She was born August 20, 1948.
Thought to be a boy with hypospadias (uretheral defect) was given the name Harry Stinson Finnegan in honor of an uncle. She was tiny, only 5 pounds but not premature. Didn't grow very much either; it was safer to keep her on a pillow rather than in your arms. Other than size, development seemed pretty well normal, sat up, rolled over, walked, talked, etc. at age appropriate times. Just very tiny. The Doctors at John Hopkins didn't say much to the family, but had their suspicions about why HF was so small.
At age 4, they finally did a laparotomy to see what she had inside. Surprise: Uterus and Fallopian tubes, matched with undescended testicles. She was a "pseudo-hermaphrodite" and given a diagnosis of Turner's Syndrome. But she had been raised up to that time as a boy, but was physiologically clearly a girl. So what to do now?
Enter Dr. Frank Money (yes, that Frank Money) a young phychiatrist at Johns Hopkins who was asked for his advice on how to handle the situation. Also, finally the parents were told what was happening and given a choice in the matter. All agreed that she should be a little girl. Dr. Money advised that the upbringing as a bay should be suppressed, and immediately all girly approaches should be applied. This was 1951 after all, and there was no real data on what to do.
The family was advised to move to a different school district, the older brothers and sister were instructed on how to deal with their new sister, and the parents were told to be stern about enforcing a girl's lifestyle on young Harriet Sue. Sue (not Harry anymore) was encouraged to forget/suppress her memories of being a little boy, even if it confused her badly for a while. No more pretend shaving with Daddy, no more hunting games with the brothers, no more cowboys and indians or Daniel Boone hats. Instead there were lots of dolls and makeup and cooking lessons with Mom. And weekly therapy sessions with Dr. Money and the residents at JHU. Still, what to do about her size? Female hormones had been discovered and were applied with vigor, resulting in a major growth spurt that did catch up a great deal of the height; she would be a midget, but not a really small one.
First day of school came, and the bus driver told her to fetch her older sister for school, until older sister explained that Sue really was the one going to first day of elementary school. Fortunately, the bus driver took a liking to Sue and protected and nurtured Sue during bus rides. Most of the kids at school thought her size was cute and liked her, so there wasn't much bullying in elementary school. Sue seemingly settled into being a little girl with few problems.
Then came junior high school, and the family moved back to Baltimore proper for a number of reasons. The brothers and sisters were almost done with High School and no one remembered that there had been a Harry Finnegan. In junior high and high school, the bullying wasn't about being transgendered, but about size and religion (christian in a predominantly Jewish school.) However, Sue never took to liking boys, she was most assuredly a lesbian tomboy. She graduated High School in 1966.
Two weeks after graduation, Mom and Dad separated and divorced. They had stuck together "for the kids" and now the strain was too great. Sue was tossed back and forth between the households a few times, and finally moved to Ocean City, MD with her mother. Thus began her love affair with beach town life. They moved to Carolina Beach, NC and Mom re-married. Sue was pretty much on her own and Fell into (and eventually out of) alcohol and drugs. She worked in Momma's restaurants and developed excellent cooking skills. Step-dad Charles and the police eventually decided that she needed a change of scenery for her to get her life back in order. (Can anyone say "witness protection programs"?) She moved to Durham, NC (three hours inland) and became a Councillor at Goodwill Industries as well as a sort of client of Goodwill.
She also got religion. Rev. Johnny Godair of the United Pentecostal Church invited her to services a few times, and eventually hooked her into the community. Playing guitar at services, teaching Sunday School, and following all the cult-like rules made here feel as if she belonged finally. She started dating men to find more acceptance, and suppressed her sexuality. Still, her inherent intelligence and liberal mindset didn't quite jibe with the Pentecostals. At one point she moved back to Baltimore to be near her Dad and siblings. The Pentecostals there rejected her and Dad made her actually read and study the Bible for herself. De-conditioned from the Pentecostals, she studied Dianic Wicca, and resumed a lesbian lifestyle. She had romances with various politicians and finally had a lover. She had developed an ultra-butch role, and became a white leather lesbian.
At this point in her life, I met her at a lesbian/mixed bar in Washington DC, as well as the DC Eagle, while I was exploring my leather fetish lifestyle. Just casual acquaintances, we passed each other occasionally. (Well, she did send one of my lovers home in his own handcuffs one evening when he expressed an opinion that "women don't deserve to wear leather" in her presence. She had no idea he and I were an "item" at the time.) Unfortunately, tragedy struck her life, when a trio of psychotic leather lesbians abducted and murdered her partner. She got revenge, but then had to move again for her own safety. Back to Durham.
It was now 1977. Back in Durham, she took a job at Duke Medical Center as a bookkeeper for one of the research programs. She also had a vaginal reconstruction (finally!) and they did the genetic testing to confirm the Turner's Syndrome diagnosis. She was a mosaic, XO/XY', (the Y' being a partially deleted X.) The folks in Physiology taught her to program computers and she learned C and the UNIX operating system. I was working two buildings over in Allergy and Immunology doing systems programming and administration for a variety of small computers in the Med Center. My father was at Duke Computer Science and I was helping him with his research system. I also go an account on the Duke CS UNIX system. Still, it took an intervention by one of my brothers to introduce Sue and I finally and formally.
In 1978, the social climate was cooler again, and after meeting, Sue and I dated to provide social cover for our gayness. We became best friends. After a few incidents that really cemented the friendship (I had a bout of meningitis and her dog had some emergencies) I moved in with her Halloween of 1979. We mutually decided that being best friends was an excellent basis for long-term cohabitation, and decided to get married in December. We planned for a July 1980 wedding and family and friends started planning. But fate intervened; her mother decided that her biological father was going to "do right" by her daughter, and created a furor. To short-circuit anymore fighting, we told folks to meet us at the magistrate's office in Durham on Wednesday noon, January 11, 1980. Her Mother and Step-father, my parents, her would-=have-been maid of honor (my brother's wife) and my best friend, gathered and had a wonderful civil ceremony. This was civil mainly because one of the parishioners at the Episcopal church in Durham impressed on the minister there that a religious ceremony would be a "travesty" and he found some excuse to deny the ceremony. (Now, thirty-three years later, St. Phillips is a major sponsor of the NC pride festival, but it was too late.)
By this time we had discovered and joined the Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Durham, and were active in the CUUPS chapter. I wrote a song for the chapter and at spring equinox 1981 I premiered the song at a public handfasting ritual for Sue and I. (My parents attended, her Mom declined.) The years passed quietly, we acquired dogs, cars, and a house (thanks to my father.) We loved, lived, laughed and cried together, fought and made up, and had occasional flings with same-sex lovers on the side.
The reactions of various folks varied through the years. Many of our LGBT friends understood the situation and remained friends, others thought we were "playing both sides" and rejected us. "Straight" society mostly ignored us, and some (the Pentecostals) thought we were "saved". We were not shy or concealing about our situation, and educated quite a number of folks about gayness and transgenderdness. We went out to bars, both straight and gay, and loved to sing karaoke to each other whenever and wherever we could.
In 1994, we had a car crash that gave Sue a major concussion. In the aftermath of that, she went through a phase of memory problems, and it took several years of therapy and majik to heal.. During this therapy, she recovered her "lost years" of being raised a little boy and finally overcame her internal transphobia. Dr. Money (remember him?) did some followup interviews and ultimately apologized to Sue for not knowing enough in 1951 to properly handle the case. (He had, by this time also learned lots from some of his other celebrated cases.)
In 2004, Sue suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. It was relatively minor, and mostly affected a speech center (she lost the ability to use pronouns for a few months.) But it was a harbinger of things to come. In 2009 she suffered more strokes. Again, they affected her intellect and personality more than her body. She went back to being Roman Catholic and got a strong angry bent. We went back to the Episcopal church to satisfy her needs for ritual and ceremony. I dealt with her abuse, and ended up accused of abusing her at one point. (My first encounter with the NC penal system.) It all got cleared up and dismissed, but she lost her privilege to own guns. In 2010, more strokes ended up with her in a nursing home, and a ward of the state. Wells Fargo "hooked" us with a deceptive second mortgage on our fully paid-for house (2004), and I ended up homeless, living out of my car with the dog. We had already become familiar with the Urban Ministries Community Cafe Soup Kitchen as a result of me becoming disabled in 2005 and losing my job. It took Social Security 5 years to get my disability approved.
The nursing home tried valiantly but Sue was a very difficult patient and refused to cooperate. She developed major bed sores and in July 2011, succumbed to toxic shock and pneumonia. I was at the Duke ED when they brought her in, and she was mostly comatose and barely responsive. I said a few word, kissed her, and then she went into her final coma. Next afternoon, she was gone. A heartbreaking end to 31.5 years of marriage.
If I didn't have friends willing to live with me. I would have died myself within a month. But I've persevered with a lot of help. It is now a little more than a year later, and the pain of losing Sue is still strong for me and the folks who knew her best. But it is time to tell her story. Index patient HF in the 1965 Textbook of Obstetrics and Gynecology is dead. Long Live Sue.