Local
Obituary
Jack Keegel, 68
John Jack Keegel, a longtime D.C. resident and professor of mathematics at the University of the District of Columbia for nearly 35 years, died of cancer May 11 at his home in Boynton Beach, Fla. He was 68.
With a specialty in statistics and statistical analysis, Keegel played a lead role for more than 20 years in designing and directing an annual, federally mandated study of seatbelt usage by drivers in the District of Columbia.
The D.C. Department of Transportation retained Keegel to organize the study with the help of student interns at UDC and others, who methodically observed whether drivers traveling along various D.C. streets wore their seatbelts. Although he retired as a professor in 2004, he continued to conduct the seatbelt study through 2009, when his findings showed a 93 percent seatbelt usage by D.C. drivers, according to UDC Professor Eugene Shiro, who assisted Keegel in the study.
Keegel’s friends said they and his UDC colleagues became inspired and moved in 1995 over Keegel’s devotion to his domestic partner of 24 years, Edward Levine, who was hospitalized in critical condition while awaiting a heart transplant. They said Keegel juggled his teaching schedule to make time each day to drive from the District to Fairfax Hospital, where he spent part of the day with Levine for nearly two months before Levine died while waiting for a replacement heart that never arrived.
During Levine’s hospital stay, he and Keegel agreed to become the subject of a feature story in the Washington Blade, becoming the first known same-sex couple to publicly share their experiences in grappling with the uncertainty of a hoped for heart transplant.
Keegel was born in Jersey City, N.J. and was raised in Rahway, N.J. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1963 from Rutgers University and his master’s degree in 1966 from the University of Delaware, both in mathematics. He received a doctorate degree in statistics in 1975 from George Washington University.
Keegel served as a statistician with the National Institutes of Health from 1966 to 1969 and worked as a statistical consultant to a contracting company providing services to the U.S. Postal Service from 1968 to 1969. He began his tenure as a mathematics professor at UDC in 1969.
While at UDC, he worked as a statistical consultant during the summer months for a number of outside consulting firms. In the summer of 1979 he served as a lecturer at the NATO Advanced Statistics Institute in Urbino, Italy. Keegel also is the author or co-author of at least nine books or book chapters on statistics and statistical analysis.
Upon his retirement, he retained his home in D.C. while spending winters in Boynton Beach, Fla.
Keegel was preceeded in death by Levine, his domestic partner of 24 years. Survivors include a former domestic partner, Brian Lee; his father, John Keegel; a stepmother, Margo Keegel; several cousins; and many longtime friends in Florida and D.C.
Plans to celebrate Keegel’s life in Florida and D.C. are pending.
Cameroon
Gay Cameroonian immigrant will be freed from ICE detention — for now
Ludovic Mbock’s homeland criminalizes homosexuality
By ANTONIO PLANAS | An immigration judge on Friday issued a $4,000 bond for a Cameroonian immigrant and regional gaming champion held in federal immigration detention for the past three weeks.
The ruling will allow Ludovic Mbock, of Oxon Hill, to return to Maryland from a Georgia facility this weekend, his family and attorney said.
“Realistically, by tomorrow. Hopefully, by today,” said Mbock’s attorney, Edward Neufville. “We are one step closer to getting Ludovic justice.”
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
Bowser appoints first nonbinary person to Cabinet-level position
Peter Stephan named Office of Disability Rights interim director
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bower has named longtime disability rights advocate Peter L. Stephan, who identifies as nonbinary, as interim director of the D.C. Office of Disability Rights.
The local transgender and nonbinary advocacy group Our Trans Capital and the LGBTQ group Capital Stonewall Democrats issued a joint statement calling Stephan’s appointment an historic development as the first-ever appointment of a nonbinary person to a Cabinet-level D.C. government position.
“This milestone appointment recognizes Stephan’s extensive expertise in disability rights advocacy and marks a historic advancement for transgender and nonbinary representation in District government leadership,” the statement says.
The statement notes that Stephan, an attorney, held the position of general counsel at the Office of Disability Rights immediately prior to the mayor’s decision to name him interim director.
The mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a question from the Washington Blade asking if Bowser plans to name Stephan as the permanent director of the Office of Disability Rights. John Fanning, a spokesperson for D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large), said the office’s director position requires confirmation by the Council.
Stephan couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
“At a time when trans and nonbinary people ae under attack across the country, D.C. continues to lead by example,” said Stevie McCarty, president of Capital Stonewall Democrats. “This appointment reflects what we have always believed that our community is always strongest when every voice is represented in government,” he said.
“This is a historic step forward,” said Vida Rengel, founder of Our Trans Capital. “Interim Director Stephan’s career and accomplishments are a shining example of the positive impact that trans and nonbinary public servants can have on our communities,” according to Rangel.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
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PHOTOS: ‘Defrosted’
