Movement leader & pivotal LGBTQ activist Urvashi Vaid has died

Though I did not know Urvashi Vaid well, since the first day we met back in Boston in the late 1970s, I have considered her my friend. I believe she thought of me as her friend as well.

During those exciting and heady days of the movement for liberation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people, Urv and I were connected to the progressive national weekly newspaper, Gay Community News. I wrote for the paper for many years and served as its Features Editor for a short period.

I first met Urv on a typically hectic weekly Friday evening at the offices of GCN on Bromfield Street in Boston completing the final edits of the paper, and later in the night, joining with community members to stuff individual copies into mailing envelopes for sorting and shipping around the U.S. and many countries across the globe.

We did not have the computerized technologies that newspapers have today. We typed article copy using electric typewriters. As copy was completed throughout the week, we drove it to a printing company across the Charles River in Cambridge, which converted it into right and left justified print on camera-ready sheets.

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