Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents Blog: Obituary - Randy Forrester

This one is personal for me. I knew and worked with Randy on several occasions during the eighties when I was living in Western Pennsylvania and active in the LGBT movement on college campuses and in the community. I lived in Pittsburgh for several years.

Randy was a true pioneer in the movement, founding the Persad Center in Pittsburgh when the LGBT movement itself was just getting started around the country. He was a fantastic person and the LGBT community was much richer because he was a part of it. I was honored to have known him. (O.M.)

Randal G. "Randy" Forrester was 16 when he came out as a gay man to his parents, and likewise was open about his sexuality with his friends and classmates.
That was in 1963, when society's attitudes about homosexuality were in the Stone Age compared to today, and it illustrated Mr. Forrester's honesty and bravery.
Those attributes, along with intelligence, passion and a sense of humor, would serve him well over the next four decades as he worked tirelessly as a pioneering crusader for the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as well as for women, black people and other minorities.
Mr. Forrester, 60, died Wednesday in Forbes Hospice, where he had been treated for 10 days. He died of cell carcinoid cancer of the liver.
He was first diagnosed with a tumor 26 years ago, but, amazingly, only in the last year did it present him with serious health problems, said Jim Huggins, Mr. Forrester's life partner of 37 years.
Mr. Huggins, who co-founded the Persad Center with Mr. Forrester in 1972, said he was a visionary who affected innumerable people through his activism and the way he lived his own life.
"Randy was at the forefront of most changes in the sense he was a person who kept pushing the envelope, getting people to look at what gay people and lesbians are really about and not to look at the stereotypical images," said Mr. Huggins, who with Mr. Forrester lived on a houseboat docked at Fox Chapel Yacht Club.
"People are people, human beings are human beings and our 37 years of an incredibly loving relationship is certainly testament to that."
"He was incredibly always ahead of his time, a visionary," said Betty Hill, executive director of the Persad Center, the nation's second-oldest licensed counseling center specifically created to serve the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. "I think he arguably is this region's most influential gay rights figure. I can't think of anyone else who has done more for the gay community and the HIV community."
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