October 29, 1962 – August 16, 1980
James Dallas Egbert III was a gay 16-year-old computer science prodigy and Dungeons and Dragons fan who disappeared from his Michigan State University dorm room in August 1979, prompting a month-long search of steam tunnels beneath the university. He took his own life at age 17.
March 10, 1962 – July 11, 2006
Douglas McIntosh earned a B.S. in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1984 and a Masters from Yale in 1990. Three years later, he co-founded McIntosh Poris Associates in Birmingham and soon became a central voice for historic preservation. McIntosh served as president of Preservation Wayne and, with his life partner Scotty James, restored the 1896 Julius Melchers home in Detroit’s West Village.
April 22, 1925 – January 27, 2002
A native of Pennsylvania, Mabel “Billie” Hill moved to Detroit in her youth and discovered Detroit’s gay bar scene while working in an auto factory during World War II. She later owned an antiques business with her then-partner Rose Bonham. A longtime member of the Metropolitan Church of Detroit, Hill tended the door at the Underground and, as a lesbian senior, was profiled in the Detroit News.
November 9, 1944 – November 7, 1994
A founder of the Lesbian and Gay Community Network of West Michigan, Dennis Komac served in Army from 1968 to 1970 and moved to Grand Rapids in 1984 to serve as executive director of the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Komac and his life partner Jeff Swanson later operated Sons and Daughters bookstore. He died from AIDS-related complications at age 49.
October 12, 1961 – November 19, 2013
Madison Heights High School grad Cheri Jo Fiebig performed for more than 30 years as a male impersonator, appearing at the State Bar in Flint, Silent Legacy in Inkster, and other bars in Metro Detroit in the 1980s and ‘90s. She was featured on such local TV shows as Good Morning Detroit and Kelly & Company. Fiebig later relocated to Nashville, Tennessee and died from lung cancer at age 52.
September 2, 1943 – November 24, 2015
Born in Pontiac, Randell “Randy” French served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, worked at the GM V-8 Engine Plant in Flint, and belonged to the Masonic Lodge in Ortonville. For a time, he also tended bar at the Interchange and other Detroit gay nightspots.
August 11, 1938 – October 16, 2012
Sabra Fischer grew up in Glencoe, Illinois and attended Ohio Wesleyan University. She later earned her M.S.W. from Wayne State University in Detroit, owned a private practice in social work and later massage therapy, and raised two children in Harper Woods. She and her partner Sue Grywalski moved to Lexington along Lake Huron in 1994.
August 15, 1914 – December 23, 1985
A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Leon Alfred DeMeunier grew up in Detroit and earned a degree in business administration from the University of Detroit, after which he operated his own tax and accounting service. He chaired the Detroit Congress of Racial Equality in the early 1960s and was active in the early gay organization ONE in Detroit.
No known obituary
February 27, 1936 – November 26, 2011
Gordon Barnard moved to Detroit when he was five and came out into Detroit’s gay world while in high school at Cass Tech. A graphic artist, Barnard worked as a graphic designer for Michigan Consolidated Gas Company for 35 years. His partner of 22 years, William Ownby, preceded him in death in 1994.
June 2, 1940 – January 29, 2012
A graduate of Mott Community College and the University of Michigan, Mary Ellen Raleigh taught English and business writing at UM-Flint from 1975 to 1995. She served on the campus Task Force on Sexual Orientation, played competitive Scrabble, and authored a longtime column for East Village Magazine.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 