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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | APRIL 2025 51 During February, the Rainbow Group raised funds for e Trevor Project which provides suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ young people. e total amount raised was $4,190. is was a combination of donations made to our campaign and an outside match for donations made to e Trevor Project in February. To all of you who made a donation, we extend our heartfelt thanks. Information on the location and time of our next event is available via our Facebook page or email (rainbowgroup@ myyahoo.com). is month our selection for the Famous LGBT Americans series is Janis Ian (née Janis Eddy Fink). Ian was born of Jewish heritage in 1951 in New Jersey. She is a singer, songwriter, and musician of so rock songs. is included "Society's Child" which portrayed a white girl pressured by her family to leave her African American boyfriend. Ian recorded the song in 1965 when she was only 14 years old and released it in 1966. In 1975, Ian wrote "At Seventeen" for which she won her rst Grammy. It has been described as being "about not having social or romantic success in high school (and rubbing later success in the faces of everyone you went to school with)." She said, "('At Seventeen' has) never been a depressing song, because it says 'ugly duckling girls like me,' and to me the ugly duckling always turns into a swan. It oers hope that there is a world out there of people who understand." In 1989, Ian moved to Nashville where she met Patricia Snyder, a 42-year-old single mother and assistant archivist at Vanderbilt University. She later said, "I met Pat, and I knew I was gonna spend my life with her." Ian came out as a lesbian in 1993 at the age of 42. A reason for coming out was the alarming rate of suicide among lesbian and gay teens: "e statistics are just awful! … I know, by the letters we're getting from gay kids, that the fact that I wrote 'At Seventeen' and I'm gay, now puts a whole dierent slant on it, like now they have their own anthem, too." On Aug. 27, 2003, Ian and Snyder were married in Toronto. For more information on Janis Ian and on the sources for this article, please go to the Rainbow Group's Facebook page or request a copy via our email. ~ Dan Hazeltine and Frank Galvan Rainbow Group

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