May 28, 1925 – October 13, 1994
A resident of Indian Village in Detroit, Wendell Glynne Addington pursued racial justice in housing in two firms he founded, in helping establish the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, and through a lifetime of activism. A Dallas native, Addington served in the Pacific with the Army during World War II. He was also a longtime member of the leather community and a regular face at the Detroit Eagle.
March 2, 1925 – March 21, 1986
A 1944 graduate of Southeastern High School in Detroit, potter and sculptor Margaret Elizabeth “Peggy” Sauer earned her BFA at Cranbrook Academy and her Masters at Wayne State. As one of the pioneering “Damsels of Design,” she worked as a designer of automobile interiors for General Motors from 1955 to 1962. Sauer later taught and shared a home in Harper Woods with her partner Julie Sabit.
Detroit Free Press, March 24, 1986
September 21, 1925 – July 20, 2018
Longtime Ironwood resident Carl Mathew Kinnunen grew up in Wisconsin and attended college at the University of Wisconsin. During World War II, Kinnunen served in the U.S. Navy as a Yeoman First Class in the Pacific. He later worked as an accountant in the construction industry and in retirement was active in his church choir and with charitable causes in Gogebic and Iron counties.
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.
October 11, 1925 – Jun 19, 2012
Jerry Mae Palmer served as a role model for masculine-identified lesbians in Detroit’s African American LGBTQ community. Born in Alabama, she later moved to Michigan where she worked on the line as an assembler for one the automobile manufacturers. Before her death at age 86, Palmer and her friends provided vital safe spaces for people to proudly be themselves through a variety of social events.
September 10, 1925 – December 20, 2014
Longtime Farmington Hills psychologist Howard Norton Baver began his career in Hartford, Connecticut before moving to Metro Detroit. As a straight therapist with a number of gay and bisexual clients, he founded The Gay Connection as a monthly discussion group in 1985 when many of them told him the only places they would meet were gay bars. Haver was also a key supporter of the Jewish Gay Network.
April 18, 1925 – November 2, 2017
Erie, Pennsylvania native John DeCecco, a pioneering scholar of sexuality and longtime editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, taught at the University of Detroit from 1953 to 1955 and at Michigan State University from 1955 to 1960. Turning his interests to psychology, he moved on to an esteemed career at San Francisco State University until his retirement in 2003.
Windy City Times, November 12, 2017
January 28, 1925 – June 21, 2003
Hal Lawson, a graduate of Wayne State University, was founding chair from 1958 to 1960 of the Detroit Area Council of the Mattachine Society, the first known organization for homosexuals in Michigan. He was later involved in ONE in Detroit, the Association of Suburban People, the Michigan Organization for Human Rights, the Unitarian-Universalist Gay Caucus, and Dignity/Flint.
May 31, 1925 – March 13, 1918
Thomas Lohr Sr. was born in Saginaw, attended Arthur Hill High School, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After graduating from NYU, he earned his M.D. from Harvard, then served in the Air Force before returning to Michigan, where he practiced medicine for 39 years. In retirement, he and his husband Robert Rousch spent winters in New Mexico and summers in East Tawas.
January 18, 1925 – September 4, 2015
Kenneth Garnett grew up in Bay City and for many decades owned and operated the Art Shoppe in Flint. Toward the end of his life, he was a familiar face at the Pachyderm Pub. Garnett was preceded in death by his life partner of 47 years Beverley Dunnington Wayt Jr. in 1994.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 