10/04/2026
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Mildred “Barrie” Berryman (1901–1972) was 15 when she came out as a le***an and proposed studying le***anism while attending Westminster College’s high school program in Salt Lake City. According to classmate Theodora Anderson’s later account, a faculty member rejected the proposal, and parents’ objections to Berryman’s le***an presence led to her expulsion from the school.
At just 16 years old, she married a man hoping to escape her attraction to women, but soon left him. She eventually included that experience in her research.
By the 1920’s, Berryman had found a community of le***ans living in Salt Lake City at Edith Chapman’s boarding house. She resumed her research in 1929, drawing on people she knew through the boarding house and the city’s Bohemian Club.
Her manuscript, “The Psychological Phenomena of the Homosexual,” documented 24 le***ans, including herself, and nine gay men. The teenager whose proposed study had been rejected by Westminster was now recording the lives of her own community—a work she continued through the 1930’s.
During World War II, Berryman met Ruth Uckerman while working at a defense plant. They made their home in Woods Cross, Utah and ran a manufacturing business together, remaining partners until Berryman’s death in 1972. Mildred’s research had never been published, but Ruth preserved the manuscript and sent it to her daughter Bonnie Bullough and son-in-law Vern, who later began the process of publishing portions of it. The collection is now held at UCLA.
In Utah, the Mildred Berryman Institute for LGBTIQ2S+ Utah History bears her name and supports oral histories, public lectures and archival preservation, including the Utah AIDS Memorial Project.
October is LGBTQ+ History Month, a time to recognize the people who fought for our rights, shaped our culture and made life better for q***r communities—including those whose stories are rarely told.
