”Īs Stella’s physical health declined, Sue said she moved Stella to an assisted living facility a mile away from where she lived in Westminster, California. She was just a sweet lady who would talk to them for hours through any crisis. Sue explained, “ They didn’t realize Stella’s history with the movement. She also met a wide-ranging group of people through meetings for lesbians with substance abuse issues. Sue told me that in later years Stella stayed in touch with an “old lesbians group” in San Francisco and corresponded with many people. Sue was then 24 and was quickly taken under Stella and Sandy’s wing. What I learned from Sue was that she met Stella and Sandy in 1972 at a meeting of The Prosperos, a spiritual organization based in southern California. Sue Beck characterized herself as Stella’s “chosen daughter.” Sue was able to fill me in on the later years of Stella’s life. More disconnected phone numbers and bounced emails, but eventually-and, sadly, after we had finished recording the episode-we heard back from someone who Stella had lived with toward the end of her life. It wasn’t until we called in a favor from an investigative reporter friend to pull background check information that we turned up a record of the date Stella died: July 25, 2015. We knew historian Marcia Gallo had spoken with Stella in 2002, but her last-known address in Westminster, California, just led to three disconnected phone numbers. Stella’s Wikipedia page showed her as still being alive. When we tried to find out what had happened to her in the intervening years, we kept hitting dead ends. And when we began work on Stella’s Making Gay History episode, I assumed that Stella was no longer alive. (Have a listen to our MGH episode featuring Phyllis and Del.) My impression from talking with Stella was that without Sandy’s stabilizing influence she was struggling.Īs with most of the people I interviewed for my oral history book, I didn’t stay in touch with Stella. The two met at a ONE meeting attended by members of the Daughters of Bilitis, including Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who became lifelong friends. Two years before I met Stella, her partner of 30 years, Helen Sandoz, who went by “Sandy,” had died. But by the late 1960s her work as a reporter, writer, and poet was over and Stella retreated from any active role in the movement. In 1956 Stella began writing for The Ladder, the Daughters of Bilitis magazine, as well. Credit: ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. ONE magazine front cover, volume 8, number 6, June 1960. Sten was the byline for dozens of ONE magazine articles beginning in 1954 and it even graced the magazine’s June 1960 cover. That’s where “Sten Russell” came in, Stella’s nom de plume. If discovered, she would almost certainly have been fired. She took a huge risk by writing for ONE magazine while working as a civil servant at the peak of the Lavender Scare. She defied the binaries that defined the lives of women in the mid-20th century (gay/straight, butch/femme) and she defied society’s expectations-marriage, kids.
Perhaps I felt it would be intrusive, although that usually didn’t stop me from at least asking the question.Īs I came to learn, Stella Rush was ahead of her time. For some reason I didn’t ask anything more about her living arrangements. The reason I wound up interviewing Stella in her landlord’s apartment was that Stella had three people living in her apartment and she was staying at a nearby motel. What interested me in Stella’s life was her work writing for ONE magazine, the first national gay magazine. She attended Berkeley for two years and then transferred to UCLA, but left after completing her junior year.
Episode Notesįrom Eric Marcus : When I sat down with Stella Rush in her landlord’s apartment to interview her in 1989 in Costa Mesa, California, I only knew the very broad outlines of her life-that she was born in Los Angeles on April 30, 1925, and was the only child of an only child. Credit: Still from DOB Video Project, © Lesbian Herstory Archives DOB Video Project, LHEF, Inc. Stella Rush (aka Sten Russell) during taping for Lesbian Herstory Archives Daughters of Bilitis Video Project, San Francisco, May 15, 1987.