They found husbands. They raised families.
then they fell in love - with each other. Now there's a movie about them. Meet... Ruthie and Connie.
BY HAP ERSTEIN - hap_erstein@pbpost.com

Palm Beach Post - Friday - April 26, 2002

Couple hopes film will encourage others to be 'authentic'.

There is a concept in Jewish culture known as bashert, meaning something that is destined to be. Looking back on their 27 years as lovers and life partners, Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz of Century Village in suburban West Palm Beach acknowledge that their being together was meant to be. It is bashert.

"Because I would never, ever, ever have thought of doing something as quantum as I did in leaving my husband if it wasn't such an intense feeling of being swept away in this relationship," says Berman, 68. "Because it was a difficult path to take. But the path was for me to be with Connie, to go through the wrenching, the turmoil, the pain, the sadness, the guilt, the whole thing of moving away from that conventional life to becoming a lesbian."

The two women - wives and mothers living conventional middle-class existences in the New York borough of Brooklyn - were always outspoken community activists, for causes ranging from gaining a stop light on their street, to exerting pressure to get a school built, to forming a mothers' action committee against air pollution. They had no idea that their most controversial act would be to listen to their hearts.

Berman was a teacher, Kurtz a bookkeeper. They have retired to South Florida into a busy life of increased activism, leading workshops to ease the way for those coming out of the closet of sexual orientation secrecy and organizing support group meetings of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Now, they have added roles, as stars of a documentary about themselves called Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House, which has its East Coast premiere on Saturday at the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in Miami Beach, with the two of them present for a post-show discussion.

It is directed by three-time Oscar nominee Deborah Dickson, who quickly agreed to record their history. "I like to tell stories about people who take risks, who passionately believe in something or who make a difference in some way, she says. "That said, I'm always interested in a good love story. They had an incredible love story, but one where they had to pay a price. Anyone with children can relate to it."

The film is also a time capsule of a period in 1960s Arnerica when homosexuality was less open, less understood, less accepted.

"I didn't hear about it for a very long time, probably not 'til high school," says Berman. "It wasn't talked about. We all were focused in on meeting the guy to get married."

Ruth met her Sol and Connie met her Bernie and they followed the expected path of getting married, having babies, pursuing careers, too much on the run to question whether they were happy.

"I gave birth, Ruthie gave birth to her second child, so there was the carriage brigade," recalls Kurtz, 66. "We just did what needed to be done. We raised our children, we baby-sat for one another. We were good friends."

In 1970, the Kurtzes decided to move to Israel, and Ruth did notunderstand her overwhelming sadness. Saying farewell, 'it was the first time that Ruth, my dear, dear friend, cries and hugs me, as a friend hugs a friend in saying goodbye," notes Kurtz.

They wrote to each other, Berman even visited her friend in Israel, but it was not until Connie came back to Brooklyn for a vacation that the emotional dam burst. After an all-night talk-
ing jag, sipping wine and smoking Salem cigarettes, a tear-stained Berman asked her friend a question.

"Unaware of the consequences, I needed to express myself and take the next step," Berman says. 'We were just talking and I leaned forward and I said, 'Aren't you going to kiss me?' And then she proceeded to kiss me, a friendly little peck, and I said, 'Can't you do better than that?'

It would be months before Berman and Kurtz mustered the courage to tell their husbands they were leaving them. Then around the close-knit apartment building, where everyone knew everyone else's business, the proverbial excrement hit the fan.

Most of the men in their circle recoiled from the news. "I would say the husbands felt threatened, and uncomfortable," recalls Kurtz. Of their women friends, she adds, "We were already connected to them in such deep ways that this was a shock, but not a separation."

"For me it made no difference. They were my friends," says Ruth Taffel, a former Brooklyn neighbor who now lives in Boca Raton. "The problem basically was that they were married to the wrong men. I feel that their husbands never gave them the encouragement, nobody really did."

News disturbs families
Their families took their news hard. Berman's mother did not speak to her for seven years. They agreed with regret to leave their children. As Berman says, her younger son "was not in a good place about it, as you see in the film. He's still not. He just had a baby, so that's what's brought us more or less more together." But as she speaks she is unclear whether he will allow her to see her new grandchild.

Berman was in such pain, feeling she was harming so many around her, she began to contemplate suicide. "I thought I was mining all these lives. It would have been much easier. It was a solution," she says.

In her mind, she saw herself climbing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and jumping to her death. "Whatever I was meant to do, I couldn't do that. Maybe a lot had to do with the selfish part of who I am, of not wanting to give up my life. I think also Con-me's being so dear to me, that she was there, saved me."

Still, Berman became physically ill, and became convinced that it stemmed from the emotional toll of her lack of openness. "Her hiding, her secret, her shame, her embarrassment, her guilt, the gamut of feelings was making her sick," says Kurtz.

Through therapy, they have become at ease with themselves and their place in the world. 'We both are not so insulated and so isolated that we don't need you also to like us, but if in fact you don't, we don't lose ourselves," says Kurtz. "We're OK"

OK is an understatement. Berman personally filed a lawsuit against New York City's Board of Education to provide benefits for same-sex domestic partners. And she won.

When the possibility of a film about them came up, they welcomed it as a boon in their efforts to encourage others to be "authentic" about who they are.

"It is important for people to hear all the different aspects of our lives and the fullness that it is, in every room," explains Berman. 'That maybe there is somebody out there who wants to kill themselves, but says, 'Y'know, I saw this movie. They went
through hell, and look where they are. Maybe I should give it another day.

"Maybe there is a senator somewhere who just may see the movie, who says, 'Y'know, maybe it's time for me to come out.' Or 'Maybe it's time for me to really care about my son.' Or
'Maybe it's time for me to really vote for that Marriage Act.'"

For director Dickson, Berman and Kurtz are ideal stereotype breakers to counteract homophobia. "What I love about Ruth and Connie is that you meet them and you realize they're just like your own aunts. They're like kin to many people. And then it's, 'Oh, yeah, and they're lesbians.' It gave me the opportunity to talk about something that's political, but in this most delightful way."

'An extraordinary place'
Berman and Kurtz agree that they are in a good place now both psychically and geographically. Kurtz first started coming to West Palm Beach three decades ago to visit her parents, who bought a condo in Century Village in 1970. To them it feels comfortable, like a larger, sunnier version of their Brooklyn apartment complex.

"Century Village is a great place, an extraordinary place. Everything is here if you want it, all kinds of people," says Berman. "We have met gay men, couples here who have been together longer than Connie and I. They have a life, they're not in bathhouses and maybe they were, so what?"

"And we started a PFLAG meeting here, because that's what you do," shrugs Kurtz.

"I have such admiration for them," says Rita Fischer, mother of a gay son, depicted in the movie at a support meeting led by Berman and Kurtz. "If you're in trouble, they're there for you. They're very kind, very concerned, very sincere. The more I learn about them, the more inspiring I think they are."

In addition to her counseling efforts, Kurtz has found a new avocation, working in collage, acrylics and watercolors. "I would not be the artist I am today without (Ruthie's) support in every way, without her 'oohs' and 'aahs' and 'wows'," says Kurtz, currently exhibited in a Palm Beach Gardens show.

Not that she has had a lot of time for painting lately, because -- - - of their other job - appearing with and promoting Ruthie and Connie. They flew to the Berlin -Film Festival in February to speak. "We're leaving for Toronto May 18," says Kurtz. 'The end -of June we're leaving for San - Francisco.

"Wherever we go, this is who we are," she says. "We may be the characters in this movie - and certainly we're characters but this story belongs to a lot of people."

'You meet them and you realize they're just like your own aunts. They're like kin to many people. And then it's, "Oh, yeah, and they're lesbians." It gave me the opportunity to talk about something that's political, but in this most delightful way.'