The halls are decked with pine and garland, guests from across the country are pouring in and the new owners of the Brass Lantern Inn on Maple Street are preparing to celebrate their first Vermont Christmas.
As part of the new cohort carrying the torch for old-fashioned hospitality in Stowe, Donald Jones and Andrew Kohn have brought their own touch to the inn and made it a family affair.
Jones and Kohn will celebrate their first Christmas in Stowe in the attached apartment as they’ve been so focused on getting into the business of hospitality that there hasn’t been time for much else.
The garrulous Jones fills the role of the consummate host, while Kohn is more reserved and thoughtful, but with an attention to detail and a penchant for husbandry. Their dynamic is complimentary in their personal life — as married men and parents to two adopted children — as it is professionally.
The couple has largely kept the inn intact, adorned with its charming array of oil paintings and knickknacks, but also introduced modernizing touches like an ice machine, high-speed internet and making alcoholic beverages available.
It was politics that brought the two of them together and, in a sense, it’s politics that has defined their lives and ultimately brought them to purchase this historic bed and breakfast after uprooting their lives in Ohio.
With a rise in anti-LGBTQ violence and policy across the country, including the rightward turn in the political landscape of the Buckeye State where the specter of “Don’t Say Gay” and educational policies aimed at removing the discussion of race in schools, the couple began to feel materially threatened for themselves and their children, who are Black.
When they began looking for hotels in true blue Vermont on a whim, they connected the Brass Lantern’s former owners, Mary Anne and George Lewis, who have their own Ohio connection and were quietly looking to part ways with the property.
“It ended up kind of being this kind of kismet, kind of serendipitous situation where the stars aligned in making this happen,” said Jones.
Getting together
The Vermont connection was already there when Jones and Kohn met in Washington, D.C., in the early 2000s, where Jones was working as a consultant and Kohn was in town to help lobby against the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Kohn was studying at Vermont Law School and the couple did the long-distance thing for a while. Jones visited him one weekend and the couple spent a fateful weekend in Stowe. Though they wouldn’t end up moving there for years, the prospect of Vermont never left their relationship.
“‘We should move to Vermont, we should move to Stowe.’ He’s been saying that for 15 years and we finally went through with it,” Jones recalled.
The couple first tried life in urban Maryland, but after a carjacking and a general wearying of the D.C. set, Jones and Kohn decamped to the Columbus, Ohio, area in 2010, a return to Jones’s home state. It was there they opened a bed and breakfast, which also functioned as a working farm overseen by Kohn.
But the specter of Vermont lingered. Granville, the village where they lived, boasts a distinctly New England aesthetic, having been founded by — you guessed it — Vermonters.
Jones and Kohn built an idyllic life in Granville, eventually adopting their daughter in 2013 and later their son, who was also an emergency placement. After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2014, they married, first in a small ceremony officiated by a housekeeper and later in a more traditional ceremony.
Political reality
As gay men, politics and policy have always been more than just a personal set of beliefs or part of their careers. Milestones like the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage and broader legal recognition and acceptance of LGBTQ rights have shaped their lives in deeply personal and material ways.
When they first moved to Ohio, the state was solidly blue. Kohn jumped into Democratic politics and helped stump for Barack Obama. But like many formerly Democratic or at least politically purple Midwestern states, Ohio saw a red wave in 2016, helped along by gerrymandering, and the state helped to elect Donald Trump.
Buoyed by this rightward surge, Ohio is currently controlled by a Republican supermajority. In April, its legislature introduced a bill that combined aspects of Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which essentially forbids the discussion of gender or sexuality in schools, and also forbids teachers from discussing race as a systemic problem in the United States.
This hit particularly close to home for Jones and Kohn, who have always supported progressive politics but found the issue of race had become deeply personal after adopting two Black children.
“We as white folks need to make sure that we’re aware and educated and understand the legacy of white supremacy and privilege, but when it’s your kids, it absolutely hits even harder,” Jones said. “It’s so important to do the work and also important to make sure your kids are safe, and they are able to be supported in that.”
This past November, an admirable showing by Democrats nationwide tempered expectations for another red wave, save for the defeat of Democrat Tim Ryan by the Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate race.
Earlier this month, the First Unitarian Church, where Jones was previously a board member, was subjected to armed protest by members of the Proud Boys, a militant far right group best known for the key role it played in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, for a drag queen storytime event being held there.
“I felt like, as two gay men with Black kids — and I’m not trying to be hyperbolic about it — but we’re the ones who are vulnerable in this kind of situation,” Jones said.
So, when the right opportunity fell into place, the couple finally moved to Vermont and never looked back.
While Vermont’s politics seem to ensure that their children will learn about racism and will be allowed to talk about gender or their parents’ sexual orientation in schools, they’re also reckoning with the sparsely populated, un-diverse reality of Vermont living, particularly for their elementary-aged children.
“We were at the holiday concert and looking around, it was like, (our daughter) was the only Black girl in the Stowe Elementary School,” Jones said.
Jones and Kohn were effusive in their praise for the Stowe community in general and discussed the kindness of community members and others in the hospitality community at large. They have plans to explore Vermont’s gay culture.
Although this may be their family’s first Christmas at the Brass Lantern Inn, Jones and Kohn see it as the first of many.
