Washington Blade - January 5, 2007
Katherine Volin

"It was one of the single most powerful moments of my entire life," Spector, a lesbian, says about the march, which took place in October of that year, nearly two years to the day of her brother's death.

"I remember not sleeping at all," she says. "I just remember standing on the Mall and crying. It was ... early morning, the sun was rising. I was watching them line the walkways of the [AIDS Memorial] Quilt. The '87 Quilt, just the whole idea of it - I couldn't believe it. It was a culmination. It was a real time for me to start the healing process of losing Stan. Things started to take off after that."

Twenty years later, Spector 48, is still going. Friends and acquaintances marvel at her efforts and energy.

"I think she has put more energy into gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender causes than just about any individual I know," says Kris McLaughlin, a friend of Spector's and former president of the Arlington Gay & Lesbian Alliance.

Spector's long list of community involvement includes working with AGLA, the Human Rights Campaign, Service League Defense Network and Reel Affirmations, along with a host of others.

"My pastor used to say she thought I was triplets," says Spector, who attends services at the gay-centered Metropolitan Community Church as well as Jewish synagogue Bet Mishpachah. "I've slowed down now."

Part of what slowed Spector down for a while was her weight. Just shy of 5'6", Spector started gaining weight when she began her activism, visiting fast food restaurants and developing unhealthy eating habits as her schedule grew more and more complicated.

"Finally in 2003, when I was approaching 300 [lbs], I said, 'I gotta do something'," Spector says. "Everything hurt. The word diabetes kept coming up in my life too much for me to ignore it anymore."

Finally in 2004, Spector had gastric bypass surgery, which, combined with her plastic surgery to remove excess skin this past fall, resulted in a weight loss of 125 lbs. Gastric bypass surgery reduces the size of the stomach and allows the food to bypass part of the small intestine.

WITH THE LOSS of the weight, Spector's life and work began anew. In simple physical terms, her diabetes, diagnosed in 1994, has become manageable through diet alone; she is no longer dependent on a daily insulin dose. Being lighter, though, also means being able to hone in again on her activism work, and in some ways, that focus has been about preserving the history she has helped to create.

Spector's home is crammed with videos, photos and memorabilia of gay events that she has attended, planned and founded over the years.

"I could fill half a museum just with what's in my apartment," Spector says.

So it was natural that a majority of her volunteer time has been devoted to the Rainbow History Project, an organization cataloguing gay local history. The Project was founded by Mark Meinke, who is also one of Spector's local heroes.

She also donates her time to the Max Robinson Center, a Southeast branch of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, and she is fiercely devoted to the D.C. drag community.

"She's ... been instrumental in bringing the drag kings to the area," McLaughlin says.

IN HER ACTIVISM, Spector has usually arrived early on the scene, distributing safe-sex kits to women in the late '80s with Oppression Under Target, an early AIDS activism group she co-founded. She counts her AIDS activism as her most significant contribution to the city. In 1990, she worked with ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, to prevent the spread of HIV through infected drug needles.

"I think giving out clean needles at the corner of 9th and N, NW, when it wasn't safe or trendy to do clean needle exchange - we really saved lives," Spector says.

As she celebrates her 20th anniversary of AIDS and lesbian activism on Jan. 10, Spector will again look to the community she has served for so long and decide where her energy is most needed.

"I see the amount of money that the community spends on alcohol and cover charges and parties and I do that too, but it breaks my heart when I see a club full of young people and then we have a town meeting and 40 people show up," Spector says. "The only way we're going to get anywhere is if everyone chips in."

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