A Colorado grandpa who's been leading a double-life for 90 years has finally come out as gay to his family and revealed a 70-year love story that he's spent his entire life keeping hidden from them.
In an interview with the Denver Post, 90-year-old Kenneth Felts revealed he recently made the decision to come out to his family after almost a century of pretending to be straight, and now he's ready to tell his story.
However, when the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. and the country went into lockdown, the divorced elderly man spied this as his opportunity to pen his own autobiography.
Most importantly, he remembered his one true love, a man named Phillip (not pictured here) who he let slip away out of fear of being his true authentic self.
However, homosexuality wasn't declared legal in the state until 1976, and during the '50s it was still incredibly dangerous to be an openly gay or lesbian person.
In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a form of mental disorder, and the following year, President Eisenhower would sign an executive order prohibiting gay people — specifically, people guilty of “sexual perversion”— from obtaining federal jobs.
At the time, he thought it would be easier that way, though the following decades of struggling to hide himself from his friends and family would certainly prove that to be incorrect.
"I guess I didn’t have the courage to face society at that time, so I just went ahead and buried it," he admitted.
In fact, he told her he regretted leaving his lover, which was the first time he had ever mentioned the man to Rebecca, let alone revealed his sexuality.
Although he tried to search for Phillip, Felts was unable to track him down, and his daughter did everything she could to comfort her heartbroken father.
Twenty years ago, she was the one coming out to him as a lesbian, which Felts admitted took some time to get used to, particularly while he himself was living as a closeted homosexual.
But now that he's finally come out himself, he's no longer afraid to let his friends and family meet the man he's been keeping from them for years.
“I’ve been in the closet all my life — deep in the closet, behind rows and rows of clothing. I’m way back there,” he told the Post.
As he said, "Opening that door at the front, I had great trepidation as to what people would say. I was very concerned because I needed people and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing them just because I decided to finally be who I really was."
He's finally out and proudly living the life he'd spent nearly a century suppressing deep inside of him. And his daughter couldn't be prouder.
“He’s just so brave and he doesn’t even realize that he is, but it’s extraordinary,” she said.
In a Facebook post shared on Friday, Felts revealed that someone had dug up information about his lost love, though this 70-year story sadly won't have a happy ending.
"Phillip Allen Jones was the love of my life," he wrote. "I have a very sad and lonely heart today. My first and greatest love has passed away."
He added, "It is so terribly frustrating to be so close to and yet not reach my lost love and horribly painful to not be able to say good-by. But the whole world now knows what a loving man he was with me and to me while we were together."
