Zeki Müren

Zeki Müren (1931-1996) was the most famous twentieth-century singer in all Turkish-speaking countries. He was never surpassed in performing a very difficult form of Turkish classical music that originated in the Sultan's Court of the Ottoman Empire.

In his early years he became a popular movie star, branching out into Arabesk (a Turkish musical genre), popular music and even composition – he penned more than 300 songs, many of them written for use in his films. A true polymath, Zeki also achieved success in poetry and design.

His recordings and televised performances made him a cult figure of almost mythical status, held as dear to the hearts of the Turkish people as Frank Sinatra in the U.S. and Europe. And, just like Sinatra, Müren’s recordings, issued over a 40-year span (1951-1991), are still heard today in all Turkish-speaking countries. Five wildly popular compilation albums have been released since his death, which resulted from a string of health complications and massive weight gain.

Although Zeki was a homosexual who always lived his life according to his own terms, it is astonishing that as Müren became more flamboyant, sporting heavy woman’s make-up, a bouffant hairdo. female dress and outsized jewelry, his popularity grew, along with record sales. His stage persona was as over-the-top as Liberace – in drag. He designed most of his outrageous costumes. It is difficult for us Westerners to comprehend that there was no public backlash, in light of Muslim countries’ unwavering intolerance of homosexuality. The last five years of his life, during which he was afflicted with health issues, were spent in relative seclusion with his male partner. Even so, he made not infrequent "guest star" appearances.

Yet after his death backstage immediately following a live television performance in Izmir, it was revealed that Müren had left all his money to an Army Fund for disadvantaged soldiers and a foundation for education. His death caused the greatest public grief in years, and many thousands of Turks attended his funeral. Zeki Müren is revered to this day, having his own museum in Bodrum; his extravagant grave in his native city of Bursa had to be fortified by a heavy iron grill to prevent well-wishers from taking all the soil as souvenirs.

After early success in Bursa’s summer theatre, Zeki moved to Istanbul to pursue a singing career while still in his early teens. After studying at the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul, he recorded his first single in 1951, at a time when he was already a regular singer on Istanbul radio. His first musical film co-starred Cahide Sonku (in polka dots at left), the greatest female Turkish movie star at the time. It was the first of Müren’s 18 consecutive films (1953-1971), all of which met with success.

To say that Muren's stage performances were novel and over-the-top extravagant is understatement. Müren was one of the first artists to use a catwalk stage in order to mingle with his audiences. Zeki was particularly popular with conservative housewives, who flocked to his sold out afternoon shows fashioned particularly for the entertainment of women. In fact, it was this dialogue with his fans, his manner of interacting and his flawless diction and pronunciation of the Turkish language that best explains his wide appeal. Through his recordings, "good Turkish" was brought to the masses, providing them with a free linguistic education alongside their musical entertainment.

Bruce Hayes

Journalists covering the 1984 Summer Olympics heard reports that two gold medal winners were about to declare that they were gay, but no one stepped forward. However, two gold medalists from those Los Angeles games came out at a later date –  diver Greg Louganis and swimmer Bruce Hayes (b. 1963).

Hayes (shown at right in 2010 in Cologne, Germany, at Gay Games VIII) anchored the U.S. men's 4 x 200 m. freestyle relay team in what is widely acknowledged as one of the most exciting races in Olympic history, coming from behind to best Germany's Michael Gross by .04 seconds, setting a word record of 7:15.69. A native of San Antonio, Texas, Bruce was a full scholarship swimmer at UCLA, becoming the highest-scoring freshman at the 1981 NCAA Championships, thus helping the Bruins win the national title. During the early 1980s he competed on several U.S. national teams. Hayes captured three gold medals at the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, and won a gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Hayes retired following his Olympic success and thought his swimming career was over. He left the sport to earn a Masters degree at Northwestern University (Chicago) and subsequently moved to New York City to work in public relations.

Ten years after his Summer Olympics success, Hayes returned to the Olympics on the management side as Assistant Competition Manager for Swimming in Atlanta. He then resumed his public relations career in New York following the Atlanta Olympics. Fluent in Spanish, he worked as an executive Vice President for Edelman in Madrid. Hayes continues to travel the world on behalf of clients of Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm.

Bruce joined Team New York Aquatics in 1990, and he became the first Olympic gold medalist to compete in the Gay Games (Vancouver 1990 and New York 1994). His accomplishments at Gay Games IV in New York were particularly noteworthy, setting five 25-meter short course Masters world records, including becoming the first Masters swimmer to break 4:00 in the 400 m. freestyle.

Hayes has consistently lent his name and support to LGBT causes. In 1994, he was included in Out magazine's list of 100 most influential gays and lesbians in America. During his time in Atlanta he was a co-founder of the Atlanta Rainbow Trout swim team. He was one of the four charter Gay Games Ambassadors when the program was launched in 2002.

Says Hayes, "While I'll always be extremely proud of my accomplishments as a member of the U.S. National Team, particularly at the Olympics in 1984, in many ways my participation at the Gay Games has been just as meaningful to me. The Gay Games gave me the courage to come out and the awareness and willingness to get involved in our community's political struggles, things I sorely lacked during my years in the closet. The stereotype has been that members of the LGBT community weren't athletic. The good thing about sports is that it's a really good arena to dispel those stereotypes. The Gay Games just opened up a whole chapter of what the real story is with gays and sports."

Donald Windham and Sandy Campbell

Donald Windham, second from left, with dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq, painter Buffie Johnson, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal.

Gay partners Donald Windham (1920-2010) and Sandy Montgomery Campbell lend their names to a new literary award administered by Yale University to endow up to nine unrestricted $150,000* annual awards to emerging and established English language writers for outstanding achievement in fiction, nonfiction, and drama (it is possible that poetry may be included at a later time). The awards are administered by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, and winners are solely determined by experts in each field. Mr. Windham, who never went to college himself**, specifically requested that writers with no academic affiliation be considered. The awards are not operated by an application process. Instead, a steering committee solicits nominations, and a panel of judges selects the winners. The first nine recipients of these new awards were announced by live stream on March 4, 2013, and a ceremony conferring the awards will take place at Yale on September 10, 2013.

*To compare the richness of the Windham-Campbell awards, it should be noted that the Pulitzer Prizes for Literature and the National Book Awards are each worth only $10,000. Windham wished to ensure that the prizes would be substantial enough to enable each recipient to spend a full year writing, unencumbered by financial concerns.

**Immediately after high school, Windham worked at Atlanta’s Coca-Cola plant, rolling barrels through the factory. High school was the extent of his formal education.

The endowment for the prizes comes from the estate of openly gay writer Donald Windham, who died in 2010. A co-executor of Windham’s estate said that Mr. Windham’s will was quite specific about his intention to establish a fund for literary prizes, although he left the details of how such prizes should be awarded to be worked out by his estate’s executors and advisers at Yale.

Donald Windham was a minor, but well-regarded, author who relocated to New York City from Atlanta as a virtually penniless teenager. He quickly befriended Tennessee Williams, with whom he collaborated on a play, a stage adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's You Touched Me. Windham's social circle soon included the likes of Truman Capote, George Platt Lynes, George Balanchine, Paul Cadmus and Lincoln Kirstein. Windham wrote short stories and novels, including “Two People” (1965, available in a Kindle edition) about a married New York stockbroker who falls in love with a teenage Italian boy. He is perhaps best known, however, for his memoir, “Lost Friendships,” about his relations with Williams and Capote. Struck by the inaccuracy of Williams's own Memoirs, Windham published Williams's letters to him. Subsequently, Williams falsely claimed that Windham had not been granted permission to do so and trashed the volume, resulting in a very acrimonious and often public dissolution of their friendship.

Windham and Sandy Campbell (shown in photo as young men in Italy), were a well-known couple in New York’s gay literary circles. It was at a chance meeting at Paul Cadmus’ studio that Donald met Princeton undergraduate Sandy Campbell, who was modeling for one of Cadmus’ paintings. Windham and Campbell began a 45 year relationship that led to a collaboration as avid book collectors, voracious readers, and friends with many of the most important literary figures of their time. The couple lived together from 1943 until Campbell's death.

Windham wrote memoirs, novels, plays, short stories, and a children’s book. Campbell was a stage actor who also penned unsigned book reviews for The New Yorker and contributed articles to Harper’s Magazine and other publications. Campbell died in 1988, predeceasing Windham by 22 years. However, the partners lived so unostentatiously that it surprised many that Windham could leave a bequest large enough to generate more than a million dollars in prize money every year. His estate was amassed from a large inheritance from Campbell, successful investing and a very modest lifestyle.

In 1989, Windham gave Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library a collection of his  papers, with the stipulation that the library would receive the balance of Windham’s literary estate. Yale describes The Donald Windham-Sandy Campbell Collection at the Beinecke as “a rich and diverse trove of correspondence between partners Windham and Campbell and such writers as Tennessee Williams, E. M. Forster, Truman Capote and Christopher Isherwood; other correspondence involves such notable writers as Carson McCullers, Marianne Moore, Graham Greene, Isak Dinesen and Paul Bowles.”

1955 portrait of Windham (standing) with life-partner Sandy Campbell by celebrity gay photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten.