My story of Jim and Roland ~ Aubin Petersen
I met Jim Glass and Roland McLaughlin when they began visiting Broadway Baptist Church, in 2013. I noticed them in the congregation and welcomed them. I invited them, as I try to do all new faces, to visit the Ragamuffin Sunday School Class. Jim and Roland began joining us for Sunday School and became regular members.
Some of my favorite memories of Jim and Roland are the many lunches and dinners we shared together often with Tom Duke, another member of our Sunday School Class. We would meet at any location that provided food and good iced tea. Roland would start telling stories or catching us up on the latest events of their lives. Jim meanwhile would roll his eyes and try to correct any misinformation that might be relevant. It was always a fun and uplifting time for me, and I so appreciated being included when I was often alone since Mark was traveling so much at the time.
When Roland and Jim came to share their story at Another Story® in 2013, Roland brought copies of a Dallas newspaper clipping from a raid in the 1950’s on an apartment in Dallas. He told the story of missing the gathering for some reason, but it was a party of gay men, in a private apartment, when an underage young man tried to join them. He was told to leave, got mad and reported it to someone and the news somehow made it to authorities. Some of the men gathered were from prominent Dallas and North Texas families, whose whole lives would be ruined and livelihoods lost when it came out in the next day’s morning news. The police would take license plate information and then the newspapers would publish names and other identification. Many of the party guests left Dallas immediately, upsetting jobs and lives and families. (I cannot remember why Roland said he missed the party, but he did, and many of those men were his friends.)
Another story Roland shared was spending his childhood visiting his grandmother. She owned a large home off McKinney Ave. in Dallas. The house had a pergola at the top with a little area where Roland would visit and spend his days. His grandmother also worked in that home and was known as the “Grand Dame of Dallas Bordellos.” I think there was a news story about her, praising her upscale practices and it being the best place to go in Dallas.
In telling their story, Roland and Jim conveyed the love they shared, the dreams they had and the constant change in their lives that kept them challenged and engaged. Roland was a proud businessman who had lots of family. Jim was a loving spouse who continued his working career after Roland began to slow down and retire.
In 2015, when same sex marriage was legalized, Jim and Roland decided to get married. Their initial plans to marry at Broadway were waylaid, so they made wedding plans to be married at Celebration Community Church with the Reverend Carol West presiding. It is the beautiful wedding ceremony pictured above which was followed by a lovely dinner celebration .
I am grateful for the time I was allowed to share life and stories and laughs with Jim and Roland. As Roland became ill and his health declined it was a time I witnessed the love and care between two spouses. I will forever be grateful for your love and friendship in return. Yours is another amazing love story. Another Story®
Jim’s story:
Jim Glass and Roland McLaughlin
Roland was my first relationship, the first person I loved with all my heart. I told my oldest sister that I was in love with a man over the phone. She asked me how I knew it was love, having never been there before. I told her it physically hurt when Roland left after visiting my apartment, a dull, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach (I feel it now as I'm writing this). She said "yea, that's it". My family sort of accepted the fact that we were together, my mother more than any. My older sister is the church lady, there every time the door is open. She said that she does not like it, but I'm her brother and nothing will change the love she has for me. Roland's family is still, to this day, my family. His sister has died, but I still text or call his niece a few times a month (not as much as I should).
When Roland and I were asked to tell our story at Aubin's and Mark's house we discussed what to talk about. He had so many stories to tell. I told him that Another Story® was there to provide a safe place for people to discuss anything that might help them understand other facets of a non-straight life and I suggested he tell his story of growing up in Dallas as a gay man in the 50's and 60's. Roland often talked about the piano bars he would go to and the dance clubs where the person up front would flash a light in the back and all the men would have to find a lesbian to dance with since dancing with another man could get you in trouble. He talked about the party that Aubin mentioned where men were busted, not for having an orgy, but for having dinner with one another. I printed archive copies of the Dallas Morning News of other instances when names, address, employers were printed in the paper for all to see. He said lives were ruined many times, overnight. He said many of his friends had to leave town, move to San Francisco, and came home in a box having died from AIDS or whatever they called it back then.
I had "a life well lived" put on Roland's marker because it was so full. He and his first partner had a trucking company, opened a truck stop, had the Townhouse Cafe in McKinney for many years, had a freight forwarding company, a warehouse in Irving, when I first met him, storing merchandise for Macy's, designed and built three houses, etc., etc., etc.
I could go on, but I won't. He's gone and I miss him every day. He died in 2016. They tell you "time heals all wounds", well not this one. Maybe I don't want to heal, I keep picking at it to keep it fresh in my mind. I thought selling the house in Granbury and moving to Tyler would help get past the past. It has helped a lot; I am closer to my family and my mother is 90 years old and I'm grateful to spend more time with her. But when you meet someone that makes your life as a gay man worthwhile and real, it's hard to forget. The 21 years we had together were the happiest, most frustrating, and enjoyable days of my life. He was a pain in the ass, but he was mine and I was his. In one of the Lord of the Rings movies one of the men dies in battle and the woman he loved asks her father why it hurts so much. His answer, "because it was real". It was real and I am forever grateful and blessed for having met a person like him.
