Special Report: Oklahoma honors Queen of Gay Hate Anita Bryant with proclamation and laurels - the whole sordid story!

October 1977 Des Moines Iowa: The pie in the face heard around the world.
During a presser, Anita Bryant was hit the face with a pie by LGBTQ activist
Tom Higgins. Bryant said "At least it was a fruit pie" then burst into tears.

Oklahoma's new governor Kevin Stitt, who already courted controversy by naming a Christian dominionist to lead his transition team and holding an inaugural prayer at an anti-gay church, has now decided the notorious Anita Bryant is worthy of state honors.

On March 22nd Gov. Stitt declared that Anita Bryant Day would be celebrated on March 25th. 

So who is Anita Bryant and why is it a controversy for the governor of Oklahoma to honor her?

Hate Trackers told that story a decade ago.

Ten years ago, Hate Trackers did a special series of reports on Bryant after going undercover inside her Oklahoma City ministry. The info below comes from those reports.

PART ONE: THE RISE, FALL, AND RESURRECTION OF ANITA BRYANT

  

On June 21, 1977 32-year-old Robert Hillsborough lay feet away from the doorstep of his San Francisco home bleeding to death from fifteen stab wounds inflicted by a young man that stood over him screaming “FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!” According to an eyewitness account, one of Robert’s four assailants looked at him and said, “This is for Anita Bryant.”

First blood had been drawn and the mother of that fallen gay man would soon step forward and point an accusing and condemning finger at the Florida Sunshine Woman.

31 years later…

On December 10, 2008, Anita Bryant stood looking out her husband’s office window staring towards the Harkins Cine-Capri movie theater in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown entertainment district. Wanting a better view, she left her fourth story perch to go street side and, while standing next to a water taxi stand ignored by passer-bys who in another era would’ve swarmed the one-time celebrity, she anxiously monitored the cinema. The biting cold air eventually forced her to move back inside to pace and stare. And fume.

For over the canal and across the street were hundreds of gays and lesbians a scant block away from the woman who had at one time led a national crusade against homosexuality. This time, however, the homosexuals weren’t there to scream at Bryant or hit her in the face with a fruit pie. In fact, none in the gathering crowd even knew she was nearby and watching. None would know of her actions that day until this gay journalist, working undercover during two separate occasions, obtained access to Bryant’s hidden sanctuary.

The spied-upon crowd was braving the cold, gray near-winter evening to see a special screening of the film ‘Milk’, which honored the life and death of legendary gay rights activist Harvey Milk – a film in which Anita Bryant is a prominent villain. To them Bryant would be a ridiculed subject on the movie screen, not someone that was discreetly watching them congregate and seething over the unfairness of life and the immorality she feels has overtaken the beloved country she once supported by doing USO tours with comedian Bob Hope and singing the Star Spangled Banner at baseball games.

Bryant would later say, “I know God doesn’t want my trials to be easy ones. I know there is a purpose to this. I tried not to be offended by the openness of so many homosexuals out there that day, but I have a weakness and I falter. Where has our nation arrived at that such a man is being honored? The evilness that walks the streets below me has only won the battle, not the war. To everything there is a season and now it is the time for my Father’s righteousness to return.”  

Shortly after Bryant confided in me about the return of such righteousness, her husband, Charlie Dry, threatened to have this gay journalist killed after he discovered the person the couple had independently befriended was in reality there to expose his wife’s resurrected hate campaign. It didn’t help matters, when Dry realized he’d done a bit too much talking to the wrong person himself.

***

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk had become the first openly gay man to be elected to an important political position in American history. The following year San Francisco City Supervisor Milk was assassinated by fellow supervisor Dan White, who also killed Mayor George Moscone in the city hall shooting spree.

Milk and Moscone were buried after their bodies lie at rest in the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda, so that mourners could pay their final respects. Over 30,000 Bay Area residents silently marched in their memory.

In what would become known as “The Twinkie Defense” defense lawyers blamed White’s actions on a diet of junk food. Yet others blamed an increasingly hateful atmosphere of intolerance that was being fueled by Bryant’s national campaign to outlaw homosexuality. A former campaign manager came forward claiming White was anti-gay and an aide claimed that White had told him before the shooting spree that Milk and Moscone represented all that was wrong with the world. White was found guilty of manslaughter and his seven year sentence for the murders of the two city officials led to the largest gay riot in U.S. history. The White Night riots saw 61 police officers and one hundred protestors hospitalized.

After serving five years for the murders of Milk and Moscone, White was released. Eventually he returned to San Francisco where he committed suicide.   

On that bone-chilling December night in 2008 things had come full circle for Anita Bryant. She was born in Oklahoma 68 years earlier and had since traveled the country and the world as a pop singer, commercial pitchwoman, challenger to the concept that all men are created equal, and a deadbeat fleeing tax collectors and unpaid employees. She did not stand before that window regretting the deaths of her fellow man and the blood that marked her life and made her a pariah, but coldly calculated how she could revive a dead career by reclaiming her throne as homosexuality’s leading nemesis.

Blood on one’s hands is a thing that never completely washes away no matter how much you want it to disappear. Conversations with Bryant would later suggest that she never cared about the blood…only the glory. Her stage presence as a warm, caring, loveable person ends up being just a stage act. The person behind that façade is actually ruthless and cold, but lacking a serious enough degree of intelligence to succeed at her intrigues. What’s left is a broken woman pushing seventy with her beauty queen looks long behind her, who wants one more head liner and vindication for a sacrificed life.

Ironically, Bryant possesses all the criteria that makes for a beloved gay icon: larger-than-life physical features, belting voice, theatricality, show tunes, tacky costumes, man problems, professional ups and downs, unparalleled diva qualities, and sexy gay men high kicking behind her – one could say she’s a draq queen without the kick stand. But she came with hate and bigotry instead of alcohol and amphetamines.

Last year, Anita Bryant received a ten-minute standing ovation in New Orleans during a national convention of conservative leaders. They were applauding someone who many consider a bigot, a charlatan, and someone that got an orgasmic thrill knowing she had the deaths and assaults of many gay men on her hands. Thirty one years prior to that night of laurels, Bryant had lodged an attack on gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians, that would give birth to a national gay rights movement and plant the seeds for the rise and success of rightwing fundamentalist groups like the Moral Majority.

The biggest enemy to LGBT’s in the 20th Century would come to be known as the Mother of the Gay Rights Movement. It would be her actions that would motivate a nation of gays and lesbians to unite hand-in-hand to do battle with a woman who wanted to destroy them. There would be a rallying cry to all across the land and a fledgling gay rights group would find power and influence.

Anita Bryant’s personal office in Bricktown OKC. Having built a shrine to herself, replete with photos

with such luminaries as Bob Hope and Rev. Billy Graham, Bryant only promoted her ministry through

 a discreet post office box. Now her secret sanctuary has been invaded by those she fears most – The Gays.

In 1977 Dade County, Florida, passed an ordinance that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Famous resident Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma, second runner up for Miss America, pop and gospel star, and celebrity product spokesperson, found her cause célèbre and began organizing an effort to overturn the law. To advance her agenda, she founded the group Save Our Children. Bryant stated at the time that her group was formed for “Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation.”

She would go on to publicly claim in front of television cameras, “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.”

It was a surprise to many that nail biters shouldn’t have the rights afforded to non-nail biters. In reality, those Bryant mentioned already had the rights being denied to homosexuals. Prostitutes could marry. People who slept with St. Bernards could adopt children. And even nail biters were allowed to eat in any restaurant.

"Homosexuality is nothing new. Cultures throughout history have dealt with homosexuals almost universally with disdain, abhorrence, disgust-even death.  The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality. Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks.  And who better qualifies as a likely recruit than a teenage boy or girl who is surging with sexual awareness." From an Anita Bryant ad in the Miami Herald on March 20, 1977

Jerry Falwell

Bryant quickly gained an ally in Virginia, who went to Florida to work with and learn from her. That person was Jerry Falwell. Six years earlier Falwell had founded the Lynchburg Baptist College, which is now known as Liberty University. To fund the college Falwell marketed bonds to churches and other sources. Within a year the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Falwell with fraud and deceit. Falwell and his church, however, succeeded in their court battle with the federal entity. The university was left heavily in debt and was due to be closed, when a group came in and bailed them out. It was later found the group received $3,500,000 from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a controversial cult figure of the time. 

Working side-by-side with Bryant, Falwell became consumed with a passion to battle the “evils of immorality and homosexuality”. Gays, lesbians, and others would suffer the impact of their meeting for the next three decades and beyond. Thousands upon thousands of gay men would be ravaged by AIDS while the government turned its back on their suffering and brutal deaths, all due to the influence on the Reagan Administration by the hate Falwell embraced for homosexuality – a hate taught to him by Anita Bryant.

While being mentored by Bryant, Falwell told reporters, “Gay people would just as soon kill you as look at you.”

Bryant successfully organized voters into overturning the Dade County ordinance and the homosexuals there lost their short-lived protections. It was then legal in the Florida county to fire workers for being homosexual, evict them from their homes, and refuse to do business with them. Store windows that twenty years earlier displayed ‘No Coloreds Allowed’ signs, hastily put up ‘No Fags Allowed’ ones.  Her group also caused a 31-year-long ban in Florida on gay adoptions that has been a forefront in gay activism this decade.

[Editor’s Note: In 1998 Miami-Dade County reinstated protections for sexual orientation. An effort by the Christian Coalition to revoke the protections failed in 2003. On September 11, 2008, a Florida judge overturned that law. Judge David Audlin Jr. declared the ban unconstitutional and ordered that a gay man be allowed to adopt a boy he’d been fostering for seven years.]

Anita Bryant would take her mission nationwide and within a year protections for gays were overturned in Minnesota, Kansas, and Oregon. An effort called the Briggs Initiative, strongly opposed by Harvey Milk, saw her and Falwell deeply involving themselves in California to outlaw homosexuals from teaching in public schools. However, Bryant and her allies suffered defeat there, when voters overwhelmingly opposed the measure.

"I don't hate the homosexuals. But as a mother, I must protect my children
from their evil influence." From an Anita Bryant 1978 fundraising letter.

In the end, due to rising resistance and heavy-handed tactics by gays and their supporters, Bryant ended her national campaign and retreated from the public eye. There were threats on her family, boycotts of products she had endorsed in commercials for Coke and Florida orange juice, petitions and pickets.

There were, however, many others anxious to take up her cause.

Empowered by Bryant’s successful assault on gays, the Old Testament religious right set their eyes on the White House. Falwell, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and Phyllis Schlafly (Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern belongs to Schlafly’s group the Eagle Forum) would organize and found the religious right with Anita Bryant being its seed.

These groups would use Bryant’s attacks on gays to ignite conservative Republicans and turn Southern Democrats into rightwing religious fanatics, who abandoned their party to join the newly founded Moral Majority. Their large electoral might would thrust Ronald Reagan into office followed by George H. Bush and later by George W. Bush. Reagan would go on to hinder research into a plague decimating gay men across America – AIDS. The latter Bush would advocate the changing of the United States Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.

The Moral Majority found themselves in the hot seat in the latter 1980s, when well known religious leaders like Jim Bakker (then husband to the now late Tammy Faye Messner) and Jimmy Swaggart became embroiled in highly-publicized sex and finance scandals. With Falwell taking over Bakker’s ministry the black-eyed Moral Majority needed a new image and so the Christian Coalition was founded. At the time, Falwell was also fighting against the sanctions in South Africa and did not want the United States interfering in Apartheid. He urged his followers to support the system in which the white-controlled government would practice racial segregation by buying up South African gold.  

In 2004, Falwell, who was often referred to as an “agent of intolerance”, emboldened by the sweeping re-election of George W. Bush, revived his group as the Moral Majority Coalition, which he called, “the 21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority.” Gay marriage was becoming a wedge issue across the country and Falwell sought to finance candidates that would, when elected, ensure that gays not achieve equal status in America. The following year both Falwell and Pat Robertson would declare that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment by God for the homosexuals in New Orleans. Prior to this Falwell had become an object of ridicule with his constant declarations that fictional characters like the Teletubbies and SpongeBob Squarepants were all agents of a gay agenda.

The re-born group’s purpose was to lead a revolution and cause voters to “vote Christian”. They had three main objectives: The confirmation of pro-life U.S. Supreme Court Justices; the passage of a constitutional Federal Marriage Amendment that would limit marriage to one man and one woman; and the election in 2008 of a conservative candidate to the White House.

Anita Bryant’s victories over homosexuals did not come without cost. She would go into virtual obscurity in the 1980s, endure bankruptcy, and a bitter divorce that would see Christian fundamentalists turning their backs on her. The entertainment and advertising industries made her an untouchable and in an attempt to save face, Bryant made herself out to be a sacrificial lamb claiming that the attacks on homosexuals were orchestrated by her husband Bob Green, a Miami disc jockey.

Anita would eventually re-marry in 1990 to childhood sweetheart and retired NASA flyboy Charlie Dry. The duo would spend years fleeing a number of states after business ventures soured, leaving the pair owing money to employees and various state tax coffers. 

In 2003, Bryant and her husband took up residence in an Edmond, Oklahoma estate valued at nearly one million dollars. The supposedly bankrupted pair, also, secured office space within the city’s pricey entertainment district.

PART TWO: THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”

Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire

March 2019: Charlie Dry and Anita Bryant

When seeing Anita Bryant and her second husband Charlie Dry together, I could not help but think of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski – two characters from the tragic Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire.

Like Blanche, Anita is a relic of past beauty and urgent ambition with a diminishing façade of grandioseness.

Stanley/Charlie is a brute, a bastard, and a mean son-of-a-bitch with a fading aura of primal masculinity that suggests lost glory day sensuality. A former NASA test crewman, Charlie has a Bible-salesman charm, when looking you in the face, but catch him unaware and his eyes will be darkened with a cruelty waiting to be unleashed. Cross him and he will tell you plainly that he’ll have you killed. When he speaks, Anita, who can be just as ruthless as he, cowers. Without hesitation she rushes to obey him in a manner I’ve usually only seen in battered women.

As has been her pattern, Bryant appears to have found another husband that scares the living daylights out of her and forces her to submit to orders that are too obviously reminiscent of a veiled brutality that hints of punishment were she not to obey.

***

Ask people in four states to describe Anita Bryant and Charlie Dry and you hear two oft repeated words: deadbeats and swindlers.

Anita Bryant and Charlie Dry live in a nearly one million dollar 4,639 sq ft home on thirteen acres in an affluent section of suburban Edmond, OK. The home was purchased in November 2006 for $889,500. Property values in Oklahoma are far below the national average and a million bucks will get you a lot of home here. Included in the estate is a 4425 sq ft enclosed pool house. There doesn’t appear to be a mortgage on record for the home.

The couple leases a suite of offices in one of the state’s most expensive real estate markets. According to an Oklahoma City realtor handling vacant offices in the Miller-Jackson Building, where the couple lease space on the fourth floor, offices range from 1,500 to 2,800 square feet and go for $18 per SF per year. That means the pair are paying from $27,000 to $50,400 each year for an area large enough to contain Bryant’s ministry and Dry’s business interests. 

With what appears to be a small fortune at their disposal, why then were the couple bouncing checks and eluding creditors in Pigeon Fork right before coming to Oklahoma? And while living at their near million-dollar country estate why were they still dodging large lawsuits filed in Oklahoma district court as recently as last year? 

  

Just in Oklahoma Dry and Bryant have been sued by creditors in Oklahoma, Hughes, Johnston, and Seminole Counties. In 1998, Dry unsuccessfully tried to terminate his parental rights to a child from a former wife.

According to his official bio:

Charlie Dry is a recent inductee into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame. He enjoyed a long and illustrious career at NASA. Charlie held the position of Senior Systems Engineer on the Apollo Command Module. As such, he was responsible for supervising the team of engineers and technicians who created the ablative re-entry thermal protection material of the Module. Charlie also served as a Senior Scientific Analyst for the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston TX, where he directed NASA laboratory engineering tests during space flight post-test evaluation and developed mathematical models for test evaluation. Charlie also took on the position of In-Flight Operator, where he designed, developed and supervised the installation and in-flight monitoring and operation system for the on-board Integrated Scientific Experimental Instrumentation Package for the Air Force/NASA WB-57 A Earth Resources High-Altitude Reconnaissance Aircraft Program. Charlie was also a Flight Test Engineer for the Apollo Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter Flight Evaluation Test Program, and served as the chief Army / NASA liaison for this project.

Charlie was also selected as a NASA Astronaut Test Crewman, where he tested the Lunar Surface Probes that Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldrin used to penetrate the surface of the moon. In this role, Charlie was responsible for alpha testing where he wore, evaluated, and reported on each spacesuit and each piece of flight hardware. Charlie was also the Astronaut Test Crewman for the development of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. Charlie’s work with this program required onerous physical testing which included centrifuge G-Force testing, under-water survival simulation, hostile space environment simulation, and shock and impact testing. Charlie was awarded the prestigious NASA Apollo Achievement Award for his work there.

They grew up as childhood sweethearts in rural Oklahoma, but Bryant and Dry drifted apart over the years. Eventually, their paths crossed again and old flames were rekindled. The pair married in 1990, one year after Charlie had his home foreclosed on him, likely hoping for wedded bliss, but the coming years saw numerous financial failures, accusations of swindles, and a multi-state pattern of fleeing town as debtors moved in.

In the years preceding their return to Oklahoma, Anita and Charlie failed at entertainment shows in Eureka Springs, AR, Branson, MO, and Pigeon Fork, TN. The Anita Bryant Music Mansion in Pigeon Fork saw her invading the home of Dollywood and royally pissing off the Godmother of the Smokey Mountains herself – Dolly Parton. There the pair, while living their normal above-everyone-else lifestyle, racked up massive debts with local small businesses, failed to pay employees, and fled the state with tax commission agents and irate investors hot on their heels. 

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton’s Dollywood management company assisted Hate Trackers in tracing a former employee of Bryant’s named for the purposes of this report, Jeb Michaelson, to interview. However, the person we talked to at Dolly’s office had much to reveal about the Bryant/Dry scandal himself. 

The source, who wanted it made clear he was speaking only on his behalf and not for Dolly or her company and did not want his name published, conveyed that Dolly was quite upset at the time over the bad reputation Bryant and Dry had established in the area and was concerned it could threaten the 9-to-5 singer’s own business interests and the local economy by driving tourists away. He alleges Dolly already had a severe dislike for the homophobic Anita, but the business misdeeds that occurred mixed with a beloved local populace that Dolly considers family strengthened that feeling to outright contempt.

He said, “You don’t come to Pigeon Fork and mess with the folks. These people, if not outright kin to Dolly, are the children and grandchildren of the Smokey Mountain residents she knows and adores. To see the residents misused and discarded, as Anita and Charlie did, did not make Dolly happy at all. She built Dollywood here to give these people jobs outside the mines. Some of Anita’s performers and workers are kin to Dollywood workers or worked here themselves. I wish I had witnessed it, but I heard Dolly gave Charlie a big dressing down. I heard Anita went into a back room and hid though.”  

That source also offered, “When Dolly heard those kids had gone hungry over there and weren’t getting paid, she made sure they were given some help and job offers at Dollywood. That’s Dolly. You won’t find anyone with a bigger heart.” 

Jeb Michaelson, an openly gay dancer who prefers using this alias, worked for both Bryant and Dolly, During an interview he stated, “Anita Bryant is a Grade A bitch. She’s looney and walks around with these airs that God has blessed even her flatulence. Her shows require the hiring of gays in order to work. Where else are you going to get dancers, singers, makeup artists, and costume designers but from the gay world? So she is forced to hire us but she makes no bones about detesting gays and will throw a conniption at any outwardly gay manner.”  

When asked about reports that Bryant’s employees had to at one time steal food from the theater’s snack bar, Michaelson said, “Oh yeah. After they fled town everything started coming out. We had no choice. We weren’t getting paid and a lot of us had no local family members to turn to, so we had to sleep on the floor and sneak food from the vending area. Her and Charlie do nothing but rip hardworking people off and then skip town owing everyone money.”     

Michaelson concluded, “They pack up and move to another mansion with another scheme with their pockets stuffed with cash, while those of us left behind have nothing.”

There are many news accounts that confirm the accusations lodged against Bryant. Most first hand accounts match closely to the interviews conducted by Hate Trackers.

According to a report in the April 22, 2002, edition of the St. Petersburg Times, Bryant and Dry filed a 1997 bankruptcy in Arkansas after their Eureka Springs venture failed. In 2002, they again filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Tennessee after the demise of the Anita Bryant Music Mansion. Due to not receiving pay due them, some of the five dozen people employed by Bryant in Pigeon Fork suffered evictions from their homes and the repossession of their cars, while she resided in a leased $350,000 home built into a mountainside.     

The newspaper also reported, “The list of creditors in the Tennessee bankruptcy case includes more than 40 employees owed a total of $112,122 by the couple's corporation; the IRS, which is owed more than $80,000; local and state governments, owed $410,000; contractors and commercial lenders, owed more than $250,000; and about 60 retailers and small companies, owed $200,000.”

Those debts were never paid.

Four years later Anita and Charlie moved into their lavish Oklahoma home with pool house and into some prime real estate office space.

Bryant lost her Edmond, Oklahoma home during a foreclosure in 2016

***

Within the Bricktown entertainment district’s Miller-Jackson building housing Anita Bryant’s ministry, you’ll also find a Hooters, a Water Taxi Company, a Native American art gallery, and, oddly, several defense-related office suites. Besides her husband Charlie Dry’s Government Procurement Solutions, who recently landed a multi-million dollar contract at Tinker Air Force Base for client Chickasaw Nation through Northrup Grumman, you’ll find GFPS on the floor below. 

There isn’t much information on GFPS other than being leased on October 24, 2007, by a former Army officer named Kevin Edgmon. Three months before leasing that office, Edgmon was packing up his belongings at a federal penitentiary where he’d been serving time for child pornography convictions out of Texas. The Oklahoma Sex Offender Registry lists Edgmon as having been convicted in Oklahoma County, however, that is incorrect. He has no State of Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections number. The child sex crimes conviction is out of Texas. The Oklahoma registry defaults to the state district court in which a federal offender resides.

Sharing the same floor with Anita’s ministry and Charlie’s business are Long Wave Inc. and DocSoft Inc. Long Wave is a defense contractor specializing in military communications and software development. One of their more recent clients was the Indian Head Division Naval Surface Warfare Center. DocSoft specializes in software development with their main clients being the United States military and large defense contractors like Boeing.   

Also, the Army National Guard recruiting office with a contingent of military personnel is housed in some very expensive digs on the second floor, just north of the Hooters.

It’s a wonder Anita Bryant isn’t flashing back to her Vietnam Era days with Bob Hope and the USO.

Additionally, it has been discovered that a silent partner with Charlie Dry at GPS is J. C. Watts. Watts is a former United States Congressman, University of Oklahoma football player, and likely Republican candidate for the state’s gubernatorial office in 2010. Currently, he serves on the board of the United States Military Academy at West Point and heads the J. C. Watts Companies.

Julius Caesar "JC" Watts

The former lawmaker takes great strides to hide his involvement with GPS and makes no mention of his relationship and partnership with the OKC-based company that could be seen to unduly manipulate client bids into appearing to comply with federal minority ownership clauses – whether they do or not.

In conversations with Dry, during the undercover phase of this investigation, he made it clear that Watts was not an associate or contact, but a full fledged partner in the GPS venture.

Further, it has been found on Zoom a biographical notation on Dry directly connecting him to J. C. Watts Companies. That notation declares, “Charlie Dry is a senior advisor at the J.C. Watts Companies. As senior advisor, Charlie works with clients as they navigate the highly complex government procurement process. He is President of Government Procurement Solutions, LLC, and has extensive experience in government contracting in the defense, homeland security, aviation, telecommunications, and transportation industries. He and his wife, Anita Bryant, reside in Oklahoma.” 

Although full details about the Dry and Watts partnership aren’t known, the impression learned during the investigation is that Watts brings in clients, who normally wouldn’t qualify for federal minority business preferences in contracts within the military and aerospace industries and uses Dry to network tribal leaders, like Gov. Bill Anoatubby of the Chickasaw Nation, to “front” the business. Watts then uses his influence in Washington to secure exclusive contracts for those companies, who may now possess a coveted minority preference status.

Oklahoma's notorious homophobe former Rep. Sally Kern 

Interestingly, Anoatubby and the Chickasaw Nation were among the largest financial contributors to Rep. Sally Kern during her 2008 re-election bid to House District 84. The Oklahoma Ethics Commission shows that Kern received a $1,000 donation from the tribe on August 25, 2008, and another $1,000 on October 17, 2008. Kern does not appear to be in the position to influence favorable legislation concerning the tribe, and the Chickasaws did not donate to all candidates, so it is questionable why substantial donations were made to the notorious anti-gay figure.

During the undercover operation Dry bragged to this reporter about his founding of Native American Personnel Services (NAPS) a fledgling recruiting company he intends to use to place clients into government contracted positions, specifically the aerospace industry. In itself that is legal, however, Dry offered financial incentives, or what was felt could’ve been outright bribes, to this reporter to misuse what he thought was an official tribal position to wrongly funnel applicants directly through NAPS. This would involve secretly paying off the reporter/tribal employment official on the side without the tribe’s knowledge. 

PART THREE: UNCLE GUNNYSACK

During the Christmas season of 1961, Anita Bryant closed the Bob Hope Holiday Tour for United States military personnel at Guantanamo Base on the Caribbean island of Cuba by singing “Silent Night, Holy Night”. At the age of 21, the Oklahoma native had begun the first of many world tours to share her unique blend of pop music, evangelism, and unabashed patriotism.

Were you to listen to the Leave It To Beaver type tales, you’d think it was a more “innocent time” in America during 1961. That very same year the Berlin Wall was erected to keep East German refugees from escaping to the West. The John Birch Society was declaring any attempt to give civil rights to blacks was a communist plot. The Soviets detonated a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb resulting in the largest explosion in mankind’s history. America sent 2,000 military advisors to South Vietnam. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was formed in the Middle East.  Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American in space. Frank Kameny filed a petition with the Supreme Court of the United States to regain his job as an astronomer with the U.S. Army after being fired, when it was discovered he was gay – SOTUS denied the request. Later in the year Kameny helped form a Mattachine Society branch in Washington DC to advance gay rights, which was quickly infiltrated by local police and the FBI. Jose Sarria, a San Francisco drag performer, became the first openly gay person to run for political office in American history.

Anita Bryant’s “Wonderland By Night” was number 18 on the music charts, while Robert Frost was reciting “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.

Fixed between the eras of McCarthyism and Vietnam and as 1961 came to a close, Bryant’s Midwestern beauty and strong vocal skills combined to stir a melancholy within GI’s, who were far away from their homes in a hostile environment. Just seven months before had been La Batalla de Girón, the Bay of Pigs, a failed invasion organized by the U.S. government to wrest control of the communist nation from Fidel Castro.

As Anita sang “Sleep in Heavenly peace” to the soldiers, in Havana, located on the opposite end of the island, families were begging for the bodies of their loved ones to be released to them for burial. In the weeks and months preceding her performance, the silent nights were filled with the screams of hundreds of men, women, and children being executed at El Morro Castle for their involvement in America’s failed nation building effort. As close to Anita was to Havana she was to another island nation, Haiti, a past and future failure at nation building by America. There the Christmas season, like many others, was filled with a silence not of reverence, but of fear, as Papa Doc’s terrorist death squads, the Tonton Macoutes, roamed the island. Tonton Macoute translates as Uncle Gunnysack. In America we call him the boogeyman, but in Haiti he is the horror figure come to life, snatching children and dragging them off in gunnysacks to never to be heard from again.   

Holy infant so tender and mild.  

According to Bryant’s own statements, on March 25, 1940 in Barnsdall, Oklahoma, she was declared dead at childbirth. In an act that seems to be common with the men in her life, her grandfather John Berry threatened to kill the doctor unless the infant Anita was revived. The doctor managed to rescue the baby and escape with his life intact and later the grandfather was bragging he’d taught the baby to sing when she was just six months old. Her early childhood saw her parent’s divorce, her father abandoning the family for the Army, and Bryant moving with her mother, sister, and grandparents to Tishomingo, Oklahoma after Berry was blinded in an oil refinery accident and found Jesus, while in the hospital.  Later, at the age of eight, Bryant claims to have been saved, accepted Jesus as her savior, and demanded to be Baptized.

In Tishomingo Anita meant a boy named Charlie Dry and they quickly became childhood sweethearts.  Part Chickasaw Indian and residing in its 11 ½ county boundaries, Dry was partial to roaming the southeastern Oklahoma countryside with childhood friends, brothers Tom and Jefferson Keel, and a pudgy younger boy named Bill Anoatubby, who was destined to one day become the Chickasaw Nation’s governor. Jefferson Keel would become its lieutenant governor.

As they came of age Bryant and Dry parted with broken hearts, when Anita and her family returned north to the Tulsa area after her mother remarried. Just a few years later she was on that Caribbean stage with Bob Hope, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Andy Williams. Dry would leave Oklahoma for Houston where he began a long career with NASA as a systems engineer and astronaut test crewman responsible for prepping equipment used for the Apollo missions that saw Neil Armstrong make his giant leap for mankind with his first step on the moon’s surface.

In 1960, while traveling to promote her records, Bryant, a teen, met Miami deejay Bob Green. After turning 20, the two married with the night before the wedding seeing Green turn his life over to Christ. The couple divorced in 1980 three years after Anita, who’d by then become a mother of four, discovered that her Miami, Florida home base, which is the same distance from Cuba as Barnsdall is from Tishomingo, was being terrorized by Uncle Gunnysack.

Uncle Gunnysack had arrived in the form of gay men to snatch up and molest children and thus Save the Children was born.  

Nearly half a century has passed since that Silent Night in 1961. The Civil War standard “Battle Hymn of the Republic” has since become Anita Bryant’s signature song having been sung by her in war zones, on Army bases, on battleships, during political conventions, at sporting events like the Super Bowl, and even at the funeral of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The president made it clear before his death that he wanted two things at his state funeral: Anita Bryant singing and Billy Graham preaching.

Anita and Charlie are back together in Oklahoma after having rekindled their childhood romance in 1990. She’s still surrounded by military men. The John Birch Society has now set their eyes on keeping gays from gaining civil rights and has replaced their anti-communism agenda with an anti-liberal humanist one. Cuba is still led by a Castro. Guantanamo Base is now Guantanamo Bay and housing Muslim enemy combatants from the War on Terror; at least three of which are children snatched from their homes never to be heard from again. Replacing the stage where Anita performed in 1961 is a billion-dollar detention facility built by energy group and defense contractor Haliburton, who maintains an OKC location five blocks from those of Bryant’s Bricktown offices. America is still failing at nation building. The United States’ Operation Uphold Democracy, its last attempt at nation building on the island, failed a decade ago and Haitians are about where they were in 1961. Russia just detonated the world’s most powerful bomb. Gays are still struggling to keep their jobs in the military.      

And Anita is stirring up old fears over Uncle Gunnysack again.

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia.

  

***

In September 2008 this reporter got word that Anita Bryant would be reviving an anti-gay platform within the city I’d moved to – Oklahoma City. Just months before, Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern made national headlines by claiming gays were worse than terrorists and were after children. It seemed unusual that two women, both now living in the same metropolitan area, held the same contempt for homosexuals and were leading campaigns, past and present, against such. Already involved in investigating Kern’s background, I decided to learn more about Bryant. I started researching her whereabouts and found her living in Edmond. Then I decided to pay her a personal visit.

I traveled to her home and rang the doorbell. After a few minutes Charlie Dry opened the door and stepped out, closing it behind him. It was getting dark and with a stranger on the front porch some degree of suspicion is to be expected, but at first Dry was somewhat cordial, though understandably guarded. We engaged in a very short conversation where I identified myself and asked to speak with Bryant about her current ministry. Dry stepped closer to me and very forcibly said, “Get off this property now. That is the past and we will not have it brought up again.”

He tried to be menacing in the way men long past their prime think they can still get away with.    

The front door opened and Anita peeked her head out the door, which caused Dry to snap around and scream, “Get in the goddamn house and call the police.” She obeyed.

As I was at their personal residence and had been ordered to leave, I knew I was legally obligated to do so and left. Yet I knew I wasn’t finished with Anita Bryant or Charlie Dry. Months passed and I decided I would attempt another approach hoping that our short encounter hadn’t left too much of an impression on the pair and I could attempt to get closer to them. The ruse was successful and although my time was spent more often with Dry, I was around Bryant long enough to gain a decent understanding of her new anti-gay mission.  

After leading the late 1970’s national crusade against what she deems as unconstitutional equal rights for homosexuals, Bryant suffered a severe backlash as gays across America joined together to defy her. The negative attention saw Bryant losing recording contracts and her position as a spokesperson for various products. Following her divorce to Bob Green, and after finding out just how much the Christian Right frowned upon divorce in 1980, Bryant found herself shunned by everyone. She attempted for a period to blame the crusade against homosexuality on Green, but eventually abandoned that claim once she found out she was better off embracing her past as a heroine fighting against homosexuality.

Her plans now include “exposing militant homosexuals” who she says “have managed to subvert the American culture and it’s foundation in Christ by infiltrating the schools and indoctrinating children into having the false convictions that homosexuality should be accepted.”

Bryant revealed, “God gave me four children when I was told I could bear none. He saved me as a child and saved me as a mother giving birth to twins. From nothing to four children. When you are told you can’t have something, then God gives you so much more, you understand the blessing and the responsibility. I stood up for not only my gifts but for all children, just as God moved my heart to do. I am not a confrontational person, but for whom much is given, much is asked. I was given the strength to challenge the evils being waged in Dade County. But Dade County is not all of America and my service to the Lord meant assuring that the Christian nation that I am so thankful to be a part of was as safe from the wrongdoings of the homosexual community as Florida was.”

“I realize now that seeking justice for all children and their protection from homosexual militants, who were threatening to kill my family and saying things, filthy things, hateful things, was both my reward and trial. God told me, “Anita I gave you children, so now you must show how much you love them and stand up for them.” I did that too. There were problems. Many problems and I began to falter some. Satan fills you with fear and desires for self-preservation. I turned my back on what God had expected of me and pulled back from fighting the homosexuals. But I was doing it for the safety of my children. From there the burdens I had to bear for standing against a sickness that threatened my, the, American family were becoming too harsh and dangerous to bear.”

During the conversations with Bryant, it was noticed that she refused to accept any personal responsibility for the many soured business ventures she’d experienced in the last two decades. She would hint at her troubles being the fault of others, and then fluctuate to them deriving from her walking away from the mission to fight homosexuality she believes God laid at her feet.

She stated, “God kindled within me this task to stem a homosexual tide coming into America and subverting its institutions. The task wasn’t for a day or a year. It was a lifetime mission. He gave me a voice and a platform and made me a national figure so that I would be positioned to an important enough level that others would listen and heed our warnings. Until He takes me home I will follow my calling.”

“Charlie doesn’t want me to travel this road again,” she commented, while her shoulders drew in, her body tensed, and her eyes darted around the offices in what I perceived as a fear that he may overhear her remarks.

Yet she then acknowledged that her husband will allow her to travel that road - with certain conditions.

She offered, “There’s a new book on the way. I am going to do a new tour, bigger than ever. Charlie has told me to limit my engagements to ones that have a broader Christian and patriotic audience. The type of people who haven’t turned their hearts to stone, but are thirsty to do what is right for America. They need to be reminded that God still loves America and expects it to abide by his authority. We’re going to have a stars and stripes theme and make people feel good about loving God and His Country. There will be intimate spots where I will be able to sit down and talk plain to the people about the growing dangers with the homosexual agenda. My music will remind them of days, when you waved a flag and were civic minded and moral. I’ll tell them about what the homosexuals are up to and why we can’t allow it to continue and what needs to be done to stop them.”

Bryant, however, would not provide any specific details about bookings or dates.

In recent months Bryant has geared her Anita Bryant Ministries International website towards reminding people of her crusading past and has included photographs of her public stands against homosexuality. The site’s Press Room area has only two entries. One links to a story from a 2001 article at the Baptist Press Review that says about the song “God Have Mercy on America”, “This woman who sacrificed so much when she took a stand against normalization of homosexuality begs the Lord to have mercy on our country which has left his standards. When she performs the song on stage, she and the audience often have tears in their eyes.”

The other link titled Anita Was Right goes to a World Net Daily article from last year that says, “Anita Bryant was right, and I want to personally thank her for blazing the trail of resistance for those of us who follow in her footsteps for the freedom to disagree with dangerous behavior and an agenda that threatens our rights to speak the truth and spread the Gospel.”

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