I didn’t know anyone who was gay.”Ī security guard circling the lot noticed Rick sitting in the lot and asked him what he was doing. “For weeks and weeks at night, I’d drive over there and just sit in the parking lot and observe.
“I was scared to death the first time I walked in,” he recalled of The Open Closet on Secor Road. The 21-year-old man couldn’t bring himself to get out of his car in the Secor Road parking lot.Ĭornett, a gay man born and raised in West Toledo, did not know any other gay people in 1985 but he had a strong desire to change that. The first time Rick Cornett went to a gay bar, he didn’t actually walk through the doors.
