Honoring Those Who Left Us in ’18
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Laura Aguilar, photographer, died at 58 of complications from diabetes on April 18th. Born in San Gabriel, California, and a self-described Chicana, she chronicled the role of bars in the lives of L.A.’s working-class lesbians in the 1990s and photographed well-known Latina lesbians. Some of her critically acclaimed works were of her own nude body, which she arranged as sculptures in desert landscapes. Her work has been featured in exhibitions nationwide, most recently at a retrospective at East Los Angeles College.

Angela Bowen, dancer and dance teacher, died at age 82 on July 12th. Born in Boston, she began dancing at the relatively advanced age of fourteen. She came out after a heterosexual marriage ended and was active in the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays. She received her doctorate from Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and taught at CSU–Long Beach. Her short story collection Out of the Blue: Aleta’s Stories (2012) is based in part on her childhood. Her life was documented in the 2016 film The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen. She is survived by her spouse, Jennifer Lynn Abod.

María Irene Fornés, playwright, died on October 30th at the age of 88. Born in Cuba, she arrived in New York as a teenager. She studied painting in Europe, where she saw the original production of Waiting for Godot, an inspiration for her later playwriting career. She earned eight Obies, including one for lifetime achievement in 1982, and was a cofounder of New York Theater Strategy. In her younger years, she was well-known for her romantic liaisons with writers Susan Sontag and Harriet Sohmers Zwerling. A documentary of her life, The Rest I Make Up, was released earlier this year. Much has been written about her life and works, notably The Theater of María Irene Fornés (1999).

John Glines, playwright and producer, died on August 8th at age 84. Born in Santa Maria, California, he grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Yale. In 1976, he cofounded The Glines, dedicated to the development and production of theatrical works exploring the gay experience. In 1983, he won a Tony as the producer of Torch Song Trilogy and became the first person to acknowledge a same-sex partner, Lawrence Lane, on an awards show. He is survived by Chaowarat Chiewvej, a former Buddhist monk, to whom he was married.

Geoffrey Hendricks, artist, died on May 12th at the age of 86. Born in Littleton, New Hampshire, he moved to New York after college and became a prominent member of Fluxus. He taught art at Rutgers for almost fifty years, where he became known as “Cloudsmith” for his many and varied renditions of the sky. His work was shown internationally, and he wrote several books on art and art history, including Between Earth & Sky: In Knowing One, One Will Know the Other (2003). He is survived by his husband, writer and archivist Sur Rodney.

Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark), artist, died May 19th at age 89. Born in New Castle, Indiana, he moved to New York in the 1950s, living with other artists in the Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan. At that time, the late artist Ellsworth Kelly was his lover, though Indiana was not generally out. His sculpture LOVE (1964) is considered one of the most popular artworks of the 20th century, though some critics are skeptical as to whether Indiana shared the “cheery spirit” invoked by the art.

Vivian Matalon, Broadway director, died on August 15th at the age of 88. Born in Manchester, England, he began his acting career in the 1950s, having studied at Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He directed Noël Coward’s final stage appearance in London and later won a Tony for his revival of Morning’s at Seven in 1980. He directed regionally all over North America and collaborated on several productions with his partner, playwright and actor Stephen Temperley, to whom he was married.

Rick McKay, documentary filmmaker, died on January 29th at age 57. He grew up in Indiana and moved to New York, starting out as a cabaret performer, then made a documentary about drag queens called Birds of a Feather. He’s best known for the 2004 film Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There, which enjoyed both critical and popular acclaim, winning awards at fifteen film festivals. At the time of his death he was working on two sequel documentaries, the first of which is slated for release later this year.

Stathis Orphanos, photographer, died at age 77 on January 13th. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. Subjects for his many portraits include writers Gore Vidal, James Merrill, May Sarton, and Christopher Isherwood, and artist David Hockney. Other photographic works included fashion magazines and “locker room activities” of soccer players and servicemen. With Ralph Sylvester (see below) he founded the fine-art publishing company Sylvester & Ophanos, which focused on limited edition books. Christopher Isherwood helped them to launch this company with a deluxe edition of his Christopher and His Kind (1976), illustrated by Don Bachardy.

Ellis L. “Larry” Phillips, musician and philanthropist, died on October 31st. A longer obituary appears in this issue.

Charles “Bill” Rydell, actor, died at age 92 on March 24th. Born in Jamestown, New York, he served in the Marine Corps, later appearing in shows on and off Broadway. He acted in films directed by the late Jerome Hill, who was also his lover. Both men were briefly co-owners of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Rydell appeared in several of Warhol’s films; he was Warhol’s first choice for the 1963 short film “Blow Job” but reportedly failed to show up for the shoot. He was known for his generosity to several members of the Warhol circle who had fallen on hard times.

Bob Smith, comedian and writer, died on January 20th at age 59. He was remembered in the May-June 2018 issue by Eddie Sarfaty and in July-August 2018 by Richard Schneider Jr.

Ralph Sylvester, book designer and publisher, died on January 23rd at age 84. Born in Derry, Pennsylvania, he was stationed in California while in the military, and attended college classes, which is where he met Stathis Orphanos (see above). They immediately became a couple. Sylvester began working at Decca Records in Hollywood, later turning to the publishing business that he and Orphanos established.

Craig Zadan, producer, died on August 20th at age 69. Born in Miami, he grew up in New York and attended Hofstra University, where he was entertainment editor of the university’s newspaper. He began his professional career at After Dark magazine and went on to coproduce dozens of TV shows and films. He received two Tonys as well as almost every film award possible, some multiple times, plus six glaad awards. His classic 1974 book, Sondheim & Co., which went behind the scenes in the making of Sondheim’s plays, is regularly updated with new editions.

Writers and Educators

Ben Barres, neuroscientist and advocate for women’s equal opportunity in the sciences, died on December 27, 2017, at the age of 63. Originally from West Orange, New Jersey, he received degrees from MIT, Dartmouth Medical School, and Harvard Medical School. A transman, he transitioned when he was in his forties. He was a professor at Stanford and a researcher into the cellular causes of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, publishing over 150 scientific papers on the topic. His Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist was published in 2018.

Neil Derrick, writer, died on January 5th at age 87. Growing up in California, he moved to New York City in the 1950s after a brief foray into graduate school and the military. He met poet and writer Edward Field, who survives him, and they settled in Greenwich Village, where they became artists-in-residence at the Westbeth Artists’ Housing. Derrick wrote several gay pulp novels pseudonymously, as well as the novel Village, written under the name of Bruce Elliot and published by Avon in 1982. A later version titled The Villagers: A Novel of Greenwich Village was published in 1999 with Edward Field as co-author.

Vicki L. Eaklor, educator and writer, died at 63 on March 8th. She grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado, and received her doctorate from Washington University. She taught American history for thirty years at Alfred University, creating the college’s first LGBT-focused classes in the early 1990s. Among her published works is Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the 20th Century (2011). She is survived by her partner Patricia Ann O’Brien.

Elizabeth Fee, writer and historian, died on October 17th at the age of 71. Born in Ireland, she received a doctorate from Princeton. During her career as an educator, she introduced courses in human sexuality. She later served as chief of the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine. She wrote over two dozen books, one of which was Women and Health: The Politics of Sex in Medicine (2016), and hundreds of journal articles, some of which were co-authored with her spouse, artist and nurse Mary Garafolo, who survives her.

Drewey Wayne Gunn, writer, died at age 78 on April 27th. Born in North Carolina, he received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and spent much of his career as a university professor in Texas, where he taught American literature. A contributor to this magazine, he was a prolific writer and bibliographer, donating his collections to a variety of libraries. One of his last books, co-authored with Jaime Harker, was 1960s Gay Pulp Fiction: The Misplaced Heritage (2013). He was predeceased by his life partner, Jacques Murat.

J. D. “Sandy” McClatchy, poet and writer, died on April 10th at age 72. He was remembered in the July-August 2018 issue by Edmund White.

Jim Nawrocki, writer, poet, and frequent contributor to this magazine, died at 54 on May 31st. He was remembered in the September-October 2018 issue by Richard Schneider Jr.

Rashod Ollison, feature writer and music critic, died on October 17th at the age of 41. Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, he started out as the editor of his high school newspaper. He went on to write for major daily papers in Dallas and Philadelphia and, more recently, for The Baltimore Sun. In his reviews, he sometimes wrote about “growing up poor, gay and black in a broken home in Arkansas” and the necessity for music in his life. His memoir Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age through Vinyl was published in 2017.

Kristi Parker, editor and publisher, died on March 10th at age 49. Born in Wichita, Kansas, she graduated from Wichita State University and worked as an accountant. In 1994 she founded the newspaper Liberty Press, whose motto was “We were gay before it was cool.” It received numerous awards over its quarter-century run, ceasing publication with Parker’s death.

Richard W. Peck, children’s book writer, died of cancer on May 23 at the age of 84. Originally from Decatur, Illinois, he moved to New York City to teach. He began his prolific writing career in 1971, aiming his books mostly at children and young adults. He won a wide variety of national awards and came out to his public in his last book, The Best Man (2016), about a child whose male role models get married.

Robert Pincus-Witten, art critic and historian, died on January 28th at age 83. Born in New York City, he received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and began his career as a professor at CUNY, later organizing shows for a variety of New York galleries. He held various editorial titles for almost half a century at Artforum. In its November 1971 issue he coined the term Postminimalism. Of his many books, among the best known is Postminimalism into Maximalism: American Art 1966-1986 (1987). Known as a “dedicated chronicler of the scene,” he is survived by his spouse, Léon Hecht.

Douglass Shand-Tucci (born Paul Douglass Tucci), architectural historian and writer, died on April 11th at age 76. Born in Boston, he attended Harvard College. A self-described æsthete, he was the author of over two dozen books, mostly about Boston area history and the arts. Among his best-known books are The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture (2003) and The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1997).

Wickie Stamps, writer, died at the end of December 2017. Described in one obituary as a “cornerstone of San Franciscan queer and leather culture,” she was editor of the gay leather magazine Drummer during the 1990s and was a frequent contributor to gay and lesbian magazines and books, including Sister & Brother: Lesbians & Gay Men Write about their Lives Together (1994). She appeared in the documentary Blood Sisters (1995) about the San Francisco leather dyke scene. With Jed Bell, she co-wrote and co-produced the film Foucault Who? (2002).

Jim Stewart, writer, photographer, historian, and leather pioneer, died on October 15th at age 75. After living in San Francisco throughout the 1970s, he spent the next twenty years as head of the Chicago Public Library’s Social Sciences and History Department. His Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco was published in 2011, and his widely-exhibited photographs and articles are included in a variety of anthologies. He is survived by Kenneth Warner, to whom he was married.