#hillburn

CLIPPED FROM The Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  06 Oct 1977 

‘GAYLA OPENING’ OF UNIQUE MOTEL

By Richard Ben Cramer Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

HILLBURN, N.Y. - It was, on the whole, not the standard world premiere. The men in the crowd, for example, tended less to black tie and more to gold lame with high-heeled pumps.

Still, it was quite a partying night, and Beth and Frank Cavallo were feeling great. They had left their two-year-old daughter at home and had traveled with two of their friends, Jay Young and Bill Hiller, to the Gayla Opening of Motel on the Mountain, a homosexual resort in Rockland County, N.Y. on the way to the Catskills.

Now, in the wee hours, with everybody loose, Frank celebrated by giving Bill a big kiss.

Beth, bemused, looked on. She is straight but tolerant. She learned to adjust when Frank "came out" shortly before the birth of their child, Jennifer.

Anyway, Frank still likes "fish," as gay men call women, and to prove it, he pulled his wife toward him, and soon she was entangled in his arms and Bill's with everybody trading kisses around.

On the dance floor at the front of the disco room, one of four rooms provided for the opening-night crowd, a man and a man who looked like a woman were dancing belly to belly while strobes revealed their-movement in a series of dramatic stills.

Another mannish form, attracted by the dance, leaped into the light and danced up behind the womanish form until the sandwich was moving through the crowd in perfect synchronization.

From the end of the bar, in a straight three-piece suit, Tommy Esposito squinted through the smoke and flashing lights at the crowd near the stage and smiled a small smile of private satisfaction.

Tommy is straight. ("I'm not gay, I'm Italian," he says.) And until this weekend, he was the proprietor of a hotel and resort property that seemed headed for collapse.

The Motel on the Mountain built 22 years ago overlooking the New York State Thruway, was at the time the wonder of this small community, about 45 minutes from mid-Manhattan by car.

Its clever landscaping in the Japanese style and engineering that gave every room a view of the large wooded valley below won the motel several architectural awards.

But the motel has been going downhill, so to speak, since Esposito acquired control four years ago. Twice during those years, preliminary bankruptcy papers were filed. The complex looks a little down at the heels.

That is all past now, according to Esposito, who expects the Motel on the Mountain to be a trend-setter for other resort properties, a crucial breakthrough in the social liberation of homosexuals in America and, most important, a tremendous commercial success.

He paused in the task of erecting new signs ("Gay Life at Its Peak," they proclaim) at the bottom of the winding road up the mountain, to put the event in proper historical perspective.

"Hey, we're living history now," he said. "A place as famous as Motel on the Mountain? A gay resort? This is a sociological breakthrough."

His own motivation was not sociological.

"Well, put it this way," he said. "Summer of 74, I called the Summer of American Graffiti good name, huh? The movie was just out, you know, and I had all the biggest oldie names in the business the Drifters, the Orlons, everybody . . . Didn't work.

"In 1975, I open up with a dinner theater, the Roar of the Greasepaint. ...Didn't work.

"In 1976 . . . Variety Showcase . . . ventriloquists, magicians, comedians, everything. . .. Didn't work.

"So, I said, 'Hey, -why not?' You know?"

On the main street of Hillburn, an inconspicuous valley town of inconspicuous charms, W. S. Jones, 62, was remarking in front of the fire hall that he sure to heck knew why not and he just didn't know why it had to happen to Hillburn.

“Tell you the truth, I think they're all sick," said Jones, a retired postal worker. "That's just my opinion, but I know one thing. If it'd happened back a few years ago, when all the big people were here, the big church people, it never would've even got a foothold."

Jones' opinion was echoed by most in a joint town meeting for the residents of Hillburn and Sloatsburg, a neighboring village.

"If we don't stop these people from getting a foothold right now, it will be too late," said Sloatsburg resident Robert Latke. "They'll be running up and down the streets of our village, flaunting it."

Hillburn's Mayor Brian Miele, who runs the 1,100-person town's business after teaching his school classes for the day, said that he did not know if a law existed to prevent the motel's conversion.

But he and about 25 other Hillburn and Sloatsburg residents showed up at the Gayla Opening last weekend with picket signs that read "Queers Go Home" and the like, in an effort to decrease the turnout for the night.

About 25 gay patrons came down from the lounge to stage a counterdemonstration at the bottom of the motel's entrance road, and for a while it looked as if the situation might get ugly. A plea from Esposito to his customers and the arrival of the Rockland County Sheriff's Department avoided trouble.

Now the residents of the town say that they want to bring in Anita Bryant, the singer and orange-juice peddler who helped defeat a local Florida ordinance preventing discrimination against homosexuals.

"Let her come, oh yes," said" Allan Ross, the motel's new consultant on gay affairs.

Ross, who was talent scout and master of ceremonies for the Gayla Opening, thought that the first night was "fabulous, oh definitely fabulous."

In his red ruffled shirt, red pants and red high-heeled shoes, he looked rather fabulous himself. From the back of the stage, he introduced a series of female impersonator acts mimicking Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Pearl Bailey and Diana Ross.

The crowd around the stage, dressed in a lot of satin and leather, capes and hats, mostly colorful and mostly quite tight, cheered and called out unprintable remarks. Most stayed until 3 or 4 a.m., and most said that they would be back.

At the end of his act, the Sophisticated Silhouette of Diana Ross - Leslie London dressed in high heels and a divine scarlet sequined see-through gown, said that he would definitely be back.

After seven years in the business, he knew he would rarely see a crowd of 1,500, and so sympathetic!

"Oh, I've played sweet sixteens," he said, wrapping himself around a young Manhattan boy, "rock 'n' roll revivals, bar mitzvahs . . ."

Bar mitzvahs?

"On Long Island, darling, of course."

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We are pleased to share this piece of 🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ History in honor and recognition of PRIDE month.

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Gladys Jenkins

6th Grade Teacher

Hillburn, New York

1920's

El hombre #Géminis tiene sus momentos de puro romanticismo en los que, incluso, se vuelve excesivamente cariñoso.

Mary Frances Gunner (Van Dunk) 

b. 1895 in Lexington, Kentucky;  d. Unknown

        Mary Frances Gunner was the daughter of the Rev. Byron and Cicely Gunner.  They lived in Hillburn, NY while he was a pastor at the Brook Church in Hillburn NY. Her family taught her community involvement, as her father served as president of the National Independence Equal Rights League, and her mother was the president of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs.  Her maternal grandfather, William Savery, was one of the founders of Alabama’s Talladega College.

       Mary Frances Gunner was featured in 1911 in the NAACP’s magazine Crisis. During that year, she was noted as winning the grammar school’s oratorical contest in Hillburn, NY.  She went on to Suffern High School.  In 1912, the same magazine featured Miss Gunner again, this time they wrote, “We give a portrait of Miss Mary Frances Gunner, the daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. Byron Gunner, of Hillburn, NY who during her courses at the Suffern High School made a remarkable record.  Miss Gunner was the only colored girl in the class and led it throughout the course, making a uniformly higher average than any other pupil.  The school is made up of girls and boys, so this young lady is an agreement for woman suffrage as well as for the intelligence of the Negro race.”  

Howard University Annual - 1915

           Mary Frances Gunner went to Howard University, graduating in 1915.  She became the president of the Howard chapter of the NAACP and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority delegate to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society conference in 1913.  Two years later she earned her AB degree.  Her mother was able to travel to Washington, D.C. to see Mary Frances graduate thanks to a “liberal purse” presented by friends from the Brook Chapel in Hillburn.  She taught school for a few years and then became the general secretary of the YWCA in Montclair, NJ in 1918.  She served in that same capacity in Brooklyn in the 1920’s.

           In 1930, Mary Frances Gunner wrote Light of the Women, a play for high school girls that combined historical African American Women Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Phyllis Wheatley with modern female roles of teacher, doctor, and minister.  She earned her MA from Columbia University the same year with her thesis, “Employment Problems among Negro Women in Brooklyn.”  She also presented a 30-minute program on a New York radio station about the issues that African Americans faced.

From 1938 to 1950, Mary Frances Gunner worked as branch manager of the New York State Employment Service.  She married Jerry Van Dunk of Hillburn on February 15, 1946.

We are pleased and honored to share the story of Mary Frances Gunner during Women’s History Month.