July 24, 1920 – February 12, 2008
Longtime Battle Creek resident Yvonne Phyllis Cushman graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School and was that city’s first female bus driver. Her other jobs included working as a machinist in an electronics factory, operating a grocery, and caring for residents at Fort Custer State Home and the Muskegon Regional Facility. A Harley rider in the 1950s, Cushman also owned and showed Great Danes.
September 20, 1920 – April 23, 2010
A 1939 graduate of Eastern High School in Lansing, Joseph Covello served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He operated Joe Covello’s as a mainstay in Lansing’s gay community from the early 1970s until it was closed for urban renewal in the early 1990s. Covello was preceded in death by Helen, his wife of 63 years.
July 19, 1920 – October 27, 2002
Max LePard grew up in Owosso and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He owned a beauty salon in Birmingham in the 1960s and later operated his own graphic art business in Royal Oak, where he lived for more than forty years with his life partner Usein Alieff.
Daily Tribune, October 29, 2002
July 11, 1920 – February 28, 2004
Active in the Lansing women’s community and such groups as Sistrum and PFLAG, Lorraine Leroux helped two lesbians escape from a Minnesota mental hospital in the 1950s.
Between The Lines, April 1, 2004
Lesbian Connection, May/June 2004
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 