SEQUIM — In his lifetime, Michael Lowe said he’s been given a lot of labels.
But the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe elder said he’s felt the most free for the past 10 years after he moved back to Sequim and let go of trauma and any worry of judgment.
“Coming home, all that relief was gone when I took control of who I was and not giving that control to other people or groups,” he said.
That sense of openness and belonging are key reasons Lowe, 77, started Sequim Pride, a celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community during Pride Month in June.
The one-day celebration will start at noon Saturday at the Sequim Farmers and Artisans Market on the Sequim Civic Center Plaza, 152 W. Washington St.
The event includes a ceremony at noon followed by a parade down Washington Street and a celebration at the market and Salty Girls, 210 W. Washington St. For more information, visit facebook.com/SequimPride.
“It’s not just about gay people,” Lowe said. “It’s about all of us learning to live together regardless of your orientation.”
His husband Dale said they’d talked in recent years about starting a Sequim event following Port Townsend and Port Angeles’ events.
“There isn’t a reason not to have one here in Sequim,” he said.
Lowe said he set a goal to have a Sequim event by the time he was 75, and he worked with his LGBTQIA+ friends and tribal members to organize the first event. The celebration also serves to honor the memory of two gay friends from Sequim who passed away.
While Lowe continues to promote the event with fliers and word of mouth, he took a step back this year as organizer after a diagnosis of lung cancer last Halloween. He had a portion of his upper right lung removed earlier this year.
This marks his third time with cancer, following a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2015 and a skin cancer diagnosis in 2018.
His niece Vicki Lowe, a Sequim City Council member, said “everybody always comments on his attitude towards life and, despite all of the things that have happened to him, he’s the most resilient person I’ve ever met.”
New Sequim Pride organizers offered him the chance to serve as the event’s grand marshal.
“He feels honored,” Dale said. “He is more honored that people are carrying it on.”
“I have the satisfaction to know it’ll continue on after I’m gone,” Lowe said.
“There’s a lot of gay people in Sequim and it’s changing here … and by doing this every year, Sequim becomes more aware of its LGBTQ community and maybe supports it a little better.”
Vicki Lowe said the event celebrates all members of the community.
“It’s important we show support for people who have been made to feel they don’t belong or that someone doesn’t agree with their lifestyle,” she said.
“We want to make sure they’re supported and they support each other.”
She said her uncle being openly gay shows tribal youth it’s OK and that statistics show one person showing support to LGBTQIA+ youths decreases their chance of suicide by more than 40 percent.
Lowe said Sequim Pride has helped encourage people during its short tenure.
“I’ve had people come up to me say they’ve been able to feel more open and be out there more,” he said. “It’s amazing how many gay flags I see in Sequim now.”
Lowe’s life
While Lowe doesn’t like labels, he said his list of titles could go on indefinitely being a gay, Native American, veteran, drag queen, pioneer family member and much more.
He lived in Carlsborg with his family until he was 6, when the Carlsborg Mill shut down. Afterward, his family moved to Port Gamble. There, his dad Abraham Lowe was injured on the job and he learned of a cancer diagnosis. He later committed suicide in front Michael and his siblings.
“It’s something I’ve made peace with,” Lowe said.
His mother Virginia Cameron married Lowe’s first cousin, and he grew up in the Poulsbo area where he endured various forms of abuse and saw rampant alcoholism.
“When you reach a certain age, you are responsible for the reactions to all that happened to you,” Lowe said.
“You reach a point where you quit blaming others. They’re gone. They don’t have any hold on you. Getting rid of that hold is really important, which is how I was able to deal with being gay when I came out.”
Lowe said he tried college but wasn’t into it and was eventually drafted into the military. Instead of going to Vietnam, he was stationed as an Army cook in Germany.
Prior to moving, he married his high school sweetheart Marlene “because that’s what you did. You couldn’t be gay in front of a lot of people,” he said.
“It wasn’t even good to be Indian when growing up. Then I was battling my inner demons.”
He learned German, but said it “was a culture shock having never been out of Washington before.”
His daughter Heather was conceived there, and two years later, the couple had their son Shawn, both born in Washington.
After eight years of marriage, Lowe said he was tired of living a lie and asked for a divorce. He didn’t tell Marlene he was gay until he asked for the divorce.
His first relationships with men went badly, with one man being physically abusive, he said, so he dated a woman for a year, which also didn’t work out.
“I came out and then went back in,” he said. “I didn’t know or understand the gay scene. I wanted the same relationship with no bickering or fighting I had with my wife.
“I’ve always told people it wasn’t her. She was probably the best woman I would have found in my life anyway. I married my best friend, and that’s what I wanted in a relationship.”
Lowe opted to run away from family and friends to be openly gay in Oregon.
“I didn’t tell my mother, brother or anybody,” he said. “Back then you didn’t dare.”
Vicki recalled visits from her uncle, aunt and two cousins when she was young, and that Michael was “always being bigger than life.”
“Then all of sudden I didn’t see him anymore,” she said. “It took a lot of years to understand that, after he came out, he just disappeared.”
She said Lowe reconnected with his family following a plane crash that killed his half-brother Boone Cameron in 1995.
“I thought my sisters and brothers would disown me, but they didn’t,” Lowe said of them reconnecting years later.
He recalled being told that, when he was young, his grandmother put a basket on one side and a feather on the other.
“If you grab the basket, you will play more of a feminine role in your life, and if you grab the feather, you’ll be the masculine hunter,” Lowe said.
“Grandma said, ‘He’s contrary. He grabbed them both. He’s gonna go everywhere and have a decision to make that he’s two-spirited.’”
Family
At age 35, he relocated to Portland, Ore., and worked three years there before he moved to the Eugene/Springfield area, where he worked at a barbecue restaurant and then a Mexican restaurant, he said.
Following the breakup of a long-term relationship, Lowe met Dale while playing pool about 25 years ago at a bar. After their second meeting, they started dating. The couple formally married in 2018.
One of their major activities together in Oregon was performing as drag queens Rhoda Gravel and The Lady Bloomingdale to help local charities.
“We have a rule that we laugh with each other when we wake up and laugh with each other when we go to bed,” Lowe said. “He’s kept me young at heart.”
While Dale has encountered health problems of his own, he recommended the couple move to Sequim to help them be healthier.
Shortly afterward, the couple found themselves energized with Dale working for the tribe and Lowe no longer needing a walker.
Lowe calls his children Heather, now a bus driver, and Shawn, a pipe fitter, wonderful people along with his three grandchildren. He’s eagerly anticipating his first great-grandchild, too.
He is also an ordained minister and plans to perform his 51st and 52nd ceremonies this summer for his great-niece and great-nephew’s weddings.
Reflecting on the formation of Sequim Pride and Pride events in general, he’s reminded of the Stonewall riots of 1969 and that many people went back in the closet out of fear of violence.
Today, he’s “tickled people are keeping Sequim Pride going,” and he encourages those looking to support the LGBTQIA+ community by reaching out to see how they can work together, work out differences and have conversations.
For more about Sequim Pride, visit facebook.com/sequimpride or instagram.com/sequimpride.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
