Born Mildred J. Berryman, she was a typist, machinist, and jewelry maker. She was also a pioneering independent scholar, who did a precious, and one of the earliest, community study of Lesbians and Gay Men in America. This took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, between 1916-1938, widely consulting personal diaries, articles from official Mormon Church publications and other sources. From her study, one clearly gets the idea that Salt Lake City was never as straight nor as straitlaced as some would have the world believe.