An Interview with Dr. Graham McDougall
PrimeTimers Worldwide, Inc. is a network of groups for mature gay, bisexual, and transgender men. Their focus is creating a supportive atmosphere with educational, cultural, and social activities. There are over 70 chapters in the United States and Canada, and independent groups in Australia, Columbia, Denmark, Ecuador, Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands.
I recently met with Dr. Graham McDougall, the president of the Greater New Orleans PrimeTimers (GNOPT), to learn more about the organization. Graham worked for many years in academia in the fields of nursing, education, and clinical research. In 2020, he was honored as Distinguished Educator in Gerontological Nursing from the National Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence. He retired a few years ago, and moved back to New Orleans with his husband, the artist Rick Shopfner.
JM: Hi, Graham! Thank you for speaking with me. You moved back to New Orleans a few years ago after living away for many years. What brought you back home?
GM: I decided to retire in December of 2021 after the pandemic. Rick, my husband of 41 years, and I both decided it was time to move home to New Orleans. I’m a seventh generation New Orleanian, and Rick is a New Orleanian because of his degree from the Tulane School of Social Work. He and I met in 1983, and after a few years together we moved to Austin, Texas to pursue our graduate degrees. I completed a PhD in Educational Psychology, and Rick got his Master of Fine Arts. Our careers brought us to various places around the country: Texas, Ohio, Alabama, and Florida. But we’re delighted to have moved back home. This is where we belong.
JM: How did you first get involved with the Prime Timers?
GM: I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1980s, and at the time I was also writing a column on gay men’s health for a journal called Chiron Rising. I got a call one day from an older gentleman named Woody Baldwin, who was the founder of PrimeTimers. He had recently retired from a career in academia, and was considering moving to Austin. He had gotten my name from someone who was familiar with my column, and knew I lived there. We met for breakfast and visited for a couple of hours. Soon after that, Woody and his partner, Sean O’Neill, moved to Austin, and formed a local PrimeTimers chapter there. I was writing my dissertation on subjective memory evaluation in older adults, and Woody introduced me to 25 or 30 men from the PrimeTimers group. So they were very helpful to me, and I was grateful for that. We left Austin in 1991, but I was recruited back in 1998 to teach at the university. I was 41 years old by then, and I could relate more to the guys in PrimeTimers. That’s how I first got involved, and have been a member of various chapters in different states over the years. I’ve sort of aged into it from when I was in my late 30s and now into my middle 70s. And here I am now as president of the New Orleans chapter, which I never expected to have happen in my lifetime.
JM: Tell me about the New Orleans chapter of PrimeTimers. When did it first launch?
GM: The New Orleans chapter started in 1994. We celebrated our 30th anniversary last September. I didn’t know that when they elected me as president last April. Two of the leaders from international came down asking, “how are you planning to celebrate your 30th anniversary?” And I said, oh, I didn’t know we were having one! But I’ve realized that the guys who formed the New Orleans chapter were ahead of their time. There wasn’t a lot of discussion about aging issues in our community when it was formed.
JM: What kinds of activities do you offer?
GM: We meet for lunch twice a month, and have some other get-togethers throughout the year, like holiday parties around Christmas, and picnics in the summer. We are planning to institute some other things, like meeting for happy hour at a bar. That’s something the group did regularly before COVID. We’re also planning to have movie nights, and maybe some other activities. In fact, PrimeTimers International recently put out a document called “150 Activities That Don’t Involve Food.” You know we love to eat here in this town, and it’s a great part of the life here. But while about 85% of our members are retired and have flexibility on their schedules, the people who are still working want more activities on the weekends or in the evenings. So this is a dilemma that we on the board are dealing with right now. Someone suggested we go to a day at the races at the fairgrounds, so we’re planning to do that sometime in early March.
JM: How can people find out more about the local PrimeTimers chapter?
GM: We have a website (https://chapters.theprimetimersww.com/neworleans), and we also have a Facebook group (“Greater New Orleans Prime Timers Group”). You can request an application by emailing us at gnopt1994@gmail.com. Membership dues are $40 a year. That gets you on the mailing list and gives you access to other members’ information. Because we really are about social networking and bringing people together.
JM: Fantastic. Is there anything about the group that I haven’t asked you that you’d like people to know about?
GM: Well, our age of entry is 21. Believe it or not, you don’t have to be over 50 to join. It’s important to have intergenerational communication and friendships. If you don’t spend any time with people who are older than you, how are you going to learn how to handle your own aging?
JM: I love that! Intergenerational connections can be such an enriching experience for people of all ages. Thank you so much for your time, Graham.
