Longtime queer community advocate and all-around rockstar servant of the people Judy Lewis isn’t sure why we’d want to interview her, but she’s happy to accommodate our request. “I’m here for whatever you need,” she says. It’s a phrase that could be a guiding principle for a career that has seen Lewis jumping in to help people who’ve needed her for decades. She’s just wired that way — “efficient, competent, trustworthy (and one of the funniest people I know),” says one longtime community partner, Pride Source Publisher Emeritus Jan Stevenson.
In part, it was Lewis’ personal perspective that led her down a path toward co-founding and serving in her current role as lead training and tabling manager for MiGen, the agency formerly known as SAGE Metro Detroit that focuses on LGBTQ+ advocacy for community members 45 and up. “I had pneumonia, and I was at one of the hospitals locally,” she recalls of an experience that happened around 40 years ago. “And the nurse must have recognized that the woman who brought me was my partner or a more ‘intimate friend,’ and she was not happy…”
The story Lewis recounts about the experience won’t be unfamiliar to older members of the LGBTQ+ community. […]
Click here to read the full piece. This story was originally published by Pride Source on October 5, 2023.
