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Cheryl Spector, a longtime gay and AIDS activist in the Washington area, died this week. In January, she posed for this photo for a Blade story on her life’s work. (Blade photo by Adam Cuthbert)
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: ELIZABETH PERRY and JOEY DiGUGLIELMO COMMENTS
 
The Washington gay community lost a beloved friend this week with the Tuesday death of lesbian activist and archivist Cheryl Ann Spector. She was 49.
Spector was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia June 29 and was hospitalized for 10 weeks during which she underwent two rounds of chemotherapy. She died Tuesday at George Washington University Hospital.
A private funeral service for family and close friends will be held Sunday. A public memorial service will take place Sept. 30, though place and time had not been determined by press time.
Spector will be honored posthumously with the Mautner Project’s Unsung Hero Award Sept. 29. Her sister, Barbara Spector Yeninas, will accept the award on her behalf at the gala. Interim executive director Andrea Densham said Spector was an inspiration and said the Mautner Project would follow through on its promise to celebrate her life and work.
“She understood we were a whole community and we will continue the work she began,” Densham said. “Creating more change, more art and remembering our history in order to build a more just world.”
Spector, an out lesbian and resident of Arlington, Va., served on the board of directors of the Rainbow History Project. She devoted 20 years of her life to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender activism and was involved in a host of Washington-area organizations, including Queer Nation, the Lesbian Avengers, Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance, D.C. Capital Pride, the Mautner Project, the Max Robinson Center, the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, Bet Mishpachah, the Human Rights Campaign, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and Reel Affirmations.
“Cheryl has been a larger-than-life personality in our community for decades and will be missed by many,” said Mark Meinke, chair of the Rainbow History Project. “Her activism, her commitment and her contributions will be remembered for years.”
Spector was born in Lakewood, N.J., and raised in Toms River. She moved to Washington in 1976 and attended American University. She worked in broadcast television and in public affairs for nonprofit organizations before going to work for the CIA as an executive secretary in 2000.
She was known to point out what she saw as the irony of being both an activist and a CIA employee. One of her close friends was fellow activist Frank Kameny, one of the pioneers of the gay rights movement. Kameny said he was “shocked and saddened” by her death and described her as a “young woman at the height of vigor” who gave him credit for her employment and ability to be out on the job.
“Over the years one of the issues I became an authority on was security clearances for gay people,” Kameny said. “The CIA was the worst of the holdout agencies. There is now an active, open group of gay employees.”
Spector came out as a lesbian in 1982 and began photographing and interviewing D.C. gay events and people, including the first AIDS candlelight vigil in 1983. The Rainbow History Project web site estimates she assembled a massive collection of slides, photos, documents and more than 1,000 videos by the summer of 2007. Those events included Pride celebrations, parades, drag shows and pageants, parties, dances, protests, marches, meetings and speeches in the District and Baltimore.
She worked as a disc jockey at the Phase and Hung Jury clubs in the early ’80s but discovered her true passion as an activist after her brother Stanley’s AIDS diagnosis and subsequent suicide in October 1985. She channeled her grief into action by helping with the 1987 and 1993 Marches on Washington, and served as Grand Marshal of the D.C. Gay Pride Parade in 1998. She also organized the first Drag King contest at the Hung Jury in the mid ’90s.
In January, Spector told the Blade planning for the 1987 March was “one of the single most powerful moments of my entire life.”
She elaborated: “I just remember standing on the Mall and crying … I was watching them line the walkways of the Quilt … I couldn’t believe it. It was a culmination … a real time for me to start the healing process of losing Stan. Things started to take off after that.”
Spector was also involved with transgender issues. Transgender advocate Earline Budd said Spector lived her life to the fullest and will be remembered a “lifetime advocate friend to all.”
“I know the statement, ‘Let the life I live speak for me’ is applicable to Cheryl now,” she said. “I will miss her charming smile and warm spirit.”
Spector’s other activities included distributing safe-sex kits to women ...
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