My Hometown’s Secret Trans Safe House
Holly Ryan opened the door to the phone booth, hoping to catch a break from the downpour. Instead, she was greeted by a giant puddle at her feet as she stepped in to make a call.
“Right away, I had an attitude,” Holly told me over coffee at a Panera Bread in Newton, Massachusetts. The year was 1989, maybe 1990 — she didn’t remember for sure. At the time, she was newly sober and still had a little edge to her. She wanted to make friends outside of the Boston gay bar scene, beyond Playland, Bobby’s, and The Punch Bowl. A friend suggested she join the Tiffany Club, a support group for crossdressers, transsexuals, and transvestites which operated out of a house in Wayland, Massachusetts. To become a member, she’d have to call the house from a phone booth outside of the town’s public library.
She was in her late 30s when she made the initial phone call to the club on that rainy day. Somebody from the club twice her age came down to meet her. Holly got into the back seat of the stranger’s car and immediately started questioning the secrecy of it all, ranting and raving about the business of the phone booth.
“I later found out everybody wasn’t like me,” she said. “Most people were trying to protect their family life, their jobs, and everything else.”
From 1981 to 1999, hundreds of women came through the door of the Tiffany Club’s home in Wayland. It was more than just a place to sleep, store clothes, buy new outfits, read about trans issues, and meet other like-minded people. The club was a safe haven.
“It was a freeing experience for people,” said former member Cherl. “When they went there, they were freeing themselves from the shackles of being men.”
There were secrets, and then there were closets filled with custom-made wigs and size 14 heels. What happened at the Tiffany Club stayed at the Tiffany Club.
The Wayland house became a place of respite, where anyone who needed to express their true gender could go meet people of the same ilk to discuss their feelings and general goings-on. Every Tuesday and Saturday, there were informal meetings where a small group would chat about their experiences and offer support. The members were primarily crossdressing as women or transsexual women. With its library, consignment shop, hotline, and constant influx of seasoned crossdressers eager to share their skills with newbies, it was a place to get started on the road to coming out. For weary travelers, they offered a safe, open place to crash. Holly recalled that after someone had gender confirmation surgery, they would stay in the upstairs bedrooms while they recovered.
“Thank you very much for putting me up so hospitably at the Club last week,” a member named Jean from Virginia wrote to the club’s magazine, The TV-TS Tapestry, in 1983. “It has been a most pleasurable experience, living in an environment where one can dress in comfort when and as one wishes, free of conventional restraints.”
I’m from Wayland; my family has lived there since 1999. Our house is just three miles away from where the Tiffany Club house once stood on Alpine Road. My youth league soccer team lost scores of games at the athletic field near the house. The summer before college, I sat on the hood of a car pulled off to the side of that same road. A friend and I let our secrets float up to the top of the evergreen trees lining the street. We didn’t know that at the end of the cul-de-sac, there used to be a bigger, more important secret than anything we could come up with.
Until recently, I had never heard of the Tiffany Club. I have this weird fascination with Wayland and the things that have happened there, but in all the digging I’ve done into my town’s history, nothing about the club had ever come up. A 2015 book called “Legendary Locals of Wayland” by Evelyn Wolfson doesn’t include the club or its founder, Merissa Sherrill Lynn. There is no mention of it on Wayland’s Wikipedia page or on the town website. The only connection online between the town and the Tiffany Club comes on page 15 of a search for Wayland on the Digital Commonwealth, a non-profit managed by the Boston Public Library that hosts archives relating to Massachusetts.
Among the rows of desaturated photos, jaundiced letters, and nun-approved cursive, a pale yellow pamphlet with the words “The International Foundation for Gender Education” catches the eye. Under that name, a Wayland P.O. box is listed along with an address in nearby Waltham (the IFGE was a later spinoff of the Tiffany Club and was also founded by Merissa).
From there, the Digital Transgender Archive hosts the old newsletters and correspondences of both the club and Merissa herself. To discover more, you have to know what you’re looking for. It’s not so different from 40 years ago, when the club was nowhere to be found in the Yellow Pages and interested parties had to rely upon word of mouth to find what they were after.
It starts with a small, single thread among 549 pieces of information about a small, semi-rural town outside of Boston. But this isn’t a story about Wayland— not really, anyway.
This is a story about the longest-lasting trans safe house, the towns that loved them and rejected them, and histories too precious to risk being lost to time.
When the Tiffany Club first met in 1978, it was a different world for trans people, who at that time weren’t using the word transgender to self-identify. There were crossdressers, who wore gender-atypical clothing; transvestites, typically men, who dressed in a different gender’s clothing, sometimes as a part of their sexual identity; and transsexuals, who were committed to medically confirming their gender identity.
Regardless of how someone specifically identified, these were heavily closeted parts of their lives. Major cities like Detroit, Miami, Chicago, and New York City had laws against crossdressing, some of which remained on the books until as recently as 2011. In addition to the fear of legal repercussions, trans people were — and still are — at a higher risk for being victims of violence based on their gender presentation.
If trans people in Boston were gathering, it was at drag clubs like Jacques’ Cabaret or in Provincetown, a town at the tip of Cape Cod well known for being a safe haven for the LGBT community. But many of these spaces were for drinking and hooking up. For newcomers on the scene or those who needed a place to safely explore their feelings away from alcohol and sex, options were limited.
It was even more perilous for those who decided to transition. “Your family would disown you and you would lose everything,” Holly explained. “You would literally move to the other side of the country and start a new life where no one knew you, as a woman.”
To combat these hurdles, several groups in the Boston area formed, but they often failed or didn’t provide the support trans members needed. There was a wives’ support group that met at lay minister Francis Craig’s house. Husbands who came along were not allowed to crossdress at the meetings and were relegated to the basement while their wives met upstairs in the living room. Another group founded by and for trans people, Gender Identity Services, fell apart a year after its inception when a former member sued.
At the crux of this new wave of trans organizing and coming out in Boston was Merissa Sherrill Lynn, a member of the social group the Cherrystone Club and the community organizing group the Outreach Institute. Merissa was 6 feet tall and 200 pounds. She wore her mousy brown hair in a shoulder-length perm and highlighted her striking blue eyes with just a touch of mascara. In pictures, she’s dressed elegantly in white skirt suits and dresses. There was a sense of put-togetherness in her look that revealed a woman on a mission.
Merissa, a New Hampshire native, knew from a young age she was transgender. She had the support of her sister, Sylvia, and although she ultimately had a good relationship with her parents, deep scars on her back told the story of a 9-year-old beaten for experimenting with women’s clothing and makeup.
In 1974, at 31-years-old and still in the closet, Merissa went deep into the Pemigewasset Wilderness in northern New Hampshire intent on committing suicide. Instead, she had an epiphany.
“I had an understanding my existence was natural, my life had value, and I had a purpose,” she wrote in her autobiography. “To use the reality of my life to help others like myself, and to help the people whose lives we touch.”
A year later, Merissa joined Cherrystone looking for a sense of community and determined to be a force for positive change. She enjoyed being around other like-minded people, but found Cherrystone to be too socially-oriented. They mainly threw parties and hosted weekly rap sessions. Instead, she focused her time on activism efforts with another group called the Outreach Institute and their yearly conference, Fantasia Fair.
By 1976, Cherrystone was beginning to fracture. The group had moved to a larger apartment to hold their meetings, but the member on the lease wanted the space to be a primarily social-sexual space. In September 1978, they changed their name to the Kay Mayflower Society and became singularly focused on social events.
Merissa had a different vision: to start an organization that would focus on outreach, education, support, and building community. She borrowed the phrase symbiotic synergism from a friend, Gloria Wright, who defined it as “different people brought together by circumstance into a common environment, working together for the benefit of all.”
There was no solid, successful precedent for her goal, nor was she aware of any other attempts. Community news travelled slowly back then. With no model for what she hoped to achieve, Merissa spent the next four years carefully outlining a plan of action while working as a ski instructor and helping with the Outreach Institute.
By 1978, Merissa was ready. On May 18, she sent out letters of interest to trans-focused magazines advertising her interest in starting a new club. She vowed to use her own funds to support the club until member fees could sustain it. She promised a safe, private place for people to dress, an opportunity to make friends with similar interests, do outreach, offer support through educational programs, and above all, be an outlet for “fun en femme.”
“First, let us recognize that we crossdressers are the flakiest and most unreliable bunch of human beings on the face of this God’s earth,” she wrote in a follow-up letter to the TVIC Journal in October 1978. Personal problems, fears, and needs were preventing people in the community from being able to fully commit to helping one another. Nevertheless, she believed in her fellow gender expressionists. “With a will to help others, a sense of direction, and with patient dedication, we can achieve our goals.”
Seven people met at Merissa’s home in North Hampton, New Hampshire, on Nov. 26, 1978. Dress was optional. Merissa was ready to share her battle plan, which included securing a facility for the club and starting a trans-focused newsletter full of relevant events, articles, discussions, and personal ads. The newsletter would later be called the TV-TS Tapestry, symbolizing the weaving of the transvestite (TV) and transsexual (TS) worlds.
But first, they needed a name for the club. There were silly suggestions, like the Spank ’N’ Hanky Club, SMUT (Sexy Men in Undies and Tights) Club, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Androgyns.
There were more serious suggestions, like the The New England TV (transvestite) Coalition, Chantilly, Champagne Club, Carousel, Genesis, and Tiffany Club. The names evoked a sense of high class. Carousel and Tiffany were both award-winning roses, the latter blooming round, swirling petals of soft pink flecked by pale gold tones and giving off the faint scent of Chinese tea.
Merissa insisted that the name be something that could be used for a legal entity, nothing vulgar or too suggestive. It would have to be socially acceptable while accommodating and recognizing the needs of everyone in the community. Most importantly, it would have to signify the club wasn’t just a place to dress and be left alone, but a place to foster social change and provide a space for people struggling with gender dysphoria to feel welcomed. While the group originally settled on Genesis, they were blocked trying to file for tax exempt status due to another business by the same name. In April 1979, Tiffany, the runner-up, became the official name.
Everything was coming up Tiffany Club. They designed a simple rose logo and secured a meeting space. Membership was increasing steadily and the newsletter was growing to accommodate more content.
Then came a major setback. In July 1979, Merissa’s mother passed away. In the following month’s newsletter, she called it a double loss. Merissa’s mother owned the trailer park and home the club was using as their facilities, which were sold off after her death. With that, the Tiffany Club lost their center of operations.
“On top of all else,” Merissa wrote, “the Tiffany Club will soon be homeless. One year’s work for naught.”
Merissa and a member named Diane had long been searching for an appropriate place for the club. After playing Goldilocks with a few places, they finally settled on a house on Boston Post Road in Weston, Massachusetts. Merissa pledged to use her inheritance to subsidize the $600 a month rent for as long as she could until the club was self-sustaining.
The Weston house was a quaint Craftsman four-square built in the 1920s, with three bedrooms and ample storage space. Merissa described it as “just one bedroom short of being the perfect house for Tiffany.” They moved in on the first day of November, ushered into their suburban digs by a chilly breeze.
To locals like me, Weston might seem like an odd choice for the Tiffany Club. Census data shows that in 1977, Weston had the highest per capita income of any town in Massachusetts at $12,736, more than double the average for the rest of the state. Of Weston’s 11,169 residents, 13.7% were non-families, people who live alone or with others they’re not related to, and those were mostly elders or single empty-nesters. It wasn’t exactly where most people would think to put down roots for a quasi-boarding house and meeting space.
The new Tiffany Club headquarters were across the street from conservation land and situated square between two major highways, making it an ideal location for members coming from all directions. Merissa forever craved the White Mountains of New Hampshire and particularly liked the rural, historical scenery that Weston offered. Despite its wealthy, family-based populus, the house was simultaneously secluded and convenient.
“We can’t afford to do anything that will get us in dutch with the neighbors, or with the authorities,” Merissa wrote in the October 1979 issue of the Tapestry. “Our house will not see any Gala bashes, wild frivolity, fairy queens tiptoeing down the sidewalk, or anything else that may draw unwanted attention. We’ll go elsewhere to draw unwanted attention.”
Merissa developed a positive relationship with the Weston police, whose headquarters were half a mile away from the house. In her memoir, she recalled that the police would sometimes call her and tell her they had “one of hers” and ask that she come collect them. She wrote that transgressions ranged from drunk driving to “doing something stupid like wearing a nightie to the local market.”
A retired Weston Police Officer, Roland Anderson, once saw someone he thought might be a club member looking lost near the town’s train station. Someone from the club was supposed to pick them up, but never showed.
“I rolled up and gave them a ride there,” Roland told me over the phone. He didn’t remember the group members ever being a problem or having issues with the neighbors. “They handled themselves well. It’s their lifestyle. You gotta respect it.”
Membership exploded. Tiffany Club newsletter subscribers and members could be found as close as Waltham, Massachusetts and as far away as Japan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Estonia. Local businesses began advertising within its pages. They hosted Thanksgivings and lingerie parties exceeding 30 guests, far beyond their expectations. Mary Kay representatives held seminars on makeup application and fashion mavens came in to give style advice. Outside of the club, Merissa and a few other trans women brought their struggles and issues to light on Channel 4’s program “People Are Talking” with host Nancy Merrill.
Unfortunately, in 1980 and 1981, there was an outbreak of gypsy moths. The ugly speckled brown creatures were on a warpath of defoliation. They infested the Northeast, including the Weston house. Everything from the mailbox to the sycamore trees across the street were covered in egg sacs. Worse luck struck when the owners of the house announced they were selling. They gave the Tiffany Club the first option, but the asking price was too expensive. The club had to be out by July 1.
The Tiffany Club scrambled. In June 1981, Merissa incorporated under the name NACD, Inc. There are debates as to what it stood for. She wrote that it stood for nothing, but others remember it stood for National Association of Cross-Dressers. Either way, stocks were available at $100 a share, with Merissa being the primary investor and other club members happily sending her checks. The intent was to start saving up money for a new house, other housing options for people in transition, a publisher’s clearing house, gender clinics, and a community bank.
Even with the money, they needed a place to go. The hot debate was between a facility closer to Boston, which would be more convenient, offer easier options for outings, and cheaper, or somewhere out in the suburbs, which would be more expensive, but provide more space and privacy.
“Personally,” Merissa wrote in the Summer 1981 issue. “I am a country girl, and would much prefer a rural setting.”
On July 31, the Tiffany Club moved to the house at the end of Alpine Road in Wayland. It was just as convenient to major highways as the Weston house, but boasted increased privacy with a thicket of evergreen trees lining the bucolic street as well as a giant crimson maple tree and bridal wreath bush in front of the house blocking the view from the road.
They rewired the basement and set up a makeup area like something out of a Hollywood dressing room. Members could buy a mailbox to safely send letters to each other without giving out their personal addresses. In their storage space, hanging dress bags and cubbies were stuffed to the brim with chic clothes from Filene’s department store. The waiting list to get a spot in the wardrobe room was so long, there were more than a few squabbles over who got dibs.
Later that year, an alternative Boston-based magazine, Real, featured a profile on Merissa and the Tiffany Club. In the article, a 78-year-old member named Vicky told the reporter, “I can tell you, there’s no cure. I’ve tried to give it up. I’ve thrown out thousands of dollars in outfits, but I always go back. Now I’m here, among friends, and I just enjoy it.”
The Tiffany Club was set to grow again, but the 1981 recession was in full swing. Bills were piling up while membership was stagnating. They had planned to have a raffle in February and use the proceeds for obtaining tax exempt status. Instead, they used it to pay the bills.
Towards the end of the year, Tiffany membership boomed again. By January 1982, they had over 300 members and were hosting more programs and parties at the house. At the beginning of each year, they rented out a banquet hall for their awards ceremony called First Event. Local hotels welcomed them for their Spring Fling and Fall Fling. For a week every summer, they met in Provincetown for the Tiffany Club Outing, described as being the “Club Med vacation for crossdressers and friends.”
Beyond the fun, members had to behave. The Code of Conduct stipulated, “No sexual, ‘far out’ or exotic behavior will be tolerated at any Tiffany Club function.” If a member got drunk to the point where they couldn’t “exercise good behavior,” they would be asked to leave. Good manners, respect for personal property, and common sense were tantamount.
“They all worked hard to make a place where we could be comfortable,” said Beverly*, who joined the Tiffany Club in 1983. “It was a place where people could come, visit, have some refreshments, and then they could go back to their regular lives and feel refreshed.”
On July 17, 1982, two members named Diane and Char got married in the backyard. Merissa believed this historic event was “the first real transgender wedding, where both the bride and the groom were cross-dressed, the minister was cross-dressed, and all the guests with the exception of the neighbors were cross-dressed.”
The Wayland house had become the secret clubhouse the Tiffany Club founders had dreamed of. They settled into the neighborhood and made themselves at home. One of my friend’s parents remembered seeing Tiffany Club members dolled up and dining at a local restaurant, Finnerty’s, before they would go out on the town. By many accounts, the Tiffany Club were great neighbors. A good portion of their members had backgrounds in construction, plumbing, and mechanical work.
“Neighbors came to us for help,” Holly remembered. “It could have been a sitcom.”
Even so, they had to be careful and protect themselves. The club’s bylines stipulated, “No person shall attend a Tiffany function or enter the facilities without first having a confidential chat with a member of the Screening Committee, and be cleared by that member.”
When the club was in Weston, prospective members who passed an initial phone screen would be told to drive to the Red Coach Grill (now the Coach Grill) in Wayland, where two members would conduct an interview to make sure the interested party’s goals aligned with the Tiffany Club’s and they wouldn’t risk other member’s security. They didn’t want gawkers or anyone too focused on sex.
After the group moved to Wayland, security screenings moved to the Wayland Public Library. The library is a squat brick building built in 1900 in the Italian Romanesque style, complete with a rotunda at its south side and adorned with highly decorative friezes inside. It looks like a quintessential old New England structure as ivy creeps across the impressive windows up to the red tile roof.
Up until 1971, a commuter rail line ran just under two hundred feet away. The train freight house built in 1881 still stands on a hilly area next to the library parking lot. Smack dab between the library and the old freight house at the bottom of an incline was an unassuming telephone booth.
Like Holly on that rainy day when she joined, a Tiffany Club hopeful would enter the phone booth and call the number for the house. Then, they would wait for someone from the club to come talk to them.
Joan and Laura, two members who co-wrote a history of the club in 2004, said the security screenings “took on the dimensions worthy of a Cold War spy novel.”
“In my case there were two girls,” said Cherl. “Both had the physique of linebackers. They were in the front seat, and I got in the backseat and they talked to me. They asked me questions to determine if my intentions were good or not. And I passed.”
Even with all the Wayland house had to offer, it had its shortcomings. Its proximity to the Sudbury River meant the basement was prone to flooding in the spring as the dregs of Nor’easter storms melted away. In June 1982, the club ventured to Provincetown for their annual holiday weekend. It rained the whole trip, and back east at the house, the river was flooding. They came home to a backyard that had become one with the Sudbury River and a deluged basement. They lost some of their storage, the boutique, and most of their member-supported library.
“To see our collection of ‘Bizarre Sex Slaves’ reduced to a soggy lump was truly heartbreaking,” Merissa wrote at the time. Truthfully, it was a huge loss. The library had collected publications from every transgender organization they could get their hands on. Later, Merissa wrote, “It made me heartsick to lose all that history.”
As Merissa continued her mission to make the Tiffany Club and Tapestry pivotal and well-known resources for the transgender community, the AIDS crisis and transphobia were beginning to take its toll. By 1984, several members had passed away due to complications of the disease. A member named Laura was beaten to death. Her body was stuffed into the trunk of a car and discarded in the Charles River.
“That put the entire Tiffany Club and all who attended our meetings in danger,” Merissa wrote. “Death and violence had come too close to home, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
On Oct. 9, 1985, 9-year-old Sarah Pryor made herself a dish of Jell-O. She turned on the TV and ate her snack, then told her father she was going for a walk.
“Aren’t you going to clean the dish of Jell-O?” he asked her. She said she’d clean it when she got back.
Sarah was tall for her age; a picture of her shows a gap-toothed smile, hazel eyes, and shaggy blonde hair. She and her family had just moved to town from Pittsburgh six weeks before, and the shy but smart girl was apt to explore her new neighborhood. Her mother had been encouraging her to branch out more, and for Sarah, that meant going on walks alone through the open fields and wooded streets around their home.
“I’m going to go further today than I’ve ever gone before,” she told her father.
Sarah took her Walkman, donned a pair of headphones, and popped in a Panasonic tape of the musical “Cats.” She left her family’s home on Concord Road and walked north towards the Wayland-Lincoln town line. Up she went over Hickory Hill, down a footbridge over Hazel Brook, around the bend in the road near Sherman’s Bridge Road, all the while passing by Cape Cod-style houses. Downed trees fallen branches littered the sidewalk, victims of Hurricane Gloria the week before. The air was sweet and crisp as the warmth of summer invited the chill of fall to take its place.
Sarah Pryor was never seen again.
I called Gerry Galvin, who long served as the Police Chief in Wayland. At the time of Sarah’s disappearance, he was a Lieutenant with the department. He’s retired now, and when I asked him if he had been involved with the Sarah Pryor case, he told me, “I still am.”
“This had never happened in a small bedroom community of Boston,” Gerry said. “We set up a task force and we attempted to find out what occurred.”
In the days after Sarah vanished, the search spread over an eight square mile area centered at the last place she was seen and extending to the surrounding towns of West Concord, Lincoln, and Sudbury. Thousands of town residents, including members of the Tiffany Club, showed up to help with the search. There were so many people eager to help that on one of the search days, police had to call local radio stations to spread the message that anyone still on their way should turn back.
The tranquility of the suburbs was replaced with echoing cries of “Saaa-raaah! Can you hear me?” and the whirring of heat-seeking helicopters overhead. Officers on horseback and tracker dogs patrolled the woods while police boats searched up and down the Sudbury River. Law enforcement agencies at the state and federal level tried desperately to find anything that would lead them to Sarah.
Gerry said he had no reason to suspect the members of the Tiffany Club were involved. He was friendly with Merissa and had even toured the house after he first found out about it. Gerry didn’t remember any incidents at the house, not even calls for noise complaints. As far as he knew, the Tiffany Club made for good neighbors.
But the house was a mile away from where Sarah was last seen. They were investigating everyone around the area, including the Tiffany Club. Gerry said it would have been negligent not to ask if any of their members could be involved, and went over to the house to meet with Merissa.
“To your knowledge,” he asked her. “Do you have anyone who could possibly be connected in any way to the disappearance of Sarah?” Merissa told him that no one in the club had a background of hurting or enticing children. The police later asked Merissa if she could provide a full list of Tiffany Club members, but she firmly declined.
“This was not that kind of organization,” Gerry told me. “We didn’t find anyone who would have done anything to make us suspicious.”
Police suspended the ground search on Oct. 15, six days after Sarah’s disappearance. By November, the Pryors and the town were trying to return to some semblance of normalcy, but couldn’t. They were left with the messy aftermath of a tragedy with no resolution, unsettled by nebulous feelings of suspicion, anger, and confusion.
“Up until that point, nobody worried about their kids outside,” said Roger Kay, a longtime Wayland resident and former reporter for the Wayland-Weston Town Crier. “The paranoia that started off with Sarah being snatched kind of infected everything.”
No one was ever formally held responsible for Sarah’s disappearance and murder. The most likely suspect is a man who was out on parole after serving a sentence for murdering a 17-year-old girl in Texas. He was in Massachusetts at the time of Sarah’s disappearance, but was never charged for her kidnapping and murder. Sarah’s bone fragments were found in a field nearly 20 years later, but there was no solid evidence tying the suspect to her murder.
In Wayland, Sarah’s spirit looms as adults use her name as a spectral synonym for not talking to strangers or going out walking alone. Her murderer took something from everyone who has called Wayland home, leaving ripples of fear and distrust where a little girl should have grown up.
This heightened tension nearly ended up being the Tiffany Club’s undoing. On Nov. 10, 1985, the MetroWest Daily News published a favorable article about the club and the work they had done, calling it a model organization. The article highlighted the group’s tax exempt, non-profit status; their numerous newsletter subscribers; and the general decorum of the Tiffany Club members.
“We do not cater to the sexual scenes,” Merissa told the reporter. “We hold formal rap sessions. We concentrate on telling people, ‘You are who you are, and that’s OK.’”
The article was acquired by the Wayland Building Department on Feb. 24. It’s unclear how it ended up there. The clipping floats on its own in a manila folder full of documents about 36 Alpine Rd. If it was mailed by someone or brought in directly to the office, that information has been lost to time. It’s not uncommon for neighbors to seek petty revenge through the Town Offices. In the file for my childhood home, there’s a letter from a deeply concerned neighbor asking something be done about a previous owner who was operating an imported alpaca goods business from her living room.
This wasn’t the first time the Building Department had received information about the house at the end of Alpine Road. In February 1983, a neighbor complained that the club’s house had a detached garage which was too close to his property and in defiance of current setback requirements. The town building inspector at the time told the neighbor the garage dated back to World War II and he had no reason to “pursue an alleged violation on hearsay, especially after all these years and property transfers.”
This time, the new town building inspector, Mike Mulvey, sent a letter to the club. Mulvey, who declined to comment, later told the Town Crier that neighbors had called the Building Commissioner’s office and asked him to intervene.
He wrote that because the house was in a residential zone, using the space to host meetings, conduct club business, and publish the Tapestry meant they were in violation of the town’s bylaws. Neither a business nor a membership club could be conducted in a residential home without a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. Mulvey gave the club seven days to file for a special permit asking for the town to allow them to continue, or they would have to cease operations.
The Tiffany Club also had a disgruntled neighbor to take into account. Tim O’Brien lived on the south side of town, but rented out the house next door. He was trying to sell it, and he blamed the traffic caused by member’s cars and the members themselves for bringing down property values.
On April 10, Merissa appeared before the Zoning Board of Appeals for the club to apply for the special permit. A handful of neighbors came to speak their minds about the issue.
I can’t be certain if the Tiffany Club was targeted because of their membership, and I can’t assume how those neighbors would feel about the club today. In the 30 years that have passed, I can only hope that any negative opinions have evolved past prejudice. I reached out to the people who were neighbors at the time, but did not hear back from most of them, or they declined to comment.
Suzanne Kavet told the Town Crier that the Tiffany Club were “terrific neighbors” and believed the club was being scapegoated by O’Brien.
O’Brien was concerned enough about his property that he took matters into his own hands by taking photos of club members. A lawyer for the club claimed he trespassed onto the club’s property. O’Brien said he was on his own property and took pictures of the club members standing in the road. He said he had not developed or published the pictures.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” O’Brien told the Town Crier. He said he took the photos to protect his property. “The Building Inspector doesn’t work weekends. You need evidence.”
At the meeting, O’Brien brought in a copy of the Tapestry he’d bought in Cambridge and read from the magazine, highlighting how they offered overnight services to anyone. He complained that when the club had parties, cars would arrive in the early afternoon and wouldn’t leave until Monday. He reasoned the permit shouldn’t be granted because the club didn’t coincide with family values.
An “abutter of an abutter,” Megrez Rudolf, said that while she also worried that the club’s presence might affect resale value, she had no concerns about the club members as a whole. “We have been to their parties. They’re very quiet,” she said at the meeting. Megrez said that although she had a young daughter, she wasn’t worried about the club corrupting her.
Megrez was the only neighbor willing to speak about her experience as a neighbor. In an email, she told me she remembered spending time with a member who she declined to name out of respect for the woman’s privacy. The woman would come over to chat with Megrez and her husband and taught them about the process of transitioning. Megrez wrote, “I said to her that the need for her to make that decision was profound and not taken lightly. I respected her need and she [was] happy for it.”
Other neighbors were less supportive. Howard Tewksbury said that while he wasn’t prejudiced about anybody’s lifestyle and didn’t find the club itself to be an issue, he objected to the traffic danger the club posed. Merissa argued there were typically only a dozen or so members at the house.
Another neighbor, Marjorie Cain, said, “I don’t like it. I live in a residential neighborhood. I don’t pay residential taxes for this. My forefathers didn’t settle the town for this.”
“No one ever said what was actually on their mind,” said Roger, who covered the issue for the Town Crier. “They didn’t say, ‘We don’t want a trans club here.’ They said, ‘real estate values’, they said, ‘parking.’”
“This is not a popularity contest,” then-Chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals Paul Roberts said. “Whether you like the use or not, if it’s within the bylaws, it’s permissible.”
Wayland’s zoning bylaws stated that membership clubs “devoted to outdoor sports and social and recreational buildings and premises” needed a special permit to operate in a residential neighborhood. Any club applying for a permit could not be against the public interest or derogate from the character of the neighborhood. Noise, objectionable features, or anything dangerous to public health or safety were just some of the reasons why a club could be denied.
At the meeting, Mulvey made clear he would enforce the state building code regardless of what the Zoning Board of Appeals decided. He said he would be inspecting the house, which he referred to as substandard assembly building. Chairman Roberts opined that the club didn’t necessarily fall under the category of an assembly building, a designation usually reserved for movie theaters, dance halls, and skating rinks. The Board ended the meeting by saying they would reach their decision in six weeks.
In the meantime, Mulvey conducted his inspection of the house on April 29. On May 1, he sent a letter to the Tiffany Club with a list of 25 items that had to be changed or fixed. Over the years, the club had divided up bedrooms, added a bathroom, and fixed lighting and plumbing to serve their purposes. The trouble was that they hadn’t filed any building permits for the work they had done.
Back in the 1980s, it wasn’t terribly uncommon to find a home that had work done without a permit. Massachusetts only began strictly enforcing building permits in 1975, and some people doing their own handiwork didn’t see the need to file a request for one, especially if they had construction experience.
Still, there were rules and codes that had to be followed. Mulvey asked that they acquire permits for the electrical and plumbing work they had done, stop using bedrooms that hadn’t been approved by the Board of Health and Building Department, install handrails on the front steps and decks, fix the roof of the garage and fence around the pool, and remove all construction debris from the home.
In addition, Mulvey ordered them to cease operations at the house, reminding them they would need the special permit to be approved in order to continue holding meetings there. Mulvey also sent a letter to Lieutenant Galvin asking for his help counting cars near the property on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Gerry said he didn’t remember following up on that request.
The Tiffany Club did their best to play by the rules. On May 9, one of the original investors who was part owner of the house, George*, sent a letter to Mulvey to say the items in his letter would be acted on immediately. He agreed that the issues raised were “serious to the point of concern for my well-being.” George explained that due to the scope of repairs, it would take some time to complete everything on the list, but improvements were being worked on promptly.
Stuck in permit limbo, the Tiffany Club had no choice but to stop their meetings. George filed for permits to fix the pressing items on Mulvey’s list and continued working to bring the Tiffany Club up to snuff.
It wasn’t enough. On May 15, the Board of Zoning Appeals denied the special permit allowing the Tiffany Club to continue holding meetings at their house. Two members, Chairman Roberts and William Sterling, voted in favor of allowing the permit. The third member of the board, Dunbar Holmes, voted against. As the meeting minutes explain, Section 9 of the Massachusetts Zoning Act required that special permits be issued only by a unanimous vote.
Holmes didn’t believe the Tiffany Club’s mission aligned with the by-law requirements saying a membership club had to be related to outdoor sports or social or recreational activities. He wasn’t convinced that the club’s existence was in the public interest, either.
“This is not an appropriate location for the headquarters of an organization with 600 members which publishes a quarterly journal and holds frequent meetings at its headquarters,” Holmes said at the meeting. He argued that the influx of cars was dangerous since it might block fire truck access.
In an article for the Town Crier, reporter Elizabeth Lofty asked Merissa what would happen to the club now that they were barred from holding meetings.
“We don’t know,” Merissa said. “Our only interest at this time is getting out of this town.”
Merissa told the Town Crier that she understood Mulvey was just trying to do his job without concern for what the club provided. She said the services offered by the Tiffany Club had saved marriages and lives by providing a safe space for people to explore being trans or crossdressing.
“There’s an awful lot of people who are being hurt very badly by this whole mess,” she said. “The only thing that’s wrong with [crossdressing] is thinking something’s wrong with it.”
O’Brien sold the house later that year to two brothers, Bob and Mark Phillips. As they were getting ready to sign the final documents, their realtor told them, “By the way, I do need to mention to you there’s a social club that meets next door, and that they are transvestites.”
“We said, ‘Okay,’ and moved on and bought the place,” Bob Phillips told me. His brother Mark, who passed away in 2018, was friendly with the club members and spent time with them.
“He enjoyed talking to them,” Bob said. “It was a different time, so it was unusual, but definitely nothing really remarkable about them as neighbors from my viewpoint, for what that’s worth.”
I asked Cherl why some of the neighbors were so hostile. She told me that closed-mindedness and a failure to try and understand explained why the neighbors took such issue with the club’s presence.
“They probably never went over to the house when it wasn’t Tuesday or Saturday [when the club held meetings] and asked, ‘What do you do here? What’s going on?’” Cherl said. “It’s too bad, because there was nothing sinister about what we did. It was just expressing ourselves.”
Merissa had long asserted that the Tiffany Club was never meant to be a one-off, but a first step in providing services to trans people and crossdressers while educating the larger public about gender identity. But she was burnt out from 10 years of trying to keep the hundred-plus-page issues of Tapestry running, managing the Wayland house, and organizing events for the club. She was seen by some as power-hungry and scattered, often falling behind on deadlines for the magazine and butting heads with members about the club’s finances. Because she was transsexual and not a crossdresser, she was a minority in her own organization. She wanted out.
“I had no heart or mind for business,” she wrote. “The only time I was self-motivated to accomplish anything was when I began working on behalf of the transgender community.”
In April 1986, Merissa drove to Chicago in her rust bucket Dodge Aries K for the National Convention for Crossdressers. There, she gathered three other women, Yvonne Cook, Ellen Summers, and Bette Johnson to discuss a new path for the transgender community.
“The Tiffany Club was not created to be a local support group,” Merissa wrote. “It was a project created to serve our whole community.”
Merissa proposed that the Tiffany Club form a separate branch called the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE), which would sponsor and host relevant conventions, be an army of educators, and take over publishing the Tapestry. The crowd in Chicago were on board, and Merissa made moves to build upon Tiffany’s tax exempt status to bring IFGE to life.
When Merissa got back to Wayland, she hit a stalemate. The Tiffany Club’s Board of Directors wanted nothing to do with IFGE. They thought that by moving the Tapestry under the purview of IFGE and using Tiffany Club’s tax exempt status for the new organization, Merissa was trying to dissolve the Tiffany Club.
“I felt betrayed, disappointed, and angry,” she wrote. “I thought everyone understood what we were trying to do, and just did not understand why anyone would disagree.”
With that, IFGE and the Tiffany Club split. Merissa kept the Wayland house running and churned out issues of the Tapestry in her dank, unheated basement room she dubbed “The Cave.” In 1987, IFGE moved to Moody Street in Waltham above a dancewear store owned by a member.
By the end of that year, it was clear Merissa’s priorities had shifted to IFGE and the Tapestry. She resigned as Executive Secretary of the Tiffany Club and believed in the remaining officers to keep the club afloat. The Tiffany Club rebranded as the Tiffany Club of New England (TCNE) and launched their own newsletter, Rosebuds.
The club stayed active at the Wayland house without facing any additional bureaucratic hurdles until issues of overcrowding and raucous revelers returning from nights out on the town caused concern within the group. It was time for TCNE to move on from the little house in Wayland. The last meeting at the house on Alpine Road was held on Oct. 29, 1993. They moved into IFGE’s space above the dancewear shop for a year until they found their own offices elsewhere in Waltham where they remain to this day.
IFGE was a huge success in its early years. They had a yearly budget of $50,000, an order of magnitude higher than any other trans organization. Every year, they hosted a conference for activists, educators, and professionals to meet and share ideas. For groups just getting started, they provided help to get things off the ground. They had paid staff available at their office and were open to visitors from noon until late in the evening. The Tapestry became a glossy-covered, perfect-bound publication and was the go-to magazine for the trans community. Trans activist Riki Wilchins told me, “[The Tapestry] was the closest thing we had to a national transgender newsletter.”
In a speech at the 1988 IFGE convention in Chicago, Merissa said, “This convention is not a dream come true, for we still have thousands of people out there who need our help.” Instead, the convention was “one more small step towards the realization of the real dream, and that is the health, the happiness, and the peace of mind for all.”
Merissa didn’t seem to see the achievements. She had a vision for the organization, but could never quite articulate her desires to the Board of Directors. Despite its success in publishing, hosting conventions, and providing for the trans community, Merissa felt IFGE still wasn’t achieving what it had set out to do.
On top of it all, by 1994, the organization was feeling financial strain. Between rent, utility bills, publishing the Tapestry, and hiring full-and-part-time employees, IFGE needed $400,000 a year just to stay afloat. As things got tense, Merissa became hard to work with, and some in the organization described her as being somewhat prickly and unable to handle the pressure.
“Merissa kept insisting it wasn’t good enough,” Dallas Denny told me. Dallas worked with IFGE beginning in the early ‘90s and later served as the editor of the Tapestry. “Orgs get to the point where they outgrow their founder. The board tried to get Merissa to retire and she wouldn’t.”
In January 1994, the Board of Directors asked Merissa to step down as the Executive Director. She was exhausted, but reluctant to relinquish control of her brain child.
“As IFGE’s founder, I was, in effect, its spiritual leader,” Merissa wrote in the Summer 1994 issue of the Tapestry. “Unfortunately, the dynamic young corporate-types, especially those with a fondness for structure and chains-of-command, couldn’t justify placing ‘spiritual leader’ on the flow chart.”
The Executive Director was never meant to be the leader of the organization, but as time went on, the Board assigned roles and expectations to the position beyond what Merissa felt she could offer. She understood the group was beginning to outgrow her and agreed to take on a new, less hands-on role as Founding Director once a suitable replacement for her former title was found.
A year later, the board named Allison Liang as the new Executive Director. By the Fall 1995 issue, Merissa was no longer listed in the masthead and her name had been removed from the list of the Board of Directors. The Winter 1995 issue debuted a new name for the magazine, the Transgender Tapestry.
After Merissa left, IFGE was riddled with in-fighting, mismanagement of funds, and a lack of direction. In 2004, Executive Director Denise Leclair eliminated most of the Transgender Tapestry staff, removed long-standing board members, and replaced them with new ones. Leclair fired the people responsible for running IFGE’s yearly conference, instead taking on the responsibility herself. She moved IFGE’s offices to Washington, D.C. to try and join the political scene.
The organization had set up the Winslow Street Fund for community organizations and projects in need of funds. By the end of the ‘90s, the fund exceeded over $100,000. In 2011, after the trustees of the fund were fired, those closely involved began to worry the monies had been drained for internal operations, something Merissa and the Board of Directors said they would never do. Leclair could not be reached for comment.
The Transgender Tapestry folded in 2009. The last IFGE conference was in 2011, rumored to have stopped due to finance issues. Their website hasn’t been updated since 2012.
“The IFGE just vanished,” Dallas said. “And no one said a word.”
Merissa felt betrayed and bitter about being ousted from her own organization. She still had the Wayland house and continued to rent out rooms, but was largely reclusive, rarely seeing or talking to anyone in the community. In 1998, she suffered a massive stroke and ended up losing the house on Alpine Road. She was taken in by friends in Rhode Island who cared for her, but still kept away from the trans community she had fought so hard to uplift.
At the Fantasia Fair in 2002, Merissa was honored as the first Pioneer Award winner. Fantasia Fair’s website says the award is given as “a lifetime achievement award to those who have sacrificed their careers, their families, and their fortunes to change the world so trans people could begin to come together in safety and comfort.” The award came with a $2,500 cash prize. Merissa’s entire acceptance speech was one quip: “I guess I’ll have to get a computer now.”
On Dec. 1, 2017, Merissa passed away at a hospice care facility in Warwick, Rhode Island. On Sep. 15, 2018, two of her friends climbed to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire and spread her ashes to overlook the snowy ski runs, evergreen forests, and rugged granite of the White Mountains. The sun warmed the summit as they said a Native American prayer for Merissa.
“I miss her because she was a great friend,” said Beverly, who helped Merissa put together her autobiography. “She had a vision that she worked hard for.”
In 2017, Riki published “TRANS/gressive,” a book exploring the hidden history of trans organizing and activism. I asked her why it was so hard for me to find information about the club, and why the likes of Merissa and the Tiffany Club have come dangerously close to being forgotten.
“Crossdressing organizations and conferences like Tapestry, the Tiffany Club, and Fantasia Fair were the true launching pad for transgender rights,” she told me. “Yet they remain both left behind and largely forgotten by the movement they helped spawn.”
Outside of the older transgender community in Boston, Merissa Sherrill Lynn’s name is little known. Pride Month 2019 came and went without any acknowledgment of the Tiffany Club, IFGE, or Merissa. This year’s First Event will be centered around the club’s 40th anniversary, but there’s been little fanfare from the larger LGBT community. The house on Alpine Road was torn down in 2000, and a new home stands on the old foundation. The phone booth at the Wayland Public Library where so many Tiffany Club members made the first step to coming out was removed a few years ago. The deep corners of the internet are the only places with information about the club. Most of the founding members are older or have passed away, leaving gaps in the official story of how the Tiffany Club came to be and what it was like to be a part of it. If there were an endangered species list for transgender history, the Tiffany Club would be listed as Critically Endangered.
It was a sticky July evening, and I had just woken up from a post-work nap. For weeks, I had debated going to a TCNE (now the Trans Club of New England) meeting. I wasn’t sure if I would be welcomed, or if the members would clam up when I asked questions. Part of me wondered if there was still any ill will about how they were treated in Wayland. I grabbed my keys and drove over anyway.
TCNE’s facilities are on a residential street off of a main road in Waltham, above a metalsmithing forge and a machine parts distributor. Like the old days, you have to know what you’re looking for. A bronze plaque simply read “TCNE” and a reversible open/closed sign hung in a window with the inviting side facing the street.
I opened the door, immediately greeted by six pairs of mascaraed eyes on me. I introduced myself and explained that I was from Wayland and desperate to learn more about what it was like to be in the Tiffany Club when they were in my hometown. A few piped up and said they remembered the house on Alpine Road and being initiated through the phone booth.
I shook hands with the other members in the room. We learned each other’s names and I sat down next to another newcomer named Tina*. I made sure it was alright I was there.
“Respectful visitors are always welcome,” said Karen, whose thick Boston accent matched my Boston-bred family members and their tenuous grasp on the letter ‘R.’ The club is for trans people and crossdressers, but also for allies, friends, and families of those exploring their gender identity. The only visitors they frown upon are gawkers and fetishists.
We talked about insurance struggles, going shopping, and dating. We bemoaned summer traffic and humidity. They talked about making up for lost time. Some members have been dressing or transitioning for decades. Others only came out a few months prior. Many spoke to how they tend to dress younger than their age to account for the missed opportunity of teenage girlhood. Married members lamented that their wives kept buying them clothes that weren’t their style.
The conversation turned to motorcycles, how they miss Car Talk, and how Karen had just fixed the leaky air conditioner on the roof. It was like the old days when neighbors would come to the Tiffany Club for light mechanic work and good conversation.
Tina explained that when she began taking estrogen as part of her transition, she was unsure if her personality and interests would change. Her doctor asked whether or not she liked football. She said yes. The doctor assured her, “You’ll still like football.”
When I came back a week later, the crowd was different, but fundamentally still a warm group of people looking for a safe place to dress. As for the future of dressing, there were some concerns.
“It’s a transvestite disaster,” said member April Rose. “First Payless, now Dress Barn.”
Both stores were a popular choice among trans women and crossdressers, not only because they stocked larger sizes, but because they had reputations for being friendly towards people looking for women’s clothes regardless of their gender expression. Payless closed all of its stores last February, and that May, Dress Barn announced it would close its doors in August. It was a huge blow to the community.
Janet, who acts as a sort of facilities manager and de facto organizer, showed me around the space. There was a sitting room with a boxy TV and a collection of VHS tapes and DVDs ranging from workout videos to Lynda Carter’s “Secrets to the Perfect Makeup.” Based on the few pictures I’ve seen of the Tiffany Club in its heyday, the two sofas with blue and white polka dot fabric at the other end of the room were brought over from the Wayland house. A kitchenette and a white plasticky dining table were in a small entrance hallway. At the other end were two doors, one leading to a key-restricted clothing storage room and the other to a makeup room doubling as the club’s archives. Between the panel walls and padded vinyl chairs, it was a comfortable space somewhere between a ‘90s den and an ‘80s dentist office waiting room.
Janet had a short bob that accentuated her Old Hollywood features. Her nose was regal and well-defined, like Isabella Rossellini, and she was eager to dish about her makeup look.
“It’s CoverGirl,” Janet revealed. Her custom, haute looks are the result of making friends with people who work at department store makeup counters. She was proud of the little connections she has at all of her regular stores. “I get hugs from [the staff], stuff like that.”
What I kept realizing was what I’ve heard from scores of trans people — they’ve always been here, and people who think they’ve never met a trans person probably have without realizing it. Every past and present member of the Tiffany Club and TCNE I talked to spoke to how things are freer now, and how lucky younger generations are that they don’t have to hide in the shadows, wait to transition, and keep their feelings secret. Non-members who were willing to speak with me all seemed to agree that even though it was unusual at the time, they found no reason to have issues with someone for being true to themselves.
The club looks somewhat different than it did 40 years ago. It’s hard to know what Merissa would think of the transgender movement and TCNE today. The only thing I can think to do is honor her memory, do justice to her mission, and make sure this story isn’t a forgotten piece of trans history.
In the Winter 1982 issue of the Tapestry, Merissa wrote, “I want people to be aware of what has happened to the Tiffany Club and where we are going. I want people to be interested, supportive, and as involved as possible.”
Maybe that’s all she’d ask of us, to keep caring, keep supporting each other, and keep trying.
*Some names have been changed or omitted to protect identities.
For a detailed map of locations relevant to the Tiffany Club and other trans historical events from 1961–1981, click here.
For more information about First Event, click here.
