McClellan, John

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Revision as of 20:13, 17 September 2011

John McClellan and his brother Paul grew up near Woodstock, a small town in northern Indiana. John often needed to look out for his much smaller brother in the years before Paul had sex reassignment surgery and became his sister Cheryl.

The McClellan brothers met Eve Riley and Shae Kirkendahl at a county fair in Blanchardville, south of South Bend where Shae managed to humiliate their school's bully and the four rode the Ferris Wheel together with Eve snuggled with Paul.^GM12 The four met again by chance at the Mishawaka Mall in South Bend where they went to see Dirty Dancing together. Shae took the brother's phone number, allowing her to make arrangements to meet them again.^GM13 The two couples met several times before talk about the Bradford High School prom resulted in the girls accepting invitations to the boy's prom in Woodstock, as witnessed by their Bradford Class of 1988 classmate, Vicky Varney.^GM15

The brothers probably went to Valparaiso University in Indiana together for their undergraduate degrees.^GM12

In December 1993, when his brother Paul was in St Priscillasville Vermont for the surgery that would complete his transition to Cheryl, John appeared in the waiting room, sitting on the couch, face in his hands, crying his eyes out, the sobs literally shaking his body. Eve realized that it was John, who cared so much about his younger brother Paul that he had tried everything to prevent him from going through with the SRS. Eventually she helps him to accept Cheryl as his sister, although he goes through a period of berating himself for having been an asshole.^GM23

When Cheryl gets out of the hospital, John, who is by then studying structural engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute insists that Eve and Cheryl stay at his apartment until the dorms are opened again at Syracuse. John again started berating himself, and Eve comforts him, ending up in his bed. One weekend, when the girls are back at Syracuse University, John and his roommate Chad show up, and after that the four of them get together every other weekend, and go to Florida on their spring break.^GM24

In the fall of 1994, John and Eve are both accepted into PhD programs at Brown University in Providence; they make a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married to take advantage of married student housing. After leaving Providence, they both move to Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, where John works with a bridge-building company.