Jean Arden Eversmeyer, known as Arden Eversmeyer (April 4, 1931 – November 14, 2022), founded the organizations Lesbians Over Age Fifty (LOAF) and Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project (OLOHP) to give older

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

s visibility and a sense of community and to document their stories.

Early life

Born to Herbert and Audrey Eversmeyer in

Stevens Point, Wisconsin Stevens Point is a city in Portage County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. Its population was 25,666 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It forms the core of the Stevens Point micropolitan statistical area, which had a p ...

, on April 4, 1931, Eversmeyer graduated from

Texas State College for Women Texas Woman's University (TWU) is a Public research university, public coeducational research university in Denton, Texas, with two health science center-focused campuses in Dallas and Houston. While TWU has been fully co-educational since 1994, ...

with a bachelor's degree in health and physical education in 1951. In 1964, she completed a master's degree in education from

Sam Houston State University Sam Houston State University (Sam Houston, SHSU or Sam) is a public research university in Huntsville, Texas, United States. Founded in 1879, it is the third-oldest public college or university in Texas. It is one of the first normal schools wes ...

Career and community activism

Eversmeyer worked in Texas public schools, starting in Plano and spending the majority of her career with the

Pasadena Independent School District Pasadena Independent School District is a school district that is based in Pasadena, Texas, United States. Pasadena ISD serves much of southeast Harris County. The district includes most of Pasadena, South Houston, a portion of Houston (incl ...

and

Houston Independent School District The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the largest Public school (government funded), public school system in Texas, and the eighth-largest in the United States. Houston ISD serves as a community school district for most of the ci ...

, both as an educator and counselor. After a 30-year career, she retired in 1981. In 1952, she met her first partner, Tommie Russum. After Russum's death in 1985, Eversmeyer became involved in community activism focused on lesbians. She started the organization Lesbians Over Age Fifty in 1987 to create safe meeting places and a social network for mid-life and older lesbians in Houston. For 14 years, Eversmeyer served on the steering committee of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, a national organization for lesbians age 55 and older working to confront

ageism Ageism, also called agism in American English, is a type of discrimination based on one's age, generally used to refer to age-based discrimination against Old age, elderly people. The term was coined in 1969 by Robert Neil Butler to describe this ...

and promote social justice. In 1987, Eversmeyer became a partner to Charlotte Avery, and they married in 2008. Avery died on April 4, 2018. In 1998, Eversmeyer founded the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project, which conducts interviews with lesbians age 70 and older to capture their personal stories and document the life of lesbians in the 20th century. Project volunteers have collected over 800 stories from women around the world. OLOHP has published two books of oral histories: ''A Gift of Age: Old Lesbian Life Stories'' (2009) and ''Without Apology: Old Lesbian Life Stories'' (2012). Transcripts, audio recordings, photographs, and other materials from OLOHP are archived at the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History at the

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...

Libraries in Northampton, Massachusetts. Arden's work with OLOHP was the subject of a documentary short film called ''Old Lesbians'', directed and edited by Meghan McDonough in 2023. ''Old Lesbians'' received the

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Listening Pitch and was commissioned by

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. For six years, Eversmeyer was a mayoral appointee to the Houston Agency on Aging.

Later life and death

In 2014, the

National Women's History Alliance The National Women's History Alliance (NWHA) is an American non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and preserving women's history. The NWHA was formerly known as the National Women's History Project. Based out of Santa Rosa, California, sin ...

, a nonprofit educational organization, named Eversmeyer one of its Women of Character, Courage and Commitment honorees for her work on the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project. Mary Speegle, creator of the podcast ''The Lesbian Story Project,'' combined two interviews with Eversmeyer into a 45-minute episode published on October 17, 2016. Eversmeyer died in Houston on November 14, 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eversmeyer, Arden American LGBTQ rights activists Activists from Houston LGBTQ people from Texas LGBTQ people from Wisconsin 21st-century American LGBTQ people 1931 births Texas Woman's University alumni Sam Houston State University alumni 2022 deaths