“An Unusual and Peculiar Relationship”: Lesbianism and the American Cold War National Security State

In 1954 security officials for the US Civil Service Commission questioned Ruth Windham, a former employee of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), who had recently resigned due to an undisclosed illness. According to Paul Hussey, the FHA deputy personnel security officer, Windham’s mother had visited his office to explain that her daughter’s departure had been due to Ruth’s “homosexual activity,” which had resulted in the dissolution of her marriage.¹ When questioned by investigators, Windham described in detail her conflicts with her husband and her numerous sexual relationships with women during the preceding ten years. She also claimed that she had gained employment in the FHA after she had met Peggy Davis, a member of the FHA Personnel Division, who, according to Windham, was also a lesbian. Windham explained that Davis had hired other women with similar sexual inclinations to work for the FHA, including Doris Wilson, with whom Windham was having a sexual relationship. Worried that the FHA was awash with lesbians, Hussey ordered an investigation into the lengthy list of employees who Windham claimed were homosexual. He was following the directives issued in 1953 by President Dwight Eisenhower under Executive Order 10,450. Continuing the practice of banning individuals with questionable political beliefs and associations from employment with the federal government, Eisenhower expanded the grounds for dismissal to include security risks and other indications that the person did not possess the proper character to work for the government. The list of character traits deemed inappropriate included criminal or immoral behavior, mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, and sexual perversion.²

Following Windham’s accusations, numerous FHA employees, including many of those Windham had named, resigned as a result of her allegations. However, some employees denied the charges, including, for instance, Grace O’Lone, a nurse at the FHA whom Windham described as “a very domineering and masculine individual.”³ When questioned by investigators, O’Lone acknowledged that she was, in the words of one security officer, in “an unusual and peculiar relationship” with Mary Meyer, another nurse at the FHA, whom O’Lone had befriended in 1932 when both were working at a local hospital.⁴ Shortly after they became friends, O’Lone had invited Meyer to move with her into her father’s home; the two women then shared the same bedroom and, for a period of ten years, the same bed. Both acknowledged that during this time they frequently engaged in disreputable activity. As Meyer explained, “There were occasions from around 1934 until approximately 1944 . . . that we would place our arms about each other while lying in bed, and on occasions, one would place her knee against the other, causing pressure, which brought about a certain amount of sexual gratification.”⁵ Claiming they no longer engaged in what the legal counsel for the FHA referred to as “this knee business,” O’Lone and Meyer denied that they were lesbians or had engaged in a sexually perverse act.⁶ While many employees confronted with similar accusations chose to immediately resign from their positions, O’Lone and Meyer represented a small but growing number of accused individuals who stayed to fight for their jobs. Few such individuals sought to defend the sexual acts in which they had engaged, choosing instead to portray themselves, as O’Lone and Meyer did, as redeemed individuals who no longer participated in such behavior. But many also asserted their privacy and challenged the legality of such hearings.⁷ As the lawyer for O’Lone and Meyer argued, “I will submit that the words ‘immoral’ and ‘sexual perversion’ . . . are so vague and lacking in uniform content . . . as not to furnish a single standard to which this Board might repair.”⁸

Consequently, the Loyalty and Security Review Board of the FHA held a hearing in 1955 to determine if the two women were sexual perverts. The accusation, as detailed in a letter sent to Meyer by the director of personnel for the FHA, was that the two women “lived in what might be called a homosexual relationship...