A Stonewall Veteran, 89, Misses the Parade
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: June 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/nyregion/28storme.htmlAt noon on Sunday, thousands of marchers filled Fifth Avenue for New York City's annual gay pride parade. Nearly six miles away, on the sixth floor of a nursing home in Brooklyn, the frail, white-haired woman in beige pajamas and brown slippers in Room 609 sat motionless at the edge of her bed, staring out her window.
snip
The woman in Room 609, Storme DeLarverie, has dementia. She is but one anonymous elderly New Yorker in a city with thousands upon thousands of them. And many of those who marched down Fifth Avenue on Sunday would be hard pressed to realize that this little old lady — once the cross-dressing M.C. of a group of drag-queen performers, once a fiercely protective (and pistol-packing) bouncer in the city's lesbian bars — was one of the reasons they were marching.
