Magora Kennedy was 14-years-old when her mother gave her a choice: she could either get married or be sent away to Utica, the mental institution in upstate New York where gay youth were commonly sent to undergo conversion therapy.
This was the early '50s and word had started to spread around Saratoga Springs about Kennedy's crushes on other girls.But Kennedy was smart.With a forged baptismal certificate that said she was 18, she took the entrance exam for the U.S.
Air Force, passed, and soon found herself in Waco, Texas where at 14-years-old, she began her training. "I really thought I was free because, in those days, once you passed the test, they shipped you immediately," she says on this week's LGBTQ&A podcast, but her escape was cut.