Kenneth Felts of Arvada, Colorado, came out as gay at the age of 90.
ARVADA, Colo. — Stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic with not much to do, Kenneth Felts began to write a memoir, chronicling the past 90 years of his life.
But as Felts wrote, he quickly realized that his story would never be complete without revealing a secret he had kept hidden his entire life: His true sexuality.
Felts, who now lives in Arvada, Colorado, told CNN that he's known he was gay since he was 12 years old. But he said he made the choice to conceal his sexuality because he grew up during a time when homosexuality was both frowned upon and illegal.
Much has changed over the last few decades, including the Supreme Court's monumental decision in 2015 to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.
Felts said his memoir couldn't go on without writing about his one true love, Phillip. So at age 90, he finally came out to his daughter and then to the rest of his friends and family through a Facebook post.
"I am gay, I am out, and I am free," Felts said he wrote in his post.
A secret he was planning to take to the grave
A sleepover with a classmate helped Felts come to the revelation that he was gay, he said. But he was taught in his devout Christian family that homosexuality was a sin.
"I just knew that if I were to come out as gay, I would probably go to hell," Felts told CNN. "I was going to the grave with (my secret)."
So throughout his young adult years, including his deployment to Korea with the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, and his following years in college, Felts lived as a straight man.
Kenneth Felts is shown when he was deployed to Korea as part of the U.S. Navy during the Korean War.
In the late 1950s, he moved to Long Beach, Calif., to work at a retail credit company. And it was there he met Phillip Jones.
"When I met him, I was still straight and so I had not anticipated opening up," Felts said. "He's the one that threw me out and made me realize that we had potential together."
Dates started out at coffee shops, but soon, Felts was spending more time at Jones' apartment than his own, and eventually moved in. For over a year, they lived as a happy, albeit secret, gay couple.
"When I was living with Phillip in California, homosexuality itself was illegal," Felts said. "It was a felony, we couldn't hold hands or anything like that. You would be arrested on exhibition of such behavior. Once you go to court, your information is spread all around town and you lose your friends, your family."
California's sodomy law wasn't repealed until 1975.
Ultimately, the burden of being gay in a society where it was considered a crime became too much for Felts, and he decided to break it off with Jones.
"I resigned my job, packed up my stuff and went back home," Felts said. "Phillip wrote me two or three letters after that. In the last letter, he said, 'If you don't respond to this letter, I won't bother you anymore.'"
"I didn't respond as I hadn't responded to any of his letters," he recalled. "Big mistake."
After Felts left Jones, he once again hid his sexuality. But this time, he created an alter ego named "Larry" to create a more defined separation between his two lives.
"Larry was my gay side and I, Ken, was the normal, straight person," Felts said.
Keeping Larry hidden, Felts met a woman at his church's youth group. They got married and had a daughter, but they divorced in 1980. Even then he didn't dare to come out as he was scared he could lose custody of his daughter.
But he would discreetly head to the library, where he flipped through the telephone books in search of one name.
"I called every Phillip J in there and was never able to locate him," Felts said. "I will die always regretting having left Phillip, but hopefully he forgave me."
Coming out at the age of 90
Growing up, Rebecca Mayes, now 48, knew that her father had some regrets in life. She had always thought that they were related to her mother, but she finally learned in May during the pandemic the source of her father's pain.
"We were on the phone and he told me that he missed out on the one true love of his life," Mayes told CNN. "He didn't say male or female."
Later that day, Felts revealed to Mayes in an email that his one true love was indeed Phillip Jones, a man.
Mayes said she was surprised to hear that her father was gay, considering the fact that he reacted to her coming out as lesbian 25 years ago in dismay.
"He told me the relationship wouldn't last," Mayes remembered. But she said her father quickly came around and became her and her now-wife's biggest supporter.
"I think he had the same fears for me that he had himself about what a tough life it could be, everything from not being able to have children to societal issues," said Mayes, who now has two children.
Kenneth Felts and his daughter, Rebecca Mayes, participate in the 2020 Denver Pride Virtual 5K.
After coming out to his daughter, Felts soon revealed his truth to the rest of the world in a Facebook post that was met with overwhelming support and love, he said. He even shared the story about Phillip Jones in hopes that someone could help find him.
A woman in New Jersey who helps find the biological parents of adopted children reached out to Felts to help find his long-lost love. But unfortunately, what she brought was sad news. Jones had died in 2013.
"I loved him till the end, and I'm doing this all for him," Felts said.
Now, as a proud gay man, Felts said Larry has taken over. He has blue and pink streaks in his hair. He's wearing the rainbow pride flag, and he even participated in this year's Denver Pride Virtual 5K on his walker.
But most importantly, Mayes said her father is more outgoing and confident than ever.
"I don't see how I could not be happy for the rest of my life," Felts said.
It might have taken him 90 years to come out as gay, but he said he hopes his story will give others the courage to embrace their sexuality as well.
"There's a whole world out there that will accept you and love you for who you are," he said.
Important moments in history of gay rights movement
Here are 12 important moments in the pride movement and the fight for LGBTQ rights.
Early organizing
In 1924 the Society for Human Rights was founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. It was the first documented gay rights organization in the United States, and meetings were held in his home.
The Henry Gerber House, pictured, is now a National Historic Landmark.
Talking about transgender
Christine Jorgensen, a former U.S. Army private, made headlines in the 1950s after having sex reassignment surgery and talking widely about her experience, one of the first people in the U.S. to do so. Her gender conversion began with hormone injections in 1950, when she was 24, and was completed in 1952 with surgery at the Danish State Hospital in Copenhagen.
On the front lines
Barbara Gittings, pictured at a rally, was a prominent gay and lesbian rights activist who, a decade before the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, was battling for the rights of homosexuals.
In the late 1950s she founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national organization for lesbians, The New York Times reported.
In the early 1970s she helped lobby the American Psychiatric Association to change its stance on homosexuality; in 1973 the association rescinded its definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Fighting back
Early on June 28, 1969, New York police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. The raid set off a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughed up customers, leading to six days of protests and clashes with police.
The Stonewall riots were a defining moment for the nascent gay rights movement and the reason behind June being chosen as Pride Month.
PFLAG is started
The idea for PFLAG, which originally stood for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, began in 1972 when Jeanne Manford marched with her son, Morty, in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day parade, the precursor to today's pride parades. In March 1973 the first meeting of what would become PFLAG was held.
The group went national as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in 1982. Since 2014, PFLAG is no longer considered an acronym but rather the entire name of the organization.
Pride parades are born
The first pride parade was held in New York on June 28, 1970, one year after the Stonewall raid on Christopher Street. A few thousand people took to the streets in New York, and gay activist groups on the West Coast held a march in Los Angeles and a march and gay-in in San Francisco. In Chicago people marched the day before New York and marked the Stonewall anniversary with a week of events.
Today, millions around the world march and rally for LGBTQ pride around the world, including in West Hollywood, pictured, which has one of the biggest and best-known pride events in the country.
Winning elected office
Gays and lesbians also made strides in the 1970s by running for office. Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly LGBT American elected to public office when she won a seat on the Ann Arbor, Mich., City Council in 1974. Elaine Noble was the first openly gay candidate elected to a state office when she was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, also in 1974.
And Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk was loud and unapologetic about his sexuality, earning widespread attention. His remarkable career was cut short when he was gunned down about a year after taking office.
Pop culture representation
Billy Crystal, pictured in 1998, played one of the first openly gay characters in a recurring role on a prime-time television show on "Soap," which ran from 1977 to 1981.
Making noise
Writer and AIDS activist Larry Kramer's work with ACT UP and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis brought attention to the AIDS crisis at a time when many people preferred ignorance. He loudly demanded attention for the disease that was felling thousands of gay men, and his writing, including the play "The Normal Heart," captured the ordinary lives caught up in the ordeal of AIDS.
Political action
The Democratic Party added “sexual orientation” to its platform’s anti-discrimination protections at the 1980 convention in New York. It was the first American political party to officially incorporate such a plank. Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Walter Mondale, along with their wives, are pictured at the convention.
Same-sex marriage
In 2004 Massachusetts became the first state to make it legal for same-sex couples to wed. It followed a controversial decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Nooni and Alicia Hammarlund, pictured, were among the couples securing a license on May 17, 2004, the first day for legal marriages.
Supreme Court ruling
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that the Constitution guarantees a person's right to same-sex marriage.
“No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision.
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