Their Love Is Secret No More -- Courant.com
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Their Love Is Secret No More
Susan Campbell
June 9, 2009
It was 1955, Trinity College's freshman orientation picnic — ties and jackets, eyes fixed firmly on the
future — and there stood Richard Nolan of Waltham, Mass., and Robert Pingpank of Waterbury.
It was instant chemistry.
But boys didn't date/love/desire boys in 1955 Harford — or, rather, they didn't do so openly without
suffering severe consequences. If certain parts of the world were beginning to decriminalize homosexual
behavior, in the United States, homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. Some reformers, not
satisfied with simply rooting out communists in the U.S. government, turned their sights toward flushing
out — and firing — homosexuals. People had no protection, legal or otherwise.
So the young men perfected the art of public discretion.
"We treated it as a game and as a matter to work around — which we did without one mishap," said
Nolan. "We did not feel oppressed; we believed that both church and state were/are (in many instances)
simply wrong, willfully or ignorantly so."
If their Trinity classmates knew or suspected the men were more than buddies, no one told Nolan or
Pinkpank.
They were inseparable and stayed together after college, living and working in and around Connecticut,
Pingpank as a math teacher and administrator, Nolan as a math, philosophy, religion and education
teacher, and as an Episcopal priest.
For appearances' sake, their home contained two apartments, lest the neighbors talk. They took separate
cars, remained buttoned-down. They lived together, but only when the door was shut.
The world turns, and people change, but love, at least, endures.
Last Thursday, under the watchful eye of several of their smiling classmates, the men — now 72, and
one leaning on a cane — kicked off their 50th Trinity reunion by walking down the long aisle of the
school's Gothic chapel to get married.
In one pew sat Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer (Trinity Class of '72), who wrote the state's
historic decision legalizing same-sex marriage last October. Earlier, Nolan sent him a wedding brochure
and a note thanking him; Palmer had responded he'd be at the ceremony.
"Many of our classmates congratulated us warmly," said Nolan. "None claimed to have suspected that
they knew the depths of our friendship."
Their Love Is Secret No More -- Courant.com
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In the ceremony, one of the scripture readings came from 1 and 2 Samuel, the story of great friends
David and Jonathan. Speculation has long centered on that relationship, and whether it went beyond
deep friendship. Upon Jonathan's death, David said that his love was "wonderful," "passing the love of
women."
In a few weeks, once the men are done with various reunions and visits with friends, they'll return to
Florida, where they've retired and where their Connecticut marriage is not recognized.
But they hope their union will protect them somewhat should Florida — where they registered as
domestic partners in 2005 — revoke domestic partnership rights.
"Having been rushed by ambulance to the hospital a number of times, there could be nothing worse than
a radical-right person declaring us 'strangers to each other' legally — without the marital right of
visitation," said Nolan. "We have now experienced all of what is currently available to us as a couple in
this nation. If courage and intellectual awareness continue to evolve among policy makers in both
church and state, even at the national level, we might experience even more justice deserved by LGBT
people as church members and equal citizens."
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant