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Longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights advocate, event promoter Jacob Pring dies at 47

Popular events included parties for people with HIV and ‘Gay Day’ at National Zoo

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Jacob Nathaniel Pring died Sept. 26. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Jacob Nathaniel Pring, a D.C.-area LGBTQ rights advocate whose career included working as a mortgage loan officer and Lyft driver by day while organizing social events and parties at night and on weekends at D.C. gay bars and other venues, including “Gay Day” at the National Zoo, died Sept. 26, at his home in Springfield, Va. He was 47.

His longtime friend Nicholas DiBlasio said another friend and housemate at the group home where Pring lived found him deceased in his room. DiBlasio said Pring’s passing was sudden and unexpected and friends and family members were awaiting the results of toxicology tests associated with an autopsy performed by the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to determine the cause of death.

“Jacob was a good man, and he had an engaging personality and a marvelous smile,” according to Sasha Chijoku, one of his housemates who posted a tribute to Pring on Facebook. “Above all, Jacob’s personality was big, and the only thing that was perhaps bigger was his smile,” she wrote.

DiBlasio and others who knew him and posted messages on social media said Pring for many years organized and promoted weekly leather-oriented events at gay clubs and other LGBTQ supportive clubs. Among them were the events held at the D.C. gay bar Green Lantern and the LGBTQ-friendly nightclub Crucible called CODE and XXX parties.

In a January 2013 interview with the Washington Blade, Pring said between 100 and 150 mostly gay men turned out for those events.

“There’s always new people coming in,” he said. “People bring their friends. It’s fun. No attitude, no drama.”

DiBlasio said Pring was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Pring’s Facebook page says his hometown was Levittown, Pa. Pring’s LinkedIn page says he studied computer engineering at Temple University in Philadelphia from 1998-1999 and studied biology at the University of the District of Columbia from 2014-2017, where DiBlasio says he believes Pring received his bachelor’s degree.

“I served in the U.S. Air Force and the Air National Guard,” Pring stated in a September 2020 Facebook posting. “I chose to do my part to keep our country safe,” he wrote, adding, “This stuff about Trump saying crazy things he has said makes me so angry! Please vote that asshole out! Please!”

Pring, an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights, makes it clear in his social media postings that he was a staunch Democrat.

While a student at UDC in 2015, Pring created a student military veterans group called VIRTUES, which he said stood for “Values, Integrity Readiness, Tenacity, Unity, Excellence, and Service.”

In his LinkedIn page, Pring says he worked from 2003 to 2006 as a Senior Mortgage Consultant for the firm Preferred Service Mortgage and in the following year, he held a similar position with Access National Mortgage. It says that beginning in 2020 he served as a loan officer with Intercostal Mortgage LLC.

DiBlasio said about a year later in 2021 Pring switched jobs to resume working as a Lyft driver, which he had been doing periodically in earlier years.

David Mariner, former executive director of the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community, praised Pring for creating yet another important event – Gay Day at the Zoo – which Mariner said served and continues to serve as a fundraising event for the D.C. Center

“He was out as an HIV-positive person and created social spaces for poz men,” Mariner said in a Facebook posting this week.

Mariner was referring to Pring’s launching of a series of “Poz” events for both people with HIV and their friends and loved ones.

“The Poz events bring faces to the disease & helps eliminate the STIGMA surrounding people with HIV/AIDS,” Pring stated in a Facebook message. “The DJs are HIV+ & Jacob Nathaniel Pring himself has been Poz for 7 years!” his message states.

Pring’s friends have pointed to other social media postings by Pring discussing his own struggles with substance abuse and depression. But in recent years, Pring’s postings have said the support he received from counseling and support groups helped him “walk away” from drug use.

“I have had a blessed life,” he wrote in a Sept. 7, 2020, Facebook posting. “Walking away from the drugs for good has me sitting here reminiscing of younger days,” he wrote. “We don’t get to go back but we sure do get to live an older life. I switched gears,” he continued.

“Sex ran my life for 30 years. Now, I feel like a retired older elder,” he stated. “I have lived life to the fullest. I can’t imagine what life has left in store for me. But I have reached a new mental frontier. I feel lucky and blessed to have made it to this new age of living!!!”

But DiBlasio said about one year later the death of Pring’s mother, to whom he was very close, took an emotional toll on him. “That was about a year ago and that hit him pretty hard,” DiBlasio said.

Another one of Pring’s friends, who identifies himself on Facebook as Mike Di, appeared to sum up Pring’s life as he was known to many of his friends and loved ones in a posting on the day he learned of Pring’s passing.

“Jacob, I am so sad to hear the news of your passing tonight. The progress you made over the past 10+ years putting yourself through school, tackling the demons, living clean, etc. It was all remarkable and I’m so proud of you,” he wrote.

“I’m grateful that you left about a thousand pics of yourself (& with friends) here on your Facebook,” Di said. “It’s a gift really…you can never be forgotten, nor the highs and lows of the last 15 years of your life that are documented in the pics.”

Chijoku added in her tribute to Pring, “He was a fine man, and certainly Heaven is being greeted right now with the toothiest grin I’ve ever had the pleasure to know!”

Pring’s sister, Michelle Forrest, said family and friends were planning a memorial service or celebration of life for Pring at the family’s hometown of Levittown, Penn. as well as in D.C, and an announcement would be made when the plans are finalized.

Pring was predeceased by his mother, Paulette Marks of Levittown, Penn. He is survived by his father, John Pring of Bethlehem, Penn.; his brother, Matthew Pring of Texas; his sisters Michelle Forrest of Brooksville, Fla., and Amy Lindquist of Levittown, Penn.; and many friends. Among the friends are Nicholas DiBlasio, Sasha Chijoku, Todd Westberg, Babak Movahedi, John Madej, and Tommy Sanders.

Jacob Nathanial Pring in 2010. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
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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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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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