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Annual History of Jim Andris and Stephen Nichols for 2014

(All images can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Past readers of this epistle will be quite familiar with the continuities in our lives, all duly recorded in past Christmas letters. As this was, however, a year full of changes and new events, I shall focus on these.

Family and Friends from afar

In February we were fortunate to visit our friends Will Lutz in Sarasota and Ron Willnow and Ann Watts on Jeckyll Island, Georgia—a great vacation, but we had to reschedule our homebound flight and that was a 24 hour mess.

Ron Willnow, Ann Watts and Stephen	Stephen and Will Lutz

In March, we were honored to be invited to help celebrate the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Tom and Mary Alice Breiter in Minneapolis, hosted by their four children Deborah, Bill, Jim and David (and eleven grandchildren). I was there for the wedding in 1964, I helped them move from Columbus, Ohio to LaCrosse Wisconsin, and they have been skunking us at bridge for the last 50 years. One more lovely visit with wonderful friends.

Tom and Mary Alice at Macy's Annual Flower Show	Deb, Bill, Jim and Dave honor their parents
Selfie of Jim and the world's largest boot (638D) at the Red Wing, MN Shoe Museum	Bill thanked Tom and Mary Alice for having pizza every Friday (and look who's recipe).

On May 19 we got some very sad news from Al Williamson that our dear friend Will Lutz had died that day. Since we had just visited Will in February, this was a total shock, from which I am still recovering. Will's children, Travor, Tod and Tonya arranged a memorial service for Will at the Layfayette Hotel in Marietta, Ohio on June 8. Stephen and I were able to attend, along with others in the "Old Gang" from high school, Mariam Edgar and Dee and Kay McFarland. We all then went to the gravesite, where Will is laid to rest with his wife, Carolyn Cogswell Lutz, who passed a few years back.

Jim, Stephen, Al, Dee and Mariam at Will and Caroline's grave	The Ohio River at the Lafayette Hotel, where the Will Lutz memorial was held

As is so often the case, significant deaths are bittersweet, due to the loss and sharing memories and renewed communication with family and friends. As it happens, Mariam Edgar, Dee and Kay McFarland and Stephen and I were able to visit with each other and renew our friendships. I also got to see again the new home of Vicki and Jerry Smith, my sister and brother-in-law, visit with my niece, Heidi Andris Lannigan and her daughter, Ariana, and spend some time remembering my old alma mater, The Ohio State University, while passing through Columbus, Ohio.

Kay and Dee at the Lafayette	Vicki and Jerry served us dinner	Mariam and Stephen at the Blue Danube, old haunt of Tom and me

Remembering OSU drinking days	Stephen gets to know Sadie, one of Heidi's dogs

We said goodbye to our friend, Anne Anderson as she moves to her retirement destination in Kentucky near relatives. Also, throughout the year, we had some great visits with family and friends.

Stephen and Anne Anderson at farewell lunch	Zander loves his noodles as mom watches
Brittany, Luke and Mary from Austin	Jerry and sister, Vicki, from Marietta

What's Happening around St. Louis

A lot of other changes have been going on at our church. Over the many years at Trinity Episcopal, we had grown to know and love Bill and Fritzi Baker. Rev. Bill often served as priest over the years, and the two of them have been extremely supportive as Stephen has dealt with various illiness. Bill's funeral was held at Trinity on January 4. Our Rector for the last 11 years, Rev. Anne Kelsey, retired last fall. We spent this year with an Interim Rector, Mark Hatch, who has done an excellent job. But now we have called a new Rector, Jon Stratton, a young man with wife and small daughter, who will arrive in January of 2015. In the meantime, the church has completed an expansion of the South Parish hall, which will be greatly useful for church events, and for the church food pantry and hot lunch program. We've also gone through two choir directors in this time. Hopefully we are entering a more settled time. However, we have been and will continue to be, as a church, very concerned about our proper response to the killings of young black men and resulting powerful combination of mostly peaceful protest and yet with some violence and property distruction in Ferguson and Shaw. 21 businesses have suffered some glass damage in our business neighborhood on South Grand the night after an unfortunate grand jury decision in Clayton.

Poster at Rev. Bill Baker's Funeral	Stephen signs up for life with Jim

As of June 2, Stephen and I, who have been together now for 30 years, were finally legally married in Illinois. We had got a civil union back on August 12, 2011, but then the Illinois State Legislature passed a new bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Illinois, and allowed us to "upgrade" our civil union to a marriage keeping the Aug. 12, 2011 date as the legal date. So on June 2, we found ourselves back at the Madison County Courthouse signing the necessary papers, and then went out to celebrate with Rosanda Richards-Ellsworth. She insists that we keep the number of anniversaries to one, however, so we are retaining the date of May 15, 1993 as our official anniversary, since that is the date we had the Holy Union mass at Trinity Episcopal Church.

Back at home, this was the year from hell for home repairs. Final count: three roof, drain and sewer repairs, big tree maintenance, and a newly renovated back deck. I spent the whole summer getting these things scheduled.

My Work with Gay History

Since 2010 I have been writing about the so-called "first" gay pride march in St. Louis, then billed as the Walk for Charity. I did some fairly deep research, interviewed many original participants, and scanned in slides from the event. This year, two important events grew from this research. On January 25 Philip Hitchcock's phd gallery in St. Louis opened the exhibition A History of QUEER, which was subtitled Selections from the St. Louis LGBT History Project. In 2013 I had identified Jim Pfaff as the owner of hundreds of slides on this and other early LGBT events, and worked with Jim to digitize them. The slides were donated to the LGBT History Project, founded and directed by Steve Brawley. The slides played a role in developing the exhibition.

Perhaps even more exciting for me was that early in 2014, Ellen Vanscoy, Parade Chair of St. Louis' June pride event (which last year moved downtown), got the idea to honor members of the original Magnolia Committee that was formed in 1979 by Glenda Dilley (now Cea Hearth). Guess who knew most of them and had the contact information?! It was my great delight to help Ellen make the arrangements for honoring these pioneers of St. Louis LGBT pride, and it was to my own pride that I watched as four of them and Jim Pfaff rode as marshals in the Pride Parade on June 29. Bill Spicer is not shown in the picture, but was Secretary and liason to the mayor's office for the Magnolia Committee.

Steve Brawley, Jim Pfaff and Philip Hitchcock at the phd gallery	Me, Cea Hearth, Frank Sprayberry, John Hilgeman and Jim Pfaff at St. Louis 2014 Pride Parade

Stephen's News

Earlier in the year, things seemed to be improving for Stephen. Last year he had started voice lessons again with our former choir director, Stephen Slusser, who left for employment in Seattle. The church found another choir director, Ryan Bollinger, who was with us for less than a year, also leaving for different employment. Stephen went back to voice coaching with Jeanette Myers, the founder of the River City Pops choral group that he used to sing with, and is enjoying that.

Stephen's bad news is that the hip replacement appliance he had installed a few years back is not only defective, but is releasing metal ions into his body. He is searching for treatment alternatives, but very probably will have to have a difficult surgery sometime next year. Keep him in your thoughts and/or prayers.

Stephen reports that this year we got a new Apple TV that has opened up a whole new universe of informaton and entertainment for us. We are especially having fun learning about all the new cosmological and astronomical discoveries. Mariam turned us on to the program Through the Wormhole, and we watched all of the Cosmos series, which we loved.

Extra Stuff

If you've read and looked this far, we're proud of you. This would probably be enough stuff. So, in including these other pictures, I'm just letting you know about other people and places that make our lives really rather wonderful, and we are grateful for them.

A couple of times a week, you can find us at Trinity Episcopal, and here are some scenes from that.

Easter Eve at Trinity Episcopal	Jeff Nall directs Trinity Choir	Hanging of the Greens at Trinity

Being characters ourselves, we attract some unique friends into our lives, which would be more dim and grim without them.

Judy's Birthday. Rosanda checks in every day!	Birthday with Martha and Heidi	Stephen lusts after Ron's beer	Rip, my pew mate and neighbor

Then there's all the good places to eat and drink in St. Louis.

French onion soup at La Bonne Bouchet	Waiting in line at Ted Drewes for a frozen custard	Kaldi Coffee makes a mean latté	Cheescake from Jim's kitchen for 2nd Sunday Play Reading Group

The beautiful parks and gardens, and the great entertainment experiences.

Lafayette Park	Missouri Botanical Gardens
Tower Grove Park	Benton Park
At the opera with the Bradleys and the Daughadays	Summer concerts in Tower Grove Park

Our year has come and almost gone, full of smiles and tears, serenity and turmoil, prayer and politics. We are grateful for this one more year on a Beautiful Planet. We and Midas cat greet you as we sail into the sunset, and wish you Happy Holidays, whatever you holidays are.

Midas love the sunlight	Old farts on a park bench at sunset	Townhouse holiday lights in 2013