‘Foundational person,’ leader in Chicago’s LGBT community
Marcia Lipetz had a knack for recognizing issues early and tackling them head-on, whether it was the AIDS crisis, challenges facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community or the fight for women’s rights.
Lipetz was the first fulltime executive director of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago in the 1980s and also helped establish the Center on Halsted, which describes itself as the Midwest’s largest LGBTQ social service agency.
In 2009, Lipetz was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, which cited her “leadership, energy, passion, and vision for Chicago’s LGBT community and the institutions affiliated with it, especially for her work with the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the WPWR-TV Channel 50 Foundation, and Center on Halsted.”
“She really was a foundational person in our community,” said Tracy Baim, longtime editor of the Windy City Times who was recently named publisher and executive editor of the Chicago Reader. “She never sought the limelight. She just did the work day in and day out. She really helped build the community as it is today by creating these long-lasting institutions.”
Lipetz, 71, died Sept. 11 in her Evanston home of cancer, according to her spouse, Lynda Crawford.
She was born and grew up in Louisville, Ky. Both of her parents were social workers, and she grew up with an orientation to the Jewish concept of “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world, Crawford said.
She went to Douglass College of Rutgers University in New Jersey for her undergraduate degree, then got a master’s in sociology from Ohio State University in Columbus. She came to Chicago to get a doctorate in sociology from Northwestern University.
Fred Eychaner, chairman of Newsweb Corp., met Lipetz around 1980 when both were on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
“She was a relentless defender of the Bill of Rights and a woman’s right to free choice unhindered by government dictates,” Eychaner said.
As the AIDS crisis unfolded in the 1980s, she was among those who saw the epidemic both as a health disaster and a threat to civil liberties.
“Marcia struggled fearlessly to protect everyone affected by that horrible disease,” Eychaner said. “She fought fiercely against those who saw the epidemic as an opportunity to moralize and blame rather than a true public health emergency.”
Lipetz soon became the first full-time director of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. She later became the first executive director of what is now the Alphawood Foundation, where Eychaner is president.
Patrick Sheahan worked with Lipetz when she was with the WPWR Foundation. Lipetz had been on the board of Horizons in the mid-1980s, formerly Gay and Lesbian Horizons, and Sheahan recruited her to help with plans and fundraising for what would become the Center on Halsted.
“I twisted her arm,” Sheahan said, “and she graciously agreed to serve on the steering committee.”
Sheahan said Lipetz was an invaluable resource whose strengths included “her remarkable standing in the community, a rich history of creating organizations and a deep knowledge not only about Chicago’s LGBT community but the broader Chicago philanthropic community.”
In an interview on the website Chicago Gay History, Lipetz offered her own version of her contributions. “I guess I’m a builder — solid hard work that builds for the future — and I’m enormously proud of the work of the ACLU and the future of Center on Halsted.”
Lipetz later was president and CEO of the Executive Service Corps of Chicago, working with local nonprofits. Most recently, according to Baim, Lipetz started Lipetz Consulting, where her clients included the Chicago Community Trust, working as an adviser on the LGBT Community Fund.
“I don’t think people realize how much of a teacher she was,” Crawford said. “She just quietly helped people — teaching and mentoring.”
Lipetz is also survived by a sister, Judith Graham.
A memorial service will be at noon Sept. 23 in the Skokie chapel of Chicago Jewish Funerals, 8851 Skokie Boulevard, Skokie.