Bob Basker, Ground-Breaking Gay, Feminist Activist

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Wednesday May 23 12:37 PM EDT (via Yahoo)

Groundbreaking Activist Dies at 82

By Gregg Drinkwater, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network

Bob Basker, a longtime political activist and founding president of one of
the earliest gay rights groups in the United States, died recently of heart
failure.

Basker was 82 when he died April 6 in San Francisco. His death was only
publicly announced a few days ago.

Born in East Harlem in 1918, Basker began his lifelong commitment to
activism and social justice by joining the student peace movement in the
1930s. He served in the Army during World War II, where he fought in Europe.
In later years, he was instrumental in increasing the visibility of gay
veterans in the American Legion, as one of the founders -- along with Paul
Hardman -- of San Francisco's Alexander Hamilton Post 448 of the American
Legion, the only American Legion post with a predominantly GLBT membership.

Active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Basker became founding
president in 1965 of Mattachine Midwest, the Chicago branch of the
groundbreaking gay rights group formed in Los Angeles in 1951 by Harry Hay
and a group of four friends.

Although Basker had been actively gay since his teenage years, in 1954 he
married Hedda Schmidt, with whom he had two children. In an interview with
Jesse G. Monteagudo, Basker said, "My wife knew I was gay before I married
her, but she knew I wanted a straight, family relationship." The couple
divorced in 1962, but the two remained friends until her death.

In the late 1960s, Basker moved to Cuba to be with his ex-wife and children,
and later to Miami, where in 1971, he helped start the city's Gay Activist
Alliance.

When he moved to San Francisco in 1978, Basker continued his political work
as a member of the National Organization for Women (news - web sites ) and
San Francisco's many GLBT Democratic clubs. He later joined the board of the
San Francisco branch of the NAACP and the California Legislative Council for
Older Americans.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in the last few years of his life,
Basker worked as a records clerk for San Francisco's district attorney,
where his reputation as an activist and a feminist grew in part from a
button he regularly wore that said "59 cents," a reference to a study that
showed women make only 59 cents for every dollar men make.

"People would ask him about it and he would use it as an opportunity to
educate people about how far we've come and how far we have to go," his
daughter, Melinda Basker, told the Chronicle.

Basker is survived by his son Wayne, daughter Melinda and stepson Paul.

Donations in Basker's honor can be made to Project Open Hand, P.O. Box
642910, San Francisco, CA 94164.
 
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