Talk:Oliver Sipple

Herb Caen quote
Could somebody please explain this passage? [Herb Caen reflecting in a 1995 column about the acceptance of gay visitors to the White House during the Clinton administration remembered "A true hero, Sipple was invited to the White House. The invitation was withdrawn when it was learned that Sipple was gay, so it could be said a little progress has been made."] This explicitly makes it sound as if the "Clinton administration" first invited and then rejected Oliver Sipple due to his sexual orientation. This does not seem possible, as Sipple died in March 1989, long before Clinton entered the White House. Is this an unintentionally ambiguous reference to a previous administration rescinding their invitation, or a very poorly thought-out attempt to portray the Clinton White House as anti-gay? I'm tempted to remove the whole section, as I do not have the correct information so as to rewrite it in a non-confusing way. --dhs Addendum: Version history explains everything. Someone simply altered the text, removing reference of the Ford administration and apparently adding quotation marks to make it seem a direct quote of Herb Caen. I'm simply axing the section, as it offers no citations, and seems to foster *two* unfounded claims (against Presidents Clinton and Ford.) Feel free to cite properly and re-insert. --dhs
 * It refers to the Ford administration who declined to bring Sipple to the White House once learning he was gay. Benji boi 15:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Sipple not the hero?
The clean cut looking Oliver Sipple did not save President Ford's life. Sipple grabbed the arm of the real person who grabbed the gun and deflected the shot away from Ford, Carl "Charles" Gundlach. Mr. Gundlach had long curly hair and a beard. Because of his appearance, he was led away from the scene by security personnel who held him and questioned him for hours before releasing him. Though there is news photography showing Mr. Gundlach saving President Ford, neither the President or the U. S. Government have acknowledged their mistake in honoring a fake hero - Oliver Sipple. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.192.62.85 (talk • contribs)

Could you provide a citation for Mr. Gundlach's role in preventing a second shot from being fired at President Ford? T.E. Goodwin 21:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Would you be kind enough to link us to said news photography? Rhymeless 22:13, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And would you really call the way they treated Sipple "honoring"? -- Imladros 04:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the government did what it could with Sipple. The media did not make a big deal about him though.

This is the most sad thing I've ever heard. ---bamonster

agreed. Solar Flute (talk) 04:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Quotations moved from article
I've cut these quotations from the article, as they were set off in the lead paragraph by themselves. If someone wants to contextualize and cite them, by all means put them back in.


 * "I want you to know how much I appreciated your selfless actions last Monday. The events were a shock to us all, but you acted quickly and without fear for your own safety. By doing so, you helped to avert danger to me and to others in the crowd. You have my heartfelt appreciation." -- President Gerald Ford/September 25, 1975
 * "My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with saving the President's life, just as the color of my eyes or my race has nothing to do with what happened in front of the St. Francis Hotel." -- Oliver "Billy" Sipple

--A Train take the 19:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Both these quotes are accurate and should be used, IMHO. Benji boi 15:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

"Outing"
I'm a bit confused by this section. The headline says the "media" outed Sipple, but the text says gay rights' groups outed Sipple. Are these two separate issues?--Idols of Mud 20:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the media covered the outing by the gay community, hence participating in the outing.
 * But unless some newspaper published "EXCLUSIVE:OLIVER SIPPLE IS GAY," they can't be accused of outing him. Sipple was a public figure, as was Harvey Milk.  If Milk announced his homosexuality against Sipple's wishes, the media has a duty to cover that.  I don't think they can be accused of outing him.--Idols of Mud 03:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Please remember that outing is not a monolithic, unitary act. One can be "out" to different sets of people. Being outed to the gay community as a whole (by the enthusiastic embracing of Sipple as a hero) is a different scope than being outed to the general public by a daily newspaper (e.g., Herb Caen in the Chronicle.). So in a sense, both prominent gay public figures and the media outed Sipple. The present wording of the article seems to indicate that adequately. --MCB 06:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree -- as it reads now, the article says Sipple didn't want to be outed to anyone, which makes the gay community as complicit in his outing as the media, if not more so. The headline, however, reads "'Outing' by the media."  If Sipple chose to be out to some people but not others, that ought to be reflected in the article.  If Sipple was outed by gay leaders, that should be made clear.  In reading this article, I'm not entirely certain what Sipple's attiude was toward his homosexuality -- one gets the sense he was in the closet, even if that wasn't true.  It seems unfair to "blame" the media for reporting on Sipple being embraced as a hero by the gay community, especially when leaders like Milk were doing so.--Idols of Mud 13:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * In digging through this Sipple, in a way, outed himself by participating in the Imperial Court System, gay parades and gay rights demos. Milk was in the midst of his campaign and either directly or through one of many folks who fed items to columnist Herb Caen hoped that he would be honored as a gay hero. all three are now dead so we might not ever know. Benji boi 15:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * But had NOT outed himself to his family. There's a difference. 137.188.108.55 (talk) 05:05, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLP issues regarding family members
I have (hopefully briefly) protected the article in order to deal with the repeated re-insertion of unsourced material regarding the identity, location, physical characteristics, sexual orientation, etc., of members of Sipple's family. This type of material is not appropriate for Wikipedia under our policy on biographies of living persons. (The living persons are Sipple's family members, who are covered by the policy.) Unsourced family gossip does not belong on Wikipedia under any circumstances.

Hopefully it will be possible to unprotect the page after this has been understood by the editor(s) involved. Thanks, --MCB 20:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Removed tangential movie quote in 'cultural references'
I think cultural references are always debatable, but this one seems especially weak (one line in a movie referring to a famous event?), and doesn't add anything to the current article, so I cut it: In the movie Absence of Malice (1981), which came out eight years before Sipple's possible suicide, actress Sally Field's character Megan Carter writes a story that reveals tangential, but very personal and embarrassing information about her source (Melinda Dillon), causing the already disturbed woman to commit suicide. Carter's editor (Josef Sommer) consoles her with a story, apparently about Sipple: "Look, people get caught up in things. Remember the woman in San Francisco, a few years ago, took a shot at Ford, and the guy in the crowd grabbed her arm, saved the president's life, was a hero? Turns out he was gay. Now the whole country knows that, too." "Did he kill himself?" Carter asks, sardonically. Cheakamus (talk) 18:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added a citation from a book that supports the movie reference as referring to Sipple. So, it's not WP:OR (anymore). VG &#x260E; 12:07, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

possible content
On September 22 1975 former marine Oliver Sipple saved the life of President Gerald Ford, for which he was highly praised by law enforcement and the media but only a personal letter from the President instead of a visit to the White House. Sipple, who was closeted in his hometown of Detroit had met Milk back in New York and had participated in San Francisco's gay pride parades and gay rights demonstrations. The incident came just three weeks after Lynette Fromme's assassination attempt on Ford so reporters hounded Sipple who at first didn't want his name used, nor his location known. Sipple had worked on Milk's campaign and the two were friends, Sipple would also be later described as a "prominent figure" in the gay community who had worked in a gay bar and was active in the Imperial Court System. Milk, however, reportedly outed Sipple as a "gay hero" to San Francisco Chronicle's columnist Herb Caen in hopes to "break the stereotype of homosexuals" of being "timid, weak and unheroic figures". Gay liberation groups petitioned local media to give Sipple his due as a gay hero. Caen published the private side of the former Marine's story, as did a handful of other publications. Sipple then insisted to reporters that his sexuality was to be kept confidential. Later, when Sipple hid in a friend's apartment to avoid them, the reporters turned to Milk, arguably the most visible voice for the gay community. The reporters had already labeled Sipple the "gay ex-Marine" and his conservative Baptist mother disparaged and disowned him when she found out about his sexuality. Milk's precise role in the outing remain somewhat cloudy as Sipple's active participation in the gay community suggests that his sexuality would have been revealed and reported even if doing so was seen as unethical.

Milk?? Harvey Milk? No link to the Harvey Milk article? Is there a reason for this? If not, this should be corrected in the article as well. 98.207.39.195 (talk) 16:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Comments
The above was a former draft from the Harvey Milk article. It has since been rewritten to an FA level but both versions may be of use to this article. -- Banj e b oi   14:54, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction
Two uncited pieces of information contradict each other. The article states that Sipple was on disability and unable to hold a job. It also states that he was employed and not out to his employer. I've done a little poking around but haven't found anything that can confirm either piece. Orrin Knox (talk) 02:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * A similar problem concerns
 * ....wounds suffered in December 1968 caused him to finish out his tour of duty in a Philadelphia veterans hospital, from which he was released in March 1970...
 * AFAIK
 * a "tour of duty" does not necessarily end in discharge, but one cannot continue past discharge, and
 * undischarged military personnel are treated in military hospitals, and discharged in vet's hospitals
 * whence i suspect he finished out his term of service in a military hospital, and may have been transferred from there to a VAH upon discharge. --Jerzy•t 07:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

See also?
Perhaps a useful "See also" link would be to Daniel Hernandez who in addition to treating victims of the 2011 Tucson shooting is also openly LGBT? Lilly (talk) 03:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Saving Ford's life, etc.
Being "known for" that suggests too strongly that he did save it, which (tho a rare thing to approach as close to certainty as he did) is utterly unverifiable: who can say that she was skilled enuf to aim accurately, let alone avoid spoiling the aim in pulling the trigger? Did she understand the difference between trajectories that guarantee a kill and don't, and was she able to deduce how they depend on the orientation of the target's body to the trajectory? Was she trying for a kill, a survivable wound, or a near miss? Similarly, how could "Reacting instinctively" be confirmable, or rather, how could whatever the editor intended to say -- in claiming that a behavior dependent on recognizing that an object is a firearm could fall under
 * Instincts are the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior. The fixed action patterns are unlearned and inherited.

-- be verifiable? It is possible to act without a conscious decision to do so, but reporting that one has done so is not verification; as with the unseen gorilla who threads his way thru the basketball players, the focus required to act that quickly is more likely to produce reports that reflect emotionally fraught attempts to reason out what one's own state of mind must have been, than accurate recollections. Such issues probably infect even those whose current mix of training and real combat puts them at their point of optimum introspection, but his nearly 7 years since either combat or training, and whatever psychological issues he had, make him (with all due respect to what must be called his heroic intervention) far from any presumption of accurately reporting how and why he acted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerzy (talk • contribs) 07:28, 18 January 2011 Letter from President Ford thanking Oliver Sipple for saving his life. http://www.lgbtqveteransmemorial.com/ford.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:243:815:717:543F:2400:5F52:2949 (talk) 17:37, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

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Oliver Sipple
You are saying that Oliver Sipple grabbed SARAH JANE Moores shoulder, arm, etc and saved the President. That is a complete fabrication. Sipple was onthe same side of the street as POTUS. He received the bullet in his groin area fom the ricochet  off the wall of the St Francis  hotel. You can argue with me but I  was on the same side of the street  as Moore. Bullet went between me and a SFO police officer. I still remember quite well. 2600:8800:171A:E100:DD5F:33E4:D6C2:94C6 (talk) 22:38, 8 November 2022 (UTC)


 * then update it 137.188.108.55 (talk) 05:06, 5 September 2023 (UTC)