Rodger McFarlane
Rodger McFarlane, a leader in the gay rights movement during the early days of the AIDS epidemic and the first executive director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, died Friday in Truth or Consequences, N.M. He was 54 and lived in Denver.
He committed suicide, Mr. McFarlane’s brother John confirmed. In a letter that he left, Mr. McFarlane wrote that he was unwilling to become further debilitated by heart and back problems. He had broken his back in 2002.
Mr. McFarlane was director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis from 1982 through 1985. The organization, which now provides services for more than 15,000 people affected by H.I.V. and AIDS in New York City, was an early and vocal advocate for public and private research to deal with the disease.
Mr. McFarlane went on to lead two other prominent AIDS-related organizations. From 1989 to 1994 he was executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a partnership of two theater-industry groups that provides grants for AIDS services. He was later president of Bailey House, which provides housing for homeless people with AIDS.
From 2004 to 2008, Mr. McFarlane was executive director of the Gill Foundation in Denver. Founded by the software entrepreneur Tim Gill, the foundation finances programs advocating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights.
The Gay Men’s Health Crisis was started in 1982 by six men who had lost friends to AIDS and were dismayed by the lack of services for those with the disease.
Among the founders was the playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer, who became a close friend of Mr. McFarlane.
Mr. McFarlane walked in one day and asked to do volunteer work, Mr. Kramer said in an interview Monday. “He started a hot line on his home phone, which grew into the G.M.H.C. hot line, which became the lifeblood of information for the organization,” he said.
Within months, Mr. McFarlane was the organization’s executive director.
“Nobody wanted us,” Mr. Kramer said. “We had no money, no office space, and single-handedly Rodger took this struggling ragtag group of really frightened and mostly young men, found us an office and set up all the programs.”
Rodger Allen McFarlane was born in Mobile, Ala., on Feb. 25, 1955, the second of four sons of Robert and Betty Baker McFarlane. He was raised on the family’s soybean and chicken farm in Theodore, Ala. Besides his brother John, he is survived by another brother, Robert.
Young Rodger grew to 6 feet 7 inches and played football in high school. “I was big enough to get past the gay thing,” he told The New York Times in 2002.
“I was a monster, a legend,” he joked, “and then I could go jump rope with the girls.”
After attending the University of South Alabama, Mr. McFarlane joined the Navy in 1974 and served as a nuclear reactor technician on a submarine. He later became a respiratory therapist and moved to New York.
For years Mr. McFarlane lived in Manhattan with his brother David, who was also gay. David McFarlane died in 2002 after a long struggle with AIDS. Mr. McFarlane took care of his brother throughout his illness. In 1998, with Philip Bashe, he wrote “The Complete Bedside Companion: No-Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill” (Simon & Schuster), touching on everything from managing pain to personalizing a hospital room.
“AIDS pointed up the inequitable status of gays,” Mr. McFarlane told The Times in 1983. “We were forced to take care of ourselves because we learned that if you have certain diseases, certain lifestyles, you can’t expect the same services as other parts of society.”
