Teaching Tolerance
As published in Jewish Affairs magazine, Autumn 2001
Lida Lebovic, now 74, was only 16 in 1944 when the Nazis marched into her hometown of Ungvar, Hungary. As the number of Holocaust survivors declines, it is increasingly important to insure that their stories are told so that the world never forgets what happened during those turbulent, horrifying years. This has become her personal mission. Since 1997, she has been conducting seminars for teachers and lecturing to young students in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in the surrounding communities.
Did Lebovic always discuss openly the atrocities she witnessed? Absolutely not. For many years, she resisted talking about the subject at all, even with her family. Then, while living in Los Angeles in 1995, she was contacted by film director Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, whose mission it is to archive videotaped testimonials of Holocaust survivors around the world. Lebovic’s videotape is one of over 50,000 Spielberg has already collected. The filmmaker plans to have the videos catalogued and house them in a library where visitors can look up survivors by name, or by city or country of origin. The Shoah Foundation is still in the process of conducting interviews.
Upon retiring to Nevada in 1997, Lebovic and her husband, William, immediately joined the Holocaust Survivors Group of Las Vegas. Gina Klonoff, volunteer coordinator for Holocaust lecturers for the Clark County School District, encouraged Lebovic to speak publicly about her experiences, but Lebovic was insecure, having never addressed a group of people before. However, at the urgings of her granddaughter, Lebovic decided to share her story. As she put it, “If I’m not going to talk about it, sooner or later there won’t be anybody to talk about it.”
Lebovic has conducted seminars for teachers on how to teach the sensitive subject to children, beginning as young as third grade. The lessons are tailored for appropriateness to age level. Middle school children, for example, are given more background in geography, history and politics. High-schoolers can more easily comprehend the atrocities of the war, including the genocide, while elementary school children are taught about “good people” and “bad people” to help them understand the concept of tolerance. Most recently, Lebovic spoke before a class studying German Civilization in the 20th Century at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
By sharing stories of her experiences during the war years, Lebovic has developed a rapport with the children, exposing them to a more personal side of the war they are studying. They are encouraged to ask questions, which have ranged from “Have you ever seen Hitler?” to “Why did they make you shave your heads?”
The third of four children, Lebovic was born in 1928 in the town of Ungvar, Czechoslovakia (which was incorporated into Hungary in 1938). Nestled in the beautiful Carpathian mountains, the town had a Jewish population of about 9,000 out of a total of 40,000. Lebovic’s father died in an accident in 1935, when she was just seven years old, and her mother raised her and her brother and two sisters on their own.
When war broke out with the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the family knew little of what was going on, though the fighting was close to home. “News didn’t travel as it does today,” Lebovic explains. “We knew that Jews were being put in ghettos in Poland; we were aware of the persecution going on. But we lived in a small town. We had no television. We were much less aware than people are today of what’s going on in the world.”
On March 9, 1944, the German army occupied Hungary. Lebovic recalls her family seeing pictures of their troops marching into Budapest. Within a few days, the German army had spread out all over Hungary. The authorities then issued the first order: all Jews were to pack 40 pounds of belongings per person. “Everything else,” Lebovic said, “was to remain in our houses, and money and jewelry was to be turned over to the authorities.” The town’s Jewish inhabitants were escorted into a fenced-in lumber yard filled with tents. In this makeshift ghetto, surrounded by guards, thousands of people lived for one month, awaiting an uncertain fate.
In May, internees were informed that they were being sent to central Hungary to do field work. Lebovic, her mother, brother and younger sister were crammed into a train car with 60 other people. She describes a nightmarish three-day journey, during which the passengers, many of whom were ill, had only the food they brought with them. Water was provided only twice during the trip and buckets were used as “bathrooms.” When they arrived at the Polish border, Lebovic’s mother realized the authorities had lied. She gathered up her children and prepared them for the worst. Lebovic’s students sit mesmerized as she recalls her mother’s words: “They are taking us to Poland, where Jews are persecuted. I don’t know what will happen to us, but if we are separated, you must do what you are told and make the best of it.”
When the train arrived in Auschwitz, Lebovic was immediately separated from her mother, sister and brother. “I was 90% sure we’d meet again,” Lebovic says, her voice cracking with emotion. She did not know at the time that her mother and 13-year-old sister had been killed as soon as they’d arrived at Auschwitz. Lebovic recalls taking off her shawl and giving it to her sister because she was crying from the cold. She was a “tiny, skinny girl,” Lebovic explains. “Maybe if she’d been more like me--big, healthy, strong--she might have lived.”
In Auschwitz, there was no work to be done; everyone was idle. There was little food and prisoners were terribly mistreated. (“Couldn’t you get a hamburger?” one of Lebovic’s students once asked). Remaining alone in Auschwitz a short time, Lebovic never believed the stories about what was happening there. People made uneasy jokes about the chimney and the horrible black smoke that poured from it day and night. She can still remember “the stench of burning meat,” though she did not want to accept the reality of the massacre going on there. Later she would understand that the purpose of Auschwitz, an extermination camp, was to transform people into weak, deteriorated beings and then kill them because they were no longer strong enough to work in one of the labor camps nearby.
In June, Lebovic was transported to a small labor camp in Hamburg, Germany. There were about 1,200 women there and, since the purpose of this camp was work rather than extermination, the conditions were much better. “We worked very hard, but because I
didn’t see any crematorium or smoke, my belief in my mother’s words was strengthened,” Lebovic recalls.
In the labor camp, Lebovic learned one of the most important lessons of the war, one she finds imperative to share with students. The German soldiers, guards and duty officers at this camp were not “beasts,” as those at Auschwitz had been described. “They had human feelings,” Lebovic remembers. She admits she has seen “good Germans as well as bad,” and this is something she tries to convey to the students she visits. “You have to have faith in people and humanity no matter what,” she says. The guards at Hamburg allowed workers to observe Jewish holidays and generally “treated [them] like people.” Lebovic, the youngest woman in the camp, celebrated her 17th birthday there, a fact her youngest students find especially difficult to swallow. No birthday cake, no presents, no party.
On January 19, 1945, the Russian army liberated Auschwitz, though very few people were found still alive. In February, in an effort to erase all evidence of the camp at Hamburg, German soldiers sent all of its prisoners, including Lebovic, to Bergen-Belsen. Upon arriving there, Lebovic realized it was a concentration camp, equipped with a crematorium. All four of the doors to the crematorium were ajar and prisoners could see dead bodies all over the floor. Lebovic remembers thinking, “Is this the end? Is it possible? I had worked, prayed and obeyed for a whole year. I had to live. I had to tell my mother all I did.”
The guards sat all the prisoners down on the floor near the crematorium and, recalls Lebovic, “We thought that was it. We said our goodbyes.” After two hours, however, the prisoners were dispersed into the camp to find places to sleep. Lebovic then met a woman she knew from home and learned that her older sister was in the camp. She found her sister on the floor in one of the barracks, amongst the sick and dying. She was weak from typhus, which was “raging throughout the camp,” Lebovic recalls.
There was no food or water in the camp and people were dying by the thousands each day from disease. Lebovic still remembers the piles of corpses everywhere and the terrible smell of death in the air. “It was Hell on Earth,” she says. “But we knew the end was close.” The British army had surrounded Bergen-Belsen and there was no way out for the SS guards, who began hiding in their barracks. On April 15, the British army entered the camp and brought in disinfectants in the hopes of stopping the spread of typhus. They brought food and water. Most of all, they brought freedom to the thousands of prisoners who had managed to stay alive. “We were finally free,” Lebovic explains. “When the gates opened up, we looked for friends and family we knew.” She raced over to the men’s camp, where she got word that her brother was alive and had gone to the women’s camp to look for his sisters. “I found him minutes later, feeding our sister,” she remembers.
While her sister and brother remained near Bergen-Belsen for treatment of the typhus from which they were suffering, Lebovic returned to Ungvar alone. She found a desolate town. “There was no one there,” she says somberly. She returned to the house she lived in, but knew she would not find anything. By that time, she was already aware that her mother and younger sister were dead. Looking around the camps after liberation, she had seen no elderly people, nor children. “You draw the conclusion,” she says, her voice heavy. “Most of the old people and the children were killed.”
Aware that Ungvar would soon fall under Russian sway, Lebovic decided to head for Prague. It was there that she met her husband, William, and together they spent the next two years trying to patch up their lives. “We tried to make up for the horrors we’d endured by having as normal a life as we could,” she says.
In 1947, wishing to escape from Communist-dominated Eastern Europe, the Lebovics began looking for a way out. Upon hearing that Chile was giving out visas, they successfully applied for one, despite knowing nothing about any South American country, and settled in Santiago. There they lived for fifteen years, before finally immigrating to the United States in 1963.
Today, the soft-spoken Lebovic, who has a daughter and three grandchildren, has become increasingly active as a lecturer and speaker throughout Nevada. After giving one of her lectures, she is always pleasantly surprised by the reactions she gets from students. Several students have sent touching letters praising Lebovic for having the courage to speak of what she endured and thanking her for exposing them to this unpopular chapter in history.
A project recently undertaken by a teacher at Becker Middle School in Las Vegas especially impressed Lebovic. The teacher had students collect Coca-Cola bottle caps and bring them to school, where they are piled in a hallway. The purpose of the colossal pile is to help students comprehend the number of Jews who were killed during World War II, a number generally accepted as approximately six million. Lebovic’s eyes light up when she speaks of such projects. She is hopeful that this understanding will prevent the atrocities of the Holocaust from being forgotten or worse, reoccurring.
Lebovic recently gave an account of her personal experiences at a mandatory seminar for junior high and high school history teachers in Reno, Nevada. Nevada state law requires that the Holocaust be compulsory subject matter in all junior high and high school history classes. Few other states have to date adopted this law, but Lebovic is hopeful that this will occur in due course.
“If you reach one person by preaching tolerance and no hate, you have reached the world,” Lebovic believes. This is her mission.
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Transformations
Completed 2005; seeking publication
Echele Teich’s daily routine may sound like a typical day to many Americans: check email, drive to work, hit the gym, pick up nieces and nephews from school, run errands, cook dinner. But Echele’s life is anything but typical. Straightforward and engaging, Echele is fond of proclaiming she’s lived two lifetimes in one. Just one year ago, she was legally blind, relying on a lovable yellow Lab to assist with basic tasks like getting around in public. And she used to be a he.
Echele’s life began as inauspiciously as yours and mine. Born in 1964 into a close-knit, Jewish family in Elizabeth, NJ, Echele entered the world as Michael, a perfectly normal boy growing up in an upper middle-class suburb just 20 miles from New York City. A generally happy child at home, Michael was teased and alienated from an early age for displaying the feminine characteristics that became increasingly hard to hide as he avoided sports in favor of dance classes. “Kids would beat me up, call me names,” Echele says, with a Jersey inflection weakened only slightly after 19 years in California. “I never liked being a boy. I always felt trapped in the wrong body,” she recalls. In order to escape the constant badgering, Michael forewent the hockey-playing and other athletics of his friends, preferring instead to socialize with girls. He was especially fond of playing house, dressing in his mother’s clothing, becoming “fixated” with shoes and declaring “I feel like a girl” at just five years old.
Now, at 40, Echele reflects on her boyhood with incredible clarity. “I’ve been a woman all my life,” she asserts. “I just happened to be born with a penis.”
The nearness of New York provided a childhood rich in culture -- theatre, opera, museums, Lincoln Center. An effeminate child, Michael was bitten early by the Broadway bug, developing a passion for musical theater and participating in summer stock and regional productions. As a high school sophomore, Michael became heavily involved with music and began, for the first time in his young life, to feel accepted by his peers and establish real friendships. He devotedly studied acting and singing, as well as tap, ballet and jazz, landing several supporting roles in Broadway musicals in the 70s and early 80s. A career in theater was all but preordained for Michael, though despite the small successes he achieved, Echele believes she could have gone farther had she been a female, a realization she calls “a common thread throughout my life.”
In addition to appearing in musicals, Michael was confidently exploring the gay lifestyle as a flamboyant and outgoing teenager. While he did date one girl during his senior year, Michael was mocked nonetheless for his femininity. Luckily for him, his open-minded parents and siblings never made an issue over his dissatisfaction with being male and instead accepted him for who he was, welcoming his gay friends and acknowledging his longing to be female. “I have an amazing family,” Echele notes. “They never tried to change me.”
Ultimately, however, the persistence of a form of manic depression landed 17-year-old Michael in the hospital for several months for treatment of bipolar disorder. While in therapy during his hospitalization, Michael began exploring and focusing on his female feelings even further, discussing them with psychiatrists and nurses, in and out of group therapy.
Soon after his release from the hospital, Michael studied Deaf Education at Union County Junior College, attaining American Sign Language (ASL) certification before eventually transferring to Kean College. An extremely popular student, Michael established lasting friendships through the campus gay organization, a place where, Echele explains, “I was able to be me without any pressure, mocking, nothing. It was so freeing.”
College also marked a turning point for Michael as it was then that he began dating men. Throughout his college years, Michael became increasingly anxious to be female, a feeling he began verbalizing to more and more people. Upon graduating from Kean, Michael began teaching English at a local middle school. Meanwhile, Michael’s parents had decided to escape New Jersey’s harsh winters by moving to southern California. The family settled in the northern San Diego town of Vista, joined a few months later by Michael. Once in California, Michael found work as a sign language interpreter and began exploring San Diego’s eye-opening gay nightlife.
Michael’s life took a dramatic turn for the better when, in a piano bar on August 3, 1988, he was introduced to Ray McCaffrey, the man who became his love of his life. “The night I met Ray was magic,” Echele recalls of meeting the kind, intelligent soul who shared Michael’s great sense of humor, as well as his passion for Broadway show tunes and fashion. “We had a wonderful first night talking and singing,” Echele remembers, adding, “I knew this was the person I was going to be with.”
The pair quickly grew inseparable, setting up house in the upwardly-mobile, largely gay Hillcrest section of San Diego. Michael continued work as a freelance sign-language interpreter in settings ranging from classrooms to medical lectures to synagogues, while Ray earned his living as a visual merchandiser, designing mannequins and displays for local department stores. The couple held season tickets to the Civic Auditorium, where they relished big, Broadway musicals as well as smaller productions. Las Vegas was a frequent getaway for the couple, who enjoyed staying at the Paris Hotel, especially in the winter months.
From the onset of their relationship, Michael was candid with Ray about his desire to become a female. It was with Ray’s love and support that Michael was able to seriously consider gender reassignment surgery and the laundry list of emotional and physical changes that went with it.
But before Michael and Ray could begin the arduous process of preparing for surgery, they were dealt a significant blow: around 1990, Michael suddenly lost his eyesight. Having suffered from various ailments, including Crohn’s disease (an infection of the lower intestine), high blood pressure, bi-polar and thyroid disorder and diabetes insipidus (sometimes referred to as “water” diabetes), Michael was ingesting a daily cocktail of over 20 medications. In addition, the drugs Michael was taking reacted poorly to each other. Unrelated to the ailments, a build-up of fluid in Michael’s brain gradually led to his blindness. (Sadly, at that time, doctors did not conduct an MRI or CT scan, though such tests would have detected the fluid build-up.)
Life changed drastically for Michael and Ray then, although they managed everything as a team. Michael was accompanied everywhere he went by Nell, a sweet, reliable yellow Lab who helped him get around in public, in taxis, on planes, on trips to Las Vegas, even when out with Ray. For nine months, he spent three days a week learning daily living skills at the San Diego Service for the Blind. In addition, Ray obligingly drove Michael to “Neutral Corner,” a local support group for pre-op transsexuals. Yet, as Echele recalls, “I didn’t allow my being blind to be a handicap to our lives. We enjoyed everything together, just as when I could see.” With Michael’s desire to live “as normal a life as possible,” the couple’s active lifestyle changed remarkably little: they continued going to the theater, shopping at the mall, renting movies and participating as often as they could in the things they did before.
That included discussing and preparing for Michael’s long-anticipated gender reassignment surgery, a monumental life change wholly supported by his partner. There were so many questions to be answered. “How will we go from living as a gay couple to living as a heterosexual couple? How will our friends and family react?”
Among the myriad questions Michael had was one carrying probably the most importance to him: “Will I still be the same person?” Fortunately, Michael felt he knew the answer to that question long before surgery became a serious consideration. “It was changing my life, but it wasn’t changing me. It was only going to make my brain and body more congruent,” Echele says.
Another important question many candidates for reassignment surgery must consider is how their partner will adjust to their transformation. Michael was blessed with a devoted partner in Ray, who reassured him with the most straightforward of answers: “I love you, not your gender.” With that, any remaining emotional obstacle was removed and the couple went ahead with plans for the procedure.
As one might expect, preparations for gender reassignment surgery are extensive. The entire process takes about two years’ time. Once a person decides to change gender, the first step is to begin psychiatric evaluations with a gender specialist, someone whose job it is to counsel pre-op transsexuals on making the transition. After evaluations are underway, a male-to-female gender reassignment candidate must begin hormone therapy, consisting of a daily cocktail of hormones taken to gradually make the male body more feminine. Hormones such as Premarin prompt the development of breasts and typically lower the voice, while diminishing obvious male traits like facial and body hair. The skin becomes softer and smoother. Astoundingly, the male body slowly transforms into a more curvaceous, feminine-looking shape.
Once psychiatric evaluations and hormone therapy are in progress, the next step in male-to-female reassignment is to begin actually living as a woman, entering a transition period that lasts roughly nine months. During this time, the reassignment surgery candidate learns and begins to apply behavioral changes and new routines, such as applying makeup, a skill made even more challenging for Michael, who lacked the benefit of sight. He was forced to learn the bone structure of his face and neck so he could determine where to apply base, powder, blush and eye shadow. As Echele readily points out, “The hardest was the lipstick, but I got so good at it that even to this day, I don’t need a mirror to apply it!”
In his study of makeup application and other feminine activities, Michael also received considerable help from Ray. They undertook the challenge as a team, the same way they approached everything Michael’s sizeable transition would entail.
After nine months of living essentially as a woman, Michael began the arduous process of applying for surgery, having followed the Benjamin Guidelines of Care. Named for Dr. Harry Benjamin, a pioneer in the field of gender reassignment surgery, the guidelines stipulate the steps candidates for the procedure must adhere to. These include undergoing evaluations by psychiatrists and endocrinologists, taking the necessary hormones and modifying important information like one’s birth certificate, driver’s license and social security number (the number itself does not change, but the office is notified of the individual’s name and status change, as are his bank and other institutions).
Michael had long before chosen the name Echele, which was suggested by his female college Sociology professor after Michael presented a paper on gender dysphoria (the clinical term for persons who have confusion or discomfort about their birth gender). He and his professor began a discussion about Michael’s choice of a name, during which his professor remarked, “You’re not going to use Michele, are you?” The two wrote the name “Michael” on the chalkboard and rearranged the letters until they came up with Echele. It was Ray who later suggested Danielle instead of Dana, Echele’s original choice for a middle name.
After Michael completed his transition, he submitted letters of recommendation from his psychiatrists, doctors and social workers to Dr. Stanley Biber, the surgeon assigned to evaluate his case. Michael later flew to Trinidad, Colorado’s tiny Mount San Rafael Hospital for the final element in his preparation: meeting Dr. Biber face-to-face. Once he completed his thorough evaluation, Dr. Biber enthusiastically approved Michael for surgery.
With preparations both emotional and physical behind him, Michael underwent the $10,500 surgery (paid for by his supportive parents) in January 1994. The two-and-a-half-hour operation entailed making a small incision in the penis and essentially pushing it up into the body, thereby building a cavity for the new vagina. Michael’s outer genitalia formed a vagina, with labia being constructed out of remaining skin from the penis while cartilage from Michael’s testicles was reshaped to form a clitoris.
Male-to-female transsexuals typically possess every anatomical feature of a woman, apart from a uterus. Hormones elicit a monthly period, though there is no blood flow without egg production; only the moods, cramps and nausea associated with a “simulated” menstrual cycle. They are equipped with a clitoris, which makes them physically capable of becoming aroused just as easily (if not more so) as women than they were before. Echele even insists she has experienced better orgasms as a female than she did as a man.
Remaining in the hospital for nine days following surgery, Echele had just begun her post-operative journey. While in the hospital, doctors administered morphine for the pain and packed Echele’s new vagina with gauze to keep it from collapsing. Echele spent six days with her legs in stirrups, unable to leave her bed. Around the seventh day, Echele’s stitches and catheter were removed, allowing her to finally walk around, use the bathroom and get outside for some fresh air (and a celebratory cigarette). Her mother, Doris, remained by her side through her recovery at the hospital, while Ray and other family and friends sent flowers and checked in frequently by phone.
For her first six months home from the hospital, Echele was required to use a “dilator” twice a day, inserting it into the vagina for 30 minutes to ensure that everything remained “open” and in order for her to become accustomed to pressure. Visits to her local doctor, who was amazed at the surgery’s results, left Echele even more satisfied with her transformation.
Yet apart from the physical changes Echele had undergone, she and Ray also faced a different type of transition: that of homosexual to heterosexual couple. As far as their public lives went, Echele and Ray were incredibly fortunate to be accepted “with open arms” by everyone around them just as they were pre-surgery. Those closest to them were thrilled for Echele in witnessing her incredible transformation into the person she’d wanted to be since childhood.
Echele notes that, while she and Ray were generally accepted as a gay couple amongst their family and friends, their public life was “much easier” as a straight couple. Apart from sexually, she acknowledges, little changed between the two with regard to their private life. However, as a straight couple in public, she and Ray were free to display their affection for each other far more freely than they did as gay men.
As for their physical relationship, Echele and Ray were given the green light to being experimenting with intercourse six months after surgery, only now it would be as man and woman. The couple visited a counselor to help with Ray’s adjustment to Echele’s new anatomy, and the process took some time. As Echele jokingly recalls, “Let’s just say I had to teach him a few things.” Still, she fondly maintains, “He was an excellent student.”
Following the surgery and their period of transition and adjustment, the happy couple lived as normal a life as possible. That is, until the relationship came to its unforeseen end, on August 2, 2002. On that terrible day, one day before their 14th anniversary, Echele came home to find that Ray had taken his own life.
Initially, the shock and grief were overwhelming, as Echele describes feeling her life was over and repeatedly asking herself, “How will I live without him?” Family and friends were a tremendous comfort and support to Echele in the dismal days and weeks to follow. There was shock and devastation coupled with limitless tears, as Echele dealt with matters such as selling the house she and Ray had loved, moving in with her sister, Helene, and explaining to her nieces and nephews that their beloved “Uncle Ray” had died. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to deal with in my life,” Echele explains, a trace of grief in her voice still palpable nearly 18 months later. “Harder than the ridicule and teasing I received as a kid, harder than wanting to be a woman, harder than learning to live in darkness, harder than anything I’d experienced.”
Before long, a family member discovered a local support group, Survivors of Suicide, and Echele attended meetings for six months, often accompanied by her sister or mother. It was there she began to recognize that Ray’s death was not her doing or her fault. That allowed Echele some measure of comfort and gave her the reassurance to move forward into the next phase of her extraordinary life.
The following year, on the 4th of July holiday, Echele began feeling dizzy and overly hyper, “As if,” she recalls, “I was going to have a heart attack.” She phoned her sister and mother, and in no time, the three were en route to the hospital. There, ER doctors discovered Echele was extremely dehydrated and showing dangerously low levels of potassium and sodium. One doctor then made the decision that would change Echele’s life: she underwent an MRI and CT scan, which confirmed that her brain was swimming in alarming levels of fluid. She was admitted to the hospital and taken off the myriad medications she’d been taking.
Having all her medications abruptly, simultaneously eliminated shocked Echele’s system and caused her to sink into a medically-induced psychosis. She lost all sense of who and where she was, retreating (at least in her mind) back to her childhood in New Jersey, forgetting that her parents had divorced and asking why her watch--designed for the sight-impaired--“had bumps on it.”
Echele’s levels soon returned to normal and Echele was admitted to the hospital’s psychiatric unit for evaluation. There, doctors reviewed her medications and prescribed only those she absolutely needed (a mere 40% of what she had been taking). Doctors determined that the combination and excessive amounts of medication she was ingesting were the source of her blindness. Once the fluid was drained from her brain and her body became accustomed to her less-severe regimen of medication, Echele’s eyesight slowly returned. “I couldn’t wait to see my nieces and nephews,” Echele gushes. “Everyone had explained how they looked over the years, but seeing them brought tears to my eyes.”
Newly-sighted, Echele wasted no time getting reacquainted with the things she used to enjoy. She immediately got a driver’s license and happily assumed responsibility for transporting her nieces and nephews to and from school, taking them out, babysitting and “becoming completely involved in their lives in a way I couldn’t before,” Echele cheerfully explains.
Today, at 40, Echele is so radically changed from the person she was at 10, 20 and 30 that it’s as if she’s existed as several different people in one lifetime. Ten years ago, she was Michael, anxiously awaiting the day she’d realize her dream of becoming a woman. Two years ago, she bid farewell to her beloved partner of 14 years. Eighteen months ago, she was blind, relying on a guide dog to navigate public places.
Having undergone radical gender reassignment surgery and, later, miraculously regaining her eyesight, Echele is today a confident, contented woman. She teaches American Sign Language, Life Living Skills and computer courses to retarded and developmentally-disabled adults, a job she enjoys immeasurably. Additionally, she’s working to set up an entire sign language program, which has never before been put into place. She works hard to maintain a 100-pound weight loss with daily workouts at the gym and a healthy diet. “I love how I’ve become a productive member of society,” she boasts. She’s also dating and enjoying an active social life, filled with friends, theatre, shopping and dining out.
Echele has endured and accomplished more in her lifetime than most and yet she remains exceptionally grounded, never losing sight of how lucky she is to have wonderful friends and a loving family who accept her completely. “At 40, with everything I have lived through, I can’t complain about how my life is. I would never have expected my life to turn out this wonderful in a million years. Life is incredible.”