Evan's Wedding / Key West

Arriving at Key West airport

A performer on the pier before sunset

Sunset in Key West

Dusk from the pier

Near our hotel with the lighthouse

Hemingway House

Robin and Joe at Hemingway House Friday. It was cool for there.

The Butterfly Museum

Self-portrait with a mural near our hotel

March For Our Lives- Key West

The rally at the end of the March For Our Lives

March For Our Lives- somewhat manipulated photo

At the Botanical Garden

A memorial at The African Cemetery at Higgs Beach. Africans from captured slave ships, after importing slaves was banned, were brought to Key West, before being resettled in Liberia. Many of them died and were buried near the beach.

The Key West AIDS Memorial

Key West City Hall, with a rainbow flag flying

Eduardo Gato House. Gato was a Cuban immigrant who got rich in the cigar business, 1890s

The Armory, 1903

Evan and Kellie at the wedding

Right to left, my sister Robin, cousins Valerie and Marjorie

L to R, cousins Cindy, Terry, Jim, Sue

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Samuel Ingham, 1934, Monday morning

Key West is an island in the Caribbean between Everglades National Park in Florida and the coast of Cuba. It's 120 miles southwest of Miami along the southern end of US Route 1, through a whole chain of islands. Sometime in the 1980s, the 8-Mile Bridge, a former railroad bridge used for cars, and narrow enough that driving it while passing another car coming the other way made you catch your breath and fear for your life, was replaced with a modern highway. There used to be a boat from Flamingo, at the end of Everglades Park, and some kind of plane from some little town on the west coast of Florida.

My friend Alan used to fly from Baltimore to Miami, where I lived from 1978 to 1984, for Veteran's Day, before "season," and we would drive down to Key West and stay in a gay guest house. One year there were four gay guest houses, another year, there were sixteen. In my mind we went all six Novembers I was in Miami, but I know we didn't go in 1983, my last year in Florida.

Joe and I were there the last weekend in March for my nephew Evan's wedding. Evan and Kellie asked Joe to perform the ceremony, and Evan's mother, my sister Robin, paid for our plane fare and hotel. I hadn't been in Key West in probably thirty-six years. We drove from Morgantown to Pittsburgh on Thursday the 23rd, flew to Atlanta, then Key West. That all went smoothly. Robin's flight from Washington was canceled because of a snowstorm, but she managed to get to Key West, somehow, Thursday night. Joe and I saw the sunset with most of the tourists on the island before Robin arrived. We had dinner later that night with Robin and Susie, Robin's traveling companion, and the mother of Robert, one of Evan's closest friends, outdoors in relatively cool weather.

L to R: Me, Robin, Joe, Susie

We stayed at Lighthouse Court, a guest house made up of little cottages around a pool and outdoor bar. There was a booklet in the office with the history of the place. It had been a gay venue, but was now a "family" hotel. The cab driver and the clerks at the hotel, to our surprise, were Russian-born. Less surprising was that the maids and janitors were Jamaican, and once they found out we were gay, the maids flirted with me. The original Key Westers, called "Conchs" (pronounced "Conks") were Black people from The Bahamas. There are still some of them there, but the island is gentrifying, and even small houses have become expensive to buy, and can rent for  five or six thousand monthly in the winter.

Key West is completely different now from the early 1980s. There are flights from Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa and Atlanta, a speedy boat from Naples (a much larger city than it was c. 1980) and the road from Miami has been rebuilt.  There was still a sign in the airport for a "clothing optional " gay resort (probably where Alan and I stayed), and there is an intersection in the middle of town with faded rainbow crosswalks. Nowadays, Jimmy Buffett is the local hero; there are lots of bars and restaurants, and although I don't drink, we had delicious food everywhere we ate. The streets were jammed with tourists, mostly families,which was not true in my previous visits.

The wedding was at five Sunday at Ernest Hemingway's House, now a museum. We toured there Friday, and also visited the Butterfly Museum, which was beautiful. Kellie's parents and grandparents came in Friday, and Robin took us all out to dinner Friday night.

Standing: Joe, Linda (Kellie's Mom), me, Robin. Seated: Mike (Kellie's father) and Kellie's grandparents

Saturday was the "March For Life" in Washington, organized by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in response to the murders of their fellow students by a gunman on February 14. As a supporter of a ban on assault-type weapons, I felt guilty vacationing when I could be part of this mass movement. We had brunch with Evan and Kellie and their friends and our families, then joined Key West's "March For Life," several hundred people marching from one end of Duval Street, the main street of town, to the other. We dined Saturday with Robin and our cousins Marjorie and Valerie, daughters of my mother's late brother.

L to R: me, Joe, Robin,  Valerie and Marjorie

We were free Sunday early, so I looked up five places on the National Register, and the town's Reform synagogue, which we had glimpsed on the cab ride from the airport to the hotel. We found the synagogue and an old-fashioned luxury hotel, a beach and a traditional residential neighborhood. Nearby was a Civil War-era fort, largely in ruins with many of the bricks carried off for other building projects. The Union controlled Key West during the war, we learned, and there is now a botanical garden there. The guide told us that there had been a broad canopy of trees, which were blown away by Hurricane Irma last year. Near the fort, we also found a memorial to the African Cemetery, where people rescued from slave ships and brought to Key West, who were ill and died, were buried in unmarked graves. Next to that is the AIDS Memorial. Many names were inscribed on marble slabs on the ground, not just locals, but people who visited Key West in its gay heyday. We recognized some of the names, like Michael Bennett, the choreographer behind "A Chorus Line." The beginning of the AIDS crisis helps explain the end of Key West as a wide-open gay resort.

I don't remember what I did there in the old days, but I know Alan and I didn't go in November of 1983, because we wanted to take ourselves out of the risk pool. I was living in Los Angeles by November of 1984. Seeing that memorial reminded me, and Joe too, of our many friends we lost to AIDS.

We walked quite a bit that morning, but came back to the hotel in time for lunch nearby and a nap. I took a dip in the heated pool at the hotel.

The wedding was beautiful. I've watched "Say Yes To The Dress" with my sister at her house, and when Kellie walked down the aisle in the perfect dress for her, I knew it would be a great wedding. Joe was in full Rabbi mode, and had everyone laughing and Evan and Kellie's friends asking" Where did you find this rabbi?" The weather was sunny and warm, and still warm after the sun went down. I hadn't seen my paternal cousins, Susan and Terry, in many years, so I was glad they were able to come with their spouses and meet Joe. Evan has had many of the same friends since early childhood, like Susie's son Robert, and his two sisters, and Brian, a neighbor growing up. Brian's parents were also there. Kellie's mom Linda, young-looking and vivacious, was there with Kellie's dad, Mike, and I met Kellie's two sisters and brother, and immediately felt close to them. Kellie's grandma Nancy attended with her husband, and we got along well. I hadn't seen Evan's dad, Jimmy, in a while, but we hung out in our hotel room before the wedding and caught up. I thought about my parents, Evan's grandparents, and how they would have loved to be there, as well as Jimmy's parents, Bill and Betty, who loved Evan dearly. All four of Evan's grandparents lived in Florida at one time.

The wedding was over at 10, per the rules of Hemingway House, and although Mr. and Mrs. Olson invited us out for drinks with their crew later, we declined, and were fast asleep by 11.

Joe and I had a little time Monday before our flight, so we walked a bit more, and saw more sites before heading back to the airport.

We loved being in Key West. March weather had been dreadful in Morgantown, and having lived in Miami for six years, and having visited Key West, I remembered how much I loved the feel of the place. Joe had never been to Key West, and he was charmed by it. Most of all, I was delighted to see my nephew, who I met at his bris when he was a week old, marry the love of his life, accompanied by family and his big friends who used to be little kids. The icing on the wedding cake was to have my own Joe perform the ceremony, as clergy and part of our family.

Update: Robin corrected me on who was at which dinner, and had pics, which I posted in the text, to prove it!