Change of Heart: Older Adults Coming Out of the Closet Late in Life

Forever Films Inc.

For filmmakers Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke, the idea for a debut documentary sprang from an intriguing dinner conversation with a childhood friend.

Speaking of his mother, then in her 80s, their friend told them, “She’s never been happy. I think she might be gay.”

That encounter prompted Brooke, 45, and Alda, 47, of Sag Harbor, N.Y., to advertise for older adults who had kept their sexual orientation under wraps. From about 50 respondents, they culled the stories of two Canadian men, one partnered and one single; two women, one in Florida and the other in Kansas; and a male-to-female transsexual who spent most of her life in the U.S. Navy. Out Late has been making the festival rounds, and the filmmakers are hoping for theatrical, television and DVD releases. “We would like it all,” Alda says.

So, too, would the film’s characters. After decades of silence, they talk openly about everything—from sex to discrimination. “I want a loving woman,” says Elaine Weber, an Ocala, Fla., widow who came out at 79 and, four years later, is still searching.

The film explores two powerful themes: the role of religion in supporting or repressing sexual orientation and the overriding need for parental approval. Even now at their advanced ages, many of the film’s subjects feel what Alda calls a “very profound” need for parental acceptance. For them, though, that’s a wish that may never be satisfied: Many of their parents died without ever knowing the truth.

Out Late is notable for its candor and bittersweet mixture of exuberance and regret. The film’s subjects knew early on that they were different, but lived mostly heterosexual lives. “I thought I would lose everything—I’d be disowned by family, friends” if he came out, says Ken Rusk, 76, a retired power company system analyst. His nearly half-century marriage produced four children but was, he says, “a colossal lie” that ended only after his wife died in 2002.

“I always called it ‘my demon,’ ” Weber says of her sexual feelings for women, which led to a brief lesbian affair during her long marriage. For the most part, “I’d get that urge, and say, ‘No, it’s not right.’ ”

Out Late depicts both the rush involved in claiming one’s sexual identity and the fear that having waited so long might make real romance impossible.

“I’m lonely. Most of the younger gay men think we’re well over the hill,” says Rusk, who found his way out through holistic erotic massage and now travels to Toronto from his southern Ontario home to see friends and dates.

The documentary shows the 83-year-old Weber, a devotee of Showtime’s The L Word, dancing with lesbian friends and driving her convertible on one of her frequent road trips. “She’s an icon,” Alda says. “She’s somebody who got a tremendous burst of later-life energy from really coming into her own.”

Yet Weber remains consumed with finding a partner. The self-described free spirit says she has twice had her heart broken since coming out. “I would tell anybody that comes out at my age, or a little younger, ‘Take it slow.’ Personally, I was trying to fall in love with love.”

By contrast, Cathy Jambrosic, a 60-year-old graphic designer, has been living happily with her partner, Michele, in Kansas for a quarter century. But they kept their secret even from close straight friends. The film shows the pair getting married in Canada, to the surprise of one of the witnesses—their Catholic next-door neighbor, a devoted friend who nevertheless opposes gay marriage.

Jambrosic’s coming out was inspired by the passage of Kansas’ 2005 constitutional amendment, which bans same-sex marriage­—and her friend’s support of it. “I felt that being closeted and just living this ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ existence really hurt the cause,” Jambrosic says. “I could not live my life another day being ashamed and trying to hide who I was—because there was nothing to be ashamed of.”

“For me,” says Alda, who married her own life partner, Brooke, in Canada two years ago, “the message is, you have one life, and if you can find a way to get to be who you really are before life ends, that’s a gift.”

As for their friend’s mom, the filmmakers say she has yet to see the documentary she inspired. “To this day, we have no idea if she’s gay or not,” Alda says.