Remember Their Stories
In Memoriam
Hundreds of members of the deaf community have died of AIDS. The stigma associated with the disease means we will never know all of their names - many died in shame and silence.
Julio Nuñez Genao’s obituary described him as “deaf, short, and very cute.” Originally from the Dominican Republic, Genao first moved to Massachusetts, and then to San Francisco where he was active in the local deaf gay community. He died in 1989, at 33 years old.
John Canady, '72, was from a large multigenerational deaf family, and he worked for the postal service. His signing was so beautiful, he became a model for an ASL textbook. His hands were silenced, though, when a hospital treating him for AIDS restrained them to the bed, preventing him from communicating. This injustice prompted deaf activists to demand increased training for hospital staff. Canady died a week later. It was 1986, and he was 37 years old.
Terry Lewis Mackin, Jr. attended RIT, making many friends through his sincere kindness. He was a dancer with the group Flux Fusion, and although he got a degree in Business Administration, he moved to Los Angeles to fulfill his dream of becoming a professional dancer. A few months later, he contracted pneumonia. He died suddenly in 2008, at 26 years old.
Rosie Lanier Rodriquez was a black trans woman who loved to lip sync, cook, and go on adventures. Her friends described her as full of laughter and life. But her family-written obituary misgendered and misnamed her against her wishes, a practice known as “deadnaming.” She died in 2006, at 37 years old.
Tom Kane was an activist everywhere he went. He founded the Deaf NAMES Project to create memorial quilt panels for deaf people, was one of the first TTY operators on the Metro TeenAIDS Hotline, served as an officer of the Capital Metro Rainbow Alliance, and co-founded Deaf AIDS Action. Kane loved sunflowers as a symbol of life, surrounding himself with them. He died in 1995, at 45 years old.