This article originally ran in the Bay Area Reporter.

By Sari Staver | HIV researcher Jeff S. Stryker, a highly respected policy analyst, journalist and activist who fought for improved treatment and prevention services, died suddenly Dec. 24 at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut after he suffered a heart attack at home. The cause of death was septic shock, according to Stryker’s husband, attorney Bill Aseltyne.

Mr. Stryker, a 68-year-old gay man, lived in San Francisco from 1990-2007, working for a wide range of government and private organizations, including the Institute of Medicine and UCSF’s Center for AIDS Prevention Services.

Colleagues admired Mr. Stryker’s intelligence and drive.

“I had the privilege of working with Jeff at CAPS,” Tom Coates, Ph.D., a former executive director of CAPS, wrote in an email. “He was an amazing intellect and brilliant writer. His perspective on HIV prevention was spot on. I’m so sad to see him go.”

Coates said that Mr. Stryker worked closely with Congressmember Nancy Pelosi’s (D-San Francisco) staff to apply their research findings to major HIV legislation. Coates is now the director of the University of California Global Health Institute at UCLA.

Mr. Stryker moved to Connecticut in 2007 after his husband accepted a job at Yale. In San Francisco, Aseltyne was vice president and deputy general counsel at Sutter Health. Mr. Stryker pivoted his part-time writing to a full-time job. In addition to HIV, LGBTQ and trans rights, Mr. Stryker wrote about a wide range of topics, including one of his pet subjects — animal rights.

The couple’s life changed dramatically in 2009 after they adopted a 4-year-old boy, Darius, who is now 18. Mr. Stryker became a stay-at-home dad, a job “he really, really loved,” said Aseltyne in a phone interview.

“Jeff had been in his element as a stay-at-home dad, devoted to their time spent together,” Aseltyne said.

“Jeff fervently believed it was a privilege to be Darius’ father. After Darius reconnected with his birth mother last year, Jeff was eager to travel to meet her and draw his son’s two families together,” said Aseltyne.

Bevan Dufty, a gay man who’s a former San Francisco supervisor and currently an elected BART director, met Mr. Stryker years ago when the two lived in D.C. In an email, Dufty wrote, “Jeff Stryker became a thought leader and public health advocate around HIV and AIDS. He was an important voice, challenging [then-President] Ronald Reagan and others who ignored AIDS and allowed gay men to die.”

Dufty also recalled Mr. Stryker’s “mischievous” sense of humor. “Jeff had a great sense of humor,” Dufty added. “Back in the 1980s many gay men would pause and sometimes blanch when Jeff introduced himself. He would quickly smirk and say that he wasn’t that Jeff Stryker — acknowledging the biggest, most iconic porn star of that generation.”

Dufty, who now has a son, kept up with Mr. Stryker at family week in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they compared “how much our kids had grown in the past year. Jeff and Bill were such a loving and strong couple,” he added.

Aseltyne is mourning the loss of his husband.

“I’m totally devastated,” said Aseltyne. After 37 years together, “we were still very much in love,” he said. On the evening before his passing, to demonstrate to Darius the love in their marriage, “We slow danced to ‘We Kiss in a Shadow’ from ‘The King and I,'” he wrote in an obituary.

Mr. Stryker also was a devoted guardian over the years to dogs Whitney, Jodie, Foster, Rosebud, Frosty and Houston, who spurred him to live by the phrase “wag more, bark less,” said Aseltyne.

Mr. Stryker was born Sept. 28, 1954 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in two years, majoring in medical sociology.

He held positions on the President’s Commission on Bioethics, under Barack Obama; the U.S. Congressional Office on Technology Assessment; the Hastings Center; the Institute of Medicine; the National Coalition on Healthcare; and the University of Michigan School of Public Health; according to the obituary.

Mr. Stryker was co-editor of a 1993 National Research Council report on the social impact of AIDS and served as staff director of the National Commission on AIDS. He also taught a seminar for the Yale Bioethics program and contributed to the New York Times, Salon, the San Francisco Examiner, the Advocate, Michigan Radio, KQED and Marketplace.

A memorial service will be held in the spring. Aseltyne asked people who want to donate to a charity to “please choose one that works to make the world a gentler place for others.”

David J. “Michael” Lewis, who owned and operated D.C.’s popular gay bar Bachelor’s Mill from 2006 to 2018 after taking early retirement from his longtime day job at the Library of Congress and while also playing an active role in working on projects to help disadvantaged youth in the U.S. and overseas, died on Dec. 6 at the age of 65.

Tom Baratta, one of his longtime friends from Florida, said the cause of death was a heart attack, which occurred while Lewis was visiting Havana, Cuba and preparing to distribute food and clothing for people in need.

Baratta said in recent years Lewis traveled between D.C. and his residence in Fort Lauderdale as well as to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where Lewis provided support for charitable organizations that helped people in need.

“David was very helpful in support of events and programs in Ward 8,” said longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights and community activist Phil Pannell, who said he worked with Lewis on charitable programs in the 1980s.

Among other things, Pannell said Lewis helped provide toys for children and families and support for youth development programs, including serving as an instructor for youth in a high school equivalency or GED program through a nonprofit group affiliated with local churches called the Southeast Vicarious Clusters.

Others who knew Lewis, including longtime D.C. friend Thomas Gore, said Lewis was born and raised in D.C. and graduated from D.C.’s Anacostia High School. Around the time of his high school graduation, he began work at the Library of Congress. At that time, he also enrolled as a student at the University of the District of Columbia, Gore said. Around 1979 or 1980, Gore believes, Lewis graduated from UDC with a degree in gerontology.

Gore, Baratta and others who knew Lewis said they believe he continued working at the Library of Congress through the 1980s and possibly into the 1990s in a supervisory role before he took an early retirement to further pursue his philanthropic endeavors as well as his interest in opening a neighborhood bar.

In 2006, through a company called Backdoor, Inc., he purchased the Bachelor’s Mill, which had been operating as a gay bar with a mostly Black gay clientele since 1978 under the ownership of its founder, Beatrice ‘BB’ Gatch, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 81.

Pannell said Lewis later opened the Back Door Pub and Mike’s Place, two other bars he operated in the same building as the Bachelor’s Mill. Lewis preferred to go by the name Mike or Michael in running his businesses, people who knew him said.

Lewis was supportive of LGBTQ community causes and provided space at the Bachelor’s Mill and the other two bars for meetings and events by local LGBTQ organizations and activists, according to Pannell.

“I knew him for 20 years,” said Baratta, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla., which is near Fort Lauderdale where Lewis had a residence. Baratta said in the years he knew him, Lewis traveled “back and forth” from Fort Lauderdale to D.C. while also visiting Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where he worked on charitable projects. “He helped a lot of people who needed help,” Baratta said.

Gore said Lewis helped him start a youth employment program in 1985 that focused on youth in need in the city’s Wards 7 and 8.

“He taught job readiness classes,” Gore said. “David could think quick on his feet. He had an impact on a lot of lives in D.C.”

A memorial celebration of the life of David J. Michael Lewis is scheduled to take place Saturday, Feb. 4, at 1 p.m. at the Café 8, located at 424 8th St., S.E. in D.C. near where Lewis operated Bachelor’s Mill.

Lily Chavez, who became a well-known figure in the LGBTQ nightlife scene as the box office cashier at D.C.’s Town Danceboutique nightclub and as a server and bartender at Annie’s and Level 1 restaurants and the gay bar Cobalt in the Dupont Circle area, died Jan. 8 from complications associated with Lupus, one of her friends said. She was 35.

Ed Bailey, co-owner of Town nightclub, which has since closed, said he and his business partners were delighted to receive a recommendation to hire Chavez as a box office cashier at the time the club opened in 2007.

According to Bailey, customers entering Town showed their I.D. to a door person and then went to the box office window to buy a ticket to come in. “And she was the person that you did that with,” said Bailey. “While there were other people who did that, she was the main person at the very first window,” he said.

“And so, she came to be a fixture that everyone knew,” Bailey said. “Everybody knew Lily.”

Leigh Ann Hendricks, one of Chavez’s supervisors when Chavez worked at the gay bar Cobalt and its lower floor restaurant called Level 1, said Chavez worked at the two venues as a server and bartender. Hendricks said prior to working at Cobalt and Level 1, Chavez worked as a host at Annie’s, the popular restaurant on 17th Street near Dupont Circle located about two blocks from Cobalt and Level 1.

At one point, Hendricks said, Chavez worked at the Colada Shop bar at 1405 T St., N.W., in the heart of the city’s 14th Street commercial strip.

David Perruzza, owner of the Adams Morgan gay bars Pitchers and League of Her Own, said Chavez had expressed interest in working at his bars recently and he planned to hire her. But he said she became too ill to work at that time.

Others who knew Chavez have posted messages on social media saying that while Chavez did not identify as LGBTQ, she was an LGBTQ ally and considered a friend to many of the customers at the LGBTQ venues where she worked.

“She was always happy,” said Hendricks. “She had a great laugh. And she was so loyal. I really miss her.” 

Bailey said Chavez dealt with health issues for many years in fighting the debilitating condition of Lupus. 

“It was very sad to watch as she needed treatment a lot over the years,” he said. “She had a lot of pain and difficulty in her life,” Bailey said. “And also, in the middle of all that, she miraculously became pregnant and had a child. It was not something the medical people thought was possible. And she did.”

Bailey said her child, whom he called amazing and wonderful, became known to many of Chavez’s co-workers and venue owners. “He became known to us as the extended group of uncles,” Bailey said.

Gay activist Robert York, who knew Chavez, said her son is now eight years old. He said Chavez is a native of El Salvador and lived in Bethesda, Md., in recent years. Hendricks said Chavez came to the D.C. area as a young child when her family came to the U.S.

York and Hendricks said a viewing and service for Chavez are scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 14, at the Glenview Mansion catering hall at 603 Edmonston Drive in Rockville, Md., from 1-4 p.m.