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Forty years ago, a small circle of friends fought for their rights as UNH's first recognized gay student group. On April 11, 2012, those 1970s activists returned to campus to see where their efforts had led. They took their place in the MUB amid other circles of friends, 260 people strong, celebrating the gay community's achievements at the university's annual pancake breakfast.

Today's activists and allies eat pancakes because in 1974, deep in a contentious battle for equality, the Gay Students Organization lost out on a pancake breakfast with the governor. Therein lies a complex tale of prejudice and court cases, friendship and ultimate triumph. (See Spring 2011 issue).

"We never expected to make history," said Wayne April '74, who filed the papers establishing the Gay Students Organization in 1973. "We were just a small group of people who wanted to get together and do something out in the open - which was itself a revolutionary act."

Not for a second did the '70s activists imagine that their legal fight would establish a national precedent still cited in students' rights cases today. Nor could they foresee that the trail they blazed would lead them back where they'd started, to a place that looked familiar but felt like another solar system.

The state that once feared contagion if gay students held a dance had just reaffirmed its support for marriage equality. The campus whose GLBT resources once consisted of an unacknowledged "gay table" in the MUB now found it perfectly normal for the university president to help hundreds of people celebrate "Gaypril."

Onstage in the Granite State Room, Cris Arguedas '75, Roma Baran '74G, Richard Maxfield '75 and Ann Philbin '76 passed the microphone around with Wayne April as they told bits and pieces of their story. When they'd finished, the crowd rose in a raucous, whistling ovation.

"You've made a difference in the lives of countless students, faculty, staff and their families," Cari Moorhead '99G, associate dean of the graduate school, said as she presented the five alumni with the UNH Founders Award. "We can never thank you enough."

The alumni gazed out past their partners and friends at the center table (including Colleen McDonough '74) past the cheering 2012 crowd, and off to the distant 1970s.

Given what happened back then—a governor who repeatedly called them perverts, front-page headlines urging "Boot Out the Pansies," the university's lawyer arguing in court that homosexuals had a "communicable mental illness" and thus should not be allowed to hold social events on campus—the audience might have expected the speakers to remember their Durham years as torture.

Instead, looking around at the living display of their legacy, here's what they remembered:

Arguedas: "This was not some painful struggle for us. This was fun, and we knew we were right, and we had each other."

Philbin: "We were kids, and then this happened to us. From then on, it determined how we were going to be: We were going to question authority, do the right thing, stay out and never go back into the closet."

Maxfield: "We just didn't take no for an answer; we kept pushing the boundaries."

Baran: "You feel clearly when an injustice is being done. It's a very strong motivating force, and that's as true now as it ever was."

Dan Innis, dean of the Whittemore School of Business, said he'd recently heard a student comment that nothing much had changed in 40 years, that the same battles remain to be fought today.

"In the 1970s, we were asked to speak in psychology classes - but only abnormal psychology," Arguedas responded. "And you guys are getting married!"

After the breakfast, Innis said the students had come away with a new appreciation of life in 2012. "In the social media age, the power of one can be hard to recognize," he said. "They saw the impact that the actions of just a few people can have in helping to shape change."

When the pancakes were gone and the well-wishers had dispersed, a group of students and Ellen Semran, the university's full-time LGBTQ program coordinator, wandered with the alumni down the hall to the Strafford Room, where their 1973 dance had attracted more gawkers and reporters than dancers.

After they'd argued good-naturedly over what happened that night ("Kool and the Gang played," someone said. "They did not; we had records!"), the alumni asked Semran and the students to tell them about Safe Zones and all the other programs that support gay life on campus today.

They listened in amazed appreciation. "You guys are the best legacy handlers," Philbin told the group.

"I was totally impressed," Arguedas said later. "They are the front lines, they are doing it excellently, and they have significant help from their allies - not just good wishes but concrete help. Amazing."

The whirlwind seacoast trip allowed some time to revisit the fun stuff, too. The day before the breakfast, Philbin, Arguedas and Baran knocked on the door of the house where they'd lived in Dover, and the owners let them in to look around.

The memories still lived there—not just gay rights and women's rights meetings in the living room, but the stuff of which everyone's college years are made: Maxfield's cat playing with Baran's dog. Cooking big communal dinners. Classical music playing on Sunday mornings, and Arguedas yelling down from the third floor: "NO CHURCH MUSIC!"

Their personal memories had met the public memory, and finally the circle has closed. Today's activists stand on the shoulders of the'70s, and for one intense day, their forbears were privileged to experience the world they'd help create.

The last word goes to the first activist, Wayne April: "I feel very validated. I know some people look at that time as a dark period, but I don't. There is no stronger tonic than personal liberation. Today's activists have no fear—and that's the real legacy."

Jane Harrigan was a journalism professor at UNH for 23 years and is now a book editor.