May 22, 1936 – June 14, 2016
Born in Redding, Maine, Sherry Redding earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Master’s from Michigan State University. A longtime counselor, for many years she taught women’s studies at William James College at Grand Valley State University. She was also a founding member in 1978 of the local lesbian organization Aradia. Redding and her spouse Karen Clahassey shared 36 years together.
September 17, 1937 – May 15, 2017
Noted sexologist Sandra Cole founded the Comprehensive Gender Identity Program at the University of Michigan in 1993 and served as its director until retiring in 2000. She was also a longtime advocate for transgender legal and civil rights, and helped secure gender identity as a protected category in the UM bylaws and Ann Arbor’s human rights ordinance.
January 19, 1932 – December 14, 2017
Grayling resident Phyllis Ann Erb worked for 24 years as a wound specialist with the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. She met her life partner Patricia Teal in the mid-1960s when both were heterosexually-married housewives and mothers. Erb and Teal operated the Heritage House Bed and Breakfast in Gaylord from 1991 to 1996.
August 5, 1940 – May 2, 2017
Artist, athlete, and San Diego native Dale Muir earned degrees from Graceland University and the University of Michigan. She settled in Ann Arbor, working in recreation and early education. In 2006, she retired to Oregon with her partner Vicki Gardner.
May 28, 1882 – July 1, 1928
A 1905 graduate of the University of Michigan, Avery Hopwood went on to enjoy a celebrated career as a playwright, once having four plays staged on Broadway simultaneously. With friend Carl Van Vechten, Hopwood experienced the homosexual underworld of New York in the 1910s and ‘20s. Much of his estate was bequeathed to fund annual literary awards for UM students.
Michigan Daily, July 3, 1928
August 7, 1947 – February 3, 2002
Originally from Waterford, Harry “Kitty” Kevorkian became involved in the Gay Liberation Front in Ann Arbor during in the early 1970s. He, took part in numerous protests, once crashing an event donned in skag drag at the home of the president of the University of Michigan. Kevorkian was a candidate for the city’s mayor in 1974 and later headed the bus union during a 42-day walkout.
July 29, 1937 – September 21, 2011
Miami native Frimmitte “Louise” Griffin attended the University of Michigan in the 1950s and went on to become a pioneering female voice on Black radio in South Florida. She later served with a medical unit in the Women’s Army Corps during the Vietnam War. Griffin and her life partner Maryanne Powers met in 1963.
Lesbian Connection, January/February 2012
October 19, 1949 – July 5, 2017
Born in Allegheny, Virginia, Angela Romagnoli grew up within a union family in Dearborn and retained a passion for social justice her whole life. At the University of Michigan she took part in the Students for a Democratic Society in the late 1960s and helped found the campus Radicalesbians in 1970.
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 2, 1949 – June 30, 1996
Jim Paffenbarger, also known as Jimmy Leather, attended the University of Michigan for one year from 1967 to 1968 before going to work for radio station WABX. He soon returned to Ann Arbor where he was employed with the student station WCBN and later served as chief engineer at WUOM.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 