August 7th

08-07-1956 Sharon Isbin – Born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is an American classical guitarist and multi-Grammy Award winner. Isbin is the founder of the Guitar Department at the Juilliard School. Isbin has appeared as soloist with over 170 orchestras. She has performed at the White House and Carnegie Hall and played with rock guitarists such as Steve Val, Steve Morse, and Nancy Wilson. In 2015, she performed with Josh Groban on the Billy Joel: Gershwin Prize concert broadcast nationally on PBS, and in February 2015 she was featured on the Tavis Smiley PBS television series. She has also had many contemporary composers write compositions for her featuring the guitar. There is a great one-hour documentary available on DVD titled Sharon Isbin: Troubadour, produced by Susan Dangel. In 1995, Isbin came out in the press as gay. At the concert following that mention in a newspaper interview, she received a standing ovation before she even began playing. If you haven’t heard her play, I highly recommend that you see and hear her on YouTube.

08-07-1983 Christian Chavez – Born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He is a Mexican singer-songwriter and actor. In 2005, Chavez joined a new telenovela (soap opera) Rebelled. The soap opera was transmitted in 65 countries, including the United State. A major plot of the show revolved around a group of six students forming a pop band. A notable aspect of the series is that Chavez and five of his other co-stars formed a real-life band RBD. RBD created most of the music on the show and the band became one of the popular music acts in Latin America. RBD’s concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum was one of the fastest-selling concerts in the venue’s history, beating megastar Madonna – 70,000 tickets were sold within 30 minutes. RBD disbanded in 2009. To this day, RBD is considered the most successful pop group in Mexican history. Chavez launched his career as a solo artist and in 2011, his single “Libertad” was put on a YouTube video. The video featured Chavez in a church confessional telling a priest he was not sorry for his sexual preference. “Libertad” continues to be an anthem for gay youth throughout Latin America. Chavez has been out publicly since March 30, 2007.

08-07-1843 – 04-23-1909   Charles Warren Stoddard – Born in Rochester, New York. He was an American author and editor best known for his travel books, especially those about Polynesian life. Stoddard was gay and praised South Sea societies’ acceptance of him and of his gay relationships. Stoddard visited Molokai several times and became friendly with Father Damien, who ministered to the lepers there. Stoddard’s book, The Lepers of Molokai, according to Robert Louis Stevenson, did much to establish Father Damien’s reputations and appreciation by the public. While Stoddard was in Italy, around the mid-1870s, he lived with American artist Francis Millet. Letters between the two men suggest that they had a romantic and intimate affair. According to historian Amy Sueyoshi, Stoddard also had an affair with Japanese writer, Yone Noguchi. While living in Monterey, California, Stoddard was diagnosed with heart disease. He died from a heart attack on April 23, 1909.

08-07-1848 – 03-06-1892 Alice James – Born in New York City, New York. She was an American diarist, sister of novelist Henry James, and philosopher and psychologist William James. Alice began to keep a diary in 1889. The diary was not published for many years after her death because of her comments on people whom she had mentioned by name. Her life-long companion was Katharine Loring. James died in 1892 from breast cancer.

08-07-1887 – 12-21-1970   Anna Elisabet Weirauch – Born in Galati, Romania. She lived in Romania with her German mother and her father, the founder of the Bank of Romania. After her father died, she and her mother moved to Germany. Starting in 1904, she worked as an actress at Berlin’s German State Theatre. She started writing plays but soon turned to novels. Her novel trilogy, The Scorpion, is considered the classic of lesbian literature of the Weimar Republic. The three volumes were published between 1919 and 1931. Weirauch lived with her life-partner, Helena Geisenhainer, a Dutch woman, until her death in 1970.

08-07-1944 John Glover – Born in Salisbury, Maryland. He is an American actor, best known for a range of villainous roles in films and television. He played the role as Lionel Luthor on the Superman-inspired television series Smallville. Aside from acting, Glover is also actively involved with the Alzheimer’s Association, because of his father’s experience with the disease. Glover is openly gay and has been with sculptor Adam Kurtzman since 1993.