a&e features
Leisure World’s LGBT residents enjoy openness, camaraderie
Local retirees find support, acceptance in new affinity group
From left, Mitch Harvey, Pat Ritter and Mary Twigger at Leisure World where they’ve found LGBT camaraderie. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
When Mitch Harvey came to Leisure World (3701 Rossmoor Blvd., Silver Spring, Md.) to take care of his ill mother, he had no idea what he was going to do with himself. Harvey felt like he wouldn’t fit in.
“I thought this is not for me,” Harvey says. “I’m too young, I’m gay. Who am I going to be friends with? I looked around and didn’t see anybody. I felt very much out of place.”
Harvey was less alone than he realized.
Pam Galef and Pat Ritter, longtime friends from Long Island, N.Y., decided to move to Leisure World to join Galef’s parents who lived there. Impressed by Leisure World’s amenities, sports and clubs, they thought it would be a good fit for them.
“As we’re walking through the community our gaydar is going off,” Ritter says. “I had a headache almost every day. I know that the people knew that I knew. They would look me in the eyes and there was recognition there and they would look away.”
After seeing how many gay people were living at Leisure World, Galef and Ritter got together with their friend Mary Twigger and decided to start an LGBT group last November. They put an ad in the Leisure World newspaper inviting people to come meet one another over coffee and cake. The plan was to meet at Twigger’s home. The interest in the meeting was far greater than the three expected and instead of meeting at Twigger’s home, they moved the meeting to the main clubhouse building. The group continued to meet there a few times before becoming an organized club.
Harvey was one of the residents who responded to the ad. He joined the group and became the secretary, Galef became president, Twigger vice president and Ritter became treasurer.
Mitch Harvey created a website for out residents at Leisure World. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Leisure World’s LGBT group has since become a safe haven for senior LGBT members. The group hosts outings, including dinners, picnics, cruises and museum tours. They attend the theater together and have plans to participate in Hillwood Estate’s Rainbow Picnic.
Yet Leisure World’s residents’ diverse age range can sometimes make it tricky to plan events. Residents at Leisure World, a 55-and-over community, can be as young as mid-50s and go up through the 100s. Some residents are still working while others have been retired for many years. Harvey says that with this huge age range, it isn’t always easy to make an event that everyone can attend. He says residents in their 50s can feel overlooked in a community like Leisure World.
“If I say I want to set up a bowling trip, this group looks at me and says, ‘You think we can pick up bowling balls?’ It’s like saying, ‘Let’s go out and go boating,’ and even less can pick up a canoe paddle,” Harvey says.
There’s more diversity in the group than just age. Each resident has his or her own experiences being gay and their own coming out stories.
Harvey, who is 60 and from the suburbs of New York, came to the District area for college and settled here while working in the travel agency business. Eventually he married a woman and had children, not coming out until he was in his late 40s. He admits he didn’t really start living a gay life until he was 51 when he moved to South Beach, Fla., finally returning to the local area to care for his mother at Leisure World.
“I was taught to live a ‘normal’ lifestyle,” Harvey says. “ I was living a false life for 45 years.”
Twigger, a Washingtonian, was married to a man for 17 years and had a son. She lived with a previous partner for 18 years and even while living with another woman she did not come out until her mid 40s, after her relationship with her partner ended.
Ritter has been out since the 1970s and Galif has been out since the 1990s. Since Ritter came out sooner, her views on the struggles gay people have faced are a stark contrast to what Harvey and Twigger have been through.
While Harvey and Twigger say they haven’t experienced any blatant homophobia, they credit it to coming out later in life. Ritter recalls times when she would have to run from her car to the bar in order to avoid getting beat up by neighborhood boys for being a lesbian.
Although there are gay residents at Leisure World and an LGBT group to support them, some still find it difficult to come out of the closet at these stages in life. Harvey says that some may have had rough times with homophobia the way Ritter experienced and are still afraid to come out. These residents tend to come out after a major life change.
“There are still a lot of people in our community, especially the seniors, who are involved in a straight relationship and when the partner passes that’s when they come out. We have had a couple of people who have been in that situation,” Ritter says.
Even some residents who choose to participate in the LGBT group have chosen to remain as secretive about attending the meetings as they can. Some members will not sign their name on the roster because they do not want a record of them being there. Harvey says that some fear what their neighbors will think if they discovered that they are gay.
The culture of living a closeted life among this generation made it challenging to gain recognition for the group at first. Some residents had no idea that gay people were living in Leisure World and that there would be a need for the group at all. When Galef explained to one person about the group, the person responded by asking where these people were coming from and if they were going to bus them in.
Ritter recalls during a Leisure World dance party, she and her friend Galef got up in front of everyone and slow danced.
Pat Ritter, left, and Mary Twigger say they enjoy life being out at Leisure World in Silver Spring. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
“It was like, ‘Oh my god, oh my god.’ But you have to break the ceiling, you have to do something,” Ritter says.
After the initial introduction, the Leisure World community’s reception has been overwhelmingly positive. Residents have been accepting of the group and the group’s float for Leisure World’s Fourth of July parade was greeted with smiles and cheers.
“It’s just amazing the reception,” Twigger says. “I think that’s the thing that has a lot of us going, ‘Oh my god.’”
Harvey created a website for the group, leisureworldlgbt.com, and the owner of the Leisure World Brand, Heidi Cortese, contacted Harvey. Cortese was impressed by the work Harvey and the others had done. Now, there are plans to expand the LGBT group into other Leisure World communities. Ideas include having meet ups in other states between different communities, setting up a program where members can swap houses for vacations and even a photo contest, one for gay residents and one for straight ones with a grand prize of a vacation.
Harvey, Ritter, Twigger and Galif are organizing a premiere party on Dec. 4 at their Leisure World location to celebrate being the first active LGBT group at Leisure World. An open bar, hors d’oeuvres and dancing are planned.
“I feel very passionate about it because I know what I lived through. There are many people that are gay that are afraid to say they’re gay that haven’t really had a life yet,” Harvey says. “It’s a very sad life and it shouldn’t be.”
He hopes this group can help those residents accept who they are and start living their lives fully.
“I can truly say that my happiness came when I was able to accept who I was,” Harvey says. “I didn’t have to pretend to be the husband of a wife and live like the Cleavers in ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ That’s why it’s important.”
(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
a&e features
Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
a&e features
Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
Trump’s war threats trigger rare 25th Amendment discussion
A Sondheim masterpiece ‘Merrily’ rolls onto Netflix
ROSENSTEIN: Vote McDuffie for mayor of D.C.
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
Report: Grenell wants Russian ambassadorship
Risking it all for love during World War II
D.C. is the place for the Democratic Socialists of America
PHOTOS: The Bonnet Ball
Key lifestyle changes can help patients cope with diabetes
