December 29th

12-30-1964 Sophie Ward – Born in London, England. She is an English actress and the daughter of the actor Simon Ward. Her film roles include the part of Elizabeth Hardy in the film Young Sherlock Holmes. She had the recurring role of Dr. Helen Trent in the long-running television series, Heartbeat. In 1988, she married veterinary surgeon Paul Hobson and had two sons. They divorced in 1996 after Ward became involved with Korean-American writer Rena Brannan and came out as a lesbian. Ward and Brannan had a civil partnership ceremony in 2005 and in 2014 the couple legally married.

12-30-1910 – 11-18-1999   Paul Frederic Bowles – Born in Queens, New York City, New York. He was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. Bowles studied music composition with Aaron Copland, who also became his lover. While living in Paris, he became a part of Gertrude Stein’s literary and artistic circle. In 1938, he married Jane Auer, an author and playwright. Their marriage was one of convenience, since both had intimate relationships with people of their own sex. The couple had a close relationship and were prominent among literary figures of New York throughout the 1940s. In 1947, he moved to Tangier, Morocco, where he lived for 52 years to the end of his life. Jane followed him in 1948. In 1957, Jane suffered a mild stroke. Her health began to decline and she died in 1973. In 1995, Bowles made his final return to New York where he attended the “Paul Bowles Festival” at Lincoln Center that celebrated his music. A Canadian documentary on his life, Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles won Best Documentary at the 27th Annual International Emmy Awards in New York City. Bowles died of heart failure in Tangier at the age of 88.

12-30-1983 Nicholas “Nick” Symmonds – Born in Blytheville, Arkansas. His family moved to Boise Idaho when he was three. He is an American middle-distance runner and a straight ally that dedicated his silver medal won in Moscow in 2013 to his LGBT friends in the U.S.A. He was a vocal critic of Russia’s “anti-gay” laws. He also published an article in the November 2013 issue of Runner’s World Magazine advocating that Congress should ban assault rifles and handguns for everyone except police and military personnel. He posed with his pet rabbit Mortimer for a PETA ad campaign against animal testing.

12-30-1915 – 06-26-2012 Sverker Åström – He was a Swedish diplomat. In 1964 he became Sweden’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He stayed on this post until 1970, when he became Sweden’s chief negotiator on the EEC treaty in Brussels. He then served as Swedish State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 1972 to 1977, and as Swedish ambassador to France from 1978 until his retirement in 1982. In 2003, at the age of 87, he came out as gay. In an interview, he had explained that his role as a diplomate made it impossible to declare himself as homosexual in public, but that his superiors and others were informed to eliminate the possibility of him being blackmailed by foreign agents.