Windsor v. The United States Of America

Filing 31

AFFIDAVIT of Edith Schlain Windsor in Support re: 28 MOTION for Summary Judgment.. Document filed by Edith Schlain Windsor. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A, # 2 Exhibit B, # 3 Exhibit C, # 4 Exhibit D, # 5 Exhibit E, # 6 Exhibit F, # 7 Exhibit G, # 8 Exhibit H, # 9 Exhibit I, # 10 Exhibit J, # 11 Exhibit K, # 12 Exhibit L)(Ehrlich, Andrew)

EXHIBIT C

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Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor
Published: May 27, 2007

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Thea Clara Spyer and Edith Schlain Windsor were married in
Toronto on Tuesday. Justice Harvey Brownstone of the North

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Toronto Family Court officiated at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel.

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Dr. Spyer (above, left) is 75. She is a

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clinical psychologist with a private

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practice in Manhattan. She graduated
from the New School for Social
Research and received a master’s
degree in clinical psychology from
V. Moraweck

City University of New York and a Ph.D. in that subject

from Adelphi. Dr. Spyer is the daughter of the late Elisabeth Ketellapper and the late
Willem Spyer, who lived in Amsterdam.
Ms. Windsor, 77, who is retired, worked in New York as a computer systems consultant
for I.B.M. She was a board member of Social Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual and Transgender Elders, also known as SAGE, from 1985 to 1987 and from
2004 to 2006. She graduated from Temple University and received a master’s degree in
mathematics from New York University. Ms. Windsor, whose previous marriage ended in
divorce, is a daughter of the late Celia and James D. Schlain, who lived in Philadelphia.

Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor met in 1965 in New York at Portofino, a restaurant in the
West Village.
“Everyone lived in the closet,” Ms. Windsor said of lesbian life in New York in the 1960s.
“The only place to go was bars, and they were rough.”
Adjourning to a friend’s apartment that night, Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor danced until
the impromptu party ended, finally “dancing with our coats on, and other people
standing at the door, annoyed, waiting for us,” Ms. Windsor recalled, adding, “She was
smarter than hell, beautiful — and sexy.”
Dr. Spyer recalled of Ms. Windsor that night, “We danced so much and so intensely that
she danced a hole through her stockings.”
It was not until two years later, during a Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, that
the two women again encountered each other, and both happened to be uninvolved.
“I heard she would be there, and called friends who had a house, and begged them,
‘Please can I come out,’ ” Ms. Windsor said. “Then I waited at a house where I knew she
would drop by.”
Dr. Spyer, who has become a quadriplegic as a result of advanced multiple sclerosis, said
of the weekend, and her time spent with Ms. Windsor: “It was a feeling of complete
delight in being with her. I had a real sense of ‘I’ve landed in my life.’ ”
That was 40 years ago.
Dr. Spyer had the help of three aides who traveled with her to Canada to officially marry
Ms. Windsor, ending an engagement that began in 1967.
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