🌈Lilli and Yetta 100 Years Too Late for Gay Pride🌈

🌈Lilli and Yetta 100 years too late for Gay Pride🌈

. Our grandparents were very liberal and open minded individuals.

In the 1920's they had a friend, Lilli,who emigrated from Poland ,owned an auto collision business,fixed cars herself, as well as a Cadillac dealershop.Lilli was a gay women who always wore men's clothing . She was generous, kind,loved cars and taught my cousin at 6 years old to drive a convertible.

Yetta ,in Poland had married a man through an arranged family agreement. Her husband decided to send Yetta to America, first,while he continued to put money away for a well funded life in America . Yetta came to NYC, and lived with relatives in Lower Manhattan. Unhappy,she went with friends to a cultural event in Greenwich Village and met Lilli. They immediately fell in love and Yetta, left her family where she was verbally abused, to live with Lilli.

They had a beautiful relationship visiting my grandparents for dinners often, and so glad to have a non judgemental support system of my grandparents.

When Yetta's husband came to America, only to find her not living with the family arrangement, he began a search to find his wife.

Someone told Yetta's husband, she was living in Greenwich Village, as husband and wife with another woman.

Not only did Yetta's husband bring her back to an apartment he rented for them, but threatened to put Lilli in jail for homosexuality.

In fear of hurting Lilli, Yetta reluctantly went back to her husband and had a son. However, she suffered from deep depression and just could not cope with her marriage, despite being a good mother. Her depression and periods of crying became so serious, that the love lost of Lilli caused her to jump out the window and leave her son. Suicide seemed to be Yetta's only alternative to life.

For Lilli and Yetta, gay pride came too late as for many others, who find love in alternative paths.

My grandparents and my father, who knew and liked both of them since his childhood always talked about it with great compassion as an unnecessary loss .

Ironically, while my grandmother had such support for Lilli and Yetta's lifestyle,her cousin living in London, was the First Viceroy to India under Queen Victoria . He was a prominent lawyer and had one of the most important law firms in England. He was also one of the lawyers responsible for bringing Oscar Wilde to trial for homosexuality.