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Ivy Young, D.C. journalist, poet, and activist, dies at 75

A life of service dedicated to community building

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Ivy Young (Photo by Sharon Farmer)

Ivy Joan Young passed away on April 24, 2023, at the age of 75. She was born to Dorothy Elizabeth (Lewis) Young and Joseph Henry Young on Dec. 23, 1947, in Washington, D.C. Both parents and her younger brother Ronald Alexander Young, Esq. preceded her in death.

Resistance framed her political activism and her life in service of justice, fairness, decency, egalitarianism, feminism, honor, principle, authenticityā€”all of which were among her core values. From the time she graduated Eastern High School in her native D.C. until her health declined, Young stood as a voice and advocate for a better human existence for all.

Young contributed her time and talent to community building for social justice on an international scale. She worked at VISTA in Chicago, the Center for Black Education and Drum and Spear Book Store, in D.C., the Venceremos Brigade in Cuba, Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation in New York, the 1974 Sixth Pan African Congress hosted in Tanzania East Africa, and the Southern Africa Support Project that stood against the oppressive apartheid system in that region.

Speaking truth to power through word and song were her pathways. Young created poetry and leaves a beautifully rich and extensive body of work. She was part of the Sophieā€™s Parlor womenā€™s radio collective on WPFW-FM Pacifica radio, reported news for WHUR-FM Howard University radio, served as general manager at WWOZ-FM jazz radio in New Orleans, Public Affairs Director for WBAI-FM in NYC, and wrote for the Southern Africa News Collective.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force launched the first initiative on behalf of lesbian and gay families in 1989 to secure recognition of lesbian and gay rights. It chose Young as its Family Project Director and in that role Young wrote and published the first-ever Domestic Partners Manual. She was an organizer for Lesbians and Gays for Jesse Jackson in 1988 and consulted the People of Color stage at the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987.

Twin loves of music and justice led Young to serve as a U.S. delegate to the 1985 Third International Festival of New Song in Ecuador. She staffed both the Smithsonian Institution’s Program in African American Culture, and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritageā€™s Folklife Festival. Additionally, she served as staff of the Roadwork womenā€™s cultural production company that organized SisterFire concerts 1982-85, the National Conference for Women in Radio, administrator for Sweet Honey in the Rock 2001-2011, editor for the Sweet Honey in the Rock documentary, Gotta Make This Journey, and member of “In Processā€¦ā€, Sweet Honey’s song workshop.

Youngā€™s surviving family members are her youngest sibling Michelle Marie Young, nieces Jade Michelle Keith and Camille Adrienne Keith, and great-niece Joy Anajli Jade Manning, who are among so many friends and colleagues that love and respect her and who celebrate her life, memory, and unwavering dedication to justice.

A late summer community event to celebrate Youngā€™s life and legacy is being planned. Details are forthcoming. For updates send inquiries, visit bit.ly/REMEMBERIVY.

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Obituary

Cheryl Jennings dies at 77

Rap Group, Passages founder and advocate for lesbian visibility

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Cheryl Jennings died peacefully on Oct. 11. (Photo courtesy of friends)

Cheryl Jennings died peacefully on Oct. 11 after a brief illness in hospice care in Rockville, Md., with friends at her side. She was 77.

Cheryl grew up in Tennessee, West Virginia, and Florida, according to a statement released by friends. She served in the U.S. Navy, where she used her eagle eyes as a photo intel specialist. After leaving the Navy, she majored in art at San Diego State University and had a career as a graphic designer and production coordinator. She moved to the Washington, D.C. area in the early 1980s. In 2002, she moved to Harperā€™s Ferry, W.Va. She returned to Rockville, Md. in 2024. 

A beautiful paradox of Cherylā€™s life was being both a leader in many areas and an avowed introvert. Her gifts for bringing women together in the lesbian community and for sharing her love of the natural world with others shone through her, according to friends. But she also reveled in solitude while using her extensive artistic talent to capture natural beauty and whimsy, often by experimenting with new techniques. 

In the 1980s, when many lesbians were socially isolated, Cheryl provided a forum for connection and community as co-founder of a lesbian ā€œrapā€ (discussion) group. The Rap Group met weekly to discuss issues relevant to lesbians at the time. Cheryl loosely based the group on the Parisian salons of the early 20th century. Many women formed lifelong friendships with Cheryl and other Rap Group attendees. Cheryl provided a safe, warm and welcoming space for lesbians at a time when being a lesbian could cost one a job, housing, or loss of family and friends. During her time as the host, she realized aging lesbians were nearly invisible and very vulnerable to mistreatment and were often silenced by mainstream society. So, Cheryl co-founded Passages, a groundbreaking organization that hosted annual conferences about lesbians and aging for over a decade in the D.C. area.

Another way Cheryl combined serving others and communing with nature was as a pioneer in letterboxing in Maryland and West Virginia. In this hobby, where art, nature, and outdoor adventure come together, Cheryl provided clues that others could follow through a natural area to find a box which she had hidden. She added her own artistic flair to this activity by carving her own rubber stamps for participants to use to register when they had found these boxes. Cheryl was interviewed about letterboxing and quoted under her hobby name ā€œSquirrelā€ in several local publications. 

Along with her love of nature, Cheryl had a green thumb. Through study and volunteering, she became both a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist. An active member of the Potomac Valley Audubon Society, she co-founded the Potomac Valley Master Naturalist program in 2006. She happily shared her knowledge by teaching classes and leading walks on subjects ranging from mushrooms to insects to vernal pools.

Cheryl traveled across West Virginia conducting dragonfly and butterfly studies as a volunteer for the state Division of Natural Resources. She was recognized in the spring 2006 West Virginia Odonate Atlas Newsletter for collecting the largest number of species of dragonflies in a statewide study. 

A gifted artist, Cherylā€™s mediums included jewelry, ceramics, stained glass, leather, wood, watercolors, pencil and ink, acrylic, collage, assemblage, and photography.

After retiring at age 65, Cheryl took off in her camper van for her solo cross-country ā€œBig Adventure.ā€ She delighted in visiting and photographing parks and monuments from West Virginia to California and back.  

Cheryl believed in her friends and their ability to grow and create. ā€œShe lifted our spirits through her steadfast encouragement and by cracking us up,ā€ according to the statement. ā€œShe mercilessly beat us at board and card games. She loved Tony Bennettā€™s singing and Mary Oliverā€™s poetry. A spiritual woman, she drew on goddess energy from many cultures and studied Hinduism in her last year of life.ā€ 

She is predeceased by her parents, Von Jennings and Dorothy Jennings Blackwell and survived by her brother Todd Jennings and cousins. She is also survived by her friends: Catherine Small Stephens (and Dale, her husband), Jan DeRoche Kretz (and Lisa, her wife), and Mariann Seriff; her Potomac Valley naturalist crew in West Virginia; and many other friends in Maryland, West Virginia, and throughout the United States. 

A celebration of Cherylā€™s life will be held in January 2025.Ā Please email [email protected] to be notified when the date is set.Ā 

Charitable contributions may be made to Potomac Valley Audubon Society and SAGE. 

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Obituary

George Jackson, dance critic and author, dies at 92

Longtime D.C. resident served as career scientist with U.S. government

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George Jackson (Courtesy photo)

Longtime D.C. resident George Jackson, a highly acclaimed dance critic and dance historian who wrote dance reviews for publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post ā€” all while working in his day job as a microbiologist for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ā€” died Aug. 5 of natural causes at the age of 92.

Friends said he passed away peacefully in his sleep in New York City, where he recently moved to be close to his husband and partner of many years, dance photographer Costas Cacaroukas, who shared Jacksonā€™s intense interest in the performing art of dance, especially ballet.

Biographical write-ups on Jackson show he was born in Vienna, Austria, on Dec. 10, 1931, and placed on a train by his parents in 1938 at the age of 7 and sent to London to be with cousins to escape the Nazi invasion of Austria as a member of a Jewish family. His birth name was Hans Georg Jakobowicz, which he later Americanized to George Jackson.

He was reunited with his parents, and the family moved to Chicago, where he grew up and saw his first dance performance at the age of 14 ā€œand fell in love with the art form,ā€ according to a 2021 tribute to Jackson by the publication Dance View Times. It says Jackson continued to patronize dance performances and later became a student at the University of Chicago, where he studied microbiology and became a microbiologist.

In a December 2011 interview with the Washington City Paper, Jackson said he took ballet lessons before starting his studies at the University of Chicago. He said the editor of the student newspaper had heard he was interested in dance and asked him to write dance reviews for the paper. ā€œThatā€™s how I got started,ā€ he told the City Paper.

Jackson said in the interview that he moved to Washington ā€œbecause a very good job opened with the Food and Drug Administration,ā€ where he soon began work as a food parasitologist, which was his specialty.

He said around that time he was writing dance reviews for the publications Dance News and Dance magazine before both the Washington Post and then Washington Star invited him to do dance reviews. He said he began doing reviews first for the Star, which has since gone out of business, and then for the Post.

Although he started doing dance reviews in D.C. around 1972, Jackson told the City Paper he wrote his first review in 1950. Since then, according to a write-up by fellow dance critic and author Alastair Macaulay, Jacksonā€™s reviews as well as essays about dance, have appeared in multiple publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Dance View, Dance Magazine, Dance Now, the German magazine Balliett, ā€œand many others.ā€

The Dance View Times tribute to Jackson says, ā€œHe used his scientistā€™s eye and analytical mind to comment on what he saw but his writing is vivid, descriptive as well as analytical.ā€

In his Washington City Paper interview in December 2011, Jackson announced he was retiring as a dance critic at that time at the age of 80. But he said he was not about to stop writing.

To the delight of many of his followers, Jackson went on to write two historic novels, one in 2014 called ā€œKing of Jerusalem,ā€ a fictional account of the life of Otto von Habsburg, the last crown prince of Austria-Hungry and heir to the ancient title of King of Jerusalem. The second novel, published in 2018, ā€œBurn Berlin, Burn,ā€ is a fictional mystery account of who the arsonist was in the 1933 burning of the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin at the time of the Nazi takeover of Germany.

Both books, in paperback and that remain available through Amazon, bear the name of Hans Georg Jakobowicz, Jacksonā€™s birth name, as the author.

ā€œMany of us also knew George as a figure of great courtesy,ā€ fellow dance critic and author Macauley says in his Aug. 14. tribute to Jackson. ā€œHe never seemed to proclaim the importance of his opinions, but he was eager to share enthusiasm and information, historical information not the least.ā€  

Jackson is survived by his husband Costas Cacaroukas of New York and many friends in Washington, across the nation, and in Europe. No immediate plans have been announced for a memorial service or celebration of life.

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Obituary

D.C. theater community mourns passing of H. Lee Gable

Served as director, producer, administrator for more than three decades

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(Courtesy photo)

H. Lee Gable, a well-known figure in the D.C. theater community for more than 30 years and was the founding Artistic Director of D.C.ā€™s Rainbow Theatre Project, died suddenly on July 26, 2024, according to a statement released by Rainbow Theatre Project publicist Alexandra Nowicki.

The statement says Gable, 62, served as artistic director for the Rainbow Theatre Project from the time of its founding in 2013 to 2022. The project describes itself on its website as a ā€œpremier theatre for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer (LGBTQ) community in the Nationā€™s Capital by presenting plays and musicals that reflect the unique experiences, interests and history of the LGBTQ community.ā€

According to the statement, Gableā€™s longstanding involvement in theatrical endeavors includes administrative positions with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington Shakespeare Company, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, the Studio Theatre, and the Helen Hayes Awards.

It says he served as Founding Artistic Director for the Phoenix Theatre from 1998 to 2000, and as Director for the Washington Shakespeare Company from 2004 to 2006. He also served as Managing Director for the Washington Shakespeare Company for its 2006 to 2007 season, where he directed the plays ā€œThe Night of the Iguana,ā€ ā€œThe Childrenā€™s Hour,ā€ and ā€œPrivate Lives,ā€ the statement says.

For the Phoenix Theater, Gable directed the plays ā€œInside/Out,ā€ ā€œThe White House Murder Case,ā€ and ā€œ3 by Sylvia.ā€ As if that were not enough, it says he directed the plays ā€œGod of Hellā€ for the Didactic Theatre and ā€œBallycastleā€ for the Source Theatre Festival.

It adds that for the Rainbow Theatre Project, Gable directed the plays ā€œGet Used To Itā€ and ā€œIn The Closet.ā€

The statement says at the time of his death, Gable was serving as a treasurer for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It says a memorial service is being planned for this autumn. 

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