What's In A Name?

What's In a Name?

December 15, 2015 was a huge day for me.  That was the day that the State of Idaho granted my name change to Kim Helmandollar Colaianni.  I took my husband's last name, finally after forty plus years.  It was like a dream come true. 

We were married on June 21, 2014 in Vancouver, Washington because Washington State was one of the few close states that voters had approved same-sex marriage.   Also, we had our friends, Eli and Laraine Triplet, who lived in Vancouver and the Stroupe family (Patricia and Marj and all the cousins) who lived there as well.   The wedding was wonderful, but when we came back to Idaho, not a lot had changed.  The State was still fighting gay marriage in the courts and I was not allowed to change my last name to my married name of Colaianni.

In June of 2015, the United States Supreme Court overturned laws in all fifty states banning same-sex marriage, or as I like to call it -- marriage.  Obergefell v. Hodges finally made our marriage legal across the U.S. and I was entitled by law to change my name.  However, that being said, because I wasn't able to change it when we married a year earlier, I had to go through the process of a legal name change.  Now at the end of a momentous year for gay rights, I am given the gift of being renamed and fully married to my wonderful husband.   He consented to giving me his last name and I am truly grateful. 

For over forty years, we have lived as a loving and committed couple and now share our name, a bonding experience equal to our marriage vows.  While going through some old photographs recently, I stumbled upon a document that my sister Mickey had written in 1982.  It is a Legal Adoption Decree renaming me Kim Colaianni, signed by Ray and Louise Colaianni, bringing me into the family fully.  Little did we know back then that it would come true. 

The funny thing is that the document states that I will be known by the aka Vito, because Kim Colaianni just wasn't Italian.  Gino has been calling me Casey every since we worked together on the railroad, after Casey Jones.   However, when we started talking about the name change, he decided to call me KC (Kim Colaianni).   He says I look more like a KC than a Kim.   It stuck.  My aka is now KC.