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Southern Tier Life / June 2021 / ISSUE 004
June’s ExPats features former Southern Tier resident Robert Rumsey, makeup artist extraordinaire and one of my best friends since high school. (Link to Rob’s Story) Apropos that Rob is featured during Pride month. He has every reason to be proud of his life, his journey and his accomplishments. From the neighborhoods of westside Elmira to the center of Los Angeles music and entertainment, Rob has traveled the world and works surrounded by unbridled creativity, diversity and inclusivity. Not to mention power, influence and money. I met Rob at Ernie Davis Middle School in the early 1980s. It was definitely NOT love at first sight. I know there’s more work to be done, crucial work, in LGBTQIA++ rights, but we really have come a very long way from the 1980s, when Rob felt it necessary to hide his sexuality. He hid it behind a razor sharp, sarcastic sense of humor who could cut ANYONE down with a one-liner. I’m not sure exactly when I first met Rob but the first memory I have is of him insulting my “Dorito breath” in the ED lunchroom, which erupted with laughter because, like me, Rob is LOUD! I realized much later, like the end of high school, that Rob just made extremely hurtful (and hilarious) comments because he was figuring out how to be his true self in a community that wasn’t openly welcoming to its LGBTQIA++ members. “It wasn’t a safe or prosperous place for “others”,” Rob said. While interviewing Rob for ExPats, we reminisced about
Vibing w/Cat White
growing up in Elmira and the lack of safe spaces or mentors for youth who were “different” - defined as “creative,” “artistic,” “gay” when we were coming of age. Even when Angles Ultimate Dance Club, which promoted itself as an alternative dance club – code: safe space for LGBTQIA++, opened in the 1990s, it was located on what Rob accurately described as a “random street by the railroad tracks with no open businesses around.”
“Even as a little kid I knew it (Elmira) wasn’t my place,” he said. “I wanted to experience different things and people, not just read about them.” In high school, Rob and I got closer, and he seemed to find his voice as an artist and performer, with support, he stresses, from the young women in his life, starting with his older sister Candy. “My sister was so supportive and beautiful to me,” Rob said. In addition to, mostly, older women in Elmira who encouraged and supported his artistic pursuits, accepting Rob for who he was. Sharon Bernard, owner of several
“Over the Rainbow” daycare centers in the southern tier, hired Rob to paint colorful murals on one of her preschool’s walls when he was in high school. “She would pick me up after school to paint at her school, pay me and make sure I got home in the evenings,” Rob says. Community businesswomen like Bernard, and teachers like Mrs. Price, an art teacher at EFA who encouraged Rob to try out for a movie filming in the area were instrumental in making safe spaces in his hometown. “They acknowledged and nurtured my talents. These women lifted me up.” He was happy to reconnect with former classmates when he returned in 2017 to help his ailing father. To learn that today’s area youth have that supportive, strong foundation of local women – teachers, businesswomen, social workers – nurturing all community kids, including the ones who may be a little “different” brought Rob peace. He’s inspired when he sees a high school friend proudly post photos
