I'm Eric Marcus and this is Making Gay History.

It's been 30 years since I started interviewing LGBTQ trailblazers and allies for my Making

Gay History book. Not everyone I spoke with left a lasting impression.

Some of the people I met with

feed it from memory and didn't come back to life

until I listened to the old recordings.

Not so Kapi Berg. In my post-interview notes I wrote, quote, I was thoroughly charmed by copy.

Actually, I was smitten. I vividly remember sitting across from the handsome former Navy man on a December afternoon

in his artist loft in New York City's Soho neighborhood. We were warmed by what must have been one of the few remaining wood-burning stoves in Manhattan.

Copy was no stranger to being interviewed.

In the mid-1970s, he'd been the subject of fierce media scrutiny.

That's because he was one of the first people to publicly challenge the military's

ban on allowing homosexuals to serve.

Kapi was born Vernon E. Berg the third in 1951.

He got his nickname because he was so much like his father,

Navy Chaplin, Vernon Berg Jr.

Copy was the oldest of four, a clean-cut kid, boy scout, student body president of his high school,

member of the Optimus Club, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis,

where he sang in the choir and the glee club.

He was also gay.

In the summer of 1975,

the Navy Investigative Service confronted copy about his sexual orientation.

...