Content Advisory: Racism / Ethnic Discrimination, Sexism / Genderism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Physical Violence, Suicide / Suicidality, Drug and Alcohol Use, Medical Oppression, Health Struggles, Loss / Grief
This photo is a school picture when Ricky was about 5 or 6 years old – the age when I was sitting outside on clear summer evenings wishing on the first star to make me a girl.
This was taken by my parents on a Sunday before going to church around 1961 when I was about 10 years old. I was the oldest and you can see from the picture how different I looked from my brothers and sister. My mother always said (jokingly) that she thought they gave her the wrong baby when she left the hospital in 1951. They gave her a Hispanic baby. I am the only one in my family who had dark skin and hair – indicative of my Native American heritage. My brother, standing to the right in the photo had the same father as me (we all had the same mother), but we couldn’t have looked more different.
This is a school photo taken around 7th grade – maybe 1963. I always had the black glasses and liked to dress up and look nice. A real target for bullies.
This is a school photo taken at around 16 years old – 1967, a junior in high school. I had horrible complexion problems at the time and was very good in school, liked by all the teachers which made me an even bigger target for bullies. They would call me derogatory names for gay people and I didn’t even know what they meant – only that they were meant to be mean. Why they thought I was gay, I don’t know but I must have been giving off some non-traditional-male vibes. I didn’t like guns or hunting, I wasn’t interested in taking shop (I wanted to take home-ec but boys had to take shop) and didn’t like hanging out with the boys. They disgusted me.
This is my official high school graduation picture in 1969. They colorized the picture, removing all of my acne, and colored my hair red (it was near black). To make matters worse, my name in the yearbook for the picture was “Rock” Thompson instead of “Rick”. It’s a good picture, but certainly not me, either inside or outside.
This is my official Navy boot camp picture in 1969. I had joined early while a junior in high school because my parents were unable to afford to send me to college. I also joined to 1) keep from getting drafted during Vietnam, and 2) go to college on the GI bill afterwards to become a music teacher, and 3) to find some type of male role models I could see to make myself happy with who I was as a person who was not going to “magically” change into the woman I knew I was. I was not happy in boot camp, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into and finding the exact opposite of the role models I was looking for.
This was a rare calm moment in Navy boot camp in 1969. On July 20, 1969, were allowed to stay up late and watch Neil Armstrong step down onto the surface of the moon. I met the first black people I’d ever seen while in boot camp and was fascinated by the different culture they had grown up in. I became good friends with one black man there, who always laughed at me because he couldn’t believe I was so naïve about everything. When I joined the Navy, I didn’t swear, drink, or smoke. No one could believe I was real. When we went on liberty from boot camp once into Chicago, everyone went to bars. I went to the Science and Industry museum.
This is me at the Defense Language Institute West Coast (DLIWC) in Monterey, CA in 1970 where I was learning Mandarin Chinese. Monterey was an astounding place, especially for someone who rarely ever left rural, land-locked northwest Ohio. I spent a lot of time down at Monterey Bay just marveling at the sea life in the tidal pools and watching the sea lions. You could hear them at night from the hill where the language school was.
This is me at DLIWC at the home of a family that took me in as one of their own. This is where I met the mother of family who was dying of cancer and asked me to take care of her family when she was gone. She said she’d seen something in me she didn’t really understand but knew she could count on me to be her substitute for her until her family got back on their feet. She died when I was gone on leave for Christmas in 1969 and I made dinner for her family for months afterward.
My father gave me this guitar when I was home on leave during Chinese language school and I taught myself to play it. Playing guitar and singing for people has been my primary solace during my entire adult life. More than 50 years later, I entertain semi-professionally. But one of the things that kept me from transitioning was my fear that I’d never be able to sing for people again without them looking at me and saying, “Oh, my god, that’s a GUY!” I was to discover how wrong I was about that.
This picture taken from a newspaper article shows me at a Navy Birthday party in 1970 at radiotelephone school in Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo, TX. It is traditional for the oldest and youngest sailors at any Navy detachment to accept the first piece of Navy birthday cake from the commanding officer. I was in dress blues and white gloves.
This picture is taken when I was stationed at the San Miguel Communications Station in the Philippines in 1972. I was experimenting with different hair styles and had actually finally gotten enough facial hair (much to my chagrin and horror) to experiment with that as well. This is where I came out to the very first people ever in my life about how I felt inside about who I was. I lived with them in their house on the base and baby-sat their toddler. I finally found them some forty years later by searching on the internet for their unusual Polish name. They had been trying to find me for decades but had no idea if I had actually changed or what my name might be if I did. We are still good friends. I was married at this time and my wife was back home pregnant.
This is me in Spain during the mid-1970s doing what I loved to do best. I was going through enormous upheaval about my identity at the time and experimenting with cross-dressing (the facial hair didn’t last long). I had been married and divorced by this time, with a young son back in the States taken from me by my wife when she left the country. I eventually got remarried to a woman who promised to help me with my transition when I got out of the Navy. She really meant she was going to try to “get it out of my system”. I was trapped in the marriage for 8 years.
This is me in 1990 in New Jersey as a highly successful person in business. I had just been promoted to Department Manager in a major software development firm and was engaged to be married for a third time, thinking that my “problem” was gone after having been on antidepressants for some time. When I discovered it wasn’t gone at all and that I was about to go through the same cycle of marriage, depression, and divorce again, I finally tried to commit suicide.
During my time experimenting with transition, I only went out at night as Rachael so I wasn’t quite so “obvious”. I had this picture taken at a photo booth outside a K-Mart in 1990 and was aghast at what I saw in the picture. It sent me into a depression spiral that almost drove me to a suicide attempt for the second time.
This picture was taken in 1991 when I had legally transitioned, both in society and at work. I went to a local shopping mall in New Jersey and had this “glamour” shot taken. I don’t think I’ve ever looked this good again.
This picture was taken at the very first company Christmas party I had ever attended as Rachael. I felt on top of the world. I had gone to Brussels, Belgium to have my Gender Affirming surgery earlier that year. I had asked a male friend to be my date, and he accepted. But thought it best to first tell him about who I “used to be”. He changed his mind.
This is a picture of me and my wife of nearly 30 years. I had tried to date men after my surgery but there was just nothing there. I learned that Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation are two entirely different things.
