Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town Paperback – December 3, 2014
by Esther Newton
Queer Places:
Saint Anns Cemetery
Sayville, Suffolk County, New York, USA
Camilla Zdenek Munkelwitz (1890-1975) was a long Island woman of eccentric and perhaps bisexual inclination. The life of this person has been researched by Esther Newton for her essay: "Cherry Grove, Fire Island", published by Duke University Press.
Camilla Zdenek was the daughter of Johan Zdenek (1853–1938) and Katherine Melsha (1862–1936). She married into the ethnic Bohemian community on Long Island. In 1912 she married William Henry Munkelwitz (1874–1961). She had two children: Shirlee Norma Munklewitz Nugent (1916–2015) and Robert "Bob" Dewitt Munnell (1925–1999), who later became an important figure in Cherry Grove's politics.
In the late 1940s, a woman named Kay, Munkelwitz, and a third woman from Chicago who was Kay's friend, were arrested for nude sunbathing. The friend gave the address of a Chicago brothel as her own in order to confound the police.
References:
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Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town Paperback – December 3, 2014 by Esther Newton |
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