Lee Lawson is honoring elder LGBTQ+ veterans after fighting for gay rights for decades

Of all the nominations for this year’s class of Hometown Heroes, one of the most moving was from South Florida resident Patti Lynn, who shared the story of her good friend and fellow retiree Lee Lawson.

Lynn, who is straight, kept seeing Lawson, who’s gay, at different volunteer opportunities and finally cornered him and introduced herself.

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“Because I’m such a shy and withdrawn person,” she says with a smokey laugh. “I was very interested in the fact that he was doing so much volunteer work.”

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Lawson wasted no time recruiting Lynn to one of his many charitable endeavors, in this case, American Veterans for Equal Rights, or AVER, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Allies Veteran’s Service Organization.

“I went to a couple of meetings, I joined, and turns out there were only four of us out of all the membership that can even walk in a parade,” Lynn shares. “So I’ve been doing his parades every time he needs somebody, because somebody’s got to do ’em. And he does, he does so many darn different things.”

“I like to help people,” says Lawson, whom Lynn describes as a man of few words.

Lawson, 82, volunteers one or two days a week at the Pride Center at Equality Park in Wilton Manors, where a weekly Coffee & Conversation event brings out about 150 gay men and a few women this time of year.

“It’ll probably be closer to 200 this winter when the snowbirds come,” Lawson predicts.

At SAGE of South Florida, or Senior Action in a Gay Environment, Lawson says, “I do the education and am the education chair for that. Get people to speak at our monthly meetings.”

Lawson sits on the advisory council for the Area Agency on Aging in Broward County and is on the board of directors of the Broward Veterans Coalition.

“I’m just the LGBTQ representative for that one,” he explains.

Lawson is an Army vet who served at the height of the Cold War, attached to an engineering battalion as an intelligence analyst in West Berlin. He was rotated out of the city the day after the Wall started going up.

After he was discharged, Lawson returned home to Davenport, Iowa, where he worked for International Harvester and was out among friends. His first opportunity for activism came in 1966.

That year, Rock Island Arsenal, a Department of Defense contractor there, started firing gay men, so Lawson and a group of like-minded friends started what they called a “homophile” organization dedicated to promoting gay equal rights with radio appearances, press releases, and increasingly visible demonstrations — but using pseudonyms in public.

“I went by Adam Lee,” Lawson recalls.

At the same time, Lawson and his circle were confronting gay bashing at local cruising spots.

“Every spring, some of the young college or high school boys, seniors, and that sort of thing would try to beat up the ‘fruits,’ and so we organized a few lessons for them so that they didn’t think we were just little nelly things. “

“It wasn’t a big effort,” Lawson says. “I’m a motorcycle rider myself, so I look tough anyway. Fruit beaters, we called them.”

Lawson’s first partner died of complications from AIDS in 1984.

“Nobody knew what it was. And so I kind of assumed I had it and became celibate pretty much for five years or so, so I wouldn’t spread it if I did have it. I had a portrait made to show my healthy self as a gift to my parents and that sort of thing. You know, things you do when you when you think you’re gonna die.”

Lawson committed years to working with HIV organizations throughout the Midwest, in Kansas City, Chicago and St. Louis. He volunteered with Milwaukee AIDS Project and the Damien Center for HIV support in Indianapolis.

“Whatever task he’s ever been given that I’ve seen, he does it well, he does it without complaint, and he gets it done,” says Lynn.

Now in sunny Florida, which he says is “a really great place to live if wasn’t for the governor,” Lawson is making as big an impact as ever.

In October, the national organization for AVER is holding its annual convention in South Florida, the first in three years after a pandemic pause. Lawson will be there, along with Lynn, to raise money for LGBTQ+ Honor Flights, sending a plane filled with aging LGBTQ+ vets along with a personal “guardian” for each to Washington D.C., honoring their service with a tour of the capital.

Has Lawson taken an Honor Flight himself?

“I have not. They started off the Honor Flights with World War II veterans and Korean War veterans. And now they’re open to Vietnam veterans. Since I was kind of in between in the Cold War, I thought, well, I can go, but I should let the people who were actually in Vietnam and the Korean War — they should have first option.”