Page 121 - Push Back

He thought he was a woman trapped in a man’s body — but it turns out he’s “just another
boring straight guy.”

ABC News editor Don Ennis strolled into the newsroom in May wearing a little black dress and
an auburn wig and announced he was transgender and splitting from his wife. He wanted to be
called Dawn.

But now he says he suffered from a two-day bout of amnesia that has made him realize he wants
to live his life again as Don.

Don/Dawn/Don Ennis

“I accused my wife of playing some kind of cruel joke, dressing me up in a wig and bra and
making fake ID’s with the name ‘Dawn’ on it. Seriously,” Ennis wrote in a memo he posted to
the newsroom bulletin board Friday, explaining his shock after he woke up from what he called
a “transient global amnesia” last month...

“It became obvious this was not the case once I took off the bra — and discovered two reasons I
was wearing one,” he said, referring to his hormone-induced breasts.

“I thought it was 1999... and I was sure... that I was a man,” Ennis said in the e-mail titled “Not
Reportable, Very Confirmed.”

“Fortunately, my memories of the last 14 years have since returned. But what did not return was
my identity as Dawn,” said Ennis, who had been wearing lipstick, skirts and heels.

“I am writing to let you know I’m changing my name . . . to Don Ennis. That will be my name
again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.

“I have retained the much different mind-set I had in 1999: I am now totally, completely,
unabashedly male in my mind, despite my physical attributes,” he said.

“I’m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was
misdiagnosed.

“I am already using the men’s room and dressing accordingly,” he noted.