Obituary

Bob Gray, lobbyist and PR executive, dies at 92

Began career with Eisenhower, later worked for Reagan

Published

11 years ago

May 1, 2014

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Bob Gray (Photo courtesy of Charles Francis)

Robert Keith “Bob” Gray, a nationally recognized Washington lobbyist and public relations executive who started his career as an aide to President Dwight Eisenhower, died April 18 in a Miami hospital of heart disease. He was 92.

As founder and CEO of the highly influential lobbying and PR firm Gray & Company in the 1980s, Gray had close ties to the Reagan administration and Republican Party leaders. He worked on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and co-chaired Reagan’s inaugural committee.

At the same time, according to people who worked for him, Gray was widely known among political insiders and a wide circle of friends as a gay man with ties to Washington’s gay community.

“He has always been out in his private life and among his circle of friends,” said Charles Francis, a gay Republican activist and public relations executive who worked for Gray & Company in the early and middle 1980s. “He was not out politically,” said Francis.

Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck Communications, a D.C.-based communications and PR firm who also worked for Gray & Company in the 1980s, said Gray served as a mentor for many young and aspiring employees of his firm, both gay and straight and Republican and Democrat.

Witeck, a Democratic Party activist, said he, Francis, and gay Democratic activist and political consultant Jeff Trammell are just a few of the many gay communications professionals that worked for Gray in the 1980s and who later rose in the profession or started their own firms.

“He gave us a lot of inspiration for doing our own thing,” Witeck said.

Francis said Gray was born and raised in Nebraska. He served in the Navy during World War II and remained in the Navy Reserve, where he rose to the rank of commander. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Carleton College in Minnesota and master’s degree in business administration at Harvard University.

Francis, who interviewed Gray two years ago for an article published last week in the online newsletter of the Mattachine Society of Washington, said Gray began work at the White House in 1956 as Appointments Secretary and later as Secretary of the Cabinet to President Eisenhower.

Following the election of President John F. Kennedy, Gray left the White House to join the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm in 1961, where he rose to become director of the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. He left Hill & Knowlton in 1980 to form Gray & Company, solidifying his stature as one of the most influential lobbyists with access to the reins of power in Washington.

Trammell, who worked for Gray during the Reagan years, said Gray hired many Democrats like Trammell and Witeck and maintained a work environment in which Democrats and Republicans respected one another even though they disagreed politically.

“It was the old days in Washington when people didn’t let their party and ideological differences get in the way of their respect for one another,” Trammell said.

Trammell and Francis noted that Gray, who remained closeted in his public role, was a generous financial contributor behind the scenes to D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Clinic in the 1980s, when Gray lost many friends to AIDS.

The two said Gray also was a longtime financial supporter of famed AIDS researcher and former National Institutes of Health official Dr. Robert Gallo after Gallo founded the Institute of Human Virology as an arm of the University of Maryland’s Baltimore campus. Trammell said Gray was a member of the Institute’s board of directors at the time of his death.

In his interview with Francis in May 2012, Gray provided a glimpse into his life as a gay man that he never before shared in a public way. Among other things, he told of how he felt about being named as White House Appointments Secretary three years after then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover “outed” a closeted gay man that Eisenhower had named for that job just prior to Eisenhower taking office in 1953.

Francis, who researched the incident years later, said Eisenhower ordered that no public disclosure would be made that the appointee, Arthur Vandenberg Jr., the son of then-Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.), was a homosexual. Instead, the then president-elect said Vandenberg had to give up the job for “health reasons.”

“It took six weeks to get a clearance,” Gray said in the interview in discussing his status as a gay man being named to fill the job for which Vandenberg was rejected because of his sexual orientation.

“I tried to act as nonchalant as I could, even though my heart was pounding,” Gray said. “I was still trying to make myself straight, dating women. If I had been in any way sexually active, I would have been outed,” he said.

“I was an open book, working 20-hour days. That was fulfilling enough for me,” he said.

Near the end of the interview, Francis asked Gray what he thought of the changes that have taken place in the country on LGBT rights in the more than 50 years since he became involved in politics and about the irony of his being hired by President Eisenhower as a closeted gay man.

“I don’t want to be known as the gay guy who worked at the White House!” Gray replied. “Being gay is a minuscule part of who I am, not my whole being; nor am I a standard-bearer. I was not hired because of it, nor was I hired because I was heterosexual.”

Gray’s survivors include his partner of 20 years, Efrain Machado of Miami Beach, Fla.

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Obituary

Longtime DC resident Thomas Walsh dies at 87

Pa. native’s husband was by his side when he passed away

Published

2 days ago

July 3, 2025

Staff reports

Thomas Walsh (Photo courtesy of Anthony Carcaldi)

Long-time D.C. resident Thomas Walsh died on May 16. He was 87.

Walsh was born on Sept. 17, 1937, in Scranton, Pa. His family later moved to Levittown, Pa.

Walsh met his husband, Anthony Carcaldi, at the Blue Note, a gay bar in Asbury Park, N.J., in 1964.

“I walked in the bar with friends from New York City,” recalled Carcaldi. “I looked at the piano and this person was singing … and all I noticed were his blue eyes.”

Walsh was singing “Because of You.”

“I walked up to the piano while Tom was singing and stared at him, which caused him to forget the words,” said Carcaldi. “He composed himself and started from the beginning.”

Carcaldi and Walsh became a couple in 1965, a year after they met, when they moved to Philadelphia.

“We moved in together and have been together ever since,” said Carcaldi.

Walsh was a freelance graphic designer until he accepted a job in Temple University’s audiovisual department. Walsh and Carcaldi moved to D.C. in 1980.

Walsh began a graphic design business and counted Booz Allen as among his clients. Carcaldi said one of his husband’s “main loves was painting,” and became a fine artist in 2005.

Walsh showed his art at the Nevin Kelly Gallery on U Street, the Martha Spak Studio near the Wharf, and at the Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia. Walsh also sang with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington.

Walsh and Carcaldi married at D.C. City Hall in 2014.

“Tom and I have been together since 1964 until his death,” said Carcaldi. “Tom died peacefully with me at his side in bed on May 16, 2025, holding Tom in my arms as he made the transition out of life.”

A celebration of life will take place in September.

Obituary

Beloved schoolteacher, D.C. resident Patrick Shaw dies at 60

Colleagues, friends say he ‘touched so many lives’ with warmth, kindness

Published

2 months ago

April 29, 2025

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Patrick Shaw

Patrick Dewayne Shaw, a highly acclaimed elementary school teacher who taught and served as vice principal in several D.C. schools since moving to the District in 2002, died April 19 at the age of 60.

His friend Dusty Martinez said his passing was unexpected and caused by a heart related ailment.

“Patrick touched so many lives with his warmth, humor, kindness, and unmistakable spark,” Martinez said in a statement. “He was a truly special soul – funny, vibrant, sassy, and full of life, and we are heartbroken by his loss,” Martinez wrote.

Among those reflecting on Shaw’s skills as an educator were his colleagues at D.C.’s Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School, where he served as a second-grade special education teacher since August 2023.

“Patrick brought warmth, joy, and deep commitment to Mundo Verde,” his colleagues said in an Instagram posting. “His daily Broadway sing-alongs, vibrant outfits, and genuine love for his students filled our community with energy and laughter,” the posting says.

Biographical information provided by Martinez and Karen Rivera Geating, a senior inclusion manager at the Mundo Verde school and Shaw’s supervisor, shows Shaw had a distinguished 38-year teaching career and multiple degrees in the field of education.

He was born and raised in Little Rock, Ark., and graduated from Little Rock’s Catholic High School for Boys.

He received two bachelor’s degrees, one in philosophy from St. Meinrad Seminary College in Indiana and one in elementary education from the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.

The biographical information shows Shaw received three master’s degrees. One is in secondary education and history from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. His second master’s degree is in special education from The Catholic University of Washington, D.C. His third master’s degree is in school administration from Trinity College in D.C.

Shaw began his teaching career in 1987 in Little Rock, Ark., as a fourth grade General Education Teacher at Our Lady of Good Counsel School and a short time later at Little Rock’s St. Theresa Catholic School as a fourth-eighth grade teacher through December 1989.

He next moved to Minnesota where he spent part of the 1990s as a fifth and sixth grade teacher and a physical education instructor, according to biographical information. His resume shows that from January 1995 to December 1998 he was associated with the Minnesota AIDS Project in Minneapolis.

He “recruited, interviewed and staffed volunteer education and transportation programs for people living with HIV and AIDS,” his resume states.

Shaw next returned to Little Rock where he served from January 1998 to December 2004 as Theology Department Chair at the Mt. St. Mary Academy. His work included creating theology lessons for ninth-12^th graders and creating a social justice program for 12^th graders.

Upon moving to D.C., Shaw served as classroom teacher and vice principal at several schools, including the D.C. Public School’s Benning Elementary School; vice principal at Chavez Prep Public Charter School; vice principal at Bridges Public Charter School; Special Education Coordinator at Monument Academy Public Charter School; and Special Education Case Management and Math Intervention Specialist at D.C.’s College Preparatory Academy for Boys.

“Patrick dedicated 38 wonderful years to teaching, from 1987 to 2025, inspiring generations of students with his passion, wit, and kindness,” Martinez said in his statement.

Shaw was predeceased by his mother, Myrna G. Shaw, and is survived by his father, Thomas H. Shaw, his brother, James Shaw (Michele), his sister, Angela Mahairi (Wafai), and his cherished niece and nephews Austin, Tariq, Reed, Ramy, and Jasmine, according to information provided by Martinez.

Martinez said a funeral mass would soon be held in Little Rock, Shaw’s hometown.

“His family will be honoring one of his last wishes,” Martinez wrote, “to be returned home and remembered in a unique and meaningful way” – by having a tree planted in his honor, “a living tribute to the full and beautiful life he lived.”

Details of the location of the planted tree will be shared soon to offer a place where “friends and family can visit, reflect, and stay connected with his spirit,” Martinez states.

In D.C. a celebration of life for Shaw is scheduled to be held Saturday, May 3, from 2-5 p.m. at JR.’s bar at 1519 17^th Street, N.W. Martinez points out that the tribute will be held during JR.’s weekly Saturday “Showtunes” event, in which sing-along performances of famous Broadway musicals are shown on video screens.

“JR.’s Saturday Showtunes were one of Patrick’s absolute favorite traditions, and gathering in that spirit feels like the perfect way to honor him,” Martinez said.

“Many have asked how they can help,” Martinez concludes in his statement. “In response we’ve created a GoFundMe page to support funeral expenses, help find a loving home for Patrick’s beloved dog, Birdie, and assist with other needs during this difficult time.”

Any remaining funds, according to Martinez, will be donated to a charity “that reflects Patrick’s passions and values.”

The GoFundMe page can be accessed at: gofundme.com/f/honoring-patrick-shaws-vibrant-legacy.

Obituary

Local attorney, LGBTQ rights advocate Dale Sanders dies at 75

Acclaimed lawyer credited with advancing legal rights for people with HIV/AIDS

Published

3 months ago

April 18, 2025

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Dale Edwin Sanders (Photo courtesy of the family)

Dale Edwin Sanders, an attorney who practiced law in D.C. and Northern Virginia for more than 40 years and is credited with playing a key role in providing legal services for people living with HIV/AIDS beginning in the early 1980s, died April 10 at the age of 75.

His brother, Wade Sanders, said the cause of death was a heart attack that occurred at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore shortly after he had back surgery.

Wade Sanders described his brother as a “trial lawyer, passionate criminal defense, and civil litigator for human rights” for close to 50 years, with some of his work focused on “civil law, notably gay-related insurance discrimination during the AIDS epidemic.”

He called his brother “a zealous advocate for the oppressed, his clients, and his personal convictions.”

Born in Arlington, Va., and raised in McLean, Va., Dale Sanders graduated from Langley High School in McLean and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, his brother said. He received his law degree from D.C.’s American University Washington College of Law and began his law practice in 1976 in Old Town, Alexandria, Wade Sanders said.

Amy Nelson, director of Legal Services for D.C. ‘s Whitman-Walker Health, said Sanders became one of Whitman-Walker’s original volunteer pro-bono attorneys in the 1980s.

“Dale was a beloved part of the legal services program and our medical-legal partnership for nearly 40 years,” Nelson said. “Dale was one of the clinic’s first volunteer attorneys at Whitman-Walker’s weekly, legal walk-in clinic offering free counseling to clients about their legal rights in the face of HIV/AIDS and LGBT discrimination from employers, landlords, medical providers, and insurance companies,” according to Nelson.

Nelson added, “Dale represented dozens of people impacted by the ignorance and prejudice attendant to an HIV/AIDS diagnosis, and his litigation wins were instrumental in advancing the legal rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS.”

Sanders’s most recent case on behalf of Whitman-Walker took place in 2023 in support of a transgender woman in Virginia who faced discrimination from her employer and health insurer, Nelson said.

In 1989, Whitman-Walker presented Sanders with its Gene Frey Award for Volunteer Service, and in 1994 presented him with its Founders Award for Pro Bono Legal Services, Nelson told the Blade. She said in 2024, Whitman-Walker re-named its annual Going the Extra Mile Pro Bono Award as the Dale Sanders Award for Pro Bono Excellence.

“Dale’s legacy helped to shape HIV/AIDS law, and his fierce commitment to justice will live on at Whitman-Walker Health,” Nelson said in a statement. “We will miss him dearly.”

Daniel Bruner, who served as Whitman-Walker’s legal services director prior to Amy Nelson taking that position, said Sanders played a role in shaping his own legal skills and knowledge.

“Dale was one of my earliest legal models among local, and national, advocates for people living with HIV and LGBT people,” Bruner told the Blade. “He was a fierce, persistent advocate for his clients and for the community,” Bruner said, adding, “He won key victories in several cases where employees’ or health care patients’ privacy had been egregiously violated. I certainly will never forget him.”

Wade Sanders said his brother was also an avid bridge player, saying he played competitively. “He earned the rank of Ruby Life Master, a pretty big deal in the bridge world,” Wade Sanders said.

Dale Sanders is survived by his husband, Christian Samonte; his sister, Joyce Sanders of York, S.C.; his brother Wade Sanders of West Jefferson, N.C.; and his beloved dogs Langley and Abigail, his brother said in a statement.

A memorial service for Dale Sanders organized by the Sanders family and the LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington will be held Saturday, May 10, at 1 p.m. at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church at 1830 Connecticut Ave., N.W. in D.C., a Dignity Washington spokesperson said.