to LGBR’s first ever transgender conference in the state of Virginia hosted at VT. Dolly had just begun her transition and felt profoundly affirmed by her alma mater’s acceptance and involvement. Fueled by this affirmation, she engaged in advocacy across the state and came out to her parents and siblings later in her transition. Though some of them were not as accepting as she had hoped, she eventually found the parental love she was looking for in Mary Boenke, a trans woman and community advocate on a national level who was Dolly’s mentor and close friend for decades.
Dolly is also a pioneer in the field of healthcare justice for the trans community. Her work led to the founding of Carillion’s Transgender Health Services, and she currently works with Ladies and Gents to help reduce barriers to gender affirming care, trained and empathetic providers, and accurate information for the SWVA transgender community. She says that even after 20 years, she is still transitioning, but differently: “The transition is no longer, who am I? The transition is, how do I take who I am and find happiness with that? How do I help other people?”
