[youtube width=”900″ height=”506″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Euo_RNtdM[/youtube]
Video by Amber Dupree
FRED’S STORY
Fred Thomas Lee was born in Mantua, Alabama in 1956 and was one of twelve children. His father served 32 years in the military as a Tech Sergeant in the Air Force, spending two of his deployments in Vietnam. Being a military family, they eventually relocated to Illinois and then to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. However, at the young age of eight, Fred was sent back to Alabama by his father to reside with and help his grandmother who was living alone.
Lee remained in Alabama until he was fourteen and then was sent back to his family in Mt. Holly, his grandmother adamant about the fact that a segregated south was no place for a young African-American teenager to attend high school. She would remain, however, his rock and his foundation for his entire life. She was the only person, initially, that he told that he thought he was gay. She was comforting and accepting but advised that he didn’t tell his father who was a strict, demanding man.
He would come out to his mother and his older sister when he was 18. But he never told his father. Fred also continued to date women, a last grasp at trying to live a “normal” life that his family would embrace.
In 1975, at 19, Lee enlisted in the Army and after basic training, he was stationed at Fort Huachuca, an Army Intelligence Center in Arizona and served as a Communications Specialist. In 1978 he was stationed in Saudi Arabia.
Still attempting to leave his feelings for men behind, Lee married his wife, Charlene, in 1977, resulting in the birth of their son who was killed by a drunk driver when he was only 7 years old. After this tragedy, they had a second son, Fred Jr. but Charlene and Fred eventually drifted apart greatly due to the enormous strain from the pain of loss. They were divorced in 1982.
In 1981, Fred was sent to the Pentagon in Washington to serve as a Communications Specialist in the Joint Chief of Staff Communication Center. Consequently, Senator Thomas Eagleton, then the leading Democrat in the US Senate, brought Lee on as his Military Aid for 3 years. Lee had risen to serve at the very seat of the government and was on top of the world. He was at the height of a young promising military career.
Then, in 1983, he got orders to go to Camp Darby, Italy.
“That’s when my life went to hell.”
There, on what seemed to be a somewhat random whim, Fred was placed on a military volleyball team to play the Italian military team as a moral builder. As luck would have it, also in attendance at the game was a recruiter from the “All Army Volleyball Team”. Lee was so good that he was selected to play on the overseas team and eventually even tried out for the US Olympic Team. Eventually he was approached to play on Italian national team even though he could “not speak a lick of Italian”. Fred found great joy and camaraderie with his Italian teammates and remembers the experience very fondly.
But suddenly, in 1984, just before getting promoted to Staff Sargent, he was called into his Commander’s office and was accused of cashing a check that belonged to an Italian national. A young lawyer in the JAG office secretly confided in Fred that there was actually no check but the charge was just an excuse…instead the military had found out he was gay after going through his mail and wanted to get rid of him. Fred demanded proof of the check but never was allowed to confront the evidence against him. He was denied an attorney and never received representation of any kind.
His Commander then told him that he simply wasn’t wanted in the military anymore and threatened with the stockade. Although not discharged officially for being gay, they took a stripe from him and sent him back to US and refused to allow him to re-enlist. He was stationed for the remainder of his term in Augusta, Georgia at Fort Gordon as a drill sergeant where he couldn’t be seen or heard. Lee obtained his own JAG officer and with his help, managed an honorable discharge after serving in the military for 12 years. In the end, the reason for the military’s refusal to allow him to re-enlist was officially listed as “a reduction in force per President Reagan”.
Lee has always known better. Yet he is still mystified.
“I tried to be that soldier that they wanted. I still don’t understand. I was a good soldier and still my sexual preference threatened them. It was almost like being robbed.”
However, once outside of the military, Fred could now be his authentic self… all while raising his son as a single parent.
“I am gay. And we are gonna deal with it now!” Lee remembers proclaiming to himself and then “came out with no-holds-barred”. He started doing drag shows, riding on Pride Parade floats, playing on gay sports teams and basked in his new found authentic life.
After driving a roommate to Columbus to go to law school, Fred fell in love with the city. Soon, he relocated here, made it his home and started his own very successful cleaning company. And he thrived.
Then one fateful night, in 1995, at the Eagle Bar in downtown Columbus … Lee met Brad Berberick, the love of his life. They have been with each other every day since then for 18 years. Unfortunately, for 10 of those years, Brad’s parents refused to talk to him because of their interracial gay relationship. However, Fred’s family, especially his mother, embraced Brad and welcomed them as a couple with love and acceptance. Life had joyfully come full circle for Lee. Brad joined Lee in his cleaning business and they shared their lives wholly together including raising Brad’s nephew Sam.
“Brad and I are so opposite, it’s crazy. But we complement each other so well.”
In 2001, Brad and Fred eventually moved to Sarasota, Florida, employed to take care of a friend and enjoyed five wonderful years in the bright, tropical environs. They participated enthusiastically and were openly engaged in the LGBT community and gay charity events that took place there. Their friend eventually passed and they then decided to return and made a home again in Columbus.
In 2006, Lee became a Medical Support Assistant with Columbus Veterans Administration. But after becoming aware that a lesbian employee was being released from employment for reasons that Fred suspected were actually because of her sexual orientation, Fred decided that the leadership at the VA was not tolerant or progressive enough. He wanted to find a position that he could champion change within the organization and decided to seek the position of Union Steward where he could protect and advocate for LGBT workers and all minorities. He succeeded. Today he is Vice President – Chief Steward of AFGE Local 2013. As a federal employee, Lee now can affect official policy and help to formalize progressive reform within in the larger VA system.
Thanks to Fred’s work and dedication, in 2014, the Columbus VA has hired its first transgender employee.
“I learned so much and gained so much strength from coming from the little town of Mantua, Alabama. I was born in the South…I was raised during segregation and amidst deep, deep racial prejudice. It made me acquire a deep empathy for others. Who knew then how that experience would help me become the happy, gay man I am now.”
