From Dr. Dane S. Claussen

Dr. Dane S. Claussen
Head (2004-5), Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Interest Group, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)

Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Programs, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Point Park University, Pittsburgh, PA

I first saw Roy in action when I attended the second annual convention of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association in New York City in 1993, but met Roy in mid-1994 when we were both attending the Newspaper Association of America convention in San Francisco. Roy was there lobbying newspaper chains to offer same-sex benefits, and probably to hire openly GLBT employees, send recruiters to the NLGJA convention, and so on. I was there promoting my newspaper brokerage (which included being the first media company broker to represent GLBT publications for sale) and newspaper management consulting businesses. I sought out Roy because I had been circulating a white paper on the idea of a national chain of local GLBT publications (which later was executed on a limited scale by Windows Media LLC, which owns The Washington Blade and others), even though I knew they weren't NLGJA's primary constituency. I thought Roy might know a lot of gay editors, gay publishers, gay entrepreneurs, and others who might be interested in a local GLBT publications venture by themselves or with partners. I didn't know, and it never would have occurred to me, that Roy had gone from only really coming out at ASNE to lobbying for NLGJA at NAA in only four years, a period shorter than I had been out, even though I was 30 years younger.

Roy listened curiously and respectfully, asked me about myself, told me a little about himself (including mentioning, with an obvious twinkle in his eye, his partner), but Roy didn't promise anything. By late 1995, I was out of the brokerage business and back in graduate school and didn't see Roy for several years. But I read, or more accurately, inhaled, his book, Prayers for Bobby. It probably remains to this day the most flawlessly written book I've ever read. Let's put it this way: Prayers for Bobby is about as close to a perfect book as one is ever going to read. Not only did I wish I had written it (which admittedly I've thought about more than one book), but if I had edited it, I wouldn't have changed a single word, a single punctuation, a single paragraphing, etc., in the entire volume. I can't say that about any other book. I wrote Roy a letter telling him that, but he was too modest to reply or even ever mention it. Little did I know then, although it certainly didn't surprise me later, that he would go on to write well-received operas and plays, or that he had been an exceptional editor from a young age (city editor of the New Haven Journal-Courier at 27) and
for a long time.

When Roy, by this time a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, decided in 2002, that he was going to re-launch the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication's GLBT Interest Group, which had been defunct for about 10 years, and later, to get "sexual orientation" added into the curriculum diversity language used by ACEJMC to accredit journalism schools, Roy sought out my help repeatedly. I strategized with him on the phone and at the AEJMC convention in Miami in 2002, and gathered signatures with him at the AEJMC convention in Kansas City in 2003. Roy told me several times early in the process that he needed help and advice to understand the politics and structures of the AEJMC, ACEJMC and ASJMC, but as a good journalist, Roy had a lot of "sources." And as a very bright man, he was learning faster than I could tell him anything he didn't know. Before anyone who wasn't watching knew what had happened, NLGJA had a representative on ACEJMC, "sexual orientation" was in the ACEJMC accreditation standards, and the revived GLBT Interest Group was up and running.

Roy asked me to serve as the first Head of this revived Interest Group, and was, I think, genuinely perplexed about why, as a matter of both logistics and protocol, I couldn't serve as Head of the new GLBT Interest Group during the same year that I was already slated to serve as Head of the 650-member Mass Communication & Society Division. Roy, who never took "no" for an answer, asked what I could do, and I told him that I could serve as Vice-Head/Program Chair in 2003-4 and Head in 2004-5. So last year, the University of Iowa's Sue Lafky and Indiana University's David Adams were Co-Heads and I was Vice-Head, but Roy, with only the title Secretary/Newsletter Editor, was our mentor, our inspiration, our guilty conscience, our cheerleader (he called me "brilliant" more than once, but based on what, I'm not sure), and much more. News article and obituary writers have been using words about Roy such as "passion," "vision," "perpetual motion," and believing in the "possible." All of that is true and more. If Roy could, with his energy and personality, "fill up" a newsroom or a meeting room at an NLJGA convention, and he did, I don't think anyone who ever saw him with a group of typical JMC professors-who as group often strike me as mostly sober, even somber-will ever forget the contrast. That also wasn't lost on Roy; he wondered at least a few times why most of his late-in-life colleagues (America's JMC professors) didn't seem as excited, optimistic and idealistic about something, anything, as he was-especially
(this was implied but unstated) since he was older than almost all of them.

It was a privilege to have known Roy and worked with him, and it was truly an honor to apparently have been liked and respected by him. The last time I talked with Roy, he informed me that he had placed me on NLGJA's educators committee and hoped I wouldn't object. Such a call was routine for Roy, but I wish I had known it would be the last time I would talk with him. On the other hand, it's an appropriate memory because it was so in character: he was working on what was important to him and for the rest of us until the end. I will miss him terribly.