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Photo courtesy of Jeremy Youst
Green Mountain Crossroads’ Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project
Andrew’s Inn was a gay disco, bar, hotel, restaurant, co-counseling site, and community space on the Square in downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont from 1973-1984. Originally started by John Moisis, in the building owned by his parents at the time, Thom Herman and Jeremy Youst bought Andrew’s and took over ownership and daily operation in 1979. Fletcher Proctor was one of the investors who helped Thom and Jeremy raise the funds to purchase Andrew’s and became a part of the vibrant community of the Inn. Eva Mondon was a first responder with the Westminster Fire Department who fought the Star Hotel Fire and a patron of Andrew’s. Michael Gigante was a self-described ‘gay activist’ who helped found the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont and a local chapter of ACT-UP thanks, in part, to relationships he formed while spending time at Andrew’s Inn.
Those who were involved with Andrew’s were the rural LGBTQ vanguard here in Vermont. We at Green Mountain Crossroads are honored to share the stories of this place in the words of those who were there.
The Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project emerged from a rich collaboration between Green Mountain Crossroads, Marlboro College and Vermont Performance Lab that was hatched in the spring of 2015. HB Lozito of Green Mountain Crossroads had been wanting to undertake a rural LGBTQ oral history project for some time and this collaboration provided the spark; Sara Coffey of Vermont Performance Lab was working with writer/director/performer Ain Gordon on his next project and was seeking ways to connect his creative research into the radical movements of the 70s and 80s and the emergence of gay culture with our local LGBTQ communities; and Kate Ratcliff and Brenda Foley on the American Studies and Theater faculty at Marlboro College had a shared interest in the history of social movements and project based learning. The shared research fed the creation of Gordon’s new work Radicals in Miniature; yielded student projects that were grounded in oral histories collected from local radicals who were involved in various movements and projects; and Green Mountain Crossroads’ Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project. In the winter of 2017, Evie Lovett joined this collaboration to create present-day portraits of the interviewees featured in the project.
Part of the impetus behind our collaboration and this oral history project is to address the tension between visibility and obscured existence present in the legacy of rural LGBTQ people in Vermont and throughout the U.S. We are thrilled to share this critical LGBTQ history with the broader public.
Thank you: Ain Gordon, Allen Young, Apple S., Brenda Foley, Eva Mondon, Evie Lovett, Fletcher Proctor, Gavy Kessler, Jeremy Youst, John Moisis, Kate Ratcliff, Leo Fleming, Marlboro College, Mel Motel, Michael Gigante, Nancy Clingnan, Rainbow Stakiwicz, Ray Massucco, Robert McBride, Sara Coffey, Susan Macneil, Thom Herman, and Vermont Performance Lab.
HB Lozito
Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project Interviewer, Editor, Researcher
Executive Director, Green Mountain Crossroads
Andrew’s Inn was a gay disco, bar, hotel, restaurant, co-counseling site, and community space on the Square in downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont from 1973-1984. Originally started by John Moisis, in the building owned by his parents at the time, Thom Herman and Jeremy Youst bought Andrew’s and took over ownership and daily operation in 1979. Fletcher Proctor was one of the investors who helped Thom and Jeremy raise the funds to purchase Andrew’s and became a part of the vibrant community of the Inn. Eva Mondon was a first responder with the Westminster Fire Department who fought the Star Hotel Fire and a patron of Andrew’s. Michael Gigante was a self-described ‘gay activist’ who helped found the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont and a local chapter of ACT-UP thanks, in part, to relationships he formed while spending time at Andrew’s Inn.
Those who were involved with Andrew’s were the rural LGBTQ vanguard here in Vermont. We at Green Mountain Crossroads are honored to share the stories of this place in the words of those who were there.
The Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project emerged from a rich collaboration between Green Mountain Crossroads, Marlboro College and Vermont Performance Lab that was hatched in the spring of 2015. HB Lozito of Green Mountain Crossroads had been wanting to undertake a rural LGBTQ oral history project for some time and this collaboration provided the spark; Sara Coffey of Vermont Performance Lab was working with writer/director/performer Ain Gordon on his next project and was seeking ways to connect his creative research into the radical movements of the 70s and 80s and the emergence of gay culture with our local LGBTQ communities; and Kate Ratcliff and Brenda Foley on the American Studies and Theater faculty at Marlboro College had a shared interest in the history of social movements and project based learning. The shared research fed the creation of Gordon’s new work Radicals in Miniature; yielded student projects that were grounded in oral histories collected from local radicals who were involved in various movements and projects; and Green Mountain Crossroads’ Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project. In the winter of 2017, Evie Lovett joined this collaboration to create present-day portraits of the interviewees featured in the project.
Part of the impetus behind our collaboration and this oral history project is to address the tension between visibility and obscured existence present in the legacy of rural LGBTQ people in Vermont and throughout the U.S. We are thrilled to share this critical LGBTQ history with the broader public.
Thank you: Ain Gordon, Allen Young, Apple S., Brenda Foley, Eva Mondon, Evie Lovett, Fletcher Proctor, Gavy Kessler, Jeremy Youst, John Moisis, Kate Ratcliff, Leo Fleming, Marlboro College, Mel Motel, Michael Gigante, Nancy Clingnan, Rainbow Stakiwicz, Ray Massucco, Robert McBride, Sara Coffey, Susan Macneil, Thom Herman, and Vermont Performance Lab.
HB Lozito
Andrew’s Inn Oral History Project Interviewer, Editor, Researcher
Executive Director, Green Mountain Crossroads
Andrew's Inn in Historical and Cultural Context
Andrew’s Inn, with its bars, discos and lodging, offered a gathering place for rural and urban LGBT people in the heart of downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont. In operation from 1973 to 1984, its history brings to light the complex cross-currents of the 70s and early 80s and the power of shared social space in defining personal and collective identities.
The Inn flourished during a time of social, cultural and political ferment. Gay Liberation, the Women’s Movement and Lesbian Separatism fostered the emergence of new subcultures and challenged the norms and practices of a hetero-normative society. While hostility persisted, signs of change were underway: in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders; in 1975 the federal Civil Service commission eliminated its ban on the employment of gays and lesbians; by 1976, seventeen states had repealed their sodomy laws and thirty-six cities passed legislation banning discrimination. In the wake of Stonewall and in the context of a more tolerant police response to gay public life, commercialized gay spaces, from discos, to bars to bathhouses, were proliferating. Because many of those places were in metropolitan areas, we tend to have an urban-centric understanding of this historical moment. Andrew’s Inn stands out as a landmark of gay public life in a rural environment. Stories about the Inn remind us of the importance of rural LGBT people in gay history and revise in crucial ways our understanding of Vermont history and identity.
Many rural LGBT people identified as feminists, as gay activists, and as part of a wider counter-culture. The back-to-the-land movement included a gay and lesbian rural migration that affirmed widely shared counter-cultural values of rural idealism, egalitarianism, community and environmentalism, but also critiqued the heteronormativity of the dominant society, as well as the heterosexism of the broader male counterculture and what historian Scott Herring calls the “homonormativity” of gay male subculture. This critique takes clear form in the The Radical Faeries, a nation-wide grass-roots movement initially of gay men that started in the mid-70s as a direct challenge to the limitations of gay masculine identity and garnered a robust following in the Connecticut Valley. Rural LGBT people carved out new spaces for critiquing and transforming society. The rural lesbian-separatist publication Country Women, first published in 1973, followed by the RFD (Rural Fairy Digest) in 1974, articulated and disseminated the anti-heteronormative, anti-urban, pro-rural orientation of this new “movement within the movement.” The social movements of the time were part of the oxygen that defined and sustained gay public life, yet not everyone who was part of the scene at Andrew’s Inn was an activist.
At the same time, social interaction can create the context for later political mobilization, as is apparent in the way the Southern Vermont chapter of ACT-UP grew from relationships forged at Andrew’s Inn.
Andrew’s Inn provided a space where rural LGBT people could find one another and interact with guests who came from as far away as Boston and New York. The story of gay tourists arriving in Bellows Falls via rail to escape the city re-writes an historic pattern of Vermont railroad tourism in a post 1960s context. Just as the Inn brought rural and urban folk together, so too it created a nexus for gay men and lesbians to share space, and fostered integration with the wider community of Bellows Falls. According to a newspaper report of the time, 35 to 40% of the clientele were women and the Inn offered “womyn only” activities. The Yellow Rose café, attached to the Inn, was a popular community space in Bellows Falls, and both the original owner, John Moisis and later owners Thom Herman and Jeremy Youst were gay members of the Chamber of Commerce. This integrative aspect of Andrew’s Inn speaks to the particular character of rural institutions and adds important context to our understanding of gay subcultures.
Andrew’s Inn gives form to a spirit of gay pride that was very much in the air in the 70s and early 80s. The culture, sexuality and sociability of the Inn changed the way rural LGBT people thought about their lives and identities. Like other public venues, however, Andrew’s Inn was a space of both visibility and vulnerability. A subset of citizens in Bellows Falls in 1979 mounted an anti-gay backlash focused on the Inn. Their efforts to re-claim what they considered to be the “real” Bellows Falls and the “real” Vermont remind us that history is always contested and never complete without the subjective voices of those who have been marginalized. Oral history makes new subjects and new forms of agency visible.
Kate Ratcliff
Professor of American and Gender Studies
Marlboro College
Andrew’s Inn, with its bars, discos and lodging, offered a gathering place for rural and urban LGBT people in the heart of downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont. In operation from 1973 to 1984, its history brings to light the complex cross-currents of the 70s and early 80s and the power of shared social space in defining personal and collective identities.
The Inn flourished during a time of social, cultural and political ferment. Gay Liberation, the Women’s Movement and Lesbian Separatism fostered the emergence of new subcultures and challenged the norms and practices of a hetero-normative society. While hostility persisted, signs of change were underway: in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders; in 1975 the federal Civil Service commission eliminated its ban on the employment of gays and lesbians; by 1976, seventeen states had repealed their sodomy laws and thirty-six cities passed legislation banning discrimination. In the wake of Stonewall and in the context of a more tolerant police response to gay public life, commercialized gay spaces, from discos, to bars to bathhouses, were proliferating. Because many of those places were in metropolitan areas, we tend to have an urban-centric understanding of this historical moment. Andrew’s Inn stands out as a landmark of gay public life in a rural environment. Stories about the Inn remind us of the importance of rural LGBT people in gay history and revise in crucial ways our understanding of Vermont history and identity.
Many rural LGBT people identified as feminists, as gay activists, and as part of a wider counter-culture. The back-to-the-land movement included a gay and lesbian rural migration that affirmed widely shared counter-cultural values of rural idealism, egalitarianism, community and environmentalism, but also critiqued the heteronormativity of the dominant society, as well as the heterosexism of the broader male counterculture and what historian Scott Herring calls the “homonormativity” of gay male subculture. This critique takes clear form in the The Radical Faeries, a nation-wide grass-roots movement initially of gay men that started in the mid-70s as a direct challenge to the limitations of gay masculine identity and garnered a robust following in the Connecticut Valley. Rural LGBT people carved out new spaces for critiquing and transforming society. The rural lesbian-separatist publication Country Women, first published in 1973, followed by the RFD (Rural Fairy Digest) in 1974, articulated and disseminated the anti-heteronormative, anti-urban, pro-rural orientation of this new “movement within the movement.” The social movements of the time were part of the oxygen that defined and sustained gay public life, yet not everyone who was part of the scene at Andrew’s Inn was an activist.
At the same time, social interaction can create the context for later political mobilization, as is apparent in the way the Southern Vermont chapter of ACT-UP grew from relationships forged at Andrew’s Inn.
Andrew’s Inn provided a space where rural LGBT people could find one another and interact with guests who came from as far away as Boston and New York. The story of gay tourists arriving in Bellows Falls via rail to escape the city re-writes an historic pattern of Vermont railroad tourism in a post 1960s context. Just as the Inn brought rural and urban folk together, so too it created a nexus for gay men and lesbians to share space, and fostered integration with the wider community of Bellows Falls. According to a newspaper report of the time, 35 to 40% of the clientele were women and the Inn offered “womyn only” activities. The Yellow Rose café, attached to the Inn, was a popular community space in Bellows Falls, and both the original owner, John Moisis and later owners Thom Herman and Jeremy Youst were gay members of the Chamber of Commerce. This integrative aspect of Andrew’s Inn speaks to the particular character of rural institutions and adds important context to our understanding of gay subcultures.
Andrew’s Inn gives form to a spirit of gay pride that was very much in the air in the 70s and early 80s. The culture, sexuality and sociability of the Inn changed the way rural LGBT people thought about their lives and identities. Like other public venues, however, Andrew’s Inn was a space of both visibility and vulnerability. A subset of citizens in Bellows Falls in 1979 mounted an anti-gay backlash focused on the Inn. Their efforts to re-claim what they considered to be the “real” Bellows Falls and the “real” Vermont remind us that history is always contested and never complete without the subjective voices of those who have been marginalized. Oral history makes new subjects and new forms of agency visible.
Kate Ratcliff
Professor of American and Gender Studies
Marlboro College
John Moisis, photo by Evie Lovett
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John Moisis
John, who grew up in Bellows Falls, was the founder of Andrew's Inn which he housed in the hotel owned, at the time, by his parents. He operated Andrew's from 1973 until it was sold to Thom Herman and Jeremy Youst in 1979. John currently lives in Springfield, Vermont. |
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Jeremy Youst
Jeremy Youst and Thom Herman co-owned Andrew's Inn from 1979 until it closed in 1984. Jeremy was the self-proclaimed "behind-the-scenes guy" who knew "every square inch of that building." Jeremy currently offers Somatic Breath Therapy to individuals from his Center in Cheshire County, New Hampshire. |
Jeremy Youst, photo by Evie Lovett
Video and audio edited by HB Lozito with
photos by Evie Lovett & Jeremy Youst |
(L-R) Charlie, Carson, and Thom Herman, photo by Evie Lovett
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Thom Herman
Thom, along with Jeremy Youst, co-owned and ran Andrew's Inn from 1979 until it closed in 1984. Thom is currently a practicing therapist in Western Massachusetts. |
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Fletcher Proctor
Fletcher invested towards Thom and Jeremy's purchase of Andrew's Inn and also patronized Andrew's. Fletcher currently practices law in Putney, Vermont. |
Fletcher Proctor, photo by Evie Lovett
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Eva Mondon, photo by Evie Lovett
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Eva Mondon
During the time of Andrew's Inn, Eva was a firefighter with the Westminster Fire Department, and a patron of Andrew's Inn. Eva currently lives in Putney, VT. |
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Michael Gigante
Michael was a patron of Andrew's Inn, one of the founders of the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont and of the Southern Vermont chapter of ACT-UP. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont. |
Michael Gigante, photo by Evie Lovett
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Andrew's in your community: If you are interested in bringing a physical exhibit and/or lecture/presentation of the Andrew's Inn Oral History Project to your community, please email HB.
