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Title: A Stonewall Veteran, 89, Misses the Parade
Post by: Shana A on June 28, 2010, 10:54:35 AM
A Stonewall Veteran, 89, Misses the Parade

By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: June 27, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/nyregion/28storme.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/nyregion/28storme.html)

At 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.

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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.