Stories of Inspiration

Max Robinson was an inspirational figure for me when I decided to become a TV journalist and news anchor.  I’m Don Lemon, and Max’s professional ascent to become, in 1978, the co-anchor of ABC World News Tonight on ABC News, alongside Peter Jennings and Frank Reynolds, showed me that it was possible for a Black American to become a news anchor on a major network.

Many people aren’t aware that Max was the first to reach that height in our business, and was also a founder in 1975 of the National Association of Black Journalists.   He mentored and supported other Black journalists and technicians trying to work their way up the ladder in a White-dominated news business. Sadly, however, Max struggled with alcohol, and died of AIDS on December 20, 1988, at the age of 49.

After growing up in segregated Richmond, Virginia, Max’s first news anchor job was for a Portsmouth, Virginia, TV news station where – and this seems unbelievable now – he had to recite the news from behind a screen, so that viewers didn’t know he was Black.  One day, he pulled down the screen and the station was flooded with complaints, leading to his firing the next day.

But Max rebounded, and in 1966, he was hired as a reporter at Channel 4, the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC, and became a regular guest on Meet the Press.  He won an Emmy award for the documentary series The Other Washington, portraying life in Anacostia, a Black section of Washington, DC known for crime and poverty, and showed how discriminatory laws perpetuated poverty and inequality in healthcare and education.

Max moved to Channel WTOP in 1969 and later moved up to co-anchor the nighttime newscasts at 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.  But being the first Black man in his position at a series of jobs apparently took a toll on his mental health and self-esteem.

“I can remember walking down the halls and speaking to people who would look right through me,” Robinson is quoted as saying in the book Contemporary Authors. “It was hateful at times … I’ve been the first too often, quite frankly.”

Famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, who was ABC’s Washington bureau chief in 1980-1981, claimed that Max was deliberately excluded from any decision-making regarding the newscast he co-anchored.  Max publicly complained about racism at the network, including at a Smith College speech in 1981.

After Frank Reynolds died in 1983, Robinson was a no-show at the funeral where he was supposed to sit next to First Lady Nancy Reagan.  He claimed he had had too many drinks, couldn’t sleep, took some prescription drugs, and didn’t wake up on time the next morning.  Soon thereafter, Peter Jennings was named the sole anchor of World News Tonight, and Max was moved into a weekend anchor position.

The next year, Max left ABC to become anchor at a local NBC-owned station in Chicago, but often failed to show up at work, entered rehab for alcohol abuse, and retired in 1985.  The autobiography he was writing with the help of Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page was never finished.

My CNN colleague Bernard Shaw observed:  “Max, at the time of his death, had more arms around him than he had when he was fighting lonely battles fighting racism in the industry, fighting the things all of us deal with in our personal lives.”

Patricia Arquette:

We are honored to be asked to memorialize our sister Alexis Arquette.  You’ll first be hearing me, Patricia, then our brother Richmond, then David, then our sister Rosanna.

I would like to highlight what an incredible artist Alexis Arquette was.  As an award-winning actor, her works spanned the screen, theater and cabaret.  As a cabaret singer and M.C. performing at top-level nightclubs, Alexis was a powerhouse, often performing as her self-invented alter ego “Eva Destruction.”

On stage, she starred in Libra with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company for director John Malkovich.  Alexis received praise in VH1’s reality show The Surreal Life in 2005, embodying a strong trans role model at a time when transgender representation was literally non-existent.

Her long career in film began with her widely heralded performance as Georgette in Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn.  She continued with notable performances in Terminal Bliss, American Playhouse, Hollow Boy, Of Mice and Men, Threesome, Jumpin’ at the Boneyard, Grief, Jack Be Nimble, Pulp Fiction, The Wedding Singer, Bride of Chucky, Killer Drag Queens on Dope, and Wigstock, among many others.

Alexis studied Fine Arts at Otis Parsons.  Like her, her paintings are beautiful, evocative, strong, uninhibited, and spirited, encompassing diverse themes such as fantasy, other-worldliness, religious struggle, and erotic art.

Her series of video compilations from local television documented societal norms of the time, capturing blatant anti-LGBT bias.  These works also examine human sexuality, desire and desirability through her observing gaze.

When Alexis was dying, she said about her nephew’s work as an artist, “You signed your name on the tree of life.”  But I want to say, “Alexis, that you are Darling, you are Brave One, you signed your name on the tree of life, and you will never be forgotten.”

Richmond Arquette:

Alexis was an original, wildly creative, fun and funny, every bit her own person.  Her absence continues to be deeply felt.  The world is missing out and I wish she were still alive.

Alexis grew up with a president who refused to even mention AIDS by name, let alone take any measures to prevent its spread.  She heard the blowhards who judged, criticized and condemned her entire life.  I believe the insensitivity in our culture is part of what wore her down.

Death is often reduced to statistics, as if each number isn’t a complete life, intricately interwoven with the lives of those who love them.  The recent worldwide effort to address COVID begs the question, why is it not always this way?  Why are we not as a species more reverent of life?  

I promise you that humanity would be richer if Alexis were still around, and I’m sorry for those of you who never got to be around her.

David Arquette:

Alexis was always ahead of her time.  I shared a room growing up with Alexis.  He taught me everything I knew about art, Hollywood, fashion, music.  She would turn me on to bands years before they became popular.

I’m going to bounce back and forth between pronouns, because that’s what Alexis did.

She was a fighter, always standing up for herself and others.  Anyone who knew Alexis loved her.  The gangsters, the skaters, the club kids, the runaways.  She was a Pied Piper wherever she or he went.

When Alexis decided to live fully as a woman, she also decided to only play female or trans roles as an actress.  Again, she was ahead of her time.  Despite her career suffering because of that decision, she taught us to stay true to ourselves and fought for us to see a world that we had just not caught up to yet.

Rosanna Arquette:

Alexis passed away before we had today’s language around respectful gender identity.  There was no “They/Them” yet.

In this moment of reflection on who our sister was, I’m reminded of just one of the many moments with her where her individuality was crystalized for me.  It was a conversation we had in the hours before she left this life.   I asked Alexis what clothes she wanted to be dressed in before her cremation.  Alexis had every kind of outfit, every type of fluid expression.  Fashion was one of the many ways that she shared her creative voice.  And Alexis answered, “It doesn’t matter!  Me!  I’m just me!”  We didn’t have the pronouns “They/Them” yet, but that was her message in her final moment with me.

It’s important to recognize and memorialize when any artist breaks new ground.  Our sister Alexis Arquette was a pioneer.  She was compelling, hypnotic, she drew you in.  And she knew she had this power, whether with an individual friend or an endless audience of strangers.  She could instantly hold you in the palm of her hand.  And when she did, she showed you, me, us, all how to live a life fully self-expressed.  She showed us where our own power resides.

Alexis challenged me to be who I am in every moment that I live with fearlessness and pride.  In this moment of reflection on who was Alexis Arquette, they were a bad-ass!

Pedro Zamora’s bravery and commitment to AIDS advocacy engaged and educated TV audiences around the world.  Pedro was a cast member on Real World: San Francisco from 1993 to 1994.  I’m Wilson Cruz, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t remember Pedro’s courage and dedication.

On Real World: San Francisco, Pedro was one of the first openly gay people with AIDS that many people ever saw on TV.  Simultaneously, on My So Called Life, I was the first openly gay actor playing an openly gay character in a series regular role on American TV.  And to this day, Pedro still inspires me as an actor, as a man, and as an activist.

Pedro Zamora was the youngest of eight children living in Havana, Cuba when his parents decided to emigrate to Florida as part of the highly-publicized Mariel Boat Lift in 1980.  Pedro was an honor student, captain of the cross-country team and President of the Science Club at his high school where he was voted Best All Around and Most Intellectual.  But at 17 years old, Pedro learned he was HIV positive after donating blood at a blood drive.

His HIV-positive diagnosis propelled him to become a full-time AIDS educator, so that other young people could learn what he was never taught.  This led to hundreds of speaking engagements; a front page article about him in the Wall Street Journal; appearances on major talk shows hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue; and testimony before the U.S. Congress on AIDS education.

Producers of the Real World wanted to cast an HIV-positive person.  Being cast on the series gave Pedro his biggest platform for AIDS education and won him fans all over the world.  Audiences watched how his HIV status affected his relationships with housemates and his health.  They celebrated his commitment ceremony with partner Sean Sasser, which was the first such ceremony in the history of television.

But about midway through the taping of the series, Pedro’s health began to decline, but he told producers that he wanted them to tell his story until the end.  When the stress from his conflict with a homophobic housemate, Puck Rainey, led Pedro to want to move out of the Real World house, his other housemates instead voted to evict Rainey.  Time magazine ranked that episode #7 of the top 32 most epic episodes in reality TV history.

In late June 1994, the Real World: San Francisco began to air on MTV.  At a cast reunion party only two months later in August, Pedro’s progressing illness was evident.  He was diagnosed with toxoplasmosis, a disease that causes brain lesions, and also a rare and often fatal virus that causes inflammation of the brain.  Doctors estimated that he had 3-4 months to live.

In September 1994, he was transferred to a hospital in Miami near his family.  With the help of the U.S. government, the remainder of his family was allowed to move to the U.S., so that they could be with Pedro before he died.  MTV paid for his medical costs, because Pedro was unable to get health insurance due to having a pre-existing condition.

Pedro Zamora died of AIDS at age 22, the morning after the final episode of the show was broadcast.

A memorial fund, youth clinic, a public policy fellowship, a youth scholarship fund and a street in Miami are named in Pedro’s honor.  He was one of the 50 people first included on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor as part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first national monument in the U.S. dedicated to LGBTQ history.

Reflecting on Pedro’s death, President Clinton reminded us, “We must remember what Pedro taught us:  One person can change the world — and whether or not we are living with HIV or know someone who is, we all have a responsibility as global citizens to do whatever we can.  Life is short enough as it is.  No one should die from a disease that is both preventable and treatable.”

Charles Ludlam was the king — and sometimes queen — of downtown theater. As founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York City, Ludlam was an actor, drag artist, writer and director – and one of the most prolific artists on the off-Broadway scene in the 1970s and ’80s.

I’m Jackie Beat, and I want to say right here and right now that drag artists and writers such as myself would not exist were it not for Charles Ludlam.

For nearly 20 years, Ludlam drew dedicated fans to a small basement theater in Greenwich Village for parodies that included Bluebeard, Reverse Psychology, and the Maria Callas spoof Galas. Although Ludlam’s plays were characterized by cross-dressing, free use of double-entendre and comic exaggeration, he resisted attempts to categorize his work as camp. He explained it this way:

”If people take the time to come here more than once, they see I don’t have an ax to grind – even though I do have a mission. That mission is to have a theater that can offer possibilities that aren’t being explored elsewhere.”

The Ridiculous Theatrical Company toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe, and Ludlam received a Drama Desk award and six Village Voice Obie awards. He made forays beyond his own company, as well.

In 1984, he played the title role in the American Ibsen Theater production of Hedda Gabler; and in 1985, he staged the American premiere of The English Cat by Hans Werner Henze for the Santa Fe Opera. Ludlam received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford and Rockefeller foundations and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In early 1987, Ludlam was retained by producer Joseph Papp to direct the production of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park. But in March of that year, Ludlam was diagnosed with AIDS and, a month later, he was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Ludlam called Papp from his hospital bed to say he couldn’t direct Titus for him. Papp promised to reserve the play for him, perhaps for next season, in a space at the Public Theater. Ludlam’s condition quickly worsened, and he died on May 28, 1987. He was 44 years old.

His obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times, the first obituary that directly named AIDS as the cause of death. His sixth Obie award, the Sustained Excellence Award, was presented two weeks before his death.

In 2009, Ludlam was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. The street in front of his theater in Sheridan Square was renamed Charles Ludlam Lane.

With so many tributes to loved ones who fell victim to HIV and AIDS, I want to pay tribute to one man who has devoted his life to caring for those with HIV and AIDS.  This one person has made such a positive impact on the LGBTQIA community and has literally ministered to thousands of men who were alone and lost. This man is Reverend Bernárd Lynch.

During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ‘90s, Bernárd was a tireless voice in the New York City community and traversed the difficult road of illness and death.  His leadership served as a beacon of light to those of us lost in the sea of dying faces we could not save.  Bernárd took up a fight of which many other men shied away. This man used every ounce of his being to provide care to those who died and to those of us living and blindsided by AIDS.  Bernárd’s faith in God never wavered.

Bernárd is an out and proud Roman Catholic priest who has marched in the Gay Pride parades of New York and London for the past 30 years.  He has touched the hearts of gay men and lesbian women from the shores of the United States to England to his homeland of Ireland.  Few men living can be called icons, but I certainly would call Bernárd an icon.

Bernárd’s list of accomplishments is long and varied.  He has worked for the betterment of the LGBT community worldwide.

Father Lynch first came to notice in New York City in 1982 when he formed the first AIDS ministry in New York City with the Catholic group Dignity.  It was this same year that he was drafted to work with the then-New York City Mayor Koch’s Task Force on AIDS.

In 1984, Father Lynch publicly backed Executive Order 50 in New York, which forbade discrimination from employers who did business with the city or received business funding.  At the height of the AIDS pandemic in 1986, he used his voice to publicly speak up against Cardinal O’Connor in New York City Council chambers for Intro 2, that guaranteed lesbian and gay New Yorkers the right to work and housing without prejudice against their sexual orientation.

Accusations of sexual abuse were lodged against Rev. Lynch in a criminal case in 1989, in which
he was found not guilty and acquitted.  Some, including Rev. Lynch, believe that the prosecution
was part of a smear campaign against him by Cardinal O’Connor and his allies in the church and
government.  A 2019 civil lawsuit against the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, in which Rev.
Lynch was accused of sexual abuse, was dismissed for lack of evidence.

His work related to HIV and AIDS and his persecution in New York were profiled by Channel 4 in
three documentaries: AIDS: A Priest’s Testament, Soul Survivor, and Priest on Trial.  He
received the AIDS National Interfaith Network Award for Outstanding Contribution to HIV and AIDS
Ministries in 1990.  In 1992, Father Lynch was the first priest of any denomination to march in
London’s LGBT parade dressed as a priest.  In 1993, he founded a support group for priests who
are gay.

His autobiography, A Priest on Trial, was published in 1993.  In 1996, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence canonized Father Lynch outside Westminster Cathedral in London.  In 2006, Father Lynch became the first legally married and legally valid priest in the world to have a civil partnership with his partner and husband, Billy Desmond.

In 1986, he received the Magnus Hirschfeld Award for outstanding services to the cause of Irish LGBT freedom.  Father Lynch was welcomed in 1995 to the Palace of the President of Ireland by her Excellency President Mary Robinson.

Never in my life have I met, or been privileged to know, a man who represents the LGBT community so well.

Rand Schrader was an openly gay activist who fought discrimination and homophobia to become one of the first two openly gay California municipal court judges appointed in 1980 by then-Governor Jerry Brown.  This was a time when the majority of voters in the state supported conservative Ronald Reagan for president.

I’m David Bohnett, and I was Rand’s partner for 10 years. 

As a UCLA Law School student in the early 1970s, Schrader volunteered countless hours providing legal guidance to leaders at the Los Angeles LGBT Center (then called the LA Gay Community Services Center).  Many of his cases involved police discrimination against gay men.

After graduating from UCLA in 1973, Schrader took a job with the City of Los Angeles, becoming the first openly gay staffer in the city attorney’s office.  Then-City Attorney Burt Pines was impressed with Schrader’s work, saying the young staffer was able to command respect from people across the political spectrum.  In 1980, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Schrader to the LA Municipal Court and immediately received pushback from conservative politicians expressing public outrage at the judicial appointment of an openly gay man.  Brown held firm on his decision.

In 1987, Los Angeles County established an AIDS Commission, and Schrader was among its first cohort of commissioners.  At the time, LA county had surpassed San Francisco in the number of HIV and AIDS cases.  San Francisco had established an AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital in 1983, but there was nothing comparable in LA County.

The Los Angeles chapter of ACT UP organized a steady stream of demonstrations at LA County Medical Center, demanding that persons living with HIV and AIDS be provided with a specialized unit that would protect them from discrimination and neglect.  As a commissioner, Schrader found himself siding with the activists and at odds with the AIDS Commission’s chairman, Rabbi Allen Freehling, who argued that patients put in a separate unit would feel isolated.  The commission formed a task force to determine a course of action, and soon it became apparent that people living with AIDS would benefit significantly from access to having their own clinic.

In 1988, the LA County Hospital finally opened a ward dedicated to AIDS healthcare.  The next year, Schrader was elected the new chair of the AIDS Commission.

When Schrader was diagnosed with AIDS-related illness in 1991, he went public with his condition and continued his work in the municipal court and on the AIDS Commission.  Two years later, the LA County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion to name the LA County AIDS ward after Schrader in tribute to his courage, his vision and his tenacity.

Rand Schrader died of AIDS-related illness on June 13, 1993 at the age of 48.

As I said in 1999, “When Randy died, I honestly did not know how I could go on. But I had friends. I had a family — mine and Randy’s. And we all shared our grief and comforted one another during our time of loss. But what if I had been alone in that grief?  What becomes of a man or woman when one loses a partner whom no one else knows was a partner?  What happens to people who are afraid to tell the truth about who they are and whom they love?”

While I grieved Randy’s passing and with these thoughts in mind, I created the very early social network e-commerce company GeoCities.com, where people could create free personal web pages on the internet; give voice to their hopes, dreams and passion; and find connection with one another. 

Randy’s legacy also endures in the HIV/AIDS clinic he helped to create.  Today, the University of Southern California manages the Rand Schrader HIV Clinic, where more than 40 faculty members provide primary and specialty care to more than 3,000 patients in LA County.

Rest in peace, my dear Randy.

“My life had certainly not turned out the way that I expected, but while tomorrow would bring what it would, today was glorious.”
– Elizabeth Glaser, wife, sister, mom and angel

On a Los Angeles summer night, in a chance meeting at a stop light on Sunset Boulevard, Elizabeth Glaser, a second grade school teacher, and Paul Michael Glaser, a television star from Starsky & Hutch, rolled down their car windows and found one another on this spinning rock in the cosmos to create a family whose creation, passion, love, fear, tragedy and sacrifice would change the world.

It was in 1981 when my mother, Elizabeth Glaser, gave birth to our guardian angel, our guide in life, Ariel. While in labor at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, my mother hemorrhaged and lost seven pints of blood. In order to save her and her baby, a blood transfusion was necessary, one that would forever change the path of their lives. What began as new virus predominantly showing up in gay men, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus was spreading fast and amongst many communities, not just the homosexual community.

My sister Ariel became sick. She would sink into sickness one week and bounce back the next, signs of what most called an extreme flu, but became known soon after as the global health crisis we now know as AIDS.

It was soon after this that I was born, HIV positive and with an unknown future. After years of antibiotics, and medications never designed for the fragility of a child’s immune system, my sister’s HIV turned into AIDS and took my sister’s life at age 7.

A mother’s response to losing her child is like a crack of thunder across the world. My mother knew she lived with this same virus, and so did I. Her only choice was to do something about it.  So she asked for help, used her skills of getting people to come together and work together, and applied it to the start of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, in an effort to raise essential funds for medical research into pediatric treatments for HIV.

She smashed down politicians’ doors, called Hollywood to action with my father, raised the funds, and built a team of interdisciplinary medical researchers to start asking questions to which we did not have the answers. She used every last bit of her energy to humanize this issue, speaking at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, advocating in Washington, and telling her story to the world in hopes of bringing enough light to this dark place so our future could be bright.

In 1994 after witnessing the creation of the first antiretroviral medications and seeing a step in the right direction, her health declined and my mother passed away at the age of 46, when I was only 10 years old.

The spark that she ignited, lit up the world. Elizabeth Glaser and so many others sacrificed their lives to provide us the opportunity we have now, to create a world free of HIV, to make sure no one dies from this disease and to make sure no child is ever born HIV positive again.

Through the collaborative efforts of The Pediatric AIDS Foundation, a medication that was designed for a different use was applied to stop in-utero transmission of the virus from mother to child. The Pediatric AIDS Foundation has grown into a community health organization in 19 countries, with over 5,500 sites across the globe and over 30 million women reached to prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies.

Today we are not only an HIV-focused family, our programs support a variety of health issues, most recently being COVID-19.

The ripple that Elizabeth Glaser and Ariel Glaser left in this world will forever be reinforced by each and every one of us who choose to do something when we feel we can’t, who choose to run into our fears when we feel helpless and show each other that even when we feel all hope is lost, in the darkest moments in the darkest places in our lives, light will always prevail if we choose to turn the light on.

NASCAR’s rough-and-tumble history has its share of legends and folk heroes down South. But a Northerner named Tim Richmond may be the wildest of the bunch.

Hello everybody, I’m Karleigh Webb. I’m a sports journalist with outsports.com, a transwoman athlete, an activist, and I’m a lifelong motorsports fan. As youngster watching NASCAR in the 1980s, I was a fan of Tim Richmond. Because he was that dude. High energy. Free spirit. Raw Talent.

NASCAR commentator Mike Joy recalled, “When he walked into a room, there was suddenly a party going on. And it was just that infectious enthusiasm for life and for racing that really defined him … He was fun to be around. He knew he was the center of attention, and he really kind of cherished it.”

Perhaps that’s why Richmond had the nickname “Hollywood,” and inspired Tom Cruise’s character in the movie Days of Thunder. He was fun even when he was trying to be serious. When team owner Rick Hendrick told Tim to clean up his appearance, the driver responded by appearing in a silk suit, clutching a purse, and a cane like an old woman.

The Tim Richmond story began in his native Ohio, with dreams of Indianapolis.  In 1977, he was Rookie of the Year at Sandusky Speedway and was a track champion. In 1978, he was the U.S. Auto Club’s national sprint car Rookie of the Year. In 1980, he was Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year. But after that, Richmond took an offer to head south to NASCAR.

He snagged his first of 13 career wins in 1982 on the road course at Riverside. By the end of the 1984 season, Esquire magazine tagged him one of the “best of a new generation.”  1986 was the breakthrough year. Driving for owner Rick Hendrick, Richmond became a Winston Cup championship threat — seven wins, third in the championship. And the Motorsports Press Association named both Tim Richmond and ‘86 Winston Cup Champion Dale Earnhardt as Co-Drivers of the Year.

In 1987, an illness reported as double pneumonia caused him to miss the first 11 races. But when Tim Richmond came back, boy, he came back.  He won at Pocono, and then followed it up back-to-back with a win at Riverside.  But after six more starts that year, he was too ill to keep driving.

He tried another comeback in 1988. NASCAR reported that he tested positive for banned substances and was suspended prior to start of qualifying for the Daytona 500 that year. Richmond denied the findings and challenged them publicly.

Days later, those substances were identified as Sudafed and Advil. Richmond sued NASCAR for defamation and later settled out of court. He was retested and reinstated later in the year but couldn’t find a ride for any team. By then the rumors concerning Richmond, HIV and AIDS were prevalent. He denied those rumors as well. A doctor friend claimed that Tim was hospitalized due to a motorcycle accident.

Tim Richmond died on August 13, 1989, at the age of 34.

Ten days after his death, his family announced at a press conference that he had died from complications from AIDS and was diagnosed during his breakthrough season in ‘86.  It was asserted that he had become infected through sex with an unknown woman.  A few months following his death, a Washington DC television station reported on sealed court documents and interviews that showed that a doctor employed by NASCAR had falsified drug test results to keep Richmond out.

Looking back at a brief yet brilliant career, Rick Hendrick concluded that Tim Richmond was 20 years ahead of his time.

“I think he was good for the sport,” Hendrick observed. “He had a tremendous following of fans. He could drive anything. Not afraid of anything. We need a little bit of that charisma today.”

During NASCAR’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 1998, Tim Richmond was named one of the top 50 drivers of all time.  In 2002, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

Constance Robin Norman — Connie — was, contrary to popular belief, born right here in California, in Oxnard in 1949. She had been a boy called Robbie who would later transition to Connie at the age of 26. That was in the mid 1970s.

Hello, I’m Peter Cashman, and Connie was my dear, dear friend.

Many of her formative years were spent in Texas in the Houston area, where her grandmother Mabel Murphy owned a bar. Connie would end up working for Mabel, and there she gained a good deal of the Connie that we came to know. The hard-scrabble life in the South made her streetwise and tough, but with a great sense of humor like Mabel.

Many years later, reflecting on her life, she said, “I often tell people I am an ex-drag queen, ex-hooker, ex IV-drug user, ex-high-risk youth and currently a post-operative transsexual who is HIV positive.”  And she added very poignantly, “I have everything I’ve wanted, including a husband of ten years, a home and five adorable longhaired cats…. I do however regret the presence of this virus.”

She had discovered she was HIV-positive in 1987.

Connie had met Bruce Norman in San Francisco. Bruce was a gay man who became her soul mate and husband. He had grown up in the Altadena.

The highlight of Connie’s Bay area years was as a manager at the Trocadero Transfer, the world-famous disco in San Francisco’s Mission District. “Disco Connie” with her huge oriental fans immortalized in the documentary Wrecked for Life.

By the mid ’80s, she and Bruce would attend the weekly “Hay Ride” gatherings in West Hollywood hosted by self-help practitioner Louise Hay. That was where I first remember seeing her and Bruce and many other folks who would join the new national AIDS activist group ACT UP when a chapter formed here in Los Angeles in December 1987.

Connie said she saw ACT UP in the Pride Parade in June of ’88.  Straightway she knew that was where she belonged and joined up. She had never attended college; in fact, she’d been a teen runaway on the streets of Hollywood. But she had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Completely self-taught she put in an enormous amount of work. She would end up co-hosting a weekly cable show in Long Beach. She would write a regular column for the Southern California LGBT newspaper Update. And she would become the very first queer person in the U.S. to host a talk show on AM talk radio, broadcasting from Hollywood.

Connie was fierce and strong, a force to be reckoned with, whether talking with legendary talk radio host Tom Leykis on KFI or with someone she didn’t agree with, like Wally George, appearing on his infamous shock jock talk show on KDOC 56. Speaking at rallies and demonstrations she was loud, forceful and eloquent. By now she was known as the AIDS Diva, to which I added “Self-Appointed and Self Aggrandizing,” typical of the banter between her and I during those times. So she became a statewide figure and was ACT UP/LA’s representative on the LIFE AIDS Lobby.

One thing that really made Connie stand out to me and so many others was her nurturing instinct, her kindness and her ability to speak to people from all walks of life. Connie educated, informed and spoke from the heart, an innate talent that so impressed people. Later she became public policy director at Pasadena’s AIDS Service Center, continuing the work she’d done with ACT UP. Talking with policy makers, lawmakers, locally, in Sacramento and in Washington.

As a respite from the death and dying that surrounded all of us, Connie and Bruce annually took time out with numerous friends, including myself, in their beloved Kauai. A time to tend to rebuilding health and spirit and befriending queer folk all over the island. Her last trip was in late 1995. Her health was failing, and she rapidly declined during the first part of 1996, passing on Bastille Day that year.

Later that year in early October, ACT UP folks gathered from around the country for a second Ashes protest — scattering the ashes of loved ones on the White House lawn. So, my final goodbye to Connie was as I clung to the White House fence, scattering her ashes onto that famous lawn.

Connie Norman – a beloved warrior who remains in our hearts and dreams.

Leonard Matlovich was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who came out as gay to challenge the U.S. military’s ban on gays and lesbians.

Following in the footsteps of his Air Force veteran father, Matlovich voluntarily enlisted in the Air Force in 1963 at the age of 19 and served three tours of duty. He received a Bronze Star for heroism under fire, and a Purple Heart after he was seriously wounded by a land mine.

I’m Air Force Lieutenant General Leah Lauderback. Openly LGBTQ servicemembers like me owe a debt of gratitude to the courage of Leonard Matlovich and I’m deeply honored to tell his story.

After serving in Vietnam, Sgt. Matlovich was posted at an air base near Pensacola. There, he started visiting gay bars and, at the age of 30, had his first relationship with a man but stayed in the closet in the military for over another year.

The Air Force assigned Matlovich to teach race relations, and he traveled the country to coach other instructors. That experience helped him to understand the similarities between discrimination on the basis of race, and discrimination against the gay and lesbian community.

After reading an article by gay rights activist Frank Kameny in the newspaper The Air Force Times, he contacted Kameny and they devised a plan with the ACLU to challenge the ban on gays and lesbians in the military. On March 6, 1975, he hand-delivered a letter to his commanding officer announcing that he was gay. His brave pronouncement landed him on the cover of Time magazine in September of
1975.

When he refused to promise never again to engage in homosexual conduct, he was
discharged from the Air Force in October of that year. He sued for reinstatement and, after a long court battle, a federal judge ordered the Air Force to reinstate and promote him. Rather than risk discharge for a made-up reason or an appeal of the court decision by the military, Matlovich accepted a financial settlement and dropped the case.

Leonard’s activism continued with his fundraising and advocacy efforts against Anita Bryant’s campaign to overturn a non-discrimination ordinance in Florida and against an attempt to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in California.

He moved to Guerneville, California on the Russian River, where he opened up a pizza restaurant. Later he moved to San Francisco and worked as a car salesman. In 1986, after fatigue and a prolonged chest cold, he tested positive for HIV. In 1987, Leonard came out as HIV positive on “Good Morning America.” He continued his advocacy and later that year he was arrested in front of the White House protesting the Reagan Administration’s inattention to HIV and AIDS.

Leonard Matlovich died on June 22, 1988. He chose to be buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C. where, unlike Arlington National Cemetery, he could have a tombstone which omits his name. His tombstone simply reads: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

As a final joke, Leonard chose a grave site in the same row as J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI Director who is widely believed to have been a closeted gay man.

Matlovich was one of the 50 people first selected for inclusion in the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. Leonard’s courage paved the way for service members like me to openly serve.

Thank you, Leonard “Mat” Matlovich, for your tenaciousness and your leadership. And lastly, I thank you for your service to this nation.

My friend, Joan Baker was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and died on September 3, 1993. She was a tireless and outspoken activist who unfortunately had to deal with ignorance and misunderstanding from her own (lesbian) community … ergo, she would often say:

“It doesn’t matter how I got it, it’s that I have been diagnosed and I am coming out as a women with AIDS because a lot of lesbians still think that they cannot get AIDS and I’m here to say that this can and did happen.”

In early October 1993, members of San Francisco Lesbian Avengers and ACT UP held a public funeral demonstration and march that went from from Dolores Park to Market and Castro and was covered on television news that night. This would end up being likely the only public funeral for a lesbian with AIDS anywhere, ever.

The images of the demo/funeral posters of Joan which were carried that day are now held at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco.

We love you and we miss you incredibly, Joan. Thank you for your inspiration, your contribution, your life and love.