August 17, 1959 – May 1, 2018
Suzan Ruth Selewski of Taylor graduated from Riverside High School in Dearborn Heights. For 18 years she taught at Logan Elementary School in Detroit. She retired in 2013, preceding a long battle with ovarian cancer. Selewski was survived by her spouse and life partner of 23 years Julia Herod.
April 8, 1913 – January 22, 2008
Lucile “Porty” Portwood was a native of Fort Worth, Texas and studied microbiology at Michigan State University, where she discovered a vaccine for whooping cough. She later oversaw vaccine production for the State of Michigan. Long active in the Lansing lesbian community, she was also a litigant in court challenge of Michigan’s sodomy law. Portwood was survived by her life partner Alixandra Summitt.
Lesbian Connection, May/June 2008
February 13, 1940 – March 25, 2016
Donald Edward True grew up in Harbor Beach in Michigan’s Thumb and attended Our Lady of Lake Huron Catholic High School. Following graduation, he moved to New York City, where he operated Country City glassware in Manhattan from 1963 to 2012. True married his life partner of more than 50 years Angelo Tufarelli in September 2015. Tufarelli survived him by one month.
November 3, 1942 – November 7, 2010
Born in Detroit and a graduate of Lincoln Park High School, Troy resident Thomas J. Moore III earned his M.B.A. from Wayne State University. He worked as a data consultant for General Motors. Moore and his surviving life partner of 40 years Dwight Rinke were supporters of the Triangle Foundation and the Forum Foundation.
September 2, 1955 – October 22, 2009
Randall Lee Seager, familiar to fans as Bucky, was longtime DJ in the 1980s and early 19980s at the Copa nightclub in Flint. He grew up in Burton Township and Mundy Township and graduated in 1973 from Grand Blanc High School, where he sang in the Mixed Chorus and the Acapella Choir. Later in life Seager worked as a cashier at Kroger.
April 3, 1936 – September 10, 2010
Born in Detroit, poet, activist, and educator Judy Freespirit studied drama and speech at Michigan State University. After being heterosexually married, she came out in the feminist movement in California. In 1973, Freespirit coauthored the Fat Liberation Manifesto and in 1978 helped defeat the Briggs’ Initiative. Among her other publications was the 1982 chapbook Daddy’s Girl: An Incest Survivor’s Story.
October 15, 1916 – October 2, 2010
Chester James “Chet” Sampson of Los Angeles was born in Hubbell and attended Michigan Tech before transferring to the University of Michigan. During World War II he produced variety shows in the U.S. Navy. He later taught high school in Grosse Pointe before opening his own travel agency. In 1965, he founded ONE in Detroit, only the second formal homosexual organization in Michigan.
Grosse Pointe News, November 4, 2010
January 25, 1957 – October 24, 2008
Born in Detroit, Cheryl Ann Marie Grout of Houston, Texas earned her B.S. from Central Michigan University in 1980. She worked as an in vitro fertilization technician at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit before moving to Texas, where she worked for Baylor College of Medicine. Grout was survived by her partner Mary Louise Sorensen.
September 19, 1967 – July 23, 2011
David Blair, better known as Blair, was born in Newton, New Jersey and moved to Detroit in the 1990s. He achieved national recognition as an openly queer socialist poet, artist, singer-song writer, and activist. Blair also taught poetry to Detroit Public School students and at the Ruth Ellis Center. Among his many achievements were a National Poetry Slam title and the BENT Writing Institute Mentor Award.
September 23, 1938 – February 3, 2019
Born in Lewiston, Idaho, Carl Ivan Jennings served in the U.S. Air Force before making his way to Michigan, where, in the late 1960s, he met his life partner and later husband Lawrence Gammons. In 1981, they opened Douglas Dunes Resort and in 2012 helped to found West Shore AWARE. The two were featured in the 2015 WGVU documentary Michigan Hometown Stories: Saugatuck/Douglas.
Holland Sentinel, February 6, 2019
Commercial Record, February 7, 2019
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 