69 years after being booted from the United States Air Force because his commander decided to start “cleaning up [his] base of homosexuals,” 91-year-old Hubert Edward Spires has had his discharge records changed from “undesirable” to “honorable.” Damn straight! (Sorta.)
The New York Times reports that Spires is just one of “hundreds of gay former military personnel who have been emboldened by the 2010 repeal of the United States military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy,” and that his appeal was first sent to the military corrections board in 2014. After nearly two years of waiting for a response, a battle with pneumonia (coupled with the worry that he wouldn’t be allowed a military funeral) caused Spires to file a lawsuit against the Air Force asserting that his “rights had been violated [after encountering] unreasonable delays.”
Last Friday, he received the phone call he’d been waiting for. The court had recommended “an honorable discharge dating to March 17, 1948. In an interview after hearing the news, Spires told the Times:
“I never did anything on the base in uniform. I had a whole slew of very good friends who were gay and lived off base. We partied together; we had wonderful meals together and went to the opera together. We lived a very normal life. I did not dishonor the Air Force in any way by my actions.”
Oh, and then there’s this:
Said his husband, David Rosenberg, whom he met in 1956 and married eight years ago: “His first words were, ‘It’s about time.’”