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.
April 10, 1947 – February 4, 2018
Paulettia Ann French of Kalamazoo, originally from Arkansas, graduated with the class of 1965 from Berrien Springs High School and later worked as non-profit directors for senior services. French and her partner of 27 years Tammy Vollrath were married in 2016.
May 10, 1945 – January 1, 2002
Colorado native and longtime Saginaw resident John Michael Monahan worked as a rehabilitation therapist. During the 1980s, he became active in the Michigan Organization for Human Rights and in 1990 co-founded the Triangle Foundation and served as its president. Following a heart transplant in 1993, Monahan moved to Detroit to engage in activism full time.
Between The Lines, January 10, 2002
Saginaw News, January 16, 2002
October 15, 1971 – December 29, 2015
Andrea Elizabeth Still Gray grew up in Royal Oak and earned her B.A. in cultural anthropology from Wayne State University and later received her Masters in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston. Her career included working for a communications firm and as an archivist at Harvard and a librarian for the Massachusetts State House. She and her spouse Julie Gray were married in 2009.
October 1, 1946 – July 15, 2007
Born in Lansing, Frederick Irving Eggan, later known as Ferd, grew up in Alpena and graduated from Alpena High School. In the mid-1960s, Eggan dropped out of college to register black voters in South Carolina, later took part in the Chicago Gay Liberation Front, and in the late 1990s served as the AIDS coordinator for the City of Los Angeles. He died from AIDS-related complications at age 60.
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.
January 24, 1959 – July 16, 2011
Thaddeus Allen Rusztowicz of East Lansing and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida was born in Detroit and earned his Bachelor’s in marketing in 1982 from Michigan State University. He enjoyed a long career in design, retiring as president of the auto supplier LPC Manufacturing to a new career in real estate. Rusztowicz was survived by Mark Clouse, his life partner of 21 years.
July 28, 1931 – October 28, 2006
Shirley Ann Weaver, formerly of Livonia, was born in Detroit and met her loving companion Barbara Sowers in the early 1960s. Weaver retired as a public school teacher and counselor in 1989 and relocated with Sowers to Port Charlotte, Florida.
October 24, 1944 – August 24, 1993
Detroit resident and Highland Park native Edward Walker grew up in Dearborn Township. He joined the U.S. Army following high school and was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds he received while serving in Vietnam. During the 1970s, he worked as an assembler at Ford Motor Company. From 1980 until his death, Walker operated the Hayloft Saloon with his lover Len Lippert.
February 12, 1938 – February 1, 2016
Louis Rhodes Farmer was born in Lynchburg, Virginia and moved to Michigan in 1956. He was employed as a custodian for the University of Michigan while working his way through college, served in the U.S. military from 1961 to 1963, and earned his M.A. in education from Eastern Michigan University in 1970. Farmer retired from teaching with the Chlesea School District in 1988 and lived in Ypsilanti.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 