Obituary
OBITUARY: Mike Ritter, Blade contributor, dies at 48
Award-winning cartoonist worked in LGBT media
Mike Ritter, a Washington Blade contributor and art director for the LGBT newspaper GA Voice in Atlanta, died shortly after midnight on Sunday, March 30. He was 48.
He was admitted to the emergency room at Atlanta Medical Center on Friday, March 28, where doctors determined he had a dissection on his aorta, a severe condition. After undergoing a 10-hour surgery on Saturday, he died due to the severity of his condition and complications from undergoing open-heart surgery.
Ritter was a native of Washington State and attended college at Arizona State University. While working on the newspaper at ASU, Ritter was awarded 10 Gold Circle Awards from Columbia University’s Scholastic Press Association. He also won two first-place awards in the editorial cartoon and comic strip categories.
He was the editorial cartoonist at the Tribune in Phoenix from 1992-2005 and a syndicated cartoonist with King Features Syndicate.
Ritter was honored by the Suburban Newspapers of America while at the Tribune and was awarded first place for editorial cartooning by the Arizona Press Club in 1993, 1995 and 1996.
In 1999 he received the Thomson newspaper chain’s highest award for illustration and a Freedom of Information Award from the Arizona Newspaper Association.
He served as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists from 2003-2004. The AAEC noted Ritter was likely one of the first openly gay staff cartoonist at a mainstream daily newspaper while he worked for the East Valley and Scottsdale Tribune papers in Arizona. The East Valley Tribune has a slide show of his nationally recognized 9-11 political cartoon as well as many of his illustrations.
In 2004 he was profiled by Editor & Publisher magazine where he was also noted for being an openly gay staff cartoonist at a mainstream daily newspaper.
After Ritter moved to Atlanta, he joined the staff of the former Southern Voice where he was a graphic designer and cartoonist. He also was a cartoonist for GA Voice and worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before joining the GA Voice staff as full-time art director last year. In 2011 as cartoonist for the GA Voice, he won third place for Best Original Editorial Cartoon in the National Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper contest. The cartoon was a biting look at the Atlanta Police Department’s raid on the Atlanta Eagle after news broke that that the lead investigator of the raid was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana. No drugs were found during the raid of the Eagle in 2009.
Many of his GA Voice and SoVo cartoons were picked up by other LGBT media outlets and blogs and he was an occasional Blade contributor, including work on several colorful and memorable front covers.
“Mike was a dear friend, a great person. He made me laugh. He made me think. He made me a better person and a better editor. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of old music and old movies. A true Renaissance man,” said Dyana Bagby, GA Voice editor. “He kept his great sense of humor until the very end even though he was in pain and uncomfortable. We at the GA Voice are heartbroken.”
Ritter’s impact goes far beyond his cartoons and graphic design, agreed Laura Douglas-Brown, GA Voice co-founder and former editor.
“I could talk about Mike’s brilliance, his skill as a cartoonist and illustrator, his keen political wit — but this would barely touch the surface of who Mike was to so many,” Douglas-Brown said. “There simply are no words big enough for the man he was or the legacy he leaves behind.”
His best friends, Will Alford and Tim Messier, are in contact with the family and plans for a memorial will be announced as soon as more information is made available.
He was born Aug. 21, 1965, and his family includes five older sisters, a brother and his parents.
William Joseph “Bill” Troy passed away peacefully on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024, at Cayuga Medical Center with his family at his bedside, from recent medical issues after living an active and robust life, according to a statement released by family. He was 69.
Troy was born April 15, 1955, in Elmira, N.Y. to William and Shirley Troy. He attended school in Ithaca and left to attend college at the University of Rochester. He worked at the university at various positions to help pay his way through, and he graduated in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He continued working at the university and living in Rochester until he accepted an internship in the federal offices of Congressman Matt McHugh of the NY 28th District from 1978-1983.
Troy was a life-long collector of various things, starting with coins and comics as a youngster, but in the 1980s he moved on to Art Deco lamps, disco records, antique furnishings, Arts & Crafts pottery, and a multitude of similar objects. He followed his passion of seeking antiques and used furnishings in Washington where he met many like-minded people and formed friendships with collectors and dealers.
Troy lived with his friend and partner Kirk Palmatier in Washington until December 2022 when he moved to Newark, N.Y., Palmatier’s hometown. He also wanted to enjoy his Ithaca family more by living nearer to them.
Troy is survived by five loving sisters and two loving brothers and several nieces and nephews. His death was preceded by that of his parents, William and Shirley Troy. Troy is also survived by his friend and partner Kirk Palmatier of Newark, N.Y., and a number of D.C.-area friends and business associates from over the past years. Arrangements to memorialize Troy will be with his family at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to your favorite cancer or hospice organization.
Obituary
Longtime LGBTQ advocate ABilly S. Jones-Hennin dies at 81
Credited with advancing bisexual presence in the movement
ABilly S. Jones-Hennin, a longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights advocate who co-founded the National Coalition of Black Gays in 1978 and helped organize the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, died Jan. 19 at his and his husband’s winter home in Chetumal, Mexico.
His partner and husband of 45 years, Christopher Hennin, said the cause of death was complications associated with Parkinson’s Disease and advance stage spinal stenosis. He was 81.
Jones-Hennin, who identified as bisexual, is credited with advancing the presence of the bisexual community within the LGBTQ rights movement while working through several organizations he helped to form to advance of the overall cause of LGBTQ and African-American civil rights.
He was born in St. Johns, Antigua in 1942 and was adopted at the age of 3 by an American civil rights activist couple. According to biographical information on Jones-Hennin released by organizations he worked with, he grew up in South Carolina and Virginia. He served in the U.S. Marines after graduating from high school in Richmond before graduating from Virginia State University in 1967. He later received a master’s degree in social work at Howard University in D.C.
A biographical write-up on Jones-Hennin by the National Black Justice Coalition, an LGBTQ organization, says he was married to a woman for seven years and had three children before he and his wife separated. In a 2022 interview published by the AARP, Jones-Hennin said the separation came after he came out as gay before coming to the self-realization that he was in fact bisexual. He said he remained on good terms with his children and even took them to LGBTQ events.
Christopher Hennin said he and Jones-Hennin met in 1978 in D.C. while Jones-Hennin worked in accounting and management for different consulting firms, including the firm Macro International. At one point in the 1980s Jones-Hennin worked for D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Clinic where he became involved with providing services to people with HIV/AIDS in the early years of the epidemic.
A write-up on Jones-Hennin by D.C.’s Rainbow History Project, which named him a Community Pioneer, its highest honor, said Jones-Hennin managed several federal and state HIV/AIDS research and evaluation projects while working for a national management consulting firm.
Jones-Hennin is credited with breaking ground in the then gay and lesbian movement in 1978 when he co-founded the National Coalition of Black Gays, which became the first national advocacy group for gay and lesbian African Americans. One year later in 1979, he served as logistics coordinator for the first ever National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
During the March on Washington weekend Jones-Hennin helped to organize a National Third World LGBT Conference at Howard University, which led to the creation by students of the Howard University Lambda Student Alliance, the first known LGBT organization at a historically Black college or university in the U.S.
Among his other activities, Jones-Hennin worked as minority affairs director of the National AIDS Network, was a founding member of the Gay Married Men’s Association, and helped co-found the National Association of Black & White Men Together. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Jones-Hennin participated in the first delegation of gay people of color to meet with officials working for a U.S. president, according to the National Black Justice Coalition write-up on Jones-Hennin.
Christopher Hennin said he and Jones-Hennin were married in 2014 and began spending winters in Mexico around 1998, in part, because the cold weather had a negative effect on Jones-Hennin’s spinal stenosis condition, which at one point, required that he undergo surgery to treat the condition, which sometimes caused intense pain.
“He was a person totally dedicated to turning adversity into hope,” Christopher Hennin said of his husband. “His passion was definitely social change and improving people’s well-being,” said Hennin, describing Jones-Hennin as a “very impressive 21st century renaissance thinker.”
Hennin said a memorial service and celebration of Jones-Hennin’s life was being planned sometime later this year at D.C.’s Metropolitan Community Church, where Jones-Hennin’s ashes will be placed in a crypt.
Lesbian activist Susan Silber, one of Jones-Hennin’s longtime friends, said she viewed him as the LGBTQ community’s Bayard Rustin in his role as the “amazing organizer” of the first national Lesbian and Gay March on Washington and as lead organizer of the Third World LGBT Conference.
“ABilly lit up the room with his warmth and charisma,” Silber said.
Jones-Hennin is survived by his husband Christopher Hennin; his sister Pat Jones; his children Valerie Jones, Anthony ‘TJ’ Jones, Forrest ‘Peaches’ Taylor, Danielle Silber, and Avi Silber; 10 grandchildren; and 11 great grandchildren.
Family members have invited those who knew Jones-Hennin to share their memories of him online, which they plan to compile and share with his friends and family members:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBiRDTlZFi4U8s7j26bEH5UChj5fgfpeklL5Km2q34eS3V3A/viewform
Obituary
Prominent LGBTQ rights attorney Mauro Montoya dies at 65
Former D.C. resident was legal director at Whitman-Walker in 1980s
Mauro Walden-Montoya, a prominent LGBTQ rights attorney in D.C. who was among the first to represent people with HIV facing discrimination before he moved to New Mexico and became active in LGBTQ rights endeavors and operated several small businesses, died Dec. 18 from complications associated with cancer. He was 65.
People from D.C. and Albuquerque, N.M., where Montoya lived and worked since the late 1990s, describe him as a selfless advocate and supporter of the LGBTQ and HIV communities for decades.
Amy Nelson, an official with D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health, said Montoya became Whitman-Walker’s first director of legal services in 1986 as a gay man living with HIV. Nelson said Montoya for at least two years assisted Whitman-Walker patients “who were facing unspeakable mistreatment and discrimination as they battled AIDS.”
Montoya was born and raised in Albuquerque. He graduated in 1976 from Albuquerque’s Highland High School and received a bachelor’s degree in 1980 from New Mexico State University. He received his law degree from D.C.’s George Washington University School of Law in 1984.
He began work as Whitman-Walker’s legal director in 1986. Nelson said he worked with a network of dedicated volunteer attorneys to provide legal support for people with HIV facing discrimination that drew local and national news media attention. Nelson pointed to a 2016 event that Montoya attended in 2016 where he “recounted the clients he assisted and befriended in the 1980s, their prolonged legal battles in that time of uncertainty and missing legal protections, and the many funerals he attended as well.”
According to Nelson, Montoya shared that he was “too shaken” to continue in that role after two years but remained committed to serving the LGBTQ and AIDS communities in other ways in D.C. before returning to his home city of Albuquerque. Before returning to Albuquerque, Montoya served as president of D.C.’s Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, an LGBTQ group, from 1990 to 1991, according to former Stein Club President Kurt Vorndran.
In 1994, Montoya was the keynote speaker for the federal government’s World AIDS Day events in D.C., where President Bill Clinton introduced him, a biographical writeup by the LGBTQ Victory Fund says.
Among his endeavors in Albuquerque, Montoya became co-owner of the real estate management companies ABQSEQ Partners and Barbary Lane. He also became owner of a classic vehicle restoration shop called Madness Motors, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund’s writeup, which came out at the time Montoya became a candidate in 2021 for a seat on the Albuquerque City Council.
Montoya lost that race in the November 2021 election, but supporters said he raised important issues as a candidate and drew attention as the first out LGBTQ and Latino candidate with HIV to run for a seat on the Council.
The Victory Fund biography says in July 2013, Montoya became a minister in the Universal Life Church and performed marriages for more than 100 same-sex couples in New Mexico, California, Texas, and Washington State.
Upon his retirement as an attorney, Montoya became a professional volunteer, the Victory Fund writeup says. Among other things, he became the LGBTQ Liaison for the Albuquerque Trolley Company, he served as president of the Albuquerque LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, and sat on several boards, including Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and the Wheels Museum.
Montoya is survived by his husband of 15 years, Andy Walden-Montoya. Walden-Montoya couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, but he expressed his thoughts about his late husband in a post on Facebook.
“He was a good man, with a passionate heart and deep soul,” Walden-Montoya wrote. “I am a better person because of the 15 years we had together,” he stated, adding, “For all of those who knew him, I hope feelings of contentment, happiness, and joy grow to replace loss and sorrow. Our world is safer and happier because of the life he lived. I miss him immeasurably. I am a better person because of Mauro.”
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