Gerald Gerrard Creer and Kent Michael Williams have choked up almost 15 years of delay to become a couple because they struggled to communicate.
In June 2009, when the two met on a carnival cruise ship, Williams texted Creeer every few weeks. Creeer routinely turned him down. For years, Williams thought it was because of his age. “Gerard told me when I met him that I was too young,” Williams said. (Creaa is seven years older.)
The truth was more complicated.
The friendship that Williams, now 42, and Creeer, 49, attacked while sailing from Miami to the Bahamas had been obstacles from the start. Williams, an engineer at Cox Communications who lived in Baltimore at the time, traveled alone. A social worker, Creeer, a deaf teacher, and the actor who later lived in Suitland, Maryland, was on vacation with his boyfriend. Both were part of a group of LGBTQ people who took vacation together.
Williams recalls seeing Mr. Creer get caught up in a trip or two outside the ship's nightclub and is drawn to him. “He's fine,” he recalls thinking.
However, he did not know that Mr. Creer was deaf. Mr. Creeer, who sees American sign language as his first language, can read his lips and make sounds. However, he struggles to decipher the words spoken in dim lighting and noisy environments.
“I don't know if my hearing is adapted to having conversations with me at times,” he said of ruggedness. That was with Mr. Williams. Then there was Williams' social anxiety issue. “I'm shy and introverted,” he said. “I'm still trying to understand why I went to Gerald in the first place.”
By the time my vacation was in the rearview mirror, only two things were clear. For one, I found each one to be attractive. And two, “Kent was very shy,” Creeer said.
Mr. Creair grew up in Richmond, Virginia and had five brothers. His parents, Pamela Smith and Jared Creeer, discovered his hearing loss before his first birthday.
In middle school, I attended an event in the Deaf Community in Rochester, New York, where I moved to attend private schools. There he found his first deaf role model: Rosalie Rockwell, a school teacher, and her husband, Dale. Both are dead.
“They told me about NTID,” he said – The National Institute of Technology, a university at Rochester Institute of Technology, will train students who are deaf and hard for technical careers where Rockwell was a professor of science.
At first, Mr. Creer was skeptical. “No one in my family went to college or graduated from college.”
However, NTID, who registered as a scholarship student in 1994, opened up the world. “I've met deaf people of all races,” he said. In his freshman year he joined the Ebony Club, a campus group for deaf black students, but left because he felt that he was not intellectual on their level. Shirley J. Allen, a retired RIT professor and the first black deaf woman to earn her PhD, pulled him aside and said, “Don't give up.”
Mr. Creeer has won twice from RIT. This is his first bachelor's degree in double major, social work and performing arts. A few years later, he completed his Masters in Education. He currently works as a teacher in the Atlanta area drama and theatre arts for the deaf people in Clarkston, Georgia.
Mr. Williams grew up in Baltimore with his parents, Darlene Winslow and Kent Williams Sr., two young half sisters, and his cousin, whom he considers his third sister. At the age of 17, he began college at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland, where he studied computer science. But at the time he had a hard time agreeing to his sexuality. After the semester he was dropped.
“I tried to commit suicide,” said Williams, who raised Christians. “I grew up in church so I thought I would go to hell anyway.” (Crea said he attempted suicide during college for similar reasons and survived depression with the help of a friend from the theater. A creative outlet he had pursued since childhood.) Instead of returning to Baltimore, Williams moved to Dunsville, Virginia, where his godmother lived. To support himself, he worked a series of retail jobs.
In 2003, three years later in Virginia, he returned to Baltimore and got a friend and eventually an apartment where he worked in customer service on Verizon. By 2009 he was ready to return to university and later earned a bachelor's degree in information systems from the University of Maryland. In 2010 he moved to Atlanta.
Her boyfriend, Mr. Creeer, took part in a 2009 cruise, where she broke up with him shortly after returning to Maryland. Mr. Creeer returned to Rochester, where he began working as an ASL coach and teacher for the deaf. Heartbreak was nothing new to him, but for years he had been dating an older man and trying to avoid it. He said that his own age or younger man “just wanted to play.” “I didn't like it.”
Williams made an appointment to himself to stay in touch with Creaer after the cruise, but he knew that the odds of the ultimate romance were against him. He didn't know ASL and it was difficult to keep up with the situation in Mr. Creer's relationship. But he stayed in a huge crushing grip. “I never stopped being attracted to him,” Williams said. “I made it very clear.”
He texted Mr. Creer at least once a month to let him know his travel plans and when and where he hoped they could meet in person. Mr. Creer always responded, but there were usually excuses. “He's going to say, 'No, I don't think so, I can't take a break,” Williams said. “I say it's okay and I'll continue to be honest.” But sometimes they met in cities like Washington, DC.
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“We met him for dinner at a local event or at a restaurant,” Williams said. Those visits were sometimes romantic before saying good night. However, the pattern of rejecting Mr. Creer's invitation is quickly picked up from where he left off. “I thought it was what it was,” Williams said. “I enjoy the things I can get from time to time.”
In December 2023, Williams made plans to celebrate a friend's birthday in Manhattan and asked Creeer to meet him there. Within a day, Mr. Creer replied, “I'm there.”
“I, oh my god, is it true?” said Williams. “I was really happy,” he said nervously.
At the Hilton Double Tree in Times Square, the two stayed up all night long in the couple's version of the (and-and) card game that Mr. Creeer brought to them.
“It was very thought-provoking,” Creeer said. “Did we answer a question you hesitate to tell me? What are you afraid of?” Both say they fell in love that night. “We understood each other in ways we never had before,” Creeer added.
That weekend, Williams finally realized that Creer had been reluctant to accept his invitation for many years. Mr. Creer's reservations about dating young men were genuine. “I was aiming to be a mature man who understood the struggles of life and knew what it took to maintain a long-term relationship,” Creeer said.
But there was something else too. “Kent often goes on trips I can't afford,” he added. “I'm a social worker and I was embarrassed that I couldn't go because of my schedule and money.”
At the end of the New York birthday celebration, Williams was ready to pave the way forward as a couple. “'Are we dating exclusively?” he asked Mr. Creer. “Gerard said, “I think we should. I'm going to emphasize that we're investing in you.”
Two weeks later, in January 2024, they met for the second time in Manhattan. In March they traveled to London for a friend's wedding. By then, they had been discussing living together in Atlanta. But it's not a marriage. So it was a surprise that Mr. Creer proposed to Mr. Williams at the top of the London I Ferris Wheel. “It was total distrust,” Williams said. His yes brought tears to both.
“I'm deaf in the hearing world so I always sign it, but I don't think Kent is different from the rest,” Creer said. “I love his heart, compassion and generosity.”
Williams added: “I fell in love with how authentic he is, the heart he has. He will do anything on his own to make someone else happy, even if he risks making himself unhappy.”
In June, Creeer moved to Williams' home in Atlanta. On February 28, 115 guests gathered at Kimball Hall in Roswell, Georgia, to officiate the week of LGBTQ activist and pastor Romell Parks, a friend of the sanctuary of the Christian Church in St. Louis. Both men were escorted in the aisle by their parents.
The ceremony included two ASL interpreters and a production of John Legend's “All of Me.” Mr. Creer and Mr. Williams traded rings and promised to love each other “today, tomorrow, and forever.” Once they officially married, they jumped over a broom decorated with ribbons and rhinestones, making it an eternal moment in that first moment.
This day
February 28, 2025
Kimball Hall, Roswell, GA.
With the weeks leading up to the wedding, Creeer took her to Instagram to express her feelings about Williams in a series called “Word of the Day.” Every day he taught his followers new ASL words, such as “eternity” and “commitment.” Williams, who avoids the camera because of shyness, reluctantly agreed to be part of a Valentine's Day “romance” post.
…and in comfort (food) at the reception after the ceremony, guests helped out with their favorite Southern buffets, including BBQ chicken, beef brisket sliders, mac and cheese. For dessert, the groom cut a small wedding cake and was given red velvet and chocolate cupcakes.
On a voyage of Bonn the day after their wedding, the couple set out on their second cruise together to the Caribbean. This time they shared a cabin.
