February 19, 1956 – March 14, 1999
George Edmund Potts, resident and booster of the Palmer Park neighborhood in Detroit was born in Highland Park and worked for many years in administration at Henry Ford Hospital. He later worked as a grant writer for the Detroit Department of Parks and Recreation. Potts was a familiar customer at Menjo’s.
December 22, 1966 – January 25, 2003
Southfield activist, performance artist, and poet Oddis was born in Detroit as Otis Mitchell and regularly showcased his work at 1515 Broadway. In 1998, he took part in the group Detroit Noir as it won first-place in the DC Black Pride poetry slam. Oddis also worked as a professional model, worked as a promoter for Club One X, and participated in Detroit Black Gay Pride and Karibu House.
June 6, 1949 – January 9, 1990
Michael Phelan grew up in St. Clair Shores and graduated from Lakeview High School. During the 1970s, he performed female impersonation as Whitney Blake at various Detroit bars and won titles for Miss Todd’s, Miss Bookie’s, and Miss Michigan before moving to California. He died from AIDS-related complications at age 40.
May 21, 1925 – July 6, 2014
Detroit native Margaret Elnora Wenzell played nine seasons in the 1940s and 1950s for numerous teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, including the Grand Rapids Chicks, the Muskegon Lassies, and the Battle Creek Belles. Employed with General Motors in Michigan and later an electric company in California, she was laid to rest next to her life companion and spouse Dorothy Kamenshek.
December 24, 1959 – September 19, 2018
Lifelong Laingsburg resident Carrie Lynn Koonter played on the 1978 Michigan Class D High School Softball championship team and was co-founder of the Laingsburg Women’s Golf League. She worked for 25 years at Meijer in East Lansing. She and Mary McDougal were together more than 30 years and were married in 2015. Koonter died at age 58 following an extended battle with multiple sclerosis.
January 9, 1940 – July 12, 2019
Farmington Hills resident Zan Alley attended high school and college in Birmingham, Alabama before moving to Michigan where she taught high school in Royal Oak for 17 years. She later worked as a director with the Michigan Education Association, negotiating more than three dozen union contracts. Alley was survived by her partner and wife Murphy Ayers.
March 4, 1935 – August 4, 2007
Born in Greenleaf Township in rural Sanilac County, Charles Henry “Chuck” Darr grew up on a farm, later moved to Saginaw, and worked at Marlette Homes. He volunteered with Green House Gathering Place and the local LGBT community group Perceptions. In 2007, he was beaten to death at age 69 by a former renter. Darr was preceded in death by his longtime lover William Harper.
July 19, 1961 – June 10, 1986
Robert Dean Lowe, Boo-Boo to friends, graduated with the class of 1980 from Lakeshore High School in St. Clair Shores. He worked as doorman at Menjo’s nightclub in the mid-1980s and was co-owner of the popular afterhours dance emporium Heaven. Lowe was found shot to death in his Palmer Woods home in Detroit at age 25.
August 23, 1966 – December 18, 1993
Born in Detroit, Carl Vinson Andrews came out at age 13 and later worked in financial services for the State of Michigan and was active in the state employee labor union. He served as secretary of Dignity-Integrity/Flint in the late 1980s and was involved the James Baldwin/Pat Parker Society in the early 1990s. In 1991, Andrews was profiled in Outweek magazine.
No known obituary
September 2, 1936 – December 26, 2019
Kentucky native Ann Sorrell moved to Detroit at age seven. She sold bakery goods, worked as a postal worker, and served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve before earning her B.A. and M.A. from Eastern Michigan University. She taught the hearing impaired in the Ann Arbor schools. Sorrell and her life partner Marge Elde were among the first lesbian couples married in Washtenaw County in June 2015.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 