On Sunday, June 11, 2023, 2 p.m., Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will feature museum curator and author Ulysses Grant Dietz who will discuss his book titled, “Growing Up Grant: A Gay Life in the Shadow of Ulysses S. Grant.”
LMMM Trustee and Lecture Chair Kathy Olsen said, “During Pride Month, as the rainbow colors welcome our LGBTQIA+ community, we are honored to have Mr. Ulysses Grant Dietz share his extraordinary coming of age story as a gay man with a powerful name and lineage.”
This lecture will be held at Stepping Stones Museum for Children’s Multimedia Gallery, 303 West Ave., Norwalk, CT. To reserve tickets attendees can visit the Events page on the Museum’s website at www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com. Admission is $15 for LMMM members, $20 for non-members. Light refreshments will be offered following the presentation as well as a special drawing for a complimentary tour of General Grant National Memorial hosted by The National Park Service on Wed., July 12, 2023 at 11am. The tour will be led by Ulysses Grant Dietz with a Park Ranger who will be available for questions as well.
Dietz grew up Grant because Ulysses was too dangerous a name to call a kid in the 1950s, when conformity ruled, and Ulysses S. Grant’s reputation was in the toilet. His given name Ulysses, however, ended up defining him as he was coming out in the early 1970s, altering his relationship with the world.
On his father’s side, an Alsatian immigrant to Colonial New York and, on his mother’s, a Puritan dissenter seeking freedom on the Mayflower, added romance to his bland “Leave It to Beaver” life in Syracuse, New York in the 1960s. Mr. Dietz said, “My world was a snapshot of prosperous, suburban Post-War America for a baker's dozen of years, until two of my siblings died and I realized, at sixteen, that I was gay.”
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York. He studied French at Yale University and was trained to be a museum curator in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. A curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick.
This lecture is generously sponsored by Flexcap Ventures. LMMM’s 2023 programs are made possible in part by CT Humanities with generous funding provided by Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) from the Connecticut State Legislature; LMMM’s Founding Patrons: The Estate of Mrs. Cynthia Clark Brown;LMMM’s Leadership Patrons: The Sealark Foundation; and LMMM’s 2023 Season Distinguished Benefactors: The City of Norwalk, The Maurice Goodman Foundation, and Lockwood-Mathews Foundation, Inc.
For more information on tours and programs, please visit www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, email info@lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, or call 203-838-9799.