My name is Charles N. Howard, III and I'm 41 years old. I was born on May 21, 1964, in Ada, Oklahoma. Both of my parents are from Ada and all my grandparents live or lived there. We lived there until I was about 4 years old, when we moved to Oklahoma City for my dad to go to medical school at the University of Oklahoma.

We didn't really have a lot of money as I was growing up. Afterall, my dad was a medical student, paying his own way through college. Both of my parents worked though, and we had everything we needed, my sister (two years younger than me) and my brother (8 years younger than me) and I. I guess we were technically poor, but we didn't know any different. We had a great time growing up and our parents would splurge each Christmas and get us something special. One of my favorites was a jungle gym for the back yard. My best friend Robert (from down the street) and I used to play on it all the time. It was alternately our castle fortress, our Alamo, our Starship Enterprise (yes, I have been and still am a Trekie), and who can remember what else. Robert and I were the same age and did everything together. Unfortunately, I haven't seen him since I was 11, when my family moved away.

Robert and I also had bicycles and there was this huge (at least to us) tract of land that was completely undeveloped at the end of our street. It was really a lot of farm land, but all that was on it was trees, trails, and an ocasional horse. Somebody had built a treehouse out there at one time and we used to ride out to it and play there all the time, completely away from everybody. You wouldn't have known that you were in the middle of the biggest city, landwise, in the nation.

I guess I really miss Robert. I'll have to see if I can find him on the the internet.

When I was 11, my family and I moved to Irving, Texas for a year where my dad did his internship at parkland Hospital in Dallas. There, I met one of my two best friends in the whole world, Greg. He and I have been inseparable ever since. We're the same age. He ended up going to college in Oklahoma and that is where we both finally came out of the closet (more on that later).

The next year, we, the family that is, moved back to Oklahoma, to a small town (population around 5000) called Pauls Valley. (Yes, there is no apostrophe there. It isn't a typo. Pauls Valley was named for a man named Smith Paul. I don't know why they left the apostrophe out. If I find out, I'll put it here.)

So, I went to one year of middle school and all of high school in Pauls Valley. I graduated from Pauls Valley High School in 1982.

In highschool, my interests were Spanish, Band, and I belonged to the Thespian Society. I'm technically still a lifetime member of the Thespian Society, but I haven't done anything since highschool, where I worked on our all school plays each year. I also taught myself to program BASIC on a TRS80 Model II.

Since it was a small town and I wasn't born and reared there, it was difficult to make friends. I had a couple, but nobody I really became close to until college. Needless to say, I kept up a lot of letter writing to my friend Greg.

In 1982, I graduated from high school and went to college at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. My dad wanted me to follow his footsteps further and go into medicine. My great love was and still is, math and computers. As I said above, I taught myself, and many in my class, to program in highschool. So, computer science was where I went. I graduated from O.U. in 1986 with a B.S. in C.S., a minor in Math and a minor in Spanish. However, don't ask me to speak Spanish and don't expect much in the math area other than algebra. I really haven't had a need to use either of those for quite some time now and I'm more than a bit rusty.

During college, my dad attempted one last excersize to get me interested in medicine. He helped me to get a job driving ambulance for the Pauls Vally General Hospital. I did that for 1 1/2 years to work my way through college. I loved every minute of it, but I still wasn't enterested in going to 8-12 years of medical school!

In the summer of '84, I decided it was time to come out of the gay closet and stop being miserable because I didn't have a boyfriend. So, I checked the school's newspaper to find out when and where the next meeting of the O.U. Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GLA) was. It was there that I found out an aquaintance of mine from high school, Brent, was president of the organization.

Brent had been a senior when I was a freshman. We both played trombone in band and we both had a keen intereset in math and science. I really always looked up to him, but never got real close since he was a senior and I was a freshman. That was going to change now that we were both in college and both going to the GLA meetings. We ended up going out on a number of dates.

I never was able to make it to a meeting of the GLA that summer. Everytime I went, they weren't meeting that night. I found out later that they were meeting every other week on campus and the alternate weeks at Brent's apartment. I kept going on the wrong week and of course Brent's apartment wasn't listed as a meeting place. So, I finally made it to the first meeting of the fall semester.

What a meeting. There I was, taking the first steps out of the closet, and I got elected to be vice president of the organization! Wow! Prior to that meeting, I had never even met an openly gay person. I had wanted to start dating, but I hadn't planned on coming out to everybody all at once. As you'll read later, it was necessary for me to blow the hinges of my closet door.

So, there I was at my first GLA meeting and I got elected vice president. That set a few wheels in motion. First and foremost, it meant I had to tell my parents that I am gay. So, I showed up unexpectedly at home one weekend and broke the big news to them. They took it very well. Their only request was, get this, that I keep it quiet so that everybody in town wouldn't know. They weren't pleased when I told them about being elected vice president.

At the end of that semester, I was elected president! I served as president until I graduated, a year and a half later, in 1986. And, what an adventure. At the time, the GLA was one of 2 prominate gay organizations in Oklahoma. The other was Oklahomans for Human Righs (OHR) based in Oklahoma City, with a branch in Tulsa. The Tulsa branch eventually broke off and became a separate organization, Tulsa OHR. As president of GLA, I had a reserved seat on the board of OHR. So much for keeping things under wraps! Being president of the GLA at O.U. meant that you pretty much became a spokesperson for all things gay and lesbian in Oklahoma. Now you know why I made the remark about coming out to everybody at once.

Mom and dad, to their credit, dealt with it quite well. Of course, we had a few disagreements, but all in all, I cannot complain. In the long run, it led to me gaining my other best friend, my Dad. While I was growing up, he and I were distant, partly because of the amount of time he spent at school and work and partly, later, because I was dealing with my sexuality and just didn't think I could talk to him about it. Well, that all changed a few years after I graduated from college and now he is my other best friend.

Back to college. As I said, I came out. I guess it was the start of another trend for me as well. I have always done things in a big way ever since. None of this half ass stuff. If you're going to do something, do it and do it to the fullest. To steal a line from Antie Mame, "life is a banquet and most poor bastards are starving to death." I decided I was going to sample all I could off the banguet table. I still do that today.

At my first meeting, I also met my first boyfriend. We went on our first date on Halloween night of '84 and dated through the rest of school. We weren't exclusive for quite a while though. I guess we finally decided that we would be exclusive lovers sometime in late 1985. We graduated together and moved together to Dallas where we went to work for BNR (which stood for Bell Northern Research). We stayed together for about a year after we moved to Dallas and broke up in the spring of 1987.

After we broke up, I decided to go volunteer at the Dallas Gay Alliance (DGA, at the time). After a few months of volunteer work, I was invited to run for the board. I accepted and was elected. (Remember, I said I started a trend for myself back in college. Most people volunteer for a year or more before being asked to join the board.) I was on the board for 3 years or so, I think. During that time, we founded the nations first gay and lesbian credit union, DGACU. I was a founding member and, thus, joined that board of directors. Serving on two different boards like that was a bit much, so I resigned from the DGA board and volunteered full time for the credit union after a year of serving on both. We founded the credit union in 1988. I was with it the entire time, excpet for a one year "sabatical" I took at one point, due to burn out and differences between me and the president. After I came back, I was appointed president and later became Chairman. Unfortunately, it was during my tenure as chairman that we had to close down the credit union due to lack of interest. So, my signature is the one that closed the doors after almost 10 years.

The credit union received its charter on October 31, 1988 and we closed the doors on December 31, 1997. It was a sad day for all of us. Maybe one day, I'll do it again. Right now, I've been taking a long vacation from the gay rights movement. I volunteered in some capicity from my start at O.U. in 1984 until that last day at the credit union on January 1, 1998, a little over 13 years. There are so few vollunteers and so much to be done that you definitely face a lot of burnout.

During all that time, I was also working with other employees at BNR to obtain non-discrimination policies and domestic partner benefits for all non-heterosexual employees. We were finally successful in 1994. The non-discrimination policy was implemented torwards the end of that year and domestic partner benefits were rolled out in January of 1995.

I should mention that BNR was absorbed back into its parent company, NT (Northern Telecom). That's the company that is now known as Nortel Networks. I've been there since I graduated from college and don't have any plans to leave any time soon. It's a good company to work for, especially now with the non-discrimination policy and benefits.

Today, I live in Dallas, Texas, in Oak Lawn, the gay area of Dallas. I live there with my roommate and ex-lover Leo.

Update June 2000 - Well, I've got a lover now. His name is Roy. He's so handsome and sweet. It's nice to find somebody who is concerned about me and wants to be my partner, not my "ward." The ex, Leo, is still living here too, but, believe it or not, there are no problems.

We live with our two dogs, Sasha and Kia, and our cat, Kitty-Bob. The dogs are both male and the cat is female. How she came to us and her name is a story in itself that I'll add later. Our home is a brick and stone house that was built in 1929 in what was the town of Cedar Springs. Cedar Springs was annexed into Dallas the following year, in 1930. The house is 1475 square feet with 2 bedrooms, one bath, a living room, a dinning room, a kitchen and a breakfest nook. It has hardwood floors throughout, although the bathroom is tiled and there is carpet in the second bedroom, which is more of library/study for all of my books and the computer. I bought the house in 1994 as my 30th birthday present to myself.

Update December 2005 - I haven't updated this for a while and since I'm in a new town now, I figured it was about time to get it updated again. Roy and I broke up in late 2003. After being so wonderful in the beginning, his true colors came out over the course of our relationship. He wouldn't get a job and then he decided I needed to be a punching bag. I don't go for that and I took the same advise I've always said I would give and I dumped him quickly.

In April 2004, I started working for a company that installs home security systems. I'm the office manager for that company and when the owner decided to relocate to San Diego and asked me to run the office there (well, actually, I guess it is "here" now) I said sure. So, 3 months ago, I moved to San Diego. Most of my time has been spent getting the new office up and running, but I'm now getting to a point where I've got a little spare time. So, look out gay men of San Diego, I'm on the prowl. :)

That's it for now. I'm going to try to start keeping this updated a little more regularly now.

P.S. If you've managed to get this far, here's another picture of me, one showing skin (no, not that much skin, this is geocities and they have policies against that). Just click on the link if you are interested. Charles