Logging town welcomes transgender group

By Marc Ramirez

Seattle Times staff reporter

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004420735_transgender17.html

RAEANN HEWITT threw on a dress and drove 400 miles last weekend to Washington's Olympic Peninsula with an ear-to-ear smile, starting a journey toward the person she feels she was meant to be. Now, learning to negotiate the art of the high heel with several others outside a Red Lion Hotel, she knows her escape will soon be over.

That's because she is really a he, an internal conflict that ultimately tore Hewitt's marriage apart. Five years ago, this truck driver from small-town Idaho gave in to the urges that had chased him for years and started wearing women's clothes.For Hewitt to wear her black blouse, smoky brown skirt and sun-yellow wig back home would be asking for trouble. But in the logging town of Port Angeles, where the Esprit transgender conference this week celebrated its 19th year at the Red Lion, Hewitt's cross-dressing is not only tolerated, it's welcomed.