ROBERT REED, American actor, born (d. 1992); Like many actors of the time, Reed was secretive about being Gay. Reed was briefly married to Marilyn Rosenberg (1957-1959). The union produced one daughter, Caroline Reed, who was born 1958. Caroline had a small role in an episode of The Brady Bunch entitled, "The Slumber Caper." Her character's name was Karen and she is credited as "Carolyn Reed". This episode also reunited Reed with his co-star from The Defenders, E.G. Marshall. Robert Reed contracted AIDS and died in 1992 at age 59 in Pasadena, California, from cancer. He is buried in Skokie, Illinois.

DIVINE, American actor born (ne Glenn Milstead) (d. 1988); best known for his drag persona, Divine. In the 1970s, Milstead starred as Divine in a number of New York City theater pieces, including Tom Eyen’s classic camp women's prison drama, Women Behind Bars, which was a major off-Broadway hit in 1976, playing the lead role of the evil matron, Pauline. Divine returned to the stage in another Tom Eyen off-Broadway play, The Neon Woman, where he played the role of Flash Storm, the owner of a sleazy strip club plagued by a series of murders.

Eyen's play was loosely based on famed burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee's book, "The G-String Murders". He appeared with the Cockettes in San Francisco. After their New York bomb, the Cockettes came back to San Francisco and performed their final show in the summer of 1972, "Journey to the Center of Uranus." Divine, joined the group, in her San Francisco debut, performing her song "The Crab at the Center of Uranus" dressed as a lobster.

Milstead starred in a number of films and was part of the regular cast known as the Dreamlanders. The Dreamlanders appeared in many of John Waters' earlier works such as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, and Hairspray.

In 1985 Milstead appeared opposite Tab Hunter in their hit Lust in the Dust, repeating their successful pairing in Polyester. He is also remembered as a major character in the documentary homage Divine Trash by Steve Yeager, covering the life and work of John Waters.

In 1988, the British film The Fruit Machine, also known as Wonderland in the United States, used Milstead's songs in a nightclub disco dance sequence that showcased an early Robbie Coltrane in drag as "Annabelle", the club's owner (a cross between Divine and Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz).

Late in his career, Milstead also played in non-drag roles in his last three films: Trouble in Mind, Hairspray, and Out of the Dark. In Hairspray he played two roles, one male and one female (which he had first done in the earlier Female Trouble).

Here’s what Divine had to say about his “Edna Turnblad” (and honey...he ain’t no John Travolta!):

“For all those people who always thought I was nothing more than a drag queen, wait until they see what I agreed to look like in Hairspray! Drag queens are supposed to be hung up on glamooouur. Meanwhile, on my first day on location, I came out as Edna Turnblad--in my flip-flops and hideous housedress, with varicose veins drawn on my nubble-shaved legs and everything that is wrong with me accentuated, schlepping along in these pin curls and barely any makeup--and I walked right by the crew. Just kept going. Not one person on the set recognized me or even noticed me, because I looked like half the women in Baltimore. I had to go up to John and stand face-front for him to realize who I was. He was thrilled. I was crushed.”

Divine was the inspiration for the design of Ursula the Sea-Witch in the Disney classic The Little Mermaid.

PATRICIA IRELAND, President of the National Organization of Women (NOW), born; Ireland served as president of the National Organization for Women, from 1991 to 2001 and published an autobiography, What Women Want, in 1996. She has advocated extensively for the rights of poor women, Gays and Lesbians, and African women. She has also advocated electing female candidates, and training people to defend clinics from disruptive anti-abortion protesters around the United States.

On December 17, 1991 she became the very thing NOW had feared from it's inception. She gave an interview with The Advocate, in which she stated that she had a husband and a female partner, Pat Silverthorn, a longtime activist in the Socialist Workers Party. Lesbians had "infiltrated" NOW. This writer would wager they were probably the ones doing most of the work, anyway. Good work, Patricia!

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, American poet (b.  1892); an American lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She was also known for her unconventional, bohemian lifestyle and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. Millay, who was bisexual, had relationships with several other students during her time at Vassar, then a woman's college. In January 1921 she went to Paris, where she met sculptor Thelma Wood, with whom she had a romantic relationship. During her years in Greenwich Village and Paris she also had many relationships with men, including the literary critic Edmund Wilson, who unsuccessfully proposed marriage to her in 1920.

In 1923, she married Eugene Jan Boissevain, then the 43-year-old widower of labor lawyer and war correspondent Ineze Milholland. Boissevain greatly supported her career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. They lived near Austerlitz, New York, at a farmhouse they named Steepletop. Millay's marriage with Boissevain was an open one, with both taking other lovers. Millay's most significant other relationship during this time was with the poet George Dillon, fourteen years her junior, for whom a number of her sonnets were written. Millay also collaborated with Dillon on Flowers of Evil, a translation of Charles Baudelaire’s's Les Fleurs du Mal. Boissevain died in 1949 of lung cancer. Millay was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in her house on October 19, 1950, having broken her neck in a fall.