The Castro, Harvey Milk and Uncle Donald

If you’ve seen the movie ‘Milk’ then you probably know where ‘The Castro’ is and who Harvey Milk was. But I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you have never heard of Uncle Donald.

I was in my twenties and heard a friend say he was going to San Francisco. My friend seemed excited about going there, but also about meeting someone named Uncle Donald.

So I did a tad bit of research and found a website (www.TheCastro.net) created by Uncle Donald. On the site it mentioned how he moved from New York to The Castro in the late 60’s or early 70’s. Uncle Donald is also a photographer and has many photos from the 70’s on the website.

So I decided to email him and ask him if he recommended San Francisco now. He responded with the fact that there are many gay friendly cities now (it was 25 years ago when I had this email conversation). Uncle Donald also told me something to the effect of; “how can you continue to live in such negative environment?” (I lived in San Antonio, Texas at that time).

3 or 4 years ago I emailed Uncle Donald again to let him know I had moved to Seattle. He remembered our email communication from years earlier. He also told me how he had to move out of The Castro, saying “big commercial interest moved in to The Castro”. Uncle Donald told me he had moved out to the suburbs.

Uncle Donald’s website www.TheCastro.net is a tribute to ‘The Castro’ of days gone by. It's also a tribute to Uncle Donald. Thank you Uncle Donald.

It’s a piece of history, my history, your history; our history!