Miscellaneous
Gay Holocaust survivor shares life lessons
Alfred Munzer laments ongoing religious, racial hatred
Alfred Munzer in his Van Ness apartment. Now retired from his medical career, Munzer devotes much of his time to the Holocaust Museum. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
First Person 2015 Series: Al Munzer
Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor
Wednesday, July 29
11 a.m.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, S.W.
Free
No registration required
Although the odds were not favorable for Alfred Munzer in the circumstances surrounding his birth, in many ways, he ended up being the luckiest member of his family.
He’s the youngest of three children of Simcha and Gisele Munzer, a family of Jewish immigrants from what is now Poland. His parents were childhood sweethearts and raising two daughters, Eva (born in July 1936) and Leah (born in November 1938) in the Hague, Netherlands. After World War I, anti-Semitism was rampant in their native land and opportunities were limited, so they moved to Holland where there was a substantial population of Jews, some of whom were from families that had been there since the 15th century. Simcha ran a men’s tailoring business.
When Gisele discovered she was expecting a third child — the pregnancy was unplanned — an abortion was advised and, as Munzer tells it today, his mother was told that, “it would be immoral to bring another Jewish life into the world.” Although not especially religious, she was inspired by the Old Testament story of Hannah, the childless woman who vows to God that if she is given a son, she will give him back to God. Her wish is granted with the birth of Samuel.
Munzer, now 73, was born on Nov. 23, 1941. Before he reached his first birthday, in July of 1942, Germans began mass deportations of nearly 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to the east, primarily Auschwitz, a network of Nazi concentration camps in Poland, the beginning of a harrowing season for his family.
Munzer says growing up, he was often reminded of the circumstances around which he was born.
“Any time I was bad growing up, my mother would remind me of this, how she had prayed to God and requested a son,” Munzer says. “She indoctrinated me with this. It was made very clear that she had made the same pledge as Hannah and that I was here in service of God ultimately.”
It’s one of many biographical stories Munzer will share on Wednesday, July 29 when he does another installment of the Holocaust Museum’s First Person program in which survivors are interviewed about their life experiences. Since retiring from his career as an internist and pulmonologist last year, Munzer has become increasingly active as a volunteer at the museum. The program is free.
Having shared his life story many times over the years, first at an artistic event in Woodstock, N.Y., in the early 1980s, Munzer says it’s important that his story and those of other Holocaust survivors continue to be told.
“The angle I usually take is that even in a sea of evil, it is possible for people to do the right thing and stand up for what is right,” he says.
Unlike, for instance, the Anne Frank family, the Munzers thought they’d fare better if they went into hiding separately. Munzer’s two sisters went to live with a Catholic family. Simcha Munzer had received a notice to report for so-called labor duty, essentially a one-way ticket to a concentration camp, but was able to delay it by first having a hernia operation he’d been putting off and later faking a suicide attempt. Joined by Gisele at a Jewish psychiatric hospital where she was pretending to be a nurse’s aide, Simcha was eventually deported, in early 1943, to Vught Concentration Camp and then a year later to Auschwitz where they were separated.
Gisele had sold the family’s possessions. Neighbors kept some items such as a silver candelabra and fire dragon puppet that are now in Munzer’s Van Ness apartment where he’s lived for about 25 years with his husband, Joel Wind. Though only married for a year and a half, the two have been together since they met at Bet Mishpachah, a local LGBT-affirming synagogue where Munzer sometimes preaches, in 1980.
Things quickly turned dark for the family. The husband of the family raising Munzer’s two older sisters turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer. He denounced his wife and the two girls and all three were arrested and sent to the Westerbork transit camp. On Feb. 8, 1944, Eva, 8, and Leah, 6, were deported to Auschwitz where they were killed three days later.
Alfred was put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna who placed him with her sister. After about a month, she became too nervous to keep him and placed little Alfred with her ex-husband Tole, a native of Indonesia. Munzer stayed there for the next three years and was looked after by their housekeeper, Mima Saina, who went to great lengths to care for him.
“She really became my mother,” Munzer says. “She was a woman who was completely illiterate, who spoke no Dutch, couldn’t read or write, she spoke only Indonesian, but she had a heart of gold. She would walk — I was in the house illegally, so there were no ration coupons for me — she had to scrounge up milk for me however she could, sometimes walking miles just to get it. I’m told I slept in her bed. She kept a knife under the pillow to kill off any Nazis who might try to get me or even kill me rather than having me fall in their hands. She was an amazing woman who raised me from the time I was about 9 months old till I was about three and a half.”
Simcha spent several months in Auschwitz and was then sent to three different camps in Austria. Although eventually freed from one in Ebensee in the Austrian Alps by the U.S. Army, he was so weakened by the ordeal that he died under the care of nuns at a convent just two months later, on July 25, 1945, 70 years ago this weekend. Munzer was told his father had contracted tuberculosis.
Gisele fared better and worked on electronics equipment in a series of camps before she was freed at the Danish border through the intervention of the Swedish Red Cross in early 1945. Although fussy from having been awoken from a nap, being reunited with her is one of Munzer’s earliest memories.
“I was cranky and crying so the whole Matna family was passing me around, like you do with a crying baby, and the only lap I wouldn’t sit on was my own mother’s,” Munzer says. “She was a stranger to me by that point.”
It was decided that his de facto surrogate mother Mima would continue to care for him while Gisele looked for work but she had a cerebral hemorrhage about two months later and died. Gisele eventually found work in the garment industry. Although deeply traumatized by the Holocaust, Munzer remembers her as a stoic, matter-of-fact woman. He had no sense growing up that his life was any different from anyone else’s.
“I was surrounded by kids who had lost their parents, who had lost siblings, there really was nothing unusual about that,” he says. “I did not understand as a very young kid what had happened to my sisters. All I knew was that there were these beautiful pictures on the wall of these beautiful girls. Everybody would tell me how wonderful they were. One of my mother’s neighbors would tell me that my older sister could write so perfectly when she was just 6. I was a little bit jealous of them in a sense. I had no comprehension of the fact that they had been killed. I just did not understand why they were missing or just didn’t really think about it.”
Neither, too, did the bombed-out landscape of the Hague, strike young Munzer as unusual.
“My mother had a very good friend who was in a concentration camp with her and she and her husband, well, there was very little housing available there. After my mother closed her store, she had acquired a little cosmetics store, we’d go to visit the Van Der Pools in these few little rooms they had in an attic and we’d walk across these huge fields of rubble to get there. I thought walking through rubble was just a normal thing. Or playing hide and seek in bunkers on the beach. It wasn’t until much later that I came to grips with the Holocaust as such.”
In July 1958, Gisele and then-16-year-old Alfred came to the United States where he became a bit of an overachiever. Located in Brooklyn, he finished high school, college, medical school and advance training at Johns Hopkins. He first came to Washington in 1972 during a two-year tour of duty with the Air Force and an assignment at Andrews Air Force Base.
He has many happy memories of his later years with his mother and says the two enjoyed many trips, including a few to visit his father’s grave, in her later years. A pivotal turning point in his understanding of the Holocaust came in 1978 when the miniseries “The Holocaust” aired on CBS.
“Before, I would hear her in conversations with friends and it was always, ‘so-and-so came back’ or ‘so-and-so did not come back.’ They never used the term survived. She had told me little bits and pieces here and there, actually humorous things mostly. She told me once very late in the game, she was actually cast as Adolf Hitler in a play, that type of thing. But she always had an incredibly positive attitude, which I think is really what kept her alive. She even spoke of being in one of those cattle cars and being able to look out and see the beautiful countryside. She said, ‘After the war, we may not have much money, but at least that was not a bad way to travel around and see nature. … After the ‘Holocaust’ miniseries, I took out a map and had her trace the 12 concentration camps she had been through and she told me the approximate dates and things that had happened at each place.”
Munzer says she was “very matter of fact about it.”
She eventually embraced Wind and on later trips introduced he and Alfred as “her two sons.” She eventually settled in Rockville and enjoyed painting and was “not especially anti-German,” Munzer says. “She judged people individually and felt that was important.” Several of her landscapes hang above Munzer’s sofa now. She died at age 95 about 12 years ago.
Munzer started volunteering at the museum about eight years ago. He conducts tours, helps with Dutch-to-English translation work, gives talks to student groups and more. He says he’s delighted that the museum has remained popular and, although a challenge, is often overwhelmed by the number of people who visit, crowds having far surpassed estimates since its 1993 opening.
Museum staff say the stories from survivors are hugely important and valuable.
“One of the most powerful ways people (understand history) is to engage with someone who witnessed it,” says Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs. “Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the museum provide that personal connection for our visitors and bring an incomprehensible past alive and add a unique and powerful dimension to the visitors’ experience.”
Munzer is thrilled the staff — he’s the only LGBT survivor volunteer he knows of — has not raised the slightest issue with him being gay. He also says being out during his medical career was also pleasantly uneventful in that regard.
Last week’s conviction of 94-year-old SS sergeant Oskar Groening, an Auschwitz bookkeeper sentenced to four years imprisonment for his role as an accessory to murder in 300,000 deaths, is “awfully late” in Munzer’s opinion.
“Although I do think it’s important for people to be brought to justice.”
Equally important, Munzer says, is that the Holocaust is not forgotten.
“To me one of the greatest tragedies of the Holocaust is not even what happened but the fact that violence continues and especially genocide continues. The world really did not learn its lesson and the slogan ‘never again’ has really not been upheld. The fact that there is still religious hatred and racial hatred is just really, really sad. The re-emergence of anti-Semitism but even more in general, just not recognizing people as part of the common human race.”
Joel Wind (standing) and Alfred Munzer married in 2013 after more than 30 years together. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Miscellaneous
LA-based TransLatin@ Coalition leads in time of attacks
Members of Congress ‘calling us a radical organization’
As ICE raids intensify across Southern California and anti-immigrant sentiment resurfaces in Orange County, transgender and immigrant communities are once again being targeted. These crackdowns go beyond enforcement — they’re designed to instill fear. At the same time, a coordinated right-wing smear campaign is attempting to discredit the very organizations working to keep these communities safe.
Last month, the TransLatin@ Coalition, a cornerstone in the fight for trans, queer, and immigrant rights in Los Angeles, was publicly named by members of Congress. But this was no recognition. It was a calculated attack.
“They’re calling us a radical organization,” said Bamby Salcedo, president and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition. “They’re spreading lies, saying we’re using government funding to abolish ICE and the police and to provide abortion access. We do believe in those things, but the funding we receive is used to serve our people.”
Now, that funding is being stripped away.
In the face of state violence, political backlash, and economic sabotage, TLC is responding the way it always has: by organizing, celebrating, and building a better world. Because when our communities are under attack, we show up — stronger, louder, and more united than ever.
Salcedo, herself a proud trans Latina immigrant, has spent decades fighting for those living at the margins. “I always say I am an intersection walking,” she said with a smile. “Our organization is made up of the people most impacted — and we are the ones leading the work.”
In Los Angeles County, roughly one-third of residents are immigrants, the majority of whom are Latino. Unsurprisingly, trans Latinas represent the largest segment within the local trans community.
Yet even within immigrant justice spaces, trans people are often sidelined.
“It’s a very hetero-centric space,” Salcedo said. “Most of the time, they don’t even consider the lives and experiences of trans and queer immigrants.”
The TransLatin@ Coalition is actively changing that. As a key member of a broad alliance of more than 100 immigrant-serving organizations across Los Angeles, including CHIRLA and the Filipino Workers Center, the TransLatin@ Coalition helped secure over $160 million in American Rescue Plan funds for immigrant housing, internet access, and legal services.
They also co-created the groundbreaking TGIE (Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, Intersex Empowerment) initiative, which allocates $7 million in Los Angeles County’s annual budget to support trans-led service providers.
“We don’t just want symbolic policies,” said Salcedo. “We fight for resources. We analyze the budget. We make it real.”
Despite these victories, the TransLatin@ Coalition is now confronting devastating federal cuts.
“Our work has been defunded,” Salcedo said bluntly. “Multiple programs are gone. And we’re not alone — trans-led organizations across the country, especially in the South, are facing the same.”
She pointed to a broader backlash against anything associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). “The private sector is pulling back. Philanthropy is scared. Even the same corporations that fund us during Pride are investing in our opposition the rest of the year. It’s hypocrisy.”
Rather than retreat, the TransLatin@ Coalition is calling for bold, collective action.
“Now’s the time for people to step up,” said Salcedo. “We have the strategy. We’re doing the work. But we need resources — and we need real solidarity, not just statements.”
To respond to the crisis and raise urgently needed funds, the TransLatin@ Coalition is organizing its Walk for Humanity on Saturday, Aug. 24. The event will begin at 9 a.m. in Silver Lake and march to Sunset and Western, featuring live performances, a resource fair, and a unified call for justice.
And yes — it will be joyful.
“This is a call for all people to stand in solidarity with one another,” said Salcedo. “We want to bring together 1,000 people, each raising $1,000. It’s going to be a beautiful day of community and resistance.”
In a surprise announcement, Salcedo also revealed she will debut her first single — a cumbia track inspired by the movement. “It’s about movement in both senses: our political movement, and moving our bodies,” she laughed. “We can’t let them take away our joy. Joy is how we survive.”
When asked what more local leaders can do, Salcedo didn’t hesitate. “Elected officials are public servants. That means serving all people,” she said. “We may be a small population, but we are deeply impacted — and we contribute so much to this city.”
She pointed to data from LA’s most recent homelessness count, which identified over 2,000 trans and gender-expansive people experiencing homelessness. That number exists thanks in large part to years of advocacy demanding the city count and name trans lives. “We have the data now. There’s no excuse not to invest in our people.”
She also uplifted allies like Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and newly appointed City Council member Isabel Urado, the first openly LGBTQ person to hold her seat. “They’ve seen our work and are fighting to invest in it,” Salcedo said. “We’re hopeful we’ll see another $10 million in city funding. But we need the community behind us.”
At the end of our conversation, I asked Salcedo what she would say to undocumented, queer, and trans Angelenos who are feeling afraid right now.
Her answer was clear, powerful, and full of love:
“You are a divine creation. You deserve to exist in this world. Walk your path with dignity, love, and respect — for yourself and for others. You belong. You are part of me. You are part of us.”
If standing with trans immigrants, resisting federal rollbacks, and dancing in the streets sounds like your kind of solidarity, join the TransLatin@ Coalition on Aug. 24. Because when we show up together, we protect each other. And when we dance together — we win.
Watch the full interview with Salcedo:
Miscellaneous
LGBTQ cruise ship rescues 11 migrants between Cuba and Mexico
Rescue took place in Yucatán Channel on Wednesday
A cruise ship chartered by an LGBTQ travel company on Wednesday rescued 11 Cubans from a boat that was adrift between their country and Mexico.
Vacaya in a press release said the Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas, which had left from New Orleans, discovered the migrants’ boat in the Yucatán Channel, a strait between Mexico and Cuba that connects the Gulf of Mexico (the Trump-Vance administration now refers to the body of water as the Gulf of America) and the Caribbean Sea.
A video that Vacaya provided shows the migrants’ boat before the rescue. Other videos show the rescue taking place.
MTV’s Downtown Julie Brown, who was performing on the ship, described the rescue in a video she posted to social media.
“We are in the middle of a live rescue operation right now,” she said. “The captain of the ship, while we were hauling so fast the other way, thought he saw a boat in distress. So, we looped around … and it was indeed a boat in distress.”
“Nothing speaks more to VACAYA’s values than providing comfort in a moment of need,” said Vacaya CEO Randle Roper in the press release. “I’m so happy we were able to bring these 11 refugees onboard safely and provide medical care, dry clothes, food, and, most importantly, water.”
“It’s sad that some people have to put themselves through such trauma in hopes of finding a better life, but that’s where we are today,” added Roper. “I’m so proud of our LGBT+ guests rallying to collect clothes for these fellow humans in need.”
The ship is scheduled to return to New Orleans on Saturday.
Miscellaneous
The dedicated life and tragic death of gay publisher Troy Masters
‘Always working to bring awareness to causes larger than himself’
Troy Masters was a cheerleader. When my name was called as the Los Angeles Press Club’s Print Journalist of the Year for 2020, Troy leapt out of his seat with a whoop and an almost jazz-hand enthusiasm, thrilled that the mainstream audience attending the Southern California Journalism Awards gala that October night in 2021 recognized the value of the LGBTQ community’s Los Angeles Blade.
That joy has been extinguished. On Wednesday, Dec. 11, after frantic unanswered calls from his sister Tammy late Monday and Tuesday, Troy’s longtime friend and former partner Arturo Jiminez did a wellness check at Troy’s L.A. apartment and found him dead, with his beloved dog Cody quietly alive by his side. The L.A. Coroner determined Troy Masters died by suicide. No note was recovered. He was 63.
Considered smart, charming, committed to LGBTQ people and the LGBTQ press, Troy’s inexplicable suicide shook everyone, even those with whom he sometimes clashed.
Troy’s sister and mother – to whom he was absolutely devoted – are devastated. “We are still trying to navigate our lives without our precious brother/son. I want the world to know that Troy was loved and we always tried to let him know that,” says younger sister Tammy Masters.
Tammy was 16 when she discovered Troy was gay and outed him to their mother. A “busy-body sister,” Tammy picked up the phone at their Tennessee home and heard Troy talking with his college boyfriend. She confronted him and he begged her not to tell.
“Of course, I ran and told Mom,” Tammy says, chuckling during the phone call. “But she – like all mothers – knew it. She knew it from an early age but loved him unconditionally; 1979 was a time [in the Deep South] when this just was not spoken of. But that didn’t stop Mom from being in his corner.”
Mom even marched with Troy in his first Gay Pride Parade in New York City. “Mom said to him, ‘Oh, my! All these handsome men and not one of them has given me a second look! They are too busy checking each other out!” Tammy says, bursting into laughter. “Troy and my mother had that kind of understanding that she would always be there and always have his back!
“As for me,” she continues, “I have lost the brother that I used to fight for in any given situation. And I will continue to honor his cause and lifetime commitment to the rights and freedom for the LGBTQ community!”
Tammy adds: “The outpouring of love has been comforting at this difficult time and we thank all of you!”
No one yet knows why Troy took his life. We may never know. But Troy and I often shared our deeply disturbing bouts with drowning depression. Waves would inexplicitly come upon us, triggered by sadness or an image or a thought we’d let get mangled in our unresolved, inescapable past trauma.
We survived because we shared our pain without judgment or shame. We may have argued – but in this, we trusted each other. We set everything else aside and respectfully, actively listened to the words and the pain within the words.
Listening, Indian philosopher Krishnamurti once said, is an act of love. And we practiced listening. We sought stories that led to laughter. That was the rope ladder out of the dark rabbit hole with its bottomless pit of bullying and endless suffering. Rung by rung, we’d talk and laugh and gripe about our beloved dogs.
I shared my 12 Step mantra when I got clean and sober: I will not drink, use or kill myself one minute at a time. A suicide survivor, I sought help and I urged him to seek help, too, since I was only a loving friend – and sometimes that’s not enough.
(If you need help, please reach out to talk with someone: call or text 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. They also have services in Spanish and for the deaf.)
In 2015, Troy wrote a personal essay for Gay City News about his idyllic childhood in the 1960s with his sister in Nashville, where his stepfather was a prominent musician. The people he met “taught me a lot about having a mission in life.”
During summers, they went to Dothan, Ala., to hang out with his stepfather’s mother, Granny Alabama. But Troy learned about “adult conversation — often filled with derogatory expletives about Blacks and Jews” and felt “my safety there was fragile.”
It was a harsh revelation. “‘Troy is a queer,’ I overheard my stepfather say with energetic disgust to another family member,” Troy wrote. “Even at 13, I understood that my feelings for other boys were supposed to be secret. Now I knew terror. What my stepfather said humiliated me, sending an icy panic through my body that changed my demeanor and ruined my confidence. For the first time in my life, I felt depression and I became painfully shy. Alabama became a place, not of love, not of shelter, not of the magic of family, but of fear.”
At the public pool, “kids would scream, ‘faggot,’ ‘queer,’ ‘chicken,’ ‘homo,’ as they tried to dunk my head under the water. At one point, a big crowd joined in –– including kids I had known all my life –– and I was terrified they were trying to drown me.
“My depression became dangerous and I remember thinking of ways to hurt myself,” Troy wrote.
But Troy Masters — who left home at 17 and graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville — focused on creating a life that prioritized being of service to his own intersectional LGBTQ people. He also practiced compassion and last August, Troy reached out to his dying stepfather. A 45-minute Facetime farewell turned into a lovefest of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Troy discovered his advocacy chops as an ad representative at the daring gay and lesbian activist publication Outweek from 1989 to 1991.
“We had no idea that hiring him would change someone’s life, its trajectory and create a lifelong commitment” to the LGBTQ press, says Outweek’s co-founder and former editor-in-chief Gabriel Rotello, now a TV producer. “He was great – always a pleasure to work with. He had very little drama – and there was a lot of drama at Outweek. It was a tumultuous time and I tended to hire people because of their activism,” including Michelangelo Signorile, Masha Gessen, and Sarah Pettit.
Rotello speculates that because Troy “knew what he was doing” in a difficult profession, he was determined to launch his own publication when Outweek folded. “I’ve always been very happy it happened that way for Troy,” Rotello says. “It was a cool thing.”
Troy and friends launched NYQ, renamed QW, funded by record producer and ACT UP supporter Bill Chafin. QW (QueerWeek) was the first glossy gay and lesbian magazine published in New York City featuring news, culture, and events. It lasted for 18 months until Chafin died of AIDS in 1992 at age 35.
The horrific Second Wave of AIDS was peaking in 1992 but New Yorkers had no gay news source to provide reliable information at the epicenter of the epidemic.
“When my business partner died of AIDS and I had to close shop, I was left hopeless and severely depressed while the epidemic raged around me. I was barely functioning,” Troy told VoyageLA in 2018. “But one day, a friend in Moscow, Masha Gessen, urged me to get off my back and get busy; New York’s LGBT community was suffering an urgent health care crisis, fighting for basic legal rights and against an increase in violence. That, she said, was not nothing and I needed to get back in the game.”
It took Troy about two years to launch the bi-weekly newspaper LGNY (Lesbian and Gay New York) out of his East Village apartment. The newspaper ran from 1994 to 2002 when it was re-launched as Gay City News with Paul Schindler as co-founder and Troy’s editor-in-chief for 20 years.
“We were always in total agreement that the work we were doing was important and that any story we delved into had to be done right,” Schindler wrote in Gay City News.
Though the two “sometimes famously crossed swords,” Troy’s sudden death has special meaning for Schindler. “I will always remember Troy’s sweetness and gentleness. Five days before his death, he texted me birthday wishes with the tag, ‘I hope you get a meaningful spanking today.’ That devilishness stays with me.”
Troy had “very high EI (Emotional Intelligence), Schindler says in a phone call. “He had so much insight into me. It was something he had about a lot of people – what kind of person they were; what they were really saying.”
Troy was also very mischievous. Schindler recounts a time when the two met a very important person in the newspaper business and Troy said something provocative. “I held my breath,” Schindler says. “But it worked. It was an icebreaker. He had the ability to connect quickly.”
The journalistic standard at LGNY and Gay City News was not a question of “objectivity” but fairness. “We’re pro-gay,” Schindler says, quoting Andy Humm. “Our reporting is clear advocacy yet I think we were viewed in New York as an honest broker.”
Schindler thinks Troy’s move to Los Angeles to jump-start his entrepreneurial spirit and reconnect with Arturo, who was already in L.A., was risky. “He was over 50,” Schindler says. “I was surprised and disappointed to lose a colleague – but he was always surprising.”
“In many ways, crossing the continent and starting a print newspaper venture in this digitally obsessed era was a high-wire, counter-intuitive decision,” Troy told VoyageLA. “But I have been relentlessly determined and absolutely confident that my decades of experience make me uniquely positioned to do this.”
Troy launched The Pride L.A. as part of the Mirror Media Group, which publishes the Santa Monica Mirror and other Westside community papers. But on June 12, 2016, the day of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., Troy said he found MAGA paraphernalia in a partner’s office. He immediately plotted his exit. On March 10, 2017, Troy and the “internationally respected” Washington Blade announced the launch of the Los Angeles Blade.
In a March 23, 2017 commentary promising a commitment to journalistic excellence, Troy wrote: “We are living in a paradigm shifting moment in real time. You can feel it. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. Sometimes it’s toxic. Sometimes it’s perplexing, even terrifying. On the other hand, sometimes it’s just downright exhilarating. This moment is a profound opportunity to reexamine our roots and jumpstart our passion for full equality.”
Troy tried hard to keep that commitment, including writing a personal essay to illustrate that LGBTQ people are part of the #MeToo movement. In “Ending a Long Silence,” Troy wrote about being raped at 14 or 15 by an Amtrak employee on “The Floridian” traveling from Dothan, Ala., to Nashville.
“What I thought was innocent and flirtatious affection quickly turned sexual and into a full-fledged rape,” Troy wrote. “I panicked as he undressed me, unable to yell out and frozen by fear. I was falling into a deepening shame that was almost like a dissociation, something I found myself doing in moments of childhood stress from that moment on. Occasionally, even now.”
From the personal to the political, Troy Masters tried to inform and inspire LGBTQ people.
Richard Zaldivar, founder and executive director of The Wall Las Memorias Project, enjoyed seeing Troy at President Biden’s Pride party at the White House.
“Just recently he invited us to participate with the LA Blade and other partners to support the LGBTQ forum on Asylum Seekers and Immigrants. He cared about underserved community. He explored LGBTQ who were ignored and forgotten. He wanted to end HIV; help support people living with HIV but most of all, he fought for justice,” Zaldivar says. “I am saddened by his loss. His voice will never be forgotten. We will remember him as an unsung hero. May he rest in peace in the hands of God.”
Troy often featured Bamby Salcedo, founder, president/CEO of TransLatina Coalition, and scores of other trans folks. In 2018, Bamby and Maria Roman graced the cover of the Transgender Rock the Vote edition.
“It pains me to know that my dear, beautiful and amazing friend Troy is no longer with us … He always gave me and many people light,” Salcedo says. “I know that we are living in dark times right now and we need to understand that our ancestors and transcestors are the one who are going to walk us through these dark times… See you on the other side, my dear and beautiful sibling in the struggle, Troy Masters.”
“Troy was immensely committed to covering stories from the LGBTQ community. Following his move to Los Angeles from New York, he became dedicated to featuring news from the City of West Hollywood in the Los Angeles Blade and we worked with him for many years,” says Joshua Schare, director of Communications for the City of West Hollywood, who knew Troy for 30 years, starting in 1994 as a college intern at OUT Magazine.
“Like so many of us at the City of West Hollywood and in the region’s LGBTQ community, I will miss him and his day-to-day impact on our community.”
(Photo by Richard Settle for the City of West Hollywood)
“Troy Masters was a visionary, mentor, and advocate; however, the title I most associated with him was friend,” says West Hollywood Mayor John Erickson. “Troy was always a sense of light and working to bring awareness to issues and causes larger than himself. He was an advocate for so many and for me personally, not having him in the world makes it a little less bright. Rest in Power, Troy. We will continue to cause good trouble on your behalf.”
Erickson adjourned the WeHo City Council meeting on Monday in his memory.
Masters launched the Los Angeles Blade with his partners from the Washington Blade, Lynne Brown, Kevin Naff, and Brian Pitts, in 2017.
“Troy’s reputation in New York was well known and respected and we were so excited to start this new venture with him,” says Naff. “His passion and dedication to queer LA will be missed by so many. We will carry on the important work of the Los Angeles Blade — it’s part of his legacy and what he would want.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein, who collaborated with Troy on many projects, says he was “a champion of many things that are near and dear to our heart,” including “being in the forefront of alerting the community to the dangers of Mpox.”
“All of who he was creates a void that we all must try to fill,” Weinstein says. “His death by suicide reminds us that despite the many gains we have made, we’re not all right a lot of the time. The wounds that LGBT people have experienced throughout our lives are yet to be healed even as we face the political storm clouds ahead that will place even greater burdens on our psyches.”
May the memory and legacy of Troy Masters be a blessing.
Veteran LGBTQ journalist Karen Ocamb served as the news editor and reporter for the Los Angeles Blade.
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Don’t miss summer productions at Clear Space in Rehoboth Beach
Todd Blanche’s record on LGBTQ issues comes under scrutiny as he takes over DOJ
HISTORIC: Susan Stewart elected Rehoboth’s first out mayor
2 former NBA players launch cheap anti-trans stunt to exploit WNBA rules
Same-sex couples challenges India income tax law
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Theater4 days agoDon’t miss summer productions at Clear Space in Rehoboth Beach
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Federal Government3 days ago
Todd Blanche’s record on LGBTQ issues comes under scrutiny as he takes over DOJ
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Rehoboth Beach3 days ago
HISTORIC: Susan Stewart elected Rehoboth’s first out mayor
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Sports3 days ago
2 former NBA players launch cheap anti-trans stunt to exploit WNBA rules
