Jeff Terry and Travis Griffin both grew up in Joplin and met in middle school. They met in middle school growing up in Joplin, but didn’t reconnect – or fall in love – until their 30s after living through the 2011 Joplin tornado.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Jeff Terry: Something that I can remember really vividly is I was standing at the kitchen sink one day – just doing dishes – and just all of a sudden it came over me, “Jeff, you're gay, you're going to have to do something about this. You can't keep living like this.”
And I took every dish that was in the sink and just broke every dish and then, like, broke down, and that was kind of a turning point for me,
Travis Griffin: Which is a very gay thing to do.
Laughter
Jeff Terry: It is very dramatic, yes.
And a huge turning point for me was in 2011 Joplin, Missouri, went through an F5 Tornado, and I was in that tornado.
That tornado changed my entire life. I just saw a whole town destroyed and 163 people die [sic], and life is getting shorter every day for me, and I've got to live my authentic life.
But I knew what the price was going to be, and the price was going to be letting everybody in my family down.
So, I came out to my close friends first. Kept it under pretty under wraps and then reconnected with Travis because I was struggling with coming out and I really didn't have anybody that I could talk to.
But I remembered Travis from school, and when he says he came out –
Travis Griffin: In middle school.
Jeff Terry: He's not joking. I can remember Travis in middle school coming to school in in sweatpants, penny loafers carrying a briefcase. We all knew that Trav was gay.
And so, I thought, you know, I'm gonna reconnect with Travis, and maybe we can just visit, and he can kind of like help me through some of the struggles and feelings that I'm going through and stuff.
So, I reached out to him on Facebook, and we just started chatting, and we may be chatted back and forth for a year or so.
But finally, one day, I was like, “Well, I'm just gonna go see Travis,” and I realized, kind of right then and there, “Okay, I'm gonna have to take this to the next level. This is who I am. This is how I want things to play out.”
And so, I came out to my parents, and that did not go well.
I was probably actually on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The only thing that I knew to do was to – this was in February, freezing cold – I turned the heat down in the house, packed my bags, and I left and went to Travis's house to stay.
