Queer Places:
10557 Ilona Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90064
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Robert Milton Onthank (October 29, 1915 - August 31, 1957) was a gay World War II veteran.
In 1948, he wrote about his military experience as a closeted gay man. In 1994
Wilna Onthank wrote Born Gay, an unpublished book based on the diaries of her brother Robert Onthank.
Robert Milton Onthank was born on October 29, 1915, in Chicago, IL, the son of Frederick Robert Onthank (1892–1973) and Grace Emma Holman (1890–1959). He attended Burbank High School and was elected president of the Scholarship society. In 1932 he was among twenty-five American high school graduates who were successful candidates in a nationwide scholarship competition conducted by the University of Southern California. Winners, twelve girls and thirteen boys, represented eleven states, namely: New York, Arkansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Michigan, Kansas, Washington, Wisconsin, and California. All of them won a tuition scholarship to the University of Southern California.
Onthank graduated from University of California, Los Angeles campus, in 1936. He taught for a time at Pacific Military Academy in Culver City. In 1941 he was Carlos Y Miran in the dramatic piece "Calvario", produced at the Westwood Theater Guild, under the direction of Leon Connell. Onthank enlisted in the Air Corps in August, 1941. Since February, 1942, he was in the Pacific war theater. Onthank served in the military and trained in aerial navigation, becoming an airspace captain, and then a PAD sales training supervisor in Seattle. In 1943 he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and Oak Leaf Cluster. In 1955 he was noted for achievements in the technical training phase at major Pacific stations. On August 31, 1957, Robert committed suicide at the age of 42.
In the 1990s, 37 years after her brother's death, Wilna Onthank sought to get her brother's writings published, a decision based on political issues regarding gays in the military. Wilna began her retirement in Mesa, Arizona, then moved to Hemet, California. Wilna passed away July 18, 2004 and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, where her brother also lays.
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