On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, it seems appropriate to recognize ground-breaking historian, activist and self-described “community-based” researcher, Allan Bérubé. He is best known for writing Coming Out Under Fire, the award-winning examination of lives of gay men and women in the armed forces during World War II. His ground-breaking book features interviews with soldiers, who were allowed to fight for the cause of freedom, as long as they kept their sexuality hidden. A college drop-out, yet recipient of a McArthur Foundation “genius grant,” he used a pragmatic rather than academic approach to his research, and he subsequently taught at several universities. Surprisingly through his research, Bérubé found that military life offered opportunities for soldiers to begin their “coming out” process. Born in Springfield and educated at the Mount Hermon School for Boys, he built community, wherever he went, believing in the power of history to help us understand ourselves and the world in which we live.
“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”
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