By Albert Lin
James Gaylord was fired from his teaching job for being gay. Forty-two years later, he finally received an apology.
Gaylord, who taught social studies at Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Wash., was relieved of his duties in 1972, a few weeks after he confirmed his homosexuality to a school administrator. “In retrospect, I guess I could have denied it, or refused to answer,” Gaylord told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “But I figured that if it had gotten to the point where the assistant principal was visiting me at home, there wasn’t much possibility a denial would accomplishanything.”
