Queer Places:
315 Florida Ave S, Lakeland, FL 33801
8 W 52nd St, New York, NY 10019
Oak Hill Burial Park
Lakeland, Polk County, Florida, USA
Alpheus Cary “Alpheus” Koon Jr. (December 26, 1918 - February 18, 1969) was
a ballet dancer Alpheus Koon. Koon, a doctor's son, had been a pre-med student
at the University of Tennessee. He was a soloist for the American Ballet
Theater from 1941-1945 and artistic director of the Tampa Civic Ballet from
1953-1963.
Before the American Ballet Theater, he had danced with the St. Louis Municipal Opera; afterwards and before his work in Tampa, he performed with the Original Ballet Russe and at Radio City Music Hall.
He contributed to Grace Robert's Borzoi Book of Ballets.
From his correspondence, Koon appears to have been in intimate relationships with several of the male correspondents. 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.”
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.
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.
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