Wartime Romance in the Alpheus Koon Papers
by Isaac Fellman
Alpheus Koon was a ballet dancer; he died in 1969 at age 51, and he didn’t want for love. This is most of what we know about him, except a few tantalizing hints around the Internet — a testimonial from a ballet student, a boast from a family historian about Koon’s ability to teach his students while playing piano.
Alpheus Koon poses on a dock, 1938; the handwritten inscription on the back reads “My first second position. 1938, Lakeland.” Photographer unknown; Alpheus Koon Papers (2019-80), GLBT Historical Society.
Last year, a sharp-eyed Floridian bought a collection of Koon’s letters and ephemera at an estate sale and donated them to us. They chronicle the small but far-flung group of lovers, friends, and family who surrounded the dancer during the Second World War.
Koon spent the war performing in New York as a soloist with the American Ballet Theater, touring and keeping up an extensive correspondence. One of his regular correspondents, Jamie, seems to have also been both a dancer and Koon’s lover. In a 1945 letter, he concludes an account of a crowded weekend of performing and partying, followed by a risqué poem about a sailor, with “I’ll have to run, Darling, I have rehearsal (understudy) at 1:00, so I’ll leave now. Will write to you tomorrow. Love me??? I love you.”
A Desirable Theatricality
Another of Koon’s apparent lovers, Gene, was a witty and ambitious serviceman. He wrote more circumspectly, but still found space among the frustrations of battalion politics to tell Koon “the PICTURES ARE AMAZING […] they seem to combine a wonderful amount of YOU with a very desirable theatricality.” A third correspondent, who signs as “Mimi,” sent Koon a store-bought valentine preprinted “for you, SISTER,” with an interior note, “Write me soon — ma chère Alphonse — what was the name of that Les who works here[?]”
After Koon retired from dancing, he taught ballet and had a ten-year stint as artistic director of the Tampa Civic Ballet. He returned in the end to his home state of Florida, where his father practiced medicine. It’s unlikely that we will ever know what became of his suitors, but we can still be invited into their heady world of artistic labor, wartime camp and romance.
Isaac Fellman is the society’s reference archivist.