Queer Heroes NW 2012

Dr. Alan L. Hart
1890-1962

Alberta Lucille Hart grew up in Albany, Oregon. She graduated from University of Oregon Medical School in 1917.

After graduation, Hart underwent a hysterectomy (transition ca 1918) and lived the rest of her life as a man. Hart is among the first female-to-male transsexuals to undergo surgery in transition.

Dr. Alan L. Hart practiced medicine in several locations across the west, sometimes forced to abandon his practice and move on when his gender was called into question. In 1928, Dr. Hart received a Master’s degree in radiology from University of Pennsylvania, and eventually became an expert on tubercular radiology and the use of X-ray medicine and the treatment of tuberculosis. He also published four novels with autobiographical themes, including medicine and homosexuality.

His 1918 marriage to Inez Stark ended in divorce in 1923; in 1925 he married Edna Ruddick.

Alan Hart died of heart failure in 1962. When Edna died 20 years later, she left the majority of her estate to the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon in memory of her husband.

ABOVE: Dr. Alan Lucill Hart, ca 1922, from the Wyoming State Museum. BELOW: Alan Lucill Hart as pictured in the 1917 Oregana yearbook.

 

Here's some information about the psychologist, Dr. J. Allen Gilbert, who helped Hart transition. This material also appears in the 1999 Gay Portland Walking Tour on this site.

The Selling Building, 610 S.W. Alder, 1917.  The medical office of Dr. J. Allen Gilbert (1867‑1948) was located here on the seventh floor.  It is believed that here is where Oregon transgendered medical student Lucille Hart (1890-1962) underwent psychological analysis with Dr. Gilbert for a condition that Gilbert evidently misdiagnosed as a case of “sexual inversion”.  His only solution to “Lucille’s” dilemma was to accept her view that “she” would be better off living “her” life as a man and making the best of the situation.  From a medical standpoint of the period, this was complete heresy!  Most psychoanalysts were attempting to “change” or “cure” the inverted, and gender dysphoric people of that time.  Thus, very clearly Hart played a part in his own transformation from woman to man, and with the help of kindly Dr. Gilbert, the disguise was completed to the point where shortly after the consultation, Dr. Hart eloped with Portland school teacher (Inez Stark, 1892-1986) in Martinez, California.  She returned to Oregon to practice medicine.  The now Dr. Alan Hart went on to write three novels, specialized in roentgenology (the study of X-rays) and its application in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, graduated from Yale University, and died in Hartford, Connecticut at age 71.