CROSS DRESSERS DAY

PORT WHITMAN: The culmination of Cross Dressers Day locally will feature a debate among the five candidates for mayor of PW in the coming election, carrying on a full-fledged polemic sponsored by the Women On The Move, to be held at the PW Maennerchor Club on July 14th at 7:30pm. All of the candidates will appear attired in the garb of their sexual opposites. The event will be televised on local cable, as will the Cross Dressers Parade, in which groups from local businesses, such as the State Street Businessmens Group, the PW Bar Association, and the PW Medical Society will participate. Featured will be the PW Association of Realtors, whose specialty this year will be lip gloss, and the Union League whose members will sport long false fingernails.

The celebration, held every year since the end of WWII, is one of the most highly anticipated events of the social calendar, when all of the men and some of the women of the city dress as their sexual opposites for the day. Cross Dressers Day is always scheduled on a weekday, not an official holiday, so that participants must appear at jobs in their chosen attire and makeup.

It started as a party held by a few participants, including club founder Michael Nash, and Police Lieutenant Richard Forfia who originated the idea, brought home from his war experience in the South Pacific, where his whole marine unit dressed as Geishas to confuse the Japanese, and was legally approved in 1964 when Superior Court Judge Milton Thuerkauf threw out the lawsuit of The Boston Store vs. Halsey Boyle, the latter causing a near riot by insisting on using the men's room on the store's fifth floor toy department at Christmastime.

Grand Mama of the parade this year will be City Prosecutor Caesar Montivecchio, a high school All American wrestler at PW High and later at the Navel Academy of Port Whitman.

Henry Francisco