Local
Former D.C. resident Franklin Dell’Aquila dies at 62
Business owner who also worked for Secret Service
Franklin S. Dell’Aquila (Photo courtesy CAMP Rehoboth)
Franklin S. Dell’Aquila, who lived in D.C. beginning in the 1970s, where he worked for the U.S. Secret Service, owned a men’s clothing store and later became a hairstylist, died Aug. 8 at a hospice in Phoenixville, Pa. He was 62.
His longtime friend Tony Amato said the cause of death was complications associated with multiple sclerosis.
Dell’Aquila lived and worked in D.C. for close to 30 years before returning around 2000 to his hometown of Royersford, Pa. He was well known in gay community circles in D.C. and Rehoboth Beach, Del., according to Amato and others who knew him.
Amato said Dell’Aquila returned to Royersford to help his ailing mother and a disabled brother. While there, he changed careers to become a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service where he worked for 10 years until his recent retirement.
He was born in nearby Pottstown, Pa., where he graduated in 1971 from St. Pius High School, according to a write-up prepared by family members.
“Franklin enjoyed music, loved to travel, and was an avid gardener, and enjoyed listening to Celtic music,” the write-up says.
Steve Elkins, executive director of CAMP Rehoboth, an LGBT community center in Rehoboth Beach, said he first met Dell’Aquila in the 1970s while Elkins worked at the White House during the administration of President Jimmy Carter and Dell’Aquila was assigned to the presidential detail with the Secret Service.
“I’ll never forget giving a friend a tour of the West Wing and seeing a silver haired agent, although he was in his early twenties, and finding out later it was Frank,” said Elkins.
Elkins said he and his partner, Murray Archibald, became good friends of Dell’Aquila’s when Elkins and Archibald moved to Rehoboth Beach and helped found CAMP Rehoboth.
“Frank was a long-time member of CAMP Rehoboth and a host of the annual Sundance Benefit,” said Elkins, who noted that Dell’Aquila became a regular weekend visitor to Rehoboth.
“We were all very lucky to have known him,” Amato said. “He was a great person, very generous and caring and a true friend. He had a lot of friends.”
Dell’Aquila is survived by his sister Diane Simon of North Wales, Pa.; a brother, John Dell’Aquila of Phoenixville, Pa.; several nieces and nephews; and many friends. Family members said a gift in his memory could be made to the ARC, a D.C.-based advocacy organization for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities at thearc.org.
A memorial celebration of Dell’Aquila’s life is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 8, at 4 p.m. at the Horizon House Condominium Community Room, 1300 Army Navy Dr., Arlington, Va. Amato, who’s hosting the event, asks that those planning to attend RSVP at 703-892-6286.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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