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Melodie Moorehead Papers, 1970-2021

 

Summary

Extent:
1 boxes 1 Legal Size Document Case 1 Large Flat Newspaper Box
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

The materials in this collection reflect the subject's participation in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) activism and interest in psychotherapy for the LGBT community. The bulk of the collection contains correspondence, news clippings, interviews with Moorehead, autobiographical information, and photos.

Please note: this collection includes some images that portray nudity in both sexual and non-sexual contexts.

Biographical / historical:

Dr. Melodie Kay Moorehead, born on Father's Day, June 19, 1949 in Utica, NY, was reared in Miami-Dade County, Florida where she began kindergarten. Subsequentially, she graduated from Miami Central High School, where she was a Silver Knight nominee in music and went on to become a professional musician working her way through school from the age of 18 until 1983, when she completed her PhD from the Union Institute. Following licensure as a psychologist she later became a Fellow and Board Certified, in Clinical Health Psychology, by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). She is a lifetime member of the American Psychological Association (APA), American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), Internation Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO) and holds membership in Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Melodie also graduated from, Miami Dade Junior College – North Campus, and Florida Atlantic University (FAU), with a double major, completing that coursework in 1971.

Before her involvement with Human Rights work, she had many high-profile musical engagements as a drummer and vocalist. She contracted with a show band called Your Father's Mustache and played the "Washboard" and other percussion instruments at the age of 18 at the Hilton Plaza, Miami Beach. During her 1968 and 69 engagement there, the space also hosted Jackie Gleason's weekly television show, as well as the Headquarters for Richard Nixon's 1968 National Convention. Nightly, Nixon's staff were in front row attendance for the nightclub show and would send the young Melodie cold milk to the stage as they sent alcoholic beverages to other members of the band. When he won the election, Nixon's head writer invited Melodie to attend the Inaugural Ball, which she attended with her mother, Laura Joyce Gillett Moorehead Williams. Later Melodie, still an undergraduate, received an invitation from President Nixon's staff to transfer to Georgetown University and study law as a proper introduction to Washington politics. She humbly state: "I want to become a doctor and help people."

Returning to her intentioned life's mission, she completed the MA degree, in Psychology, from Lone Mountain College (today, University of San Francisco), in 1977. It was at this period of time she petitioned FAU to confer her undergraduate degree. It had been withheld by the institution due to administrative rules. She won her petition, which helps explains why her MA diploma was conferred a year before her BA. The irony here perhaps was that Dr. Shwartz, who headed the Department of Sociology at FAU, had offered her a full scholarship to the MA program and to a prestigious doctoral program in return for her teaching at FAU for 5 years. Again, she humbly and politely declined.

Instead, Melodie toured with another musical group, which ultimately led to her coming to terms with her same-sex feelings, which had amounted to a lifetime of tumult. Following her own personal paradigmatic shift and owning her sense of "gay identity," Melodie entered psychotherapy with Dr. Theodore Aidman, the first president and founder of the Dade County Psychological Association (Dr. Aidman ultimately served as mentor throughout Melodie's MA and PhD programs; her MA thesis was based on Dr. Adman's work, "Transcending One's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy."). Melodie soon committed herself to a new career in the field of psychology working within the gay community.

Dr. Alan Rockway, Mr. Robert "Bob" Kunst, and Mr. Bob Basker co-authored the 1976 Miami Gay Rights Ordinance. This Ordinance was repealed through the efforts of Anita Bryant and others the following year. Before the 1976 Ordinance was repealed and before meeting the authors, Melodie was invited to be interview by Channel 10 News WPLG anchored by Ann Bishop, a popular local journalist. A news crew came to Melodie's Coconut Grove studio apartment, rented monthly for $175.00, to help put a face on what "Gay" looked like and to introduce that face to the community. People were expected to soon go to the polls to vote "For" or "Against" the repeal of the ordinance after the new law was on record for a few months without incident. The news crew stayed inside Melodie's apartment for 4 hours attempting to learn how she felt discriminated against. At the time, she could not come up with a direct sense of discrimination to report. Melodie is first to say, "I was very naïve."

By 1977, Melodie had contributed a chapter in a volume titled Now What? to help parents understand their gay child; Dr. Virginia Pendergrass, a clinical psychologist at FIU, was also among the contributors and she, with the Center for Dialog, often put workshops together where Melodie also presented.

It was during her Master's level training with the Gestalt Institute of Miami, Dr. Calvin Leonard, then Dean of the University of Miami School of Continuing Education, suggested that she meet directly with Dr. Rockway and Mr. Kunst of the Transperience Center. It was at this meeting when Melodie learned the Transperience Center was only a few doors down from where she lived. The two men began telling her of the $55,000 grant they had written through the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) to fund five positions at the Transperience Center. They asked her to take a position as the Community Outreach Coordinator and Mental Health Counselor for the Transperience Center that they directed. She accepted the position after securing her credentials. The Transperience Center was a community health center for people living in alternative lifestyles. The grant was awarded and, following the repeal of the "Gay Rights Ordinance," the grant was terminated following protests from ultra conservative groups. The trio Moorehead, Rockway, and Kunst then created a new organization, Congress United for Rights and Equality (CURE), and they filed a lawsuit through the Department of Labor for the grant's termination. Going to Federal Court twice without a judge discharging the case, the trio did not have the necessary funds to continue this fight. The gay community, even on the national scale, had not yet mobilized enough to assist. The trio ended up on food stamps for six months and Melodie conducted her last counseling session on the floor of the Transperience Center, as their rented furniture had been repossessed.

It was during this downtrodden time that Melodie came to better understand the many faces of discrimination. Kunst even asked Moorehead, "Do you feel discrimination now?" She replied "Yes!," and then he asked: "Are you ready to collect signatures?" She then committed to collecting 18,000 of the needed signatures to place an offensive effort to get Human Rights (Gay Rights) on the November 1978 ballot. The trio worked together to get certified registered voters' signatures to place three new ordinances onto the Dade County ballot that banned discrimination in housing, employment, transportation, and support equality for gays and others living alternative lifestyles, including heterosexuals. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the trio organized to pass equality ordinances and promote media awareness to protect individual rights.

Melodie relocated to Fort Lauderdale and began her PhD program in 1980. This relocation was picked up by the local press as Melodie met with every County Commissioner in Broward County regarding Gay Rights. It was not until the passage of the Eckart Bill, which called for the Privacy Rights of citizens in Florida, that Melodie shifted her focus to fully establishing herself in healthcare. By this time, she had learned the great need for culturally sensitive service in the mental health and medical field. Melodie routinely provided services for HTLV-3, later known as AIDS services, to individuals in and out of hospital settings.

With unanticipated turn of events, by the mid-1980s the then Dr. Moorehead began working with other groups of very often discriminated people struggling with the disease of morbid and super obesity. Her talents and training were recognized and her work evolved to lecturing both nationally and internationally as an invited speaker while maintaining a longstanding private practice and holding staff privileges and responsivities for decades in Broward's hospital system. In 2002 Dr. Moorehead was awarded the Golden Circle of Excellence Award from what now is called ASMBS. She was the first woman and non-surgeon to receive this honor.

During the height of her career, a then-hospitalized Dr. John Graves, who served as the Board of Trustees President of what is today the Stonewall National Museum, Archives, and Library, asked her to serve as president of the decades-old organization. Knowing that this lovely, generous man was terminally ill, she agreed to his request. By 2004 she was at the helm of Stonewall and personally funded a trip to Washington, D.C., where, among her achievements as president, she signed a contract with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to bring its historic exhibition, "Nazi Persecution of the Homosexual 1933-45," to South Florida. The exhibition was presented at the Fort Lauderdale main library.

Finally, Dr. Moorehead closed her Professional Association and successfully retired her South Florida 50-year career in mental health. She did so only after providing two years of face-to-face isolation protocol support during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown in a long-term care facility. Residents were mandated to remain in their closed rooms while family visitation was prohibited. As of Fall 2025, she retains her licensure and board certification and remains active in licensing professionals and programs worldwide in the use of The Bariatric Analysis and Reporting Outcome System (BAROS) and the Moorehead-Ardelt Quality of Life Questionnaire II (MAII) of which she holds copyright.

Dr. Moorehead encourages all who visit this bio sketch to enjoy the archives and share what you learn with others so that history does not have to repeat itself again. Biography compiled by Dr. Melodie Kay Moorehead

Acquisition information:
Materials were donated by the Melodie Moorehead Archives
Arrangement:

The materials in this collection are arranged as follows:

Personal Mementos Correspondence Between Moorehead, Kunst, Rockway, and Others Graduate Seminar (Compiled by Moorehead) Publicity 1970s-1980s Gay Rights Activism Biography Transperience and Mental Health Advocacy Photography Newspapers Magazines Newspaper Clippings Audio Ephemera

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

This collection is open for research. Researchers must contact Special Collections & University Archives in advance for access to unprocessed born digital materials in this collection. Collection restrictions, copyright limitations, or technical complications may hinder the SPCUA's ability to provide access to unprocessed born digital materials.

Terms of access:

The Melodie Moorehead Papers are owned by Florida International University. This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

For more information please visit: https://library.fiu.edu/find/copyright/general

Location of this collection:
Florida International University
11200 SW 8th Street
Miami
FL
33199
USA