April 28th

04-28-1926 – 02-19-2016 (Nelle) Harper Lee – Born in Monroeville, Alabama. She is the author of the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which became a best seller and won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize. Her book was made into an Academy Award film in 1962, staring Gregory Peck. Lee was known to be a tomboy and is depicted as such in the film as Scout. It has long been rumored that she was gay but it has never been affirmed. Journalist Marja Mills of the Chicago Tribune was sent to interview Lee and her sister Alice in 2001. Mills described Nelle Harper Lee as inquisitive, spontaneous, easy to laugh, and moody. Mills revealed that Lee is a rabid sports fan who watches baseball, golf, and football. Why didn’t Lee marry? Mills lets Lee’s close friend Tom Butts, a Methodist minister, answer this question: “Scout was a tomboy, and so was she, and she kind of kept that almost masculine way about her as an adult…I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear a piece of jewelry as long as I’ve known her except something simple for appearance. She doesn’t wear makeup, hardly. You know how she dresses. Always pants and kind of baggy clothes sometime.” Mills never asked Lee if she was gay because she was afraid that Lee would stop talking to her. Lee was also friends, since childhood, with Truman Capote (he was also depicted in the film as the charcter Dill). Maybe we’ll never know for sure if Harper Lee was a lesbian, but now that she has passed maybe the truth will come out.

04-28-1940 – 12-30-2020   Lois Sasson – Born in Brooklyn, New York. She was a jewelry designer, gay rights activist, and life partner of Lesley Gore. Her jewelry designs were featured in New York Magazine in the 1970s. Sasson created high-end jewelry where it sold in luxury department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman. She also had some of her work on display in art galleries. By 2015 she was well known and on Valentine’s Day that year a set of men’s jewelry called “The Ambassador Set” was sold for $16,000. Sasson lived with Lesley Gore, whom she started dating in the mid-1980s, for 33 years, until Gore’s death in 2015. On December 30, 2020, Sasson died of COVID-19.

04-28-1979   Scott Fujita – Born in Camarillo, California. He is a former American NFL linebacker. He retired on April 22, 2013. Despite having a Japanese last name, Scott is not biologically Japanese. He was adopted as an infant by Rodney Fujita who is a third-generation Japanese-American, and his wife, Helen, who is Caucasian. Scott is married with three children. He is politically liberal and has gone on record as a supporter of women’s rights and gay rights, as well as an advocate for adoption, wetlands preservation, and other causes; he was named the New Orleans Saints “Man of the Year” in 2009 for his charitable activities.