Prime Timers mark 20 years

Twenty years ago retired professor Woody Baldwin, then 67 years old and living in Reading, placed an ad in Gay Community News looking for other mature gay men interested in forming a social club and support group. He said he and his partner had visited a bar for older gay men during a trip to Oklahoma City, and he wanted to find a way to create a similar sense of community in Boston. Baldwin said he decided that if at least 12 people responded to the ad and showed up at the first meeting he would push forward with the group, but otherwise he would scrap the idea. The standing-room-only crowd that gathered at that first meeting exceeding all of his expectations.

"We had 42 people show up in a little place that accommodated about 20. People were sitting on the floor and standing and sitting on the stairs," said Baldwin.

The men in the room took turns introducing themselves and talking about their desire to connect with the gay community. Baldwin said some of the men had been married to women and came out of the closet much later in life. Others had been in long-term relationships, and after their partners passed away they lost touch with the gay community. All of them wanted to meet other gay men and develop friendships in a venue other than the youth-obsessed bar scene.

"By the time it got around the room I realized I was on to something hot," said Baldwin.

That's a bit of an understatement. That first meeting launched Boston Prime Timers, which over the next two decades swelled to a 300-member organization of older gay and bisexual men in the Boston area. Within a year of founding Boston Prime Timers, Baldwin received a request from men in New York City eager to start a similar group who asked if they could use the Prime Timers name. He gave them the okay, and when he moved to Austin, Texas, in 1989 he started a chapter there as well. More chapters started popping up across the country and in such far-flung locations as Canada, Australia and Sweden.

"They just started springing up every place, and every time I got a letter about a new one starting I'd come over to my partner and say, 'I just had a new baby,'" said Baldwin.

Boston Prime Timers celebrates its 20th anniversary and the birth of the international Prime Timers movement this month with a three-day extravaganza Aug. 16-18. On Aug. 16 the Prime Timers, whose award-winning floats have been one of the highlights of the Boston Pride parade for the past three years, will work their magic at Provincetown's Carnival parade. The next day the organization will host an event at the Alley Bar, and on Aug. 18 Boston Prime Timers will honor Baldwin, who is flying up from Austin, with a gala dinner at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Ed Ford, president of Boston Prime Timers, said over the past 20 years Prime Timers has given hope to gay men who do not feel comfortable in more youth-oriented settings like the bars. Ford, who is 63, said he first got involved with the group when turned 48 and was wondering what sort of life existed for gay men over 50. He said one of the major problems within the elder community is isolation, and that is particularly true for the gay community.

"I guess the biggest reward is when you see these old guys smiling and laughing and having a great social time that you get it. They're not sitting at home ... What you see as an aging gay man is it isn't the end of the world to be aging," said Ford.

For Roy Brown, a 70-year-old Brookline resident and vice president and database manager for Prime Timers, the organization is what persuaded him to spend his retirement in the Boston area. About eight years ago Brown moved to Boston from New Haven, Conn., where he had lived for about 20 years and built up a circle of gay friends. He decided to retire in Boston, but after a few months in Boston he found he had no way to connect with the local gay community. He decided to move back to New Haven and was investigating places in the area to rent when a friend persuaded him to try Boston Prime Timers. He instantly bonded with the other men there and found his niche.

"Basically it's what got me settled here in Boston," said Brown.

Over the years the organization has provided venues for older gay men to meet, from its monthly meetings to dinner parties, theater trips and major events like the organization's yearly holiday party. Ford said the meetings draw between 70 and 90 members each month, regardless of the weather, and there are currently 300 dues-paying members. And there's clearly a demand for more programming. Last summer Boston Prime Timers chartered its first July 4 Boston Harbor cruise, and 230 people turned out for the event.

Over the past three years Ford said Boston Prime Timers has been reinvigorated by its participation in the Boston Pride Parade. Ford said members of the group always marched in the parade, but three years ago after the organization moved from the Boston Living Center into United South End Settlements (USES), they ratcheted up their presence in the parade to unprecedented levels. Ford said Craig Davini, partner of former USES president Ashley McCumber, offered to lend his design expertise to Boston Prime Timers, and he helped the organization design its first float, a miniature tropical island on the bed of a truck. Members of Boston Prime Timers rode through the streets of Boston decked out in floral print shirts and hats, and the float was a hit; it took home first prize that year.

In 2006 the organization worked with Davini again, this time to share a piece of gay history with the Pride attendees by creating a float based on the Napoleon Club, the famed Boston gay bar that opened as a speakeasy in the 1920s and that required men to wear a jacket and tie to enter.

"What that meant was you dressed up, so we had T-shirts that looked like tuxedos and gave it that sort of air," said Ford. The float took a pounding in the downpour that plagued that year's Pride, but the float was honored as a runner up.

This summer Ford said Prime Timers decided to go for a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, creating a Wizard of Oz-themed float. After the success of the past two years Ford said the members decided to turn their creative efforts up a notch.

"In addition to the costumes this year we decided there had to be makeup. The float had so much detail people asked, 'Are you people a professional theater company?'" said Ford. Once again Boston Prime Timers took home the prize for best float.

For the members of Boston Prime Timers, the Pride parade is about more than just having a good time. Ford said many of the members spent a large portion of their life in the closet, marrying women, having children and only coming out much later in life. To be able to dress up and ride through the streets of Boston is a sign of how far they have come.

"The men who are on the float, the contrast between these guys living their life in secret for more than the first half of their life, now taking this step ... being out there now with a half million people seeing them, and they're comfortable, they're excited about doing it. The parade has sort of breathed another kind of life into the club," said Ford.

Brown said their participation in the parade also sends an important message to the rest of the LGBT community, particularly to younger gay men. He said for younger men focused on the bar scene and on the pressure to have the perfect body, the Prime Timers' presence shows "there's life that goes on that transcends all of that stuff, and the Prime Timers is an example of, this is what life can be like, that getting older isn't this big demon that everyone is fighting. It's something that can be fulfilling."

Brown, who dressed as the Cowardly Lion in this year's parade, described the experience as one of the highlights of his involvement with Prime Timers. After the parade he and the other Prime Timers wandered through the Pride festival at Boston City Hall Plaza, posing for photos with the crowd, and Brown found that he was able to bridge the generation gap with some of the youngest members of the extended LGBT community. Brown, who knows sign language, noticed a young girl on the plaza signing to two women who he assumed were her mothers. He signed to her from across the plaza, and he said her eyes lit up.

"I forget what I signed, but then she signed to her mother, 'Look, mommy, that lion is deaf.' And we started communicating, and I said I wasn't deaf but I know sign language," said Brown, who said that he posed for a photo with the girl and sent it to her mothers. "Immediately we sent it to the mother's e-mail address and she got it immediately, and she wrote a note back saying how thrilled her daughter was."

While most Prime Timers events are limited to members and men interested in joining the club, the organization is offering tickets to the Aug. 18 gala honoring Baldwin to the public. The event will include cocktails, dinner, dancing and a performance by cabaret artist John O'Neil. Baldwin said he is grateful for the acknowledgement from Boston Prime Timers, but back when he founded the organization in 1987 he had no idea it would spawn an international movement.

"It's a dream come true, but at the time I started I never dreamed it would come to this, but it was something I'm very proud of, and I'm kind of humbled by all the attention that I'm getting through Prime Timers because I didn't realize it would become a worldwide organization," said Baldwin. "Not only have we served the needs of men needing companionship but I think we've shown the younger gays that there's life after 40, 50, 60.... I think that's an important contribution we've made."

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To purchase tickets to the Aug. 18 gala or for more information visit primetimersww.org/boston or call 617.447.2344.