Love wins for Carla and Candy
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Bennett
Carla Valentine Myers, left, and Candy DeBerry, of North Franklin Township, share a kiss on the front steps of Washington City Hall after getting married in July 2014, months after the state legalized same-sex marriage.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Bennett
Carla Valentine Myers, left, and Candy DeBerry sit in their garden, holding their marriage certificate in July 2014, months after the state legalized same-sex marriage.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Bennett
Candy DeBerry, left, and Carla Valentine Myers, are wed in July 2014 by then-Washington Mayor Brenda Davis.
On July 18, 1997, Candy DeBerry started a book club in her Frederick, Md., apartment for her social group, FALCON – Frederick Area Lesbian Connection.
“I just wanted to read different books and hang out with a bunch of women,” she said. “So it was kind of like a book club/fishing expedition because I was hoping that some interesting-looking single fish would swim by and maybe I could hook her.”
Everyone was supposed to bring their favorite book, so Candy was prepared with “The Garden Primer,” by Barbara Damrosch. Carla Valentine Myers, who was living in Waynesboro, Pa., at the time, arrived with Laurie R. King’s “The Bee Keeper’s Apprentice.”
“There was only one person there that I didn’t know, and it was this one,” Candy said in a recent interview, while pointing to her now-wife, Carla. “She showed up with a mystery book, and I was like ‘Hmmm, not my genre.'”
A few weeks later, the FALCON group was supposed to visit a new restaurant. Candy had said she would be there, but decided the next day not to go. She didn’t realize Carla had gone to the dinner expecting her to be there.
“I expressly wanted to see her again,” Carla said.
There was a local play being put on about women in the Civil War. Candy, who was born in Gettysburg, has always been interested in the Civil War, even volunteering in reenactments. Carla has always had a passion for the theater.
“I did not realize that another one of her passions was me,” Candy said, laughing. “She asked if I was going to that play and if she could come along. So she shamelessly called me up and invited herself on a date. She was bold and fearless.”
They met at the play, then went out for a drink. It was their first date.
“You said you were taking me to one bar and we ended up at another place entirely,” Carla said. “It’s OK – you were flustered.”
“Well, you showed up in a damn skirt,” Candy responded. “I was like, ‘Who the hell is that?’ I gave those things up in 1994.”
Not long after, they took a trip to Gettysburg together, during which Candy “geeked out,” giving Carla an immense history of when and where Civil War events happened.
“My eyes were glazed over,” Carla said. “I wasn’t really that interested, but I tried to be interested because I was interested in her. I remember thinking ‘how much of this do I have to listen to?'”
“Love me, love the war,” Candy responded.
Now when they visit Gettysburg, Carla finds something else to do while Candy goes off to the battlefield.
They fell in love after the Gettysburg trip, and from there it should have been simple – They were soul mates. But in 1997, society didn’t allow anything to be simple for lesbian couples.
“It’s somewhat hard to imagine now, but in 1997, it was an act of bravery for us to fall in love,” Carla said. “We did not know anyone who felt safe engaging in public displays of affection.”
Carla said one of the only times she remembers holding hands with Candy back then, men shouted derogatory names at them. Her car was also vandalized because it had a rainbow flag sticker on it. She never took the sticker down.
Candy remembers LGBTQ acquaintances getting beat up in the early 90s.
“It was dangerous,” Candy said.
The first year they were together, 1998, they moved to Virginia, where Candy got a new job. It was the same year 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was murdered. He was a gay college student who was beaten to death in Wyoming.
“Every gay person thought, ‘That could’ve been me,'” Carla said. “They see themselves there, hung up on that fence, bleeding to death. It’s scary, and it’s chilling.”
While in Virginia, Candy’s secretary at work didn’t understand when Candy introduced her partner, Carla. She asked if Carla was a business partner or a research partner, because there weren’t many LGBTQ couples out where they lived.
“This kind of environment makes love a challenge,” Carla said. “Even a dare, if you will.”
When they moved to North Franklin Township in 1999, they were embraced by the community. Candy took a job as a biology professor at Washington & Jefferson College, and Carla works as a serials and communications assistant for the Clark Family Library on campus.
In 2003, Candy remembers the phrase, “That’s so gay” becoming popular and taking on the meaning, “That’s so dumb or stupid.” Once, in her lab, she heard a student use the phrase, and she asked him if he meant the word “gay” to mean “stupid.”
“I said, ‘Well wait a minute. I’m gay, and I have Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, so somebody thinks that I’m not very stupid,'” Candy said. “I just stopped there and went on with my lab, but inside I was a disaster. Who knows what my blood pressure was at that moment.”
Years later, one of the students who was in that lab wrote to Candy about her memory of that incident and how it “totally changed her perspective” and profoundly impacted her, Candy said.
Perspectives across the nation were beginning to change in the late 2000s.
“We watched state by state grant our civil rights in terms of marriage,” Candy said. “We were waiting, wondering if it would ever happen in our lifetime.”
On May 20, 2014, same-sex marriage was legalized in Pennsylvania. It was exciting for them, but also hard to believe. They never thought marriage could be an option for them, and they thought at any time, that human right could be snatched away from them again.
“We would have gotten married long before we did, had we been allowed,” Carla said. “If we were invited to a wedding, I rarely wanted to go because it was painful to go watch one straight couple after another get married and have something we weren’t considered good enough to have.”
They knew marriage wouldn’t change anything about their love relationship: They had been together 17 years. But marriage had legal benefits. It meant they’d be able to file taxes together and have some protection in terms of health care.
“If one of us was sick the other person would have the legal right to be there and visit,” Candy said.
They applied for a marriage license that June, but the paperwork hadn’t been updated yet – all the documentation referred to men and women.
“It felt unreal to me,” Carla said. “I couldn’t believe they were handing this marriage license to me. Am I really going to be able to get married to the woman I love?”
The day before their 17th anniversary, they were married at Washington City Hall, by then-Mayor Brenda Davis.
“It feels great to be recognized as a full citizen,” Carla said.
Since they both work on a college campus, they interact with young students often. They’ve been told that they represent a beacon of hope for the next generation of LGBTQ couples.
“For them, it’s just to see us out, holding hands and being ourselves, because it’s still scary,” Carla said. “Still in 2020, you don’t always know how someone is going to react when you identify yourself as gay.”
Carla, who is on the board of directors for the Gay Straight Alliance of Washington County, is helping to organize Washington’s first gay pride festival this June.
The couple, now both 57, mostly enjoy different hobbies, but both enjoy spending time in their garden. They have a life that “works for them as individuals, rather than roles,” Candy said.
“I really can’t imagine how our relationship is much different from any heterosexual marriage – We still have to scoop the cat litter and take out the garbage and figure out what we’re doing for dinner tonight,” Candy said.
They will be celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary this year, but 23 years together.
“We enjoy every day together,” Carla said. “Every day is special in its own way.”