Cammermeyer was born in Oslo, Norway on March 24, 1943, while the country was under Nazi occupation. Both active in the resistance movement, her parents sheltered resistance fighters and smuggled weapons to the underground. She credits their actions, specifically that of her mother and other women, for laying the foundation of her later interest in defending democratic ideals as a woman in the military.

Cammermeyer’s parents also inspired her interest in medicine. Her father was a doctor who became a well-respected neuroanatomist and neuropathologist in Norway and later in the United States; her mother had worked as a Red Cross nurse prior to her marriage.

Soon after the end of World War II, Cammermeyer’s father received a Rockefeller Fellowship, which allowed him and his family to live for nine months in Boston. In 1951, the family immigrated to the United States in order for her father to take a position with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Nine years old at the time, Cammermeyer found the adjustments in language and culture difficult. This difficulty may have been exacerbated by the fact that she was very tall for her age and had already developed interests in science and sports, pursuits that were not considered “feminine.”

Although Cammermeyer was interested in pursuing her father’s profession, he refrained from encouraging or even supporting her in her academic pursuits, believing that women should be subservient to men. He placed much greater value on the goals and accomplishments of his three sons than he did on his daughter’s aspirations.

Consequently, even though Cammermeyer entered the University of Maryland in the fall of 1959 in hopes of becoming a doctor, she was unable to follow through on this dream. The pressures of taking pre-med courses, the strain of working to support herself, and the difficulty of adjusting to the freedoms that college life afforded her all took their toll. After her first semester, she was placed on academic probation. She dropped out of the pre-med curriculum and decided to pursue a nursing career.

In 1960, Cammermeyer became an American citizen. In 1961, to help pay for her education, she joined the U.S. Army and signed up for the Army Student Nurse Program. She received her B. S. in Nursing from the University of Maryland in 1963.

After college, Cammermeyer reported for active duty and completed basic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, following which she spent an additional six months at Martin Army Hospital at Fort Benning, Georgia. Once trained, she was stationed in Nuremburg, Germany.

Throughout college and her early years in the military, Cammermeyer often felt different and out of place. As a high school student, she had ascribed these feelings to her height and to her status as an immigrant. In college, she experienced serious bouts of depression, confusion, and self-alienation. Her responses ranged from cutting herself and drinking heavily to refocusing her energy on her courses or career and further repressing these difficult emotions.

Cammermeyer also felt very little interest in dating or having sexual relationships with men. Although she went on blind dates that her friends set up, she never felt inclined to pursue these liaisons.

In August 1964, however, while she was stationed in Germany, friends of hers set her up with a serviceman, Harvey Hawken, a Second Lieutenant in an armor battalion in the United States Army. Not only did he match her in height, but he also shared many other values with her. The two soon became a couple, and in spite of her ambivalence and subtle sense of losing her independence, Cammermeyer agreed to marry him.

In August 1965, the soldiers were married. In 1966, they requested transfers to Fort Lee, Virginia, a request that the Army approved.

The couple returned to the United States just as its involvement in Vietnam was escalating. They both decided to volunteer to serve in the conflict. Even though the Army canceled Hawken’s orders at the last minute, Cammermeyer decided to complete her tour of duty, hoping he would soon join her.

Cammermeyer spent fourteen months in Vietnam working at the 24th Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh. During her tour of duty, she served as head nurse of a medical unit and then as head nurse of the neurosurgical intensive care unit. Eventually her husband arrived in Vietnam and after a few months of being stationed far apart, the couple secured housing together.

After their service in Vietnam, the couple moved to a small rural community south of Seattle. Cammermeyer had become pregnant in Vietnam, which according to military regulations at the time meant that she had to leave the military. Both she and her husband settled into civilian life. They built a home and farm on their property in Washington and began a family. They had four children in all: Matt, David, Andy, and Tom.

Yet life for Cammermeyer was not ideal. Although she enjoyed her role as mother, she felt compelled to return to her profession. In 1969 she began working part-time as a night-duty nurse, and in 1971, she took a similar position with more responsibilities at the veterans hospital in Seattle.

For the past eight years, the legacy of this remarkable young man’s life has challenged and inspired millions of individuals to erase hate in all forms. Although his life was short, it continues to have a great impact on both young and old alike.The story of Matthew Shepard begins on December 1, 1976 when he was born prematurely to Judy and Dennis Shepard in the small city of Casper, Wyoming. Matthew attended school in Casper until his junior year of high school when he finished his primary education at The American School in Switzerland. His experience abroad fueled his love for travel. He took the opportunity to explore Europe and learn multiple languages including German and Italian.

Matthew in Marocco Matthew at Window Matthew was an optimistic and accepting young man. He always put his family and friends first and had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person that was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people’s differences. Throughout his life he expressed his love for acting by becoming very active in community theater both on and off stage.

Matthew’s college career took him to a number of different universities and later ended up studying political science, foreign relations and languages at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. He was extremely interested in politics and was chosen as the student representative for the Wyoming Environmental Council.

The horrific events that took place shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998 went against everything that Matthew embodied. Two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, lead him to a remote area east of Laramie where they demonstrated unimaginable acts of hate. Matthew was tied to a split-rail fence where he was beaten and left to die in the cold of the night. Almost 18 hours later he was found by a cyclist who initially mistook him for a scarecrow.

Matthew died on October 12 at 12:53 am at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. His entire family was by his side for the last few days of his life. His funeral was attended by friends and family from around the world and gained the appropriate media attention that brought Matthew’s story to the forefront of the fight against hate.

This tragedy helped the nation wake up to the fact that hate and discrimination still lives in our communities, our schools and our families. Although his life was cut short, the impact of his spirit is great.

He emerged as a figurehead for San Francisco’s large gay community, and was known as the “Mayor of Castro Street”, a title which he himself coined. With each campaign, he garnered a larger number of supporters. Milk was successful in reaching out and making alliances among the city’s ethnic populations and among labor union leaders, but not among the rank and file members. Milk’s opponent in the 1976 race for the California State Assembly was Art Agnos, who would win the seat by 3,600 votes out of 33,000 ballots cast.In 1976 San Francisco voters voted to replace city-wide elections with district elections, effective in the 1977 city elections. This switch to district elections ushered in the most diverse Board of Supervisors the city had ever seen. Milk was the first openly gay elected official of any large city in the United States, and only the third openly gay elected official in all of the US, after Kathy Kozachenko and Elaine Noble. Milk represented District 5, which included the Castro.

The diverse board included the former police officer and firefighter Dan White as well as the gay and liberal Milk. White had to resign from being a firefighter as San Francisco charter barred people from holding two city jobs at the same time so he took up a second job to supplement the pay downgrade, running a restaurant business, which failed. White, a Roman Catholic[2] and outspoken anti-gay conservative, who was elected with strong support from the city’s police union in part to fight “official tolerance of crime and of overt homosexuality” was counterpoint to Milk, an outspoken liberal who “frequently opposed him on the board.”

Milk became highly visible in the media debating California Senator John Briggs throughout the state on Proposition 6, The Briggs Initiative, to “prohibit homosexuals from teaching in California public schools,” a topic on which White and Milk “were sharply divided” because it would have empowered California school boards to fire teachers that “practiced, advocated, or indicated an acceptance of homosexuality.”