Local
Prominent D.C. Realtor, avid traveler Kurt Rieschick dies at 50
McWilliams Ballard executive was longtime city resident
Longtime D.C. resident Kurt Rieschick, who served as a vice president for the local real estate company McWilliams Ballard and who along with his husband traveled extensively to international destinations, including their favorite city of Paris, died at home on Jan. 16 of a heart attack. He was 50.
David Klimas, his husband and partner of 22 years, and Rieschick’s sister, Jacqueline Costell, said Rieschick appeared to be in excellent health and had no advanced signs of heart disease other than the fact that his father died of a heart attack at the age of 52 in 1998.
Klimas’s posting of the news of his husband’s passing on Facebook drew an immediate outpouring of messages of sympathy and admiration for Rieschick from dozens of people who knew him, including many friends and business associates.
“Today is my saddest day,” Klimas wrote in his Facebook post. “My beloved. My person. My number one. My best friend. My husband died early this morning from a massive heart attack,” Klimas wrote. “I will never be the same. I will never forget him. He was my life.”
Klimas said he and Rieschick had vowed to get married as soon as same-sex marriage became legal, and he said the couple did so when D.C.’s same-sex marriage law took effect in 2010.
Rieschick was raised in Columbia, Md. His sister said he graduated from Columbia’s Hammond High School in 1988 shortly before he attended Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
Prior to beginning his real estate career with McWilliams Ballard, Rieschick worked from 1996 to 2000 as a product training manager for the Bureau of National Affairs or BNA, the then D.C.-based company that published newsletters and research reports on business, government, and academic related topics.
Rieschick traveled throughout the U.S. selling and teaching BNA subscribers about various BNA electronic publications and services as part of his responsibilities with the company, his LinkedIn page says.
He began his affiliation with McWilliams Ballard in 2000, according to a career summary of Rieschick’s tenure with the real estate company published on its website. The write-up says Rieschick had experience “across most real estate product lines, selling condominiums, lofts, townhouses, and unique style row homes.”
It says Rieschick, who had the title of vice president, managed “all aspects of the sales process from hands-on sales, marketing, broker outreach, sales reporting” and other aspects of the sales process. The write-up says he sold properties in the price range of $200,000 to over $2.5 million.
Klimas, who also works as a vice president for McWilliams Ballard, said that at the time of his passing Rieschick was acting as the lead sales agent for a new high-rise condominium apartment project near the Washington Nationals baseball stadium called Kennedy on L at 37 L St., S.E.
“We did everything together,” Klimas told the Washington Blade. “We worked together at the same company for the last 21 years. We traveled together. We did French lessons. We went traveling throughout the world,” said Klimas, who noted that Rieschick was especially fond of traveling to Paris and France after the two became fluent in French.
According to Klimas, his husband was a “huge” fan of Madonna.
“We saw Madonna around the world,” Klimas said. “We followed her concerts, every last one of them. And we saw her in Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Miami. We loved to travel. We traveled extensively,” he said in recounting Rieschick’s love for travel and for attending Madonna concerts.
Costell said she and her family, including her and Kurt’s parents, were supportive of his being gay and she, her husband, and her two kids welcomed Klimas as part of the family.
“I personally became a huge advocate for gay rights,” she said. “And then when I got married and had children, I wanted my kids to grow up with that love that I gave to my brother and all of his friends,” she said.
Costell selected her brother and Klimas to be godfathers to both of her children. At her request, the two attended and participated in her daughter’s and son’s baptismal ceremonies on separate occasions at a Catholic church in Baltimore with the full approval of the priest in charge, Costell said. The two kids were about three months old at the time of their respective baptisms in 2005 and 2007, with her brother and Klimas holding the two babies during part of the ceremony.
As a dedicated uncle, Rieschick, with his partner and husband, Klimas, at his side, stopped by her home nearly every holiday, she said. “I mean every Christmas, every single birthday, Easter – every holiday,” she said, that Rieschick and Klimas came over for a visit.
Costell said her brother’s untimely death has prompted her to consider taking action to encourage all public buildings and residential apartment buildings to have on hand a defibrillator, a medical device used to administer an electric shock to the heart to resuscitate someone whose heart stops from a heart attack.
Klimas told the Blade he attempted to resuscitate Rieschick after calling 911. He said emergency medical workers arrived in about 10 minutes of his call, but they were unable to save his husband’s life.
He and Costell said a highly restricted funeral viewing was tentatively scheduled for Jan. 22 or Jan. 23 at a Northwest D.C. funeral home. Costell said the downtown D.C. lockdown related to the presidential inauguration had as of Tuesday prevented her brother’s body from being transported from the D.C. Medical Examiner’s office to the funeral home.
Meanwhile, due to COVID-related restrictions, the funeral home has said it would not allow more than eight people to attend the viewing, which was to take place before Rieschick was to be cremated.
Klimas said he is planning a “huge” celebration of Rieschick’s life sometime this summer, with the hope that the COVID vaccine distribution will have lessened the epidemic to the point where a large in-person gathering can be held.
“It’s going to be a MadonnaRama party and it will be held at Number 9,” said Klimas in referring to the D.C. gay bar on P Street, N.W. near Logan Circle. Klimas said Number 9 co-owner John Guggenmos, a friend of his and Rieschick’s, has agreed to stage the MadonnaRama event like the ones Guggenmos has put on at his clubs in the past. Among other things, it includes playing audio and video recordings of Madonna’s performances, Klimas said.
“I’m going to have it catered and have a free bar and hire people to sing,” Klimas said. “It’s going to be a huge party for everybody in honor of Kurt.”
Klimas and Costell, who said her family will participate in the memorial celebration, said they will announce the date and location for the event as soon as they determine it can be arranged.
Rieschick is survived by his husband, David Klimas; his mother, Carol Stvan; his sister, Jacqueline Costell; his niece and nephew, Carlin and Jackson; his father-in-law, James Klimas Sr.; his brother-in-law, Jimmy; and many friends in the D.C. area. He was preceded in death by his father, Kurt Walter Rieschick Sr.; and his mother-in-law, Gilda Klimas.
In lieu of flowers, which the funeral home will not accept due to COVID restrictions, Klimas and Costell are inviting friends and others who knew Rieschick to contribute in Rieschick’s name to the American Heart Association and Raising Malawi, a charitable organization founded by Madonna in 2006 to help orphan children and others facing severe poverty in the African nation of Malawi.
District of Columbia
HIV/AIDS activists block intersection near White House
World AIDS Day provided backdrop for calls to fully fund PEPFAR
Upwards of 100 HIV/AIDS activists on Monday blocked an intersection near the White House and demanded the Trump-Vance administration fully fund PEPFAR.
Housing Works, Health GAP, Treatment Action Group, AIDS United, ACT UP Philadelphia, and the National Minority AIDS Council organized the protest that took place at the intersection of 16th and I Streets, N.W. The activists then marched to Lafayette Park.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
Activists since the Trump-Vance administration took office in January have demanded full PEPFAR funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Jan. 28 issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Washington Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department in September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates. The first doses of the breakthrough HIV prevention drug arrived in Eswatini and Zambia last month.
The New York Times in August reported Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)
Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration in July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought on Aug. 29 said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.
“Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has defied the appropriations authority of Congress, slashing the budget for the program despite full funding enacted by lawmakers, stealing $1.6 billion despite the direction of Congress that PEPFAR be fully funded,” notes a press release that detailed Monday’s protest. “As a result, lifesaving treatment and prevention programs have closed across dozens of sub-Saharan African countries, while Vought has refused to release money ringfenced by Congress to save lives.”
Monday’s protest coincided with World AIDS Day.
The White House has not publicly acknowledged World AIDS Day. A State Department directive the New York Times obtained last week mandated employees and grantees “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day.”
“Trump thinks by banning commemoration of World AIDS Day, he can hide from the death and destruction that he’s causing around the world,” said Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell in Lafayette Square. “But we’re here to say, we can see him. We see him stealing medicine, stealing support services, stealing HIV testing, stealing life-saving care from communities all around the world suffering and dying without access.”
The Clinton Health Access Initiative in a report it published last month said more people with HIV or are at risk of contracting the virus because of “HIV treatment and prevention cascades” during the first half of 2025. Specific figures include:
• 3.4 million fewer adults tested for HIV
• 24,000 fewer infants tested for HIV
• A 22 percent decline in new HIV diagnoses due to a reduction in testing among the most vulnerable, highest-risk people
• An 8 percent decline in people living with HIV receiving CD4 tests to diagnose advanced HIV disease
• 2,000 fewer infants and children with HIV started on life-saving medication
• A 37 percent reduction in PrEP initiations for people at risk for HIV
• 26,000 fewer infants and children on antiretroviral medications
• A 5 percent reduction in adults starting antiretroviral medications
• A 10 percent increase in people living with HIV disengaging from treatment
The Clinton Health Access Initiative also said more children around the world will die “due to undiagnosed and un- or under-treated HIV infection” if “these trends persist.”
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation in its 2025 Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey notes more than 20 percent of adults said “policies the federal government have made accessing HIV prevention and treatment care more difficult in the last year.” The report indicates 30 percent of respondents identify as LGBTQ.
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Congratulations to RODRIGO HENG-LEHTINEN on his new role as Trevor Project Senior Vice President of Public Engagement Campaigns. On accepting the position, he said, “My mission has long been to stop LGBTQ, and especially trans, people from being perceived as political footballs and start getting us seen as real people – your friends, your families, your neighbors. Now I get to focus on that 100% at The Trevor Project.”
Prior to this, he was executive director, Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), where he co-led the merger of two national transgender rights organizations, NCTE and TDLEF, to create the new organization. He had served as executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, leading that organization through a period of growth, restoring organizational size and stability. He had served as deputy executive director prior to that. Previously he served as vice president of Public Education, Freedom for All Americans, where he led a successful campaign for transgender nondiscrimination protections in New Hampshire. He oversaw a full range of legislative lobbying, field organizing, and communications strategies and oganized a leadership coalition, established structure, and divided roles for key committees of 17 state and national partner organizations and local activists.
Heng-Lehtinen conducted English-language interviews with outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Politico. He planned a Transgender Leadership Summit for the Transgender Law Center and served as Development & Donor Services Assistant, Liberty Hill Foundation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from Brown University.
Local
D.C., Va., Md. to commemorate World AIDS Day
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle will hold a Mass, candlelight prayer vigil
The D.C. area will observe World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 through a variety of community events.
Established by the World Health Organization in 1988, World AIDS Day aims to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and honor the individuals affected by the epidemic. The global theme for 2025 is “overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response.”
Washington
DC Health will host a World AIDS Day event at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library from noon to 9 p.m on Dec. 1. Attendees can expect live performances, free food and free HIV testing.
The all-day event will also feature community resources from DC Health, DC Public Library, DC Health Link, Serve DC, and the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
The Lily and Earle M. Pilgrim Art Foundation is partnering with Visual AIDS, a New York-based non-profit that uses art to fight AIDS, to reflect on World AIDS Day with a film screening on Dec. 1.
The David Bethuel Jamieson Studio House at Walbridge in Mount Pleasant will premiere “Meet Us Where We’re At,” an hour-long collection of six videos. The free screening highlights the complexity of drug use in intersection with the global HIV epidemic.
The videos, commissioned by artists in Brazil, Germany, Nigeria, Puerto Rico and Vietnam, showcase the firsthand experience of drug users, harm reduction programs, and personal narratives. The program intends to showcase drug users as key individuals in the global response to HIV.
In addition to streaming the videos, the event will include an evening potluck and conversation led by Peter Stebbins from 6-8 p.m.
The Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle will hold a 5:30 p.m. Mass and candlelight prayer vigil at 6 p.m. in honor of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. The event is open to all and includes a subsequent reception at 6:30 p.m.
The Capital Jewish Museum is hosting a speaker series on Dec. 2 from 6:30-8 p.m. that explores the response to AIDS within the Jewish community. Speakers include LGBTQ psychiatrist Jeffrey Akman, physician assistant Barbara Lewis and Larry Neff, lay service leader at Bet Mishpachah, a synagogue founded by LGBTQ Washingtonians. Heather Alt, deputy director of nursing at Whitman-Walker Health, will moderate the event.
The program is free for museum members. General admission is $10 and Chai tickets, which help subsidize the cost of general admission, are $18. Tickets include access to LGBT Jews in the Federal City, a temporary exhibition that collectively explores Washington, Judaism, and LGBTQ history. The exhibition is on view through Jan. 4, 2026.
Virginia
Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins and local residents will commemorate World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 at the Lee Center.
The event, which is free to attend, will include music, choir performances, educational moments and more. The commemoration will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Maryland
The Frederick Center will host talks, tabling and a raffle in honor of World AIDS Day. The Frederick County Health Department will conduct free HIV testing.
The event, which is free to attend, will be held on Nov. 30 from 1-4 p.m. The Frederick County Health Department always offers free, walk-in HIV testing on Tuesdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Prince George’s County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority will host a community day of awareness in honor of World AIDS Day on Dec. 6 from 1 a.m. to 2 p.m. The free event will feature free, confidential HIV testing, private talks with medical professionals and health workshops.
The event will be held at Suitland Community Center in Forestville and will include breakfast and snacks.
Damien Ministries is commemorating World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 through the grand opening of the We the People Community & Wellness Collaborative. The event, held at 11:30 a.m. at 4061 Minnesota Avenue, N.E., is free to attend.
Damien Ministries is a faith-based non-profit committed to supporting those with HIV/AIDS.
Begin Anew, a Baltimore non-profit that provides education, outreach and resources to improve public health, wellness and economic stability, is hosting its 4th Annual World AIDS Day Community Celebration on Dec. 1 alongside community partners.
Hosted at the University of Maryland BioPark from noon to 3 p.m., the program will feature keynote speaker Jason E. Farley of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The celebration will also dedicate awards to local heroes focused on fighting HIV/AIDS and promoting health equity.
The free event includes lunch, live entertainment and networking opportunities with health advocates and partners.
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