Stephen Billick – 50th Reunion Essay

Stephen Billick

901 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10021-4157

stephen@billick.com

212-570-5300

Education: UNC Chapel Hill 1973 MD

National Service: Lt. Cdr, USPHS 74-77

Career: Clinical Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine, Past President of the American Academy of Psychiatry & the Law, Distinguished Life Fellow of both American Psychiatric Association & American Academy of Child/Adolescent Psychiatry

Avocations: J’ai écrit une piece de theatre en français, et je suis un membre du Consistoire de l’Eglise Française du St-Esprit

College: Pierson

I was incredibly blessed by having loving and supportive parents, growing up in semirural Wisconsin. My parents were exceedingly proud of me. They liked my character trait of wanting to help others. When I was nine years old, I broke up a fight between two 13-year-olds, telling them that there were better ways of resolving anger. In high school, I was the first-ever volunteer at an inner-city Milwaukee Boys Club. This was the first time the 8- and 9-year-old black youth had ever spoken intimately with a Caucasian male, and it was the first time I had ever spoken in depth with someone who was black. My parents had taken the family to Mexico when I was 12 years old, and the cultural differences from Wisconsin were striking. I still remember my then best friend Gustavo, also 12, and palling around with him daily trying to speak Spanish.

One of my fondest memories from Yale was playing rugby against Dartmouth on a Mount Holyoke playing field. My buddy Charlie (Y ’70) had introduced me to rugby and my buddy Haroun (Y ’70) had given me his soccer shoes when he had a bad ankle injury. I still have the photo from the rugby game and I still have the shoes!

Being gay was difficult. I had never heard the word until after Stonewall, just after graduating from Yale. My parents had taken me to our family doctor and consulted our parish priest about the probability that I was “homosexual.” My doctor told them to accept me the way I was and to continue loving me. Our priest told them to love me “just the way God made” me. This was in 1959 and this was pretty advanced thinking back then for a doctor and a priest! Being gay in high school and at Yale was difficult because I didn’t understand it. Despite never having a date around, Bo, Skip and Todd often included me in their parties with their women friends. Miles was also a great friend in my junior and senior years, introducing me to the world of car racing—perhaps you remember my photo from our 25th reunion book.

Chapel Hill was an ideal place to become aware of my being gay. Later during my psychiatry residency at Penn, I met a Penn undergraduate, Bruce, and we have been together continuously since the evening/night we met. We supported each other emotionally during the AIDS massacre of the 1980s and 1990s in NYC. Now, after having been officially married by the Episcopal Bishop of New York, we are supporting each other emotionally as we move forward into our gray-hair years. It has been a joy for us to be close to my nephew both before and after his parents’ deaths, and now to be “loving” and “well-loved” Uncle Steve and Uncle Bruce to his adorable children. Life has had ups, downs, many twists and turns with surprises, but always quite real. Having a life-partner has really helped the trip.