Obituary: Art Thompson, former Executive Director of The GLBT Community Center of Colorado

Arthur (Art) Forster Thompson, 65, of San Diego and formerly of Denver, passed away March 20 following a valiant battle against cancer. Art was born to the late Arthur Ray and Nanette Couts Thompson on June 29, 1945, in San Diego.

During his early career he worked for both San Diego County Supervisor Lou Conde, and California State Assemblyman and Senator John Stull, before founding his own consulting firm.  Later, he served as the Executive Director at San Diego's Lesbian and Gay Men's Community Center and was recognized for his outstanding contributions to the LGBT Community by the California Legislature, San Diego's Mayor Dick Murphy, San Diego City Council member Toni Atkins and United Way of San Diego Council. 

Art was the chair of San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy's LGBT Advisory Board and treasurer of AIDS Foundation San Diego before moving to Denver to serve as Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Colorado. Art served as the Executive Director of The Center from 2002 to 2005, during a particularly trying time in The Center's history.  Art lead Colorado's LGBT community through some lean years, always ensuring that The Center's doors remained open and continued to provide the greatest number of services possible.  Art was also instrumental in stewarding Roy Wood, a donor whose planned gift enabled The Center to take the first steps toward building and owning its permanent home at 1301 East Colfax Ave. in Denver.

Art, a kind and true gentleman, enjoyed the theater, loved to cook and to travel, and spent as much time as he could at the family's ancestral cabin on Palomar Mountain. Art is survived by his domestic partner, Catherine (Kitty) Chisholm.  He also leaves behind a sister, Cathee Harris, and a brother, Barnard Thompson, along with his loving extended family including his ex-partner Mark Bjorstrom of New York City.

Following private family services, a Celebration of Art's Life will be held in June 2011.  Memorial donations in Art's name may be sent to: The GLBT Community Center of Colorado, 1301 E Colfax, Denver, CO  80218.

Obituary: Landrew Foxx

Landrew Foxx passed away early last Saturday, January 22.

A service will be held this Friday, January 28 at 3pm at the old Asbury Methodist Church at the corner of West 30th Avenue and Vallejo Streets and all are invited to come.

Landrew is survived by his mother and other family members and by many dear friends who remember him for his happy-go-lucky nature and love of a good time.

Obituary: Miss Lillian Covillo, co-founder of Colorado Ballet

Colorado Ballet announces the death of Miss Lillian Covillo. Together, with lifelong friend and business partner Freidann Parker, Miss Covillo co-founded one of Denver’s oldest and most established arts organizations, Colorado Ballet. She died peacefully at the age 89. 

 

A Denver native, Miss Covillo devoted her life to that art she loved and poured her soul into enriching the Denver’s arts scene. If not for the dedication, courage and vision of Miss Covillo, Colorado Ballet would not be in existence today, and Denver’s rich cultural tapestry would be far less opulent.

As stated by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet in honor of Colorado Ballet’s 50th anniversary, “In the imagination of lifelong friends Freidann Parker and Lillian Covillo, a place of learning, artistry and expertise was born: Colorado Ballet.”

RIP Tony Curtis

Hollywood legend Tony Curtis passed away last week on Wednesday, September 29, which also happened to be my birthday. I was fortunate enough to interview him for Out Front Colorado a few years ago when he was in town starring in the stage version of 'Some Like It Hot' at the Denver Center. In addition to being one of the all-time great Hollywood hunks, Curtis also seemed like a heck of a sweet guy.

Rue McClanahan: February 21, 1934 – June 3, 2010

The best of Rue McClanahan as Blanche on 'The Golden Girls.' - via EW.com

David Leroy Souza: 1953-2009

Just shy of 56, Denver's Leroy Souza died on August 23 of cardiac arrest/stroke.

He was wearing full dress leathers and it appeared he planned to head out for the evening.

Leroy moved to Denver in the late 1970s and worked as a stripper in clubs along Colfax Avenue.

He developed a career tailoring and designing fetish leathers, and eventually opened D/S Custom Leathers at Broadway & 21st — long before anyone imagined a baseball park and gentrification - but was probably best known as an outrageous and mercurial fixture at the Denver Triangle where he was part of the staff from 1980–1999.

A Memorial Birthday Party honoring Leroy will be held at The Compound on Saturday, October 10 from 5-8 p.m.

Over the past four decades, Leroy amassed a huge inventory of leather goods, in addition to the stock from his business and a mountain of leather garments, cuffs, collars, harnesses and “fetish accessories” will be available for purchase (cash only, please). Funds raised will be used to settle the closing his estate, as well as to benefit Horizon House and Chesney-Kleinjohn Housing, Inc.

Author E. Lynn Harris has died

This is unexpected and sad news:

With great sadness, I report that New York Times bestselling author E. Lynn Harris passed away on Thursday, July 23, while on tour for his eleventh novel.

I don't know many details yet, but it's believed it was a heart attack.

I've spoken with Lisa Moore of Redbone Press and Don Weise of Alyson, both of whom knew him well, and we're all just stunned.

I worked with Lynn for over ten years as his editor and came to be his personal friend as well, so this loss strikes very close for me. Lynn had a very big heart, which he revealed in his storytelling and in his interaction with his audience. Attending a Lynn Harris reading was a family affair, and there were always flowers, tears, and loads of laughter. His novels often changed his reader's lives, and he truly was grateful for his ability to help people. I will miss him, his laughter and his big heart.


Sincerely,
Charles Flowers
Lambda Literary Foundation

Rodger McFarlane, former executive director of The Gill Foundation, has died

From GLAAD:

It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our friend, colleague, and hero, Rodger McFarlane. A pioneer and legend in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and HIV/AIDS movements, Rodger took his own life in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico last Friday. In a letter found with his remains, Rodger explained that he was unwilling to allow compounding heart and back problems to become even worse and result in total debilitation. We know that Rodger was in a great deal of pain. Already disabled in his own mind, he could no longer work out or do all the outdoor activities he so loved. He was also now faced with the realization that he could literally not travel, making employment increasingly difficult. As his friends and family, we thought it was important that we communicate to the world that it has lost an amazingly wonderful individual who contributed so mightily to our humanity.

Read more after the jump.

Rodger approached every aspect of his life with boundless passion and vigor. While many people go their entire lives wanting to be good at just one thing, Rodger excelled at virtually everything he did. Brilliant activist and strategist, decorated veteran, accomplished athlete, best-selling author, and humanitarian are just a few of the accolades that could be used to describe our friend. To know Rodger was to love an irreverent, wise-cracking Southerner who hardly completed a sentence that didn’t include some kind of four-letter expletive. He fought the right fight every day, was intolerant of silence, and organized whole communities of people to advocate for justice. These were traits that endeared him to us and are traits that make his legacy incredibly rich and powerful.

The power of Rodger’s many personal and professional accomplishments cannot be denied. He was on the forefront of responding to the AIDS epidemic that ravaged our country – and specifically the gay community – in the 1980’s. Before HIV even had a name, in 1981, Rodger set up the very first hotline anywhere; he just set it up on his own phone. That was the Rodger we knew. A born strategist and leader, Rodger took three organizations in their infancy and grew each into a powerhouse in its own way, empowered to tackle this national tragedy.

One of the original volunteers and the first paid executive director of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the nation’s first and largest provider of AIDS client services and public education programs, Rodger increased the organization's fundraising from a few thousand dollars to the $25 million agency it is today. Until his death, he was the president emeritus of Bailey House, the nation's first and largest provider of supportive housing for homeless people with HIV.

From 1989 to 1994, he was executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA), merging two small industry-based fundraising groups into one of America's most successful and influential AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. During his tenure at BC/EFA, annual revenue increased from less than $1 million to more than $5 million, while also leveraging an additional $40 million annually through strategic alliances with other funders and corporate partnerships. Rodger was also a founding member of ACT UP – NY, the now legendary protest group responsible for sweeping changes to public policy as well as drug treatment and delivery processes.

Most recently, Rodger served as the executive director of the Gill Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of programs advocating for LGBT equality. He transformed the Foundation by sharpening its strategic purpose. He focused its philanthropy in the states, aligned its investment with political imperatives and forged relationships with straight allies that helped to further both the LGBT movement as well as the greater progressive movement. Rodger was instrumental in the creation of the Gill Foundation’s sister organization, Gill Action. The brilliance of Rodger’s vision is being seen today as important protections for LGBT people become a reality in more and more states.

No one will ever doubt that our friend Rodger lived a rich and complete life. A proud U.S. Navy veteran, Rodger was a licensed nuclear engineer who conducted strategic missions in the North Atlantic and far Arctic regions aboard a fast attack submarine. A gifted athlete, he was a veteran of seven over-ice expeditions to the North Pole. He also competed internationally for many years as an elite tri-athlete, and in 1998 and 2002, competed in the Eco-Challenges in Morocco and Fiji, where he captained an all-gay female-majority team.

In spite of the fact that Rodger never completed college, he was an accomplished and best-selling author and the producer of works for the stage. Rodger was the co-author of several books, including The Complete Bedside Companion: No Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill (Simon & Schuster, 1998), and most recently, Larry Kramer’s The Tragedy of Today’s Gays (Penguin, 2005). In 1993, he co-produced the Pulitzer Prize-nominated production of Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, the sequel to The Normal Heart.

Rodger had a reputation as a hard-ass. That reputation didn’t do him justice. Many of us will remember Rodger as a caregiver, a man who nursed countless friends and family members battling cancer and AIDS. He was the most compassionate and giving of friends, especially to those in physical or emotional distress.

His many achievements were recognized throughout his life. Most recently, he had received the Patient Advocacy Award from the American Psychiatric Association. Other honors included the New York City Distinguished Service Award, the Presidential Voluntary Action Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Award, and the Emery Award from the Hetrick Martin Institute, as well as Tony and Drama Desk honors.

How do you sum up someone’s life in just a few words? It’s impossible and you can’t. To commemorate Rodger’s life, his friends will organize celebrations of his, the details of which are still in the planning stages. If Rodger was anything, he was a character through and through; there are, quite literally, thousands of “Rodger stories.” That’s part of what made him such a special person. During our celebrations, we’ll share some of these stories and reflect on the many legacies left by our friend for life, Rodger McFarlane.




Obituary: Jack Wrangler

Jack Wrangler, iconic adult and musical theater performer passed away yesterday from complications from lung disease. He was 62 years old.

With piercing blue eyes, unruly blond hair, a chiseled physique and cocky swagger, Jack Wrangler was the king of ‘70s gay porn. Forging a gay sexual revolution, he wasn’t the typical object of homoerotic desire but an intelligent, full-bodied, self-confident male. Exulted for his 80-plus adult films, the openly gay superstar even conquered the straight adult world and legitimate theater. Mr. Wrangler eventually married pop vocalist Margaret Whiting and their relationship would last for the rest of his life.

The documentary of his life 'Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon', recently won the 2009 GayVN Award for Best Alternative release.

Wayne Jakino, the father of CGRA, dies

It is with great sadness that I share with you the news of the passing of Wayne Jakino yesterday at 4:40 p.m.
Wayne, the father of Colorado's Gay Rodeo Association, whose name was and is synonymous with Charlie's, was a pillar of strength in the LGBT community here in Denver. He was a member of the Hall of Fame of the International Gay Rodeo Association. He was also a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, and a person whose endorsement was wanted by all who ran for office. He will be sorely missed by all of us who knew him. However, while we are saddened by his passing, we should also be aware that he would not want us to mourn - he would rather that we celebrate his life and remember him in a very positive way.