Oldest Living Veteran Of Stonewall Rebellion To Take Part In Pride Parade

ORLEANS – As David Bermudez remembers, it all happened very quickly.

 Sitting in the back of the Stonewall Inn one night in June 1969, Bermudez and his friends heard the sound of confrontation. Before they knew it, they were heading for the door.

 “I was getting out of the bar with my friends,” said Bermudez, who lives with his husband, Bob Isadore, in Yarmouthport. “My friends were saying ‘Get out, David. Get out. We have a job, we have apartments. We’re going to lose everything.’”

 Upon setting foot outside of the popular Greenwich Village gay bar, Bermudez saw a man on the ground. He watched as a police officer standing over him pulled his head back, his nightstick clutched across the man’s neck. 

 Today, Bermudez, 85, is the oldest living veteran of the Stonewall Rebellion. Decades after the infamous riots, he received an email from William Henderson, the head of the Stonewall Rebellion Veterans Association, who wanted to get Bermudez involved with the organization. The two met in Greenwich Village, and it was then that Bermudez recognized Henderson as the man he saw outside of the bar years before. 

 “I said ‘Oh, I always thought you were killed and murdered.’ From then on we’ve been good friends.”

 Bermudez has spent the years since the rebellion giving talks and advocating for gay and LGBTQ+ causes. On Saturday, he and Isadore will walk as part of the inaugural Lower Cape Pride parade, which will step off from Snow Library at 10 a.m. and head down Main Street toward the Artist Cottages on Old Colony Road.

 For the couple, the parade is emblematic of how far acceptance of gay, LGBTQ and trans culture has come since the rebellion, which remains a watershed movement in the gay liberation movement.

 “I felt emotional in that moment, because it’s their first parade,” Bermudez said of being asked to take part in the parade.

 The Stonewall Inn, which legend has it earned its name from Mary Casal’s novel of the same name, originated as a double horse stable in the 1800s. The two properties were renovated in the early 1930s and repurposed to operate as a speakeasy during the Prohibition era, Bermudez said.

 In the 1960s, the bar came under the ownership of the Mafia. Bermudez, who at the time was beginning to come out as a gay man, said that the Mafia paid off the police, creating a safe space for members of the gay community.

 “We’d go there,” he said. “It had a jukebox, the only place that had a jukebox. I’d go to Puerto Rico and say ‘Stonewall’ and they’d know all about it.”

 Bermudez recalls gathering at the Stonewall on the first night of the riots with friends to mourn the death of Judy Garland, who had died days earlier. Raids of the bar were common, he said. Police would come, check IDs and leave with alcohol. Drag queens in particular were subjected to harassment, he said. But while the police presence didn’t initially arouse any concern, things quickly escalated.

 “Before we knew it we heard ‘bang’ here and ‘bang’ there,” he said. “We thought ‘Whoa, whoa.’”

 According to Bermudez, the Mafia failed to pay the police, leading to the heightened confrontation. Rioting and demonstrations ensued for the next several days. 

 “Nobody knows who started this,” he said. “I was right there with my friends. We didn’t see the person who started this. We heard the noise.”

 Looking back, Bermudez said the Stonewall Rebellion didn’t have any lingering effect on him. (“It didn’t make me hateful,” he said. “It didn’t make me resentful.”) But the event was just one of many hurdles the gay community had to clear in the years that followed on the road toward acceptance. The couple later settled in California, where they befriended San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold public office in the United States. Milk, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, were both shot and killed in 1978. 

 Shortly thereafter, the AIDS epidemic spread through the gay community, touching many of the couple’s close friends.

 “I think the thing that really was the hardest thing for me and my husband and our friends that are alive was losing our friends to AIDS and not knowing where that stuff came from,” Bermudez said. “We were afraid that we were the next ones who were going to die and all of that stuff. And through the grace of God, here we are.”

 Since moving to the Cape 23 years ago, Bermudez and Isadore have continued their advocacy work locally. Isadore was instrumental in helping start the Cape’s first hospice and bereavement programs for gay couples.

 “Now all the COAs have LGBTQ programs,” he said.

 Bermurdez and Isadore have watched support for gay and LGBTQ culture grow dramatically in their 51 years together. Isadore recalls attending a 2014 ceremony unveiling a bust of Milk’s face at Barnstable High School. High above the proceedings, he watched the iconic Pride flag wave.

 “I mean, people our age would never experience that [when they were younger],” he said. “And the young generation today think ‘Well, it’s no big deal.’ Well, yeah, but to us it is.’”

 For all the gains that have been made, Bermudez and Isadore both say there’s little room for complacency. In his talks, Bermudez leaves those he speaks with one piece of advice. 

 “I will say, be careful. Just be careful.”