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Remembering deaf lesbian pioneer Barbara Kannapell

‘A fierce leader decades ahead of her time’

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Barbara Kannapell died at 83 on Aug. 11. (Photo courtesy Mary Eileen Paul)

Even as a child Barbara Kannapell, who was deaf, experienced audism — overt and subtle discrimination against deaf people.

Born in 1937, she was nurtured by her parents and other members of her family who were deaf. They taught her American Sign Language, her native language.

Yet, “my experiences with audism started at age 4,” Kannapell wrote in a 2011 open letter to the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

A principal at a school for deaf children tried “to make me say ‘United States,’” Kannapell said in the open letter.

“I struggled to say it right but I couldn’t,” Kannapell added, “She was so frustrated with me that she slapped my face.”

Kannapell, an internationally renowned linguist, educator and lifelong advocate for the rights of deaf people, died at 83 in a Washington hospital on Aug. 11.

Mary Eileen Paul, her spouse of 50 years, said the cause was complications from hip surgery.

Kannapell, known as “Kanny” to her many friends, championed American Sign Language (ASL), deaf culture and deaf identity.

Kannapell worked tirelessly to challenge the misperceptions of audism. The prejudices of audism include: the belief that ASL isn’t a language (just as English is a language); that deaf people should strive to “overcome” being deaf – and that deaf people achieve success “in spite of” their deafness.

Kannapell received a bachelor’s degree in deaf education from Gallaudet University in 1961, a master’s degree in educational technology from Catholic University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in sociolinguistics from Georgetown University in 1985.

She believed in social justice causes – from the Black civil rights movement to the LGBTQ rights movement.

Paul, who is hearing, met Kannapell at the Washington, D.C. gay bar Pier 9. She told the Blade this story in a telephone interview:

Kannapell and Paul, both white, with Ann Wilson, a Black mother of a deaf child, founded the Washington, D.C. group Deafpride. The now defunct group advocated for the rights of deaf people of all races.

“We brought hearing parents together with deaf adults,” Paul said, “so they could meet and learn from deaf people.”

At one meeting, Paul recalled, a deaf man spoke.

“His parents didn’t know ASL. They didn’t know what to do,” she said, “because they couldn’t communicate with him.”

“One day, as a child, he was outside. His dog was roaming freely,” Paul said, “but he was tied to a tree. Because his parents didn’t know what else to do with him.”

Kannapell worked with Gallaudet for four decades, beginning as a research assistant in 1962. From 1987 to 2003, she was an adjunct professor there. She taught at the Community College of Baltimore County as an adjunct professor, and later, as an associate professor, from 1987 until she retired in 2014.

Kannapell advocated for deaf people who struggled with addiction. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous, she had been sober for 50 years at the time of her death.

Often, the words “innovator” or “iconic” are overused, but Kannapell truly was a pioneer.

She “was years, if not decades, ahead of her time in every way,” Gallaudet University President Roberta J. Cordano said in a statement to the Washington Post.

“She was a fierce leader,” she added, “who saw and valued the essence of our community and who sought to ensure that it is inclusive of everyone.”

Cordano said Kannapell was “a strong advocate to the LGBTQIA+ Deaf community.”

“Kanny” was out at a time when it was unpopular to be so and lived her life authentically, Drago Renteria, executive director of the Deaf Queer Resource Center, emailed the Blade.

“She was one of our Deaf Lesbian pioneers and role models,” he said.

Kannapell and Paul were married in 2013 when same-sex marriage was legalized.

Jennifer Furlano, who is deaf and nonbinary, remembers the commitment ceremony Kannapell and Paul had in 1996.

“It was amazing,” Furlano said in a telephone interview with the Blade conducted with an interpreter, “My ex-partner officiated the ceremony. I was an usher. It was small – intimate.”

Furlano still recalls the moment in the ceremony when the couple kissed. Then, it was still often, difficult for LGBTQ people to be themselves, Furlano said.

“So they only kissed on the cheek,” Furlano added.

Kannapell loved dogs and football, Furlano said, adding, “you didn’t dare interrupt her during a game.”
R.I.P., Kanny! Thank you for your life and work!

Barbara Kannapell (Photo courtesy Mary Eileen Paul)
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Obituary

William Troy dies at 69

Longtime D.C. resident worked on the Hill and in antiques

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William Troy (Photo courtesy family)

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. 

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Obituary

Longtime LGBTQ advocate ABilly S. Jones-Hennin dies at 81

Credited with advancing bisexual presence in the movement

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A. Billy S. Jones-Hennin (Photo courtesy of A. Billy S. Jones-Hennin)

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

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Prominent LGBTQ rights attorney Mauro Montoya dies at 65

Former D.C. resident was legal director at Whitman-Walker in 1980s

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Mauro Walden-Montoya died Dec. 18.

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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