Ann Shepherd PFLAG papers, 1977-1999

Ann Shepherd was born Ann Robart Marcotte in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1918. In 1926, she moved with her family to Evansville, Indiana, and in 1935, the family moved to Portland, Oregon. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, then completed a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri in 1940. She returned to Oregon and worked as a journalist for the Bend Bulletin and for the Telephone Register. In 1942, she was hired by the Oregon Journal, a Portland newspaper. In 1944, she married William Kemp Shepherd, and they later had five children. From 1944 to 1945, Ann Shepherd served in the U.S. Coast Guard. She then returned to her job at the Oregon Journal for another year before leaving the workforce to raise a family. In the late 1970s, she served on the 12-member Task Force on Sexual Preference, launched by Governor Bob Straub in 1976 to conduct research and recommend actions the state could take to provide equal civil rights for gay and lesbian people. In 1977, she co-founded the group Parents of Gays in Portland, which became a chapter of PFLAG (then Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) in 1982. She was active in lobbying the Oregon State Legislature and other Oregon government officials on gay rights. She died in 2003.

Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; oral history interview with Ann Shepherd, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; "The Governor's Task Force on Sexual Preference: What's It All About?" by Oral Bullard, Oregonian, Northwest Magazine, February 6, 1977, Page 12; "State Gay Community Loses Mother Figure," Oregonian, January 8, 2003, Page D9; "Rediscovering Family: The Ann and Bill Shepherd family," by George T. Nicola, Oregon Queer History Collective website, January 26, 2018 (accessed September 2025), https://www.glapn.org/6060RDFShepherd.html

PFLAG, formerly known as Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays, was founded in 1972 in New York City by Jeanne Milford, and supports LGTBQ+ people and their families. The Portland chapter was started in 1977, when two couples, Ann and Bill Shepherd and Rita and Charles Knapp, founded a support group named Parents of Gays. This group joined the PFLAG National Network in 1982.

Sources: "PFLAG - Our History," PFLAG website, https://pflag.org/our-history/; "PFLAG Portland - Our History," PFLAG Portland website, https://pflagpdx.org/our-history/