Tracing local lesbian history

The JC protest led to an agreement by the college to allow a series of teach-ins on homosexuality. For Neel, the clash produced worthwhile dialogue but also demonstrated to her that confrontation really isn?t her thing.

That?s even more true now that the contemplative lifelong teacher ? and the daughter of a famed SRJC football coach ? has just turned 71.

At this age she?s excited to still be teaching as an adjunct instructor at the junior college, and to be part of a young effort to document three decades of contributions by lesbians to the vitality of the county.

Neel belongs to a small, devoted corps of women who?ve launched the Lesbian Archives of Sonoma County. Its mission is to collect interviews and artifacts that chronicle the leading roles of lesbians in the creation of many human services, businesses and community efforts in the county between 1965 and 1995.

They include Women Against Rape, Pride Day, Moonrise Caf? Chrysalis Counseling Center, Community Market, Brown Bag Readers Theater and Women?s Voices.

Neel and others in the history project said the materials they?re gathering reflect the strong influence of lesbians in more than 60 community organizations and social, political and cultural endeavors.

Neel and her colleagues will hold their first public event on Sunday, a fund-raiser for the archives project. There will be snippets of video from interviews that Neel and fellow archivists Ruth Mahaney, Marylou Shira Hadditt, Mary Kowatch, Nina Dungan and Nancy Moorehead have recorded.

Neel has always valued being part of Sonoma County and its lesbian tradition, though she has come and gone over the years. She?s pretty sure she?s left for the last time.

The Missouri native first came to Santa Rosa in her early teens. Her late father, Bill Neel, served as head coach of SRJC?s football team shortly after World War II, but he made a historic mark.

Bill Neel?s 1949 and 1950 Bear Cubs were widely regarded as among the best community college teams in America. Coach Neel moved with his family to Redlands in 1951.

Ann Neel attended high school there, then earned degrees in sociology at UC Riverside and then at UC Berkeley.

In 1970, she came back to Santa Rosa and took a job at SRJC, where she taught the county?s first women?s studies course, ?Women and Social Change in the U.S.?

?I had a class of about 100,? she said. ?It was huge for the time.?

In 1973, a year after the protests of ?The Killing of Sister George,? Neel moved on to Sonoma State University, where she and English professor J.J. Wilson launched the college?s women?s studies program.

Neel was proud to have a hand in the selection of former SRJC instructor Ruth Mahaney as coordinator of women?s studies at SSU. Mahaney, a co-founder of the lesbian archives project, worked for 13 years at SSU and is now a faculty member at City College of San Francisco.

For Mahaney it?s been a heartening and powerful experience to interview some of the lesbians who joined with others in Sonoma County and acted to improve lives and effect change. ?You come away feeling like ordinary people sitting around a kitchen can accomplish amazing things,? she said.

?You can change things,? she said. ?This county has changed because of people?s hard work, and I think for the better.?

As Mahaney was making her start at SSU in the mid-1970s, predecessor Neel left Sonoma County for the state of Washington. She taught sociology for 26 years at the University of Puget Sound. Upon her retirement in 2001, she returned again to Sonoma County.

?I thought I was through teaching,? she said, but then returned to Santa Rosa Junior College. ?I taught at the JC at the beginning of my career and now I?m teaching there at the end of my career.?

Neel expects that one day someone will use the interviews, papers, posters and other Lesbian Archives materials for a book on the history and contributions of lesbians in the county.

At 71 she doesn?t expect to be the one who writes the book, but she acknowledges that you never know.