Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 12:41:21 EST From: "David B. O'Donnell" [Reprinted without permission...The Dallas Morning News...Sunday, January 9, 1994...First page of the Metropolitan Section] Sex change ends storm of inner conflict...by Steve Blow Many of you will remember Jim Littleton, the weekend weatherman for WFAA-TV (channel 8) during most of the 1980s. When Jim left the station in 1987, you might say big changes were in the forecast. Last week, I sat and visited with Jan, the emergency room nurse who once was a TV weatherman, the woman who used to be Jim. "I did this," Jan explained, "because I wanted to get to a peaceful place in my life. Obviously, this is something I felt very strongly compelled to do." Jan, who did not want her last name used, now lives on the West Coast. She was back in Dallas a few days to visit friends. She said she agreed to talk publically for the first time about her sex change in hopes of fostering a little more understanding for transgender folks and everyone else who happens to be a little different. "I'm from the Rodney King school," she said. "`Can't we all just get along?'" Not surprisingly, Jan looks a lot like Jim. Or like a sister, anyway. There is the same round, baby face we saw so often on TV. But now the familiar face is set in a new package. Jan, 41, wore a blue cotton sweater, faded jeans and black cowboy boots. Her hair is sandy blond, wavy, and collar length. *A caring face* I hate to stereotype, but Jan looks like what she is--an ER nurse. She combines a warm, caring face with a slightly tough, no-nonsense manner. Just like Jim, Jan struggles a bit with her weight. And like Jim, she wears a hairpiece--but wears it much better. It pains Jan to think of the grief poor Jim took over his awkward hairpiece. And, yes, she has had surgery that makes her fully a woman. Or at least in no way a man. But to Jan, the transformation didn't come with the slice of the knife. It happened on the day she moved from Dallas, on Memorial Day weekend in 1988. "I loaded up a U-Haul truck in Dallas as one person and I unloaded that truck in another city as another person. And I never looked back," she said. Jan doesn't want to say where she moved. But it was there that she underwent the sex-change process---and where she enrolled in nursing school. "I would have loved to continue in television," she said, "but I couldn't send out audition tapes because I didn't have any. *He* did." *Girlish thoughts* *He* -- Jim Littleton-- grew up in a very small West Texas town. Even in elementary school, he was thinking about being a girl. And those thoughts never went away. "When I was a senior in high school, I wrote my big English research papaer on transsexualism," Jan said. My folks wrote it off as being rebellious. At Texas Tech, Jim majored in broadcasting and then worked at several West Texas radio stations. That led to a job with a Lubbock TV station, where Jim covered the farm beat and then began doing the weather. In 1981, Channel 8 offered him its weekend weathercasting job, which would hold Jim for almost 7 years. Throughout that time, Jim was struggling with his sexuality. "I was in therapy the whole time," Jan said. Jim fell in love and married a woman while in Dallas--confessing from the start his internal conflicts. In 1988 after Channel 8 let Jim go and a brief return to Lubbock TV proved unhappy, Jim decided the time had come to act on his desires. Today, Jan' only regret is the pain her decision caused her parents and former wife. But after an initial rocky period, they have all come to accept her, Jan said. As a man, Jim was sexually attracted to women, and that didn't change. "I've never been with men and don't have any interest in them," Jan said. "I'm fairly out and active in the lesbian community." But she isn't "out" as a transsexual except to her most intimate friends. She hates all the sensationaal stereotypes that go along with transsexualism. "I'm not any of those things. I'm just me and want to be judged as me." In fact, as we talked, Jan was almost apologetic about the ordinariness of her life. "This ain't the *Geraldo* show," she said. "This is just something I did. Some people go in the Army. I went into a gender reassignment program."