Tinderbox

  For decades, Landrieu has declined to say how he occupied his time in the days after the Up Stairs Lounge fire. There is little archival record of the 1973 disaster in his papers at Loyola University and a blank page for the events of June 24, with materials evidently redacted, in the scrapbook of newspaper clippings collected by the mayor’s office. It seems that the mayor was in town on Friday, June 22, when he signed a letter to the IRS about the French Market Corporation. He declined invitations to attend events the next day, saying he’d be out of town—so it’s probable that he left New Orleans by June 23. Chances are, he reached his travel destination by that Sunday, June 24.52

  Although several articles described Landrieu’s trip as “vacationing,” one Times-Picayune story eleven days after the fire provided additional information: “Mayor Moon Landrieu spent his fourth of July in Europe where he is reviewing plans for a memorial park for Louis Armstrong.” These circumstances—a public works project to honor a legendary black musician—represented a confluence of Landrieu’s political interests: civil rights and revitalization. A few years before, Landrieu had spearheaded plans to rehabilitate a section of the Tremé—a predominantly black neighborhood adjoining the predominantly white French Quarter—that had been razed to the ground by a previous mayor. Seizing upon the 1971 death of the New Orleans–born Armstrong, Landrieu proposed converting this area into a memorial for the jazz icon. He appointed Ernest “Dutch” Morial, a popular liberal black judge, and a States-Item editor named Charles Ferguson to head up the Armstrong Park citizens’ committee.53

  Researching park designs, Morial and Ferguson were inspired by the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, which led to Landrieu’s summer trip to see it firsthand. A June 11, 1973, letter from an Armstrong committee member to the deputy director of Tivoli Gardens describes Landrieu’s travel plans and reveals that Ferguson would accompany him. The Tivoli director confirmed arrangements with Winston Lill. On Thursday, June 28, Lill sent a telefax to Ferguson at the Parkhotel in Lübeck, Germany. Landrieu, therefore, was reachable by senior staff and select members of the media during the week after the fire.54 Politician and newspaperman were on a city-funded jaunt together, which consumed their attentions abroad.

  AT AROUND 4:30 P.M., Troy Perry, John Gill, Morty Manford, and Morris Kight walked the short distance from the Marriott to the Up Stairs Lounge. They examined the rubble and scrutinized the scorched windows and marks of boiled blood. Stains marred the sidewalks, while passersby gawked and made faces at acrid smells. The Times-Picayune would print a picture around this time of a curious tourist in a candy-striped shirt poking his head into the charred staircase. “Rubbernecking spectators converged on the spot Monday,” the caption read, “as though it was yet another tourist attraction in the City That Care Forgot.” Perry placed a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums on a makeshift “people’s shrine” of candles and blooms rising beside the entrance to the bar and led a group prayer before rushing back to the hotel to meet the press.55

  Some journalists arriving at the press conference voiced suspicions about Perry. One reporter called the gay leaders “fairy carpetbaggers.” Overhearing this comment, Perry flew into a rage. He had grown up in Florida, where that Reconstruction-era slur signified the lowliest of low characters. “I want to tell you something,” Perry said as he opened the conference. “I’ve seen yellow journalism before, and quotes from cops in your newspapers and on television about the Up Stairs being a queer bar and a hangout for thieves won’t do.” His voice rose, engaging rhythms that he typically used as a preacher. “The time in history for calling people niggers and kikes and queers is over in the United States of America. And it’s high time that you people in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union.” This rebuke from a stranger to the Crescent City left the room of reporters flabbergasted. Moving on quickly, Perry castigated members of the closeted press for reporting the fire dispassionately. With that setup, Morris Kight leaped in and demanded an apology from the New Orleans Police Department for Major Morris’s published statement about thieves and queers.56

  As the news conference wound to a close, New Orleans’s WVUE, the ABC affiliate, went live across town. On air, newscaster Alec Gifford took a call from an anonymous woman who said that she had vital information about the Up Stairs Lounge. “The fire last night was set by a vigilante group which has declared war on homos,” she declared. That supposed vigilante group, which the caller identified as “Black Mama White Mama” (an obvious homage to a 1973 action film of the same name), claimed credit for the Up Stairs Lounge as an act of revenge against Deliverance-style assaults upon innocent heterosexuals. More attacks were in the works, the caller declared before hanging up. As could be expected, this scoop incited anger and panic.57

  Perry responded to the sensation with a plan to keep the peace. He escorted Up Stairs Lounge survivor Ricky Everett to a competing station for an interview. WWL agreed to interview Ricky on live TV, but under certain conditions. “Troy Perry kind of arranged that,” Ricky recalled. “And he wanted them to do it with my back to the camera to portray the poor little gay man who can’t come out cause he’s afraid of being hated.” News producers were wary of revealing the face of a confessed gay, to risk normalizing such an image, but Perry believed that the petite Ricky Everett, by virtue of his voice and body language, could serve as a nonthreatening exemplar. Ricky has only vague recollections of this TV appearance, during which he argued that many homosexuals were Christians and nonviolent citizens. “You have to remember, I’m in shock,” recalled Ricky. “All of us were—total shock—and I was in shock for weeks after. You could point me in a direction, and I would go and not ask questions.”58

  Shortly after Ricky left the studio, WWL aired another report that lamented the losses at the Up Stairs Lounge without using the word “homosexual.” Instead, the station categorized the incident as a public safety issue: “Louisiana cannot continue to ignore these fire deaths. Something must be done to make buildings safer.” This safety angle provided a welcome way to universalize a narrative of twenty-nine deaths without delving into unsavory details. As a result, an antiseptic debate about “firetraps” and building codes gained currency. Nevertheless, watching one of these reports, Clayton Delery, a closeted teenager living in suburban New Orleans, recognized the gay subtext instantly. Bullied in school as “Gay Clay,” he possessed a heightened alertness to homosexuality, a subject he knew precipitated attacks, and could decipher it on television. “They’re going to kill me,” Delery told himself, which eventually motivated his writing a book to explore this arresting thought.59

  Outside of New Orleans, CBS and NBC national news desks ran segments on the Up Stairs Lounge that evening. Both of these reports, slotted near the bottom of the evening newscast (when minor stories aired), framed the narrative in careful terms. The NBC segment lasted less than twenty seconds, several of which were lost to a suggestive cough by the newscaster; it didn’t include the word “homosexual” in its description of the bar. The CBS piece, lasting about a minute, featured reporter Bruce Hall cribbing heavily from the States-Item’s story. Hall said, “Police say the bar is a hangout for homosexuals, and homosexuals frequently carry false identification papers.”60

  CHAPTER 8

  Visions

  Monday Evening,

  June 25, 1973

  “Some said it was just a bunch of faggots,” preached Troy Perry to the fifty or so gathered in the chapel of St. George’s Episcopal Church. “But we knew them as people, and as brothers and sisters, and we will never forget them.” The sun was setting, as seen through the bay window of the tiny room, as Perry held forth. It was 8:00 p.m., precisely twenty-four hours since the fire had changed the lives of those gathered at the memorial. “This isn’t the end,” Perry said, his voice booming in the very room that had held Sunday services for the MCC before they opened their Magazine Street church.1

  Perry cast his eyes upward and then looked outward to his flock
. While this side chapel was full, the vaunted sanctuary of St. George’s (separated by a thin, white door) stood empty in contrast. Many chapels like this one, accessed by a side entrance from the street, had previously served the religious needs of black domestic workers employed by whites since early Reconstruction.2 Reporters from the Times-Picayune and The Advocate stood in back, deferring to attendees, who included Ricky Everett and Ronnie Rosenthal. “The individuals who did this act, we have to pray for them because they have to live with themselves,” stated Perry. Reporters from the New Orleans States-Item and the Associated Press also listened attentively; these venues’ publication of the word “Gay” in headlines the next day would reflect an immediate change in comportment following Perry’s castigation of their bias. Seated among the mourners was Reverend Bill Richardson, the minister of St. George’s Episcopal Church, who nodded and prayed aloud. “All of us there at MCC who were regular members knew Father Richardson,” recalled Ricky Everett. “And we loved him so much.”3

  As the rector for St. George’s, Richardson lent dignity and authority through his presence. Yet he accommodated these guests at grave personal risk. Richardson had been devastated to learn of the fire. “My phone rang at 3 a.m. telling me of this,” wrote Richardson in remembrance. “I was grieved greatly, for included among those burned to death was Bill Larson, my friend.” Richardson had agreed to host a memorial “providing they [the gay activists] would not make a big splash over it.” He cautioned local TV stations against taking pictures and asked the journalists to keep things low-key. Plans were so improvised that several MCC congregants, like Henry Kubicki, learned about this memorial only the next day.4

  Richardson, a widower in his sixties, had enjoyed a close spiritual friendship with MCC pastor Bill Larson. He knew of Larson’s homosexuality and was accepting. Although homosexual acts were decreed as sins by the American Episcopal Church (a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, led by the Church of England), Richardson had flouted these rules and preached compassion for the sexually oppressed. In 1972, he had caused a commotion by letting Bill Larson and his MCC use this chapel. In the wake of the day’s “Black Mama White Mama” scare, Richardson once again opened his doors.5

  After Perry’s sermon, Richardson himself addressed the chamber. He gave a homily for Bill Larson and openly wept. Reverend John Gill of the MCC of Atlanta then attempted to rouse the congregants to political action: “New Orleans should not be the City That Care Forgot but the city that God remembered.” Reverend David Solomon and Deacon Courtney Craighead also spoke.6

  Perry closed by calling for a so-called national day of mourning for the Up Stairs Lounge victims on Sunday, July 1, exactly one week after the tragedy. He asked that local gay bars and clubs mark the occasion by closing for one hour at 8:00 p.m. He also announced that funds would soon be solicited for a new gay church in New Orleans, one that could serve as a “living memorial” to the fire and its victims. “This is a most tragic ending of Gay Pride Week,” he noted. Hearing this statement, many congregants expressed puzzlement about how the burning of the Up Stairs Lounge had anything to do with gay pride.7

  Once the service ended, Troy Perry and the other leaders rose to tour bars along Bourbon Street. Feeling that his presence might be a boon, Perry visited Pete’s Place, Caverns, and Café Lafitte in Exile to counsel locals and make his presence known. Many New Orleanians were, in fact, stunned to see him in person. “People were really scared,” Perry observed. John Meyers said, “The reaction of all of my friends was pretty much he was capitalizing on this, that this was part of his own agenda to advance a church, really, that didn’t have much of a following or a lot of respect among gay people here in the city. But that also fits in with the fact that we really didn’t want any trouble stirred up.”8

  AS PERRY CIRCULATED throughout the Quarter, Roger Nunez tossed fitfully on the couch of his friend Cee Cee Savant at 606½ Iberville Street—just two doors down from the Up Stairs Lounge. Pungent odors wafted through the open windows as Roger attempted to sleep. His dreams were night terrors, and he periodically yelled in his half-awake state, drenched in sweat. The night before, Roger’s roommate had found him drunk on the street and guided him home.9

  In testimony she would give to deputies from the Louisiana Office of the State Fire Marshal, Savant recalled a knock on her apartment door early that Monday morning. Two plainclothes officers, she remembered, flashed their badges and asked to speak to Roger Dale Nunez. She said that one of the officers had questioned Roger out in the hallway, while the other man kept her away. When the conversation with Roger got loud, Savant grew enraged, and the officers agreed to leave. This entire episode supposedly lasted less than thirty minutes. “They think I started the fire, but I didn’t,” Roger Nunez told Savant afterward, and she quieted him with two sleeping pills. Later, Savant awoke half-sober and noticed that Roger’s jaw was swollen. He claimed to have a toothache. She asked if he’d been in a fight, and he replied woozily, “I don’t want to talk about it.”10

  In his sleep, Roger saw a horrible, violent blaze that he kept reliving in a loop. At the end of this dream, he was met by a row of accusers, who told him that he had set the Up Stairs Lounge fire and wouldn’t accept his denials. He’d wake up shouting things like “I didn’t do it!” and “Help me, I didn’t start it!” and “Tell them I didn’t.” Although this behavior might seem incriminating, what exactly went on in Roger’s sleep is hard to decipher. Fire had already played a significant role in Roger’s life. His arrest record, in fact, noted a burn scar on his right elbow, a place where heat had met flesh and scalded deeply. No one knew how or why. Moreover, Shelton Nunez, Roger’s young uncle and contemporary, had perished by flame in a terrible explosion on an offshore oil rig three years earlier.11

  SOMETIME AFTER THE memorial, Courtney Craighead got a phone call from home. Evidently, a newspaper back in El Dorado, Arkansas, quoted his name in breaking news about the Up Stairs tragedy. His parents read the story and wanted answers. Courtney barely remembered speaking to reporters on Iberville Street, like Angus Lind of the New Orleans States-Item and Eric Newhouse of the Associated Press. Within hours, it seemed, his comments appeared—attributed—in papers distributed from coast to coast. The Monroe News-Star of Monroe, Louisiana, and the Argus of Fremont, California, quoted him by name. A Boston Herald American article, “Deacon in Tavern Blames Arsonist,” printed Courtney’s full name in the same column of print that included the term “gay bar.”12

  These quotations meant that Courtney was unequivocally outed to everyone he knew. Newspapers confirmed, to his devout Methodist parents, an “aberrant” sexuality that their son had made great efforts to mask. Courtney’s father and namesake, Joseph Courtney Craighead Sr., was a banker and World War II veteran. His mother, Dorothea, was a schoolteacher.13 An only child who was still in his thirties, Joseph Courtney Craighead Jr. bore expectations of passing on the family name.

  Courtney’s parents felt humiliated. Instead of expressing relief about their son surviving an ordeal, they expressed some anger at what they felt was a genuine betrayal. His mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that year, and the possibility lingered that Courtney’s little “revelation” could worsen her condition. This reaction created a lasting psychological wound. Courtney’s parents faced a choice in a moment between an expression of compassion and an exclamation of disgust for their child. Examined through the climate of the 1970s, the Craigheads’ phone call might have seemed not like a choice at all to them but rather a refutation of sin.14 Perhaps they thought they were saving him in this way. Furthermore, they just couldn’t find the sympathy to console and comfort him about lost gay friends.

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, Reverend Paul Breton of the MCC of Washington, D.C., arrived in New Orleans at the invitation of Troy Perry. At the airport, Breton noted a headline blaring from the front page of the Times-Picayune. “Devastating French Quarter Fire Probed by Three Agencies,” it read. The story called the Up Stairs Lou
nge fire “catastrophic” and a “holocaust” but failed to mention the sexuality of bar patrons until the text jumped inside the paper. Two of the victims, the article reported, had been positively identified at this time, which set in motion the process of next-of-kin notifications: “Clarence McCloskey, 48, 816 N. Gayoso St.; and George Matyi, 27, 130 Mickal St. Slidell.” Seeing that McCloskey actually resided at 1232 St. Andrews Street, according to the NOPD report, it seems that someone at the paper may have been cracking a sly joke—at the expense of the deceased—by printing the alternative street name.15 McCloskey was identified quickly and quietly by his brother Bernard, a New Orleans fireman who learned of the death through his colleagues in the force. Vouching for the body, given Clarence’s homosexuality, could have cost Bernard his job if it became widely known, so Bernard’s affiliation with the NOFD appeared in no reports or death notices for Clarence. He was simply “brother.”16

  Next, coroners identified Bud Matyi’s body through the religious medal dangling on his neck—noticed in the morgue by Rod Wagener, Matyi’s closeted lover. Because Bud Matyi had not yet finalized his divorce in California, Charity Hospital called Bud’s soon to be ex-wife, Pamela Cutler, with the news. “They called my mother, and I just remember her screaming, and I just heard her saying ‘No, no!,’ ” Tina Marie Matyi recalled. Tina was only four, and this became her one of her first clear memories. “Your dad died in a fire,” Cutler later told her daughter. Rod Wagener made no statements regarding the loss and, according to recollections of several New Orleans residents, continued to make appearances on his WDSU radio talk show throughout the week. In written reports, the coroner respected Wagener’s request for closeted-ness by declining to name him as the source of the ID.17