|
|
|
 Editorials | Opinions | May 2008 
Carry Forward Felicia's Causes
 The Capital Times
go to original
| | Felicia Melton-Smyth | | |
The circumstances of her death in Mexico were as tragic as they were shocking.
But it is the life of Madison activist Felicia Melton-Smyth that we remember, warmly and with a genuine sense of loss - to her family, friends and co-workers at the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, to others in Madison's LGBT community, and to the thousands of people with HIV/AIDS who benefited from her work as a tireless fundraiser and caring compatriot.
Felicia was a transsexual, and she refused to hide from the fact of her sexuality. As an activist with the Madison Area Transgender Association and at OutReach, the Madison area's LGBT community center, she prodded more cautious members of the lesbian and gay community to include the B for bisexual and the T for transgendered individuals.
Felicia didn't care for closets. She thought that when people were out about their sexuality, they could then get about the serious work of their lives.
And she got about that work.
When the AIDS crisis struck, Felicia's friends began getting sick. And she began caring for them. It was a commitment that would extend to the entire community. The woman who changed her own last name to honor two best friends who died from the disease - "Every time you hear my name, every time I write it on a check," she would say, "I think of them" - began raising money for groups that help people with HIV/AIDS such as the AIDS Network. She created a tradition of spending her holidays with AIDS patients.
As drugs, treatments and a softening of social constraints began to make AIDS less frightening to many, Felicia devoted much of her energy to reminding young people that they still had to play it safe. "I've noticed that the younger generation doesn't think that they're ever going to get AIDS. They don't seem scared of it," she explained in an interview. "They don't know anybody that has it. They think it is this thing that happened years ago."
With her gentle, caring and good-humored reminders, Felicia saved lives - and she made the lives of those she could not save easier, more secure, better.
That she will not be around to save more is the real tragedy that extends from her murder last Sunday at a resort hotel in Puerto Vallarta.
As her fellow activist Michelle M. Eldridge says, "Her friends knew her as a woman who suffered many, many hardships in her life. However, her past rarely dissuaded her from expressing her energetic spirit, warm charismatic caring smile, and the kind giving of her time and devotion to those around her. Felicia was always thoughtful of another's safety and well-being. She looked out for, watched over and protected those who she felt were vulnerable or in need."
"Many times in her life Felicia stood alone," Eldridge recalls. "She stood for what she knew in her heart to be good and true. She stood to help herself and those whom she loved. She stood to bring many in the community together, organizing to raise money for community events. She stood to help bring the dangers and plight of AIDS to the forefront of people's minds. She stood strong and she stood for all humanity!"
Felicia is gone. But we can still stand with her by supporting the newly created Felicia Melton-Smyth Foundation. To learn how to carry the causes of this remarkable Madisonian forward, visit the group's Web site at www.feliciafoundation.org/. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us