My dad bonded with Lenny, who was 20 years older than me, over Lucille Ball and her daughter. When Dad flew to Manhattan to meet Lenny for the first time and stay in our apartment for a week, you can imagine how nervous we were. A former (extremely conservative) Baptist minister coming to stay with a gay couple where the older partner may have been perceived as having "corrupted" his son?

To say that we were of two minds about the visit is a vast understatement.

Thanks to Dad, however, it went off swimmingly. We did the whole New York City tourism thing, including stops at places we rarely went ourselves, like the top of the Empire State Building. But when Lenny scored tickets to a play Lucie Arnaz was in, and when we took him for a late supper to a restaurant where Lenny knew the cast hangs out, and when Ms. Arnaz herself sashayed in for cocktails and oysters, Dad was both starstruck and completely won over.

He was always a huge Lucie fan, and when he realized he and Lenny actually shared many (if hardly most) interests in common, he was able to set aside his qualms and connect person to person.